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AllFaith.com and Beit Emunah's
AllFaith Community Worship:
Sundays at 2 PM Eastern.

Welcome to AllFaith.com and Beit Emunah's AllFaith Community Worship!
We are a community of diverse people from different and unique backgrounds united in the belief that God is REALLY ONE and desires us to be of One Spirit within our diversity.

Each of our Sunday gatherings have a different focus. Today we focus on Finding the X That Marks The Spot

Opening Prayer

X Marks The Spot Elise Trouw

More Precious Than Silver Steffany Gretzinger

Seek Ye First Maranatha Singers

From my upcoming book The Awakening of Paradise:

Emmanuel, the Restoration teacher from my We Stand series appears in the small mountain town of Paradise, Alabama. He is new in town and unknown, although a handful of people are joining him a park and listening to him:

“Welcome, Thomas,” Emmanuel said. “I’m Emmanuel. I believe you have a question?” Thomas wondered how he knew his name but assumed Felicia had mentioned it.

“I write for the paper and would like to ask your opinion.” Emmanuel nodded. “The local masjid, where the imam was killed, was vandalized with some graffiti, fairly typical hate stuff. This kind of thing has become so common at most religious centers that I’m trying to find a way to make it interesting. People read the headline: MOSQUE HIT WITH VANDALISM or CHURCH HIT WITH VANDALISM, and so on that just skip to the next article.”
Emmanuel seemed to consider the question before replying. “What do you seek to accomplish in your article?”
Thomas hadn’t considered that question. He intended to do his job, which was to write about incidents like this. Hopefully, his articles are interesting to his readers. One day, perhaps he’d advance in his career, write for a major paper, maybe even get a job on one of the networks. He said nothing.
“Without a goal beyond the mundane, your writing will be mundane.” Thomas nodded.
“What would you suggest?”
“That must be your decision. I would want to help end such things if possible.”
“Agnes, Ms. Fuller, says we should be objective in our reporting,” Thomas pointed out. “Determining the reasons such things happen, beyond the basics, might call our biases into play.”
“Why was the masjid vandalized?”
“Apparently, it had to do with Terrible Tuesday,” he replied.
“Because some people believe the Muslims caused the deaths?”
“Yes.”
“And before that Tuesday, there were no ill-feelings about the masjid?” Emmanuel asked.
“Some people have opposed their presence in Paradise since they built the mosque.”
“And before Imam Noor built the masjid?”
“Some people have always opposed Islam,” Thomas replied, thinking this was all obvious.
“Do you remember three years ago when that church was burned in Chattanooga?”
“Yes, of course. Agnes sent Felicia and me to cover it.”
“Why was that church burned?”
“Investigators decided it had something to do with their stance on Israel.”
And the synagogue in Asheville a year before that?”
“Antisemites.”

“All those people suffered,” Emmanuel explained. “Imam Noor and his congregation suffered. His killer, Hassan Zainab suffered, as did those associated with him. The people of Chattanooga suffered when their church was destroyed, and the Jews in Asheville suffered. Even you are suffering as you try to make others’ suffering interesting, because your readers are bored by all the suffering; their hardened hearts cause them to suffer. It is all suffering, and it can all be avoided."

“Understand that all physical, mental, and emotional suffering arises from temporary concerns about pain and suffering, attraction and aversion, union and separation, desires met or unmet, passions, emotions, aging, sickness, death, rebirth, heaven and hell, and so on. Are not all such concerns based on misidentification with the body, which but a temporary vessel?”
They sat quietly for a few minutes.

“That which is eternal is unconditioned,” Emmanuel explained. “We embodied mortals are conditioned. We are all human, but our conditioning determines what type of human we are and how we view existence. This one is male; this one is female. Some say this male is a female, or this female is really male. This one is Indian, that one American, another Russian, this one a Christian, that a Muslim, another a Jew... As people embrace their various conditionings, they become less than they were, never more. This is called ‘addition that subtracts.’ The more conditioning one adds, the more of the essential self is subtracted.

“If I am a Christian and you are not, must I believe that you are less than I? That GOD hates and rejects you? If I am Jewish and you are not, must I believe myself chosen and you unchosen? Must I consider Jews and Christians, Hindus, and others to be infidels if I identify as Muslim? Why is there such divisions? Is my being Jewish, or Christian, or Muslim, or Hindu, not enough? And if it is not, isn’t the lack within my beliefs rather than those of the others?

Nothing that is materially conditioned is permanent! Understanding this leads to what is permanent. Not understanding this, everything appears unsatisfactory. Why? Because for who we truly are, it is!”
“Then what is permanent?” a man asked.
“This is the great mystery of life taught by all the masters. Not understanding this mystery is the birth of everything else. How does one find a hidden treasure?”
“By seeking,” a woman replied.
“Where shall we seek?” Emmanuel asked.
No one replied for a moment, and then a woman in her early sixties said, “It would be nice if we had a treasure map.”
Emmanuel placed his index finger on his nose and replied, “Precisely! And we do.”
Thomas thought, ‘Here it is, the sales pitch for his new book or his cult or...’
Emmanuel looked at Thomas and smiled compassionately, as though understanding his thoughts and doubts. “Your parents named you well, Thomas.” Thomas pretended not to understand. How could Emmanuel know what he had thought?
“We have not one treasure map, but several,” Emmanuel told them.
“The Bible?” a girl suggested.
Emmanuel nodded. And the Dhammapada, the Bhagavad Gita, the Tao Te Ching, the Guru Granth Sahib, the Tripitaka, the Analects of Confucius, the Avesta, the Agamas, the Epic of Gilgamesh, Liber Linteus, the Odyssey, the Ginza Rabba, and so on and so forth. And how do treasure maps work?” Emmanuel asked.
“X marks the spot,” the woman who had lamented not having a treasure map replied.
“If you can find the X," Emmanuel agreed. "That is your second challenge, after finding your map. Finding the X is not the end of your quest. The map may direct you to a sea that has receded or been redirected since your map was written. Perhaps the map points your way from a palm tree on the top of a hill overlooking the sea, but alas, there was a landslide, and the tree fell into the ocean a long time ago, perhaps hundreds or thousands of years ago.”
“So the map is worthless?” Thomas asked.
“Are you prepared to surrender the quest?”
Thomas replied, “No?”
“Is that an answer or a question?” Emmanuel asked.
“No, I am not prepared to give up the quest.”
“The map is probably still useful then, but you may decide to go to a library or an antiquities dealer and look for another map, perhaps a newer one, or one that is more legible, or...”
“Or one that approaches the treasure from the other side of the island,” a man replied, nodding his head.
“Until you surrender your quest for the treasure, will you not take advantage of all the clues you can find?”
“And if you decide there is no treasure?” someone asked.
“Then you go on with your life. Perhaps you will find a different X on a different map.”
“How about that saying, ‘If that which you seek you do not find within, you will never find it without’?” a woman asked.
“Where is the treasure to be found if not within? Have we not agreed that the treasure we seek is not a conditioned thing? While our conditioned maps may lead us to an island or a mountain to find the X, where does the X lead us?”
“Within,” Thomas answered nodding.
“And within what? Surely not our conditioned physical bodies. We know what is within them, temporary organs and muscles and so on...”
“Within our own consciousness,” the treasure map-referencing woman replied with a smile.
“Where else could it be?” Emmanuel asked. “This is the difference between religion and spirituality. Religions are maps to the X. We are seeking what is beyond the X.”

Into Faith I Go! Pat Barett

Seed of Faith © All Essential Music

Praises and Prayers to God.

We invite you to share your prayers with us and with God now. Hold those you would pray for in your heart and release them to GOD for healing and blessing as we sing, The Lord Bless you.

Let us join our hearts and minds. May One GOD hear our prayers and respond favorably to us and awaken us all to Light of Truth.

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