Beca Lewis

Choosing the Filter
Published at eSpiritCenter-General Spirituality on October 29, 2004
My daughter asked, “Didn’t you get my email?” That’s when I realized that I hadn’t been receiving my main email account for over a week. This meant that for at least 7 days I didn’t notice that 3 emails that come every day had not arrived, that people who usually write to me weren’t, and that I wasn’t receiving notices of orders from the Internet. It took 7 days before I realized that things that usually happened – weren’t. Once I became aware of the problem I knew what I had done to cause it. With an amazingly complete lack of awareness I had stopped an important flow of information.

It Only Takes One
Published at eSpiritCenter-Inspiration on October 22, 2004
Checking the bird feeder hanging off our third floor window I noticed that the seed had not yet been touched, and I said to myself, “It only takes one.” I know because a few years ago we had two bird feeders. One was very visible in the middle of our yard. Within hours birds (and squirrels) had found it and we had to fill it every day. The other feeder was the same one we have now, a small plastic one sitting on a window where I could see the birds while working on the computer.

Are You In?
Published at eSpiritCenter-Inspiration on October 14, 2004
Whenever someone honks at me just as the traffic light turns green I wonder, if we were standing together on a curb and the traffic light turned green would they yell at me to start walking? Is the cause of this rudeness the impersonal nature of the car, or the fact that cars are built to be going zoom-zoom that makes people honk – or cut people off – or swear at them in traffic? Do we forget who others and we are as soon as we get behind the wheel? We as drivers are often double-minded, kind in person, rude impersonally.

Graceful Rowing
Published at eSpiritCenter-Inspiration on September 27, 2004
A few days after Del and I had completed our cross-country move and I had arrived in my new office I went for a walk down to the Connecticut River. As I approached the river I heard the sound of someone calling out what I recognized as a cadence for crewing. When I reached the river I expected to see the beautiful sight of a boat skimming across the river as all onboard pulled evenly and gracefully together. That’s not what I saw. Instead I saw oars bumping and moving in and out of the water at odd times. The boat barely moved.

Celebrate Construction
Published at eSpiritCenter-Inspiration on September 20, 2004
Everyone walked into the hotel and said, “Oh my G**d!” The hotel was a mess. All of us attending the conference were expecting a luxury hotel and what we found was a construction site. “Perfect” I thought! What a wonderful symbol of what will be happening this weekend and what happens each day as we shift from a material perception to a Spiritual Perception. Since I was a speaker at the conference I thought I would take a few pictures of the construction and insert them into my power point presentation to make my point. What happened as a result meant that instead of having only one story to tell, I got two.

The Cat and the Trash
Published at eSpiritCenter-Inspiration on September 13, 2004
“Love is always present and cannot remain forever unseen.” That was the point of view we were maintaining in spite of the fact that the evidence before us told us otherwise. First we seemed to have lost a client’s beloved cat. We had been told that the cats could easily sneak out of the house so we were doubly careful to make sure that when we visited them they were still in the house when we left. Yet one cat was missing the next day when we came back and a door that we thought we had closed was now open.

The Squirrel And The Two Power Cords
Published at eSpiritCenter-Animals & Animal Healing on September 6, 2004
I have a squirrel friend who must know the spiritual law, “Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.” Perhaps squirrels automatically teach it to their children and perhaps in a squirrel family it is actually believed and acted upon. The proof I have of this fact is the little squirrel paw prints on my glass door where Mrs. Billie Bob props herself while looking in to see if I am ready to bring her peanuts. Even when it takes awhile for me to notice, or to get up and get them - she waits, confident that the law, seeking and knocking (or in her case pawing) is in intact.

The Lies of Sight
Published at eSpiritCenter-Inspiration on August 30, 2004
Perception rules – really! What you perceive to be reality magnifies and your five senses report back to you what you perceive and believe. This is cycle is self perpetuating because the more you believe the senses the more your perception is grounded in this false belief. Shift your perception and the world shifts before you. Here are three simple stories illustrating this fact.

What He Didn't Say
Published at eSpiritCenter-Inspiration on August 23, 2004
He said, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.” * It astonished those who heard him speak. They expected him to speak words of condemnation, and he did not. Recently, I realized that there was something else we might have expected him to say and he didn’t. It occurred to me after thinking through a few recent conversations that they all had something in common. It was the belief of the person I was speaking to that they must have done something wrong to be experiencing the situation that they were in.

Love Knows
Published at eSpiritCenter-Inspiration on August 16, 2004
As my granddaughter nimbly climbed up onto the counter to open a cupboard I asked her if she was allowed to do that. Her answer, “But Mom doesn’t know.” When I asked her if that was a safe thing to do her answer was, “ I am very careful with myself.” How many things do we do that our answer might be the same – God doesn’t know and I am very careful with myself. Of course her Mom knew, and of course God knows because Omnipresence really does mean everywhere.

The War of Temptation
Published at eSpiritCenter-Inspiration on August 9, 2004
It was a beautiful day so I decided to walk longer and explore a new way home. The ice had melted on the streets – or so I thought – so I had removed the chains on my shoes (yes, they exist and yes, they work) and was happily striding down a new side street enjoying the view of the lake. Suddenly I felt myself falling sideways. I hit the street with a huge thud as I fell directly on my entire side. As soon as I hit the ground I got back up because I knew that it would not be wise to succumb to the belief of falling.

The Key
Published at eSpiritCenter-Inspiration on August 5, 2004
As I stand at my window I am thinking how easily amidst the endless details and problems of daily life we forget that Love is all there Is and I wish I knew how to help stop us from forgetting. As I think on this I reach into my fanny pack that I wear for running to pull out my hat. Without any reason to do so I also reach into the zipper pocket and pull out a set of keys. I can't believe it. I thought I lost these keys a month ago or that someone else had taken them. And all along they have been with me. Last night I couldn't sleep.

Stories in the Dream
Published at eSpiritCenter-Inspiration on August 2, 2004
1. One morning I woke up thinking, “ Today is the day Del and I are going to have to go next door and tell our neighbor to stop letting his dog come into our carport and use it for a toilet.” Good idea, except we don’t have a carport nor is there a dog that lives next door.
2. A Satellite Company had sent our bill to them onto a credit collection agency claiming that we had not returned their two receivers. This is in spite of the fact we had delivery proof and had been assured that all was ok after calling at least 5 times (on that issue alone).

Supply Before The Need
Published at eSpiritCenter-Inspiration on July 26, 2004
I was doing our accounts one morning wondering how to cover the bills for that day. It was an all too familiar scene – one I had grown tired of years before and thought had “healed,” but was now playing again. Then an interesting “coincidence” occurred. The Bible phrase “Look up – not down for the fields are white with harvest” popped into my mind. Without thinking I glanced up to see my bird friend hopping on our porch. A few weeks earlier he had started to show up looking for food. He hunted and pecked and I know didn’t find much.

Like Water
Published at eSpiritCenter-Inspiration on July 20, 2004
As I prepare to write about the power of water, a gentle mist immediately rises outside my window, reminding me of all the ways that water - as power - appears. This mist softens the edges of all that I can see and only the clear sounds of birds singing can be heard. Ah, to be like more like water - flowing, gentle, patient and ultimately always effective in carrying out its purpose. And it accomplishes this by just being water. Not attempting to be a tree, or a flower, or the wind. It simply is all the qualities of itself - water.