July 2003

I hope you are having a happy summer. This is a time for us to enrich our souls through spending time in nature’s miraculous beauty. Summer is a season where we live by the rhythms of the sunrise and the sun fall. Our days are longer, with hours of shimmering sunshine. These precious days belong to us.

I am having the most exhilarating time writing Things I Want My Daughters to Know. This book is a series of fifty-five essays, words of wisdom to live by. I am under a tight deadline with my publisher HarperCollins. I’m having this book be my focus all summer, working seven days a week. The more I write, the more I stretch myself. I’m reading Aristotle and Emerson, great company, as I think through this exciting book.

Good news! Things I Want My Daughters to Know comes out this Spring in time for Mother’s Day and graduations. Choosing Happiness went back to press for a 9th reprint. I’m elated.

Our beloved teacher of Unity at Lincoln Center in New York, Eric Butterworth, died this spring. His memorial service was June 22, 2003 at a packed Avery Fisher hall. Dr. Maya Angelou gave the eulogy. The music was spectacular – Climb Every Mountain, White Hyacinths (written by Eric Butterworth), Memory, The Wind Beneath My Wings, The Impossible Dream. A choir sang “I Great I Am,” a very Eric take on “How Great Thou Art.”

Dr. Butterworth has been a force for good influencing millions of lives. He was and continues to be Maya Angelou’s teacher. He is Marianne Williamson’s teacher and my teacher. The service every Sunday morning ends with a song, “Let There Be Peace on Earth and Let It Begin with Me.” Dr. Butterworth left us with:

“My Gift to the World”
I am mindful of the great need to give of myself to the world in gratitude for a life of many blessings.
I give you a new spirit of freedom.
I give you a spirit of opulence, freedom from the fear of poverty, and the courage to lay claim to your Divine Inheritance.
I give you the key to the prison doors of fear and worry, the padded cells of guilt and unforgiveness and the dark dungeons of despair and futility.
I give you the blessing of healing and the realization that you can never be less than whole.
I give you the inexhaustible resource of love. I grant to you the discipline to live continuously in the consciousness of love.
I give you the contagious influence of joy, with which you many infect all persons with a new dimension of abundant living.
I give you “the peace that passes all understanding.” Out of this will dawn the awareness that world peace begins within the individual. With this universal discovery, wars and rumors of war will fade from the memory of humankind, and people will get on with the business of living and loving and growing.
Eric Butterworth

“I grant to you the discipline to live continuously in the consciousness of love.” Unity is all about our being one. We have individual consciousnesses but we are all united in one creative force.

I hope you will make copies to give to friends. This man’s teachings are powerful. One of his gurus is Emerson, who is another one of my teachers. I’ll share with you several passages of Emerson from his classic essay , one of my favorites.

~ The secret of fortune is joy in our hands.
~ Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life’s cultivation.
~ Every great man is unique…Shakespeare will never be made by the study of Shakespeare. Do that which is assigned you, and you cannot hope too much or dare too much.
~He who knows that power is inborn, that he is weak because he has looked for good out of him and elsewhere.
~ Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles.
~ To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart, is true for all men – that is genius.

I hope I’ve whetted your appetite for more. Read Self-Reliance. Study it. This message is so important for us to hear. Think your own thoughts. Express the truth as you live it. Our lives are an infinite experience of growth where we are on a quest for greater truth and awareness. Challenge yourself this July to stretch your thoughts beyond where they have gone before.

You will feel your life force increasing as you make new connections, one brilliant thought after another. Beliefs are what we repeatedly think. Give up the old beliefs that frustrate your vital energy from freely flowing through you. Live by your own words of truth.

I wish you a great and happy month. Eat lobster, star gaze, skip, swim, laugh, and read. Think the thoughts that feel delicious to you.

As I sit at my French provincial writing desk I’m looking out at our window boxes brimming with geraniums, our huge pink rosebushes bursting with blooms, hugging the white picket fence. Beyond, across the street, I see the boats bobbing in the harbor. This tranquil, peaceful setting is ideal for a summer of writing, of rest, renewal and re-creation…Life has never felt sweeter. Savor every sacred second.

Love and Live Happy,

Discover the Power Within by Eric Butterworth. This is a classic. HarperCollins reprinted it this month after they ran out of copies. Paperback $15.00. Call: The Unity Center, 213 West 58th Street, New York, NY 10019 for more information.

Living a Beautiful Life has a new cover. A memorable book to read, to have and to hold. This book has sold a million copies in hardcover. Now available, The new cover shows a tea celebration in Alexandra's charming cottage kitchen. Hardback $25.00 plus $5.00 s/h. Please send book orders and checks for this book to 87 Water Street, Stonington, CT 06378.

 

Many of you have expressed an interest in this great artist’s work. I’ve been collecting Muhl paintings for 42 years. If you are interested in becoming a proud owner, please let me know. The prices range from lithographs to oils. Fax me at (212) 996-4625. Tell me your price range (lithographs are $1,400 and oils are $6,000 to $36,000). This one artist has brought great joy to the lives of hundred of collectors.