The Ways of Love are strange to fear. Identify with fear, and you will be a stranger to yourself. And thus will your Self be unknown to you. Your holy Self remains an alien to the part of you that thinks itself real but different from your Self. Who could be sane in such a circumstance? Who but someone terribly confused could believe that they have judged against themself, and that they now are what they are not, and are not what they eternally are?
An idea apart from Reality appeared once in the mind of a Child of the Divine, that this Child fashioned into a strange character. This idea and character came from a thought so foreign to the Truth that it spoke a different language, perceived a world Truth did not know, and understood what Truth regarded as senseless. Stranger yet, this stranger did not recognize the one to whom it came, and yet maintained that their home belonged to it, while the one to whom it came was alien to the stranger who had taken their home. This strange character still inhabits the minds of the separated ones, exiling from their true Home they who have allowed this strange idea to exile them from themselves.
And yet how easy it would be to say, “Sanity is my home. Here I belong, and I will not vacate it because something insane says I must.” What reason could there be for not saying this, except for fear of the reprisal of the stranger for reclaiming your home from it, or that you believed you had invited this stranger in to take your place, and let yourself become a stranger to yourself? No one would let themself be thus dispossessed unless they had become deceived in believing that there was another home more suited to their tastes.
Who then is this stranger? Is it you or fear that is unsuited to dwell in the holy mind that the Divine created as Its Child? Is fear the Divine’s Own, created in Its Likeness? Is it fear that Love completes and is completed by?
There is no home that can shelter both Love and fear together. They cannot coexist. If you are real, then fear must be illusion. And if fear is real, then you do not exist at all. How simply, then, the question is resolved.
They who fear have merely fallen asleep into a dream of deep delusion, in which they said to themselves, “I am the stranger here. And so I leave my mind to one more like me than myself, and give it all I thought belonged to me.” Now are they exiled of their own decision, forgetting who they are, uncertain of all things but this: that they are not themselves, and that their Home has been denied to them.
What do they search for now? What could they find? Anyone who is a stranger to themself can find no home wherever they may look, for they have made return seem impossible to themself. The way to their Home seems lost except a miracle will search them out, and show them that they are no stranger now. The miracle will come. For in their true Home their holy Self remains. It asked no dream character in, and took no alien thought to be Itself. And It calls Its Own unto Itself, in recognition of what is Its Own.
What is this strangeness but the aspect in your mind that your holy Self knows is not Itself? You have as yet not fully identified this strange idea in your mind, for you have given it your rightful place there. Yet is your Self as certain of you as the Divine is of Its Children. The Creator cannot be confused about Creation. It is sure of what belongs to It. No strange idea or character can be interposed between Its Knowledge and Its Children’s Reality. It does not know of strangeness, but It is certain of Its Children. Only in Its Presence are you Home, and there fear is an idea so strange it cannot be conceived.
The Divine’s Certainty suffices. Who It knows to be Its Children belong where It has set Its Creation forever. It has answered you who ask, “What is this strangeness?” Hear Its Voice assure you, quietly and surely, that you are not a stranger to your Creator, nor is your Creator stranger made to you. Whom the Divine has joined remains forever One, at home in It, no stranger to themselves.
Today we offer thanks that Divine Essence has come to search the world for what belongs to It. Its Vision sees no strangers, but only beholds Its Own, and joyously unites with them. They look upon It as a stranger only when they do not recognize themselves. Yet as they give It welcome, they remember. And It leads them gently Home again where they belong.
Divine Essence remembers every Divine Child. Each one does It give you to remember, that your Home may be complete and perfect as It was established. Divine Essence has remembered you. But you will not remember It until you behold all as It does. Who denies their brother or sister is denying It, and thus refusing to accept the Gift of Vision by which their Self is clearly recognized, their Home remembered, and their awakening come.