06.08.25 "Happy Birthday 2025 – Successfully Doing My Job" with Rev. Tony Ponticello

Yesterday was the day the world has designated to celebrate the birth of my body. Yeah! "Happy Birthday to me." I stopped counting "age" several years ago so ... don't ask. If you do I will just tell you that I am immortal and timeless.

I always know it's my birthday because I recognize my birthday lesson. "Today I learn to give as I receive." (WkBk.158) If you do the lessons in the yearly sequence then the lesson that falls on your birthday is always the same. After a few years you begin to recognize it and maybe even develop a fondness for it. Sometimes people begin to see that the Course is giving them a personally significant message through their birthday lesson. My birthday lesson has several.

Since an important part of my job is teaching ACIM, I always found it interesting that in my birthday lesson was a message for a "Teacher of God." "The teacher does not give experience because he did not learn it. It revealed itself to him at its appointed time. But vision is his gift. This he can give directly," (WkBk.158.5) I can't give anyone an experience of the Divine, or a revelation. But I can, and DO, continually share the vision given to me by the Christ within. That vision is of a healed world, a happy dream, and how we can attain it.

I have done this throughout my entire ministry which is over 40 years now. For me this is good and happy news. I gift all with this "good news," which is the literal translation of the word "gospel." As good and happy as I feel this news is – it is frequently not perceived that way by others who are entrenched in a different way of seeing things. While I would have expected a lot of disagreement, I never truly anticipated the direct "attack" that I frequently get at the level of the world. (I know – attack isn't real.)

A teaching from ACIM helped me to understand this better, and I have been able to heal the perception of attack. "What you must understand is that when you do not share a thought system, you are weakening it. Those who believe in it therefore perceive this as an attack on them." (Tx.6.71) Because the vision I receive and therefore share is unconventional, many will perceive that I am attacking them. This apparently is the occupational hazard of a "Teacher of God." The "good news" of a healed world is not perceived as "good" by many.

It is still my vision to share healed world "gospel" regardless of the fact that it triggers some to attack me, and on Birthday 2025 I can affirm that I wouldn't have it any other way, because it gives me the feedback that I am successfully doing my job. Jesus encountered the same thing during his ministry. I'm in good company. "Happy Birthday 2025 to me."

26 min.
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