Joseph Shore Th.D

Towards a theology of plants and flowers! I have always known God. As a small boy I knew God. Don't ask me how. It wasn't from any person I saw who was Christ-l...ike. Deep in my heart I knew God. Much of my childhood was lonely and abusive and often I would go out into the empty fields just to be alone with a nature which also knew God well. My grandfather, George Ritchie, also knew God, for he was a farmer. We would walk together through our family's two acre garden and grandpa would talk to me about the planting. Often he would stop to talk to the plants as naturally as if they were neighbors come to call. "You see here? Joe-boy, How everything is connected within the garden? One life gives life to all? It is like that with people too." How easily complicated theology passed through his lips! My grandmother, Lena Ritchie, helped him to teach me the same truth. I loved to tag a long with grandmother as she worked in her flowers. I said one day, "Grandmother, these flowers are so beautiful, why don't we pick some to put on the table. She explained to her Joe-Boy, as well as any process philosopher, that she didn't like to pick flowers because she would be cutting their time of life. The flowers had a life of their own from seed to beautiful flower. I never forgot that. We were there to be just and able garden workers, whether with the garden of flowers, potatoes, corn, or people. If you find this kindness with the interconnected garden of life, you will simply want to be kinder to people. You will be less fearful when you meet others and less defensive. As I went through my childhood I noticed that when introduced to a person, I could instantly know certain things about them: what kind of person were they?Did he speak true words? Was he being deceptive? Was he hiding anything?" It never occurred to me that this ability I had was in any way special. I just assumed that anyone could do it. Often times in dreams I would see the answer to some question or receive more information about one of the people I had met through the day. It never occurred to me that I was to make some sort of "report" to some higher person, like the minister. I knew God and I knew that He must know about these people also. Let him do his work with them. The hardest place to find God was in church!! They didn't seem to know the God I knew. Their God was very much like one of the mixed up people I would meet during the week. I liked the Bible stories but I found church very much unlike the God I knew. I noticed this as I went through school, so few people had learned the teachings of the garden and the flowers. Now my journey through this word is much closer to the end than the beginning. Had I been a good gardener?a good friend to the flowers? Had I sensed the connection of the garden? Had the garden and the flowers helped me to be kind? Tears come quickly now, as I read myself the way I read others. I know that I had NOT worn the gentility and grace of my two most important teachers, Instead of loving new people, I would read them and judge them. Still, I have learned and I am much kinder towards my brothers now. We all have these little dreams--like wanting to be a great opera singer. But the dream of these little dreams is our ego and they are not worth the time or meaning we put into them,. But there is also the dreamer of the world itself. We need to know Him! Who is the One Dreamer of the One universe? He has given us so many clues: the beautiful flowers and the garden. Once you let the garden grant you kindness, you ill be struck one day, as Saul on the road to Damascus--how kind God is to you! How closely He holds you to Him. You as dear to Him as any son. This is a fact. God loves us more than any of us comprehend. If I could bring you to that well-spring like a tired old horse you would drink fully and deeply, then think to yourself."my Father is Real. I need have no fear." This little true thought comes to you so easily as His Mind--the Mind of Christ"--connects you There are always many meanings to these observations. I have chosen one for a focus today: "Let me be kind today to everything and body I see, for I would know God as easily as He knows me."

The first time you left the spirit world and joined with a body here in this world, it all happened so quickly. You can't quite keep it all in your consciousnes...s. But you did come into your body with a primordial fear that you had somehow separated from God and that He was furiously chasing you and would destroy you when he finally caught you. You were scared to death or you would never have done anything as desperate as come into a frail body, bound to die. You came in, full speed ahead, full of the illusion that the physical world would protect you from the Spiritual God you believed you had separated from. Surely He would never think to look into a physical body to find his Spiritual Son!! But you didn't get it!! Even what you believed had happened you could not cope with. You had to use denial and repression. How else could you handle the most horrible thoughts of all? That YOU HAD BROKEN GOD'S HEART! You stole his SON away from Him. YOU, Crowned Prince of all Heaven, looked into your Father's eyes and said: "Father I can never find my distinctiveness as long as I am limited to be like you!" And the Oneness of Heaven appeared to crack. The Son appeared to fall through that crack and for the first time He became an "Observer." He observed the Father in Heaven and He, His Son, in sub-space. How fearful the beginning of the dream of separation? How "different" it was to exist in duality instead of Oneness. The Son had dreamed of exploring areas the Father never knew. He dreamed of being so unique that not-even the Father's mind could catch up with him! Instead, his duality had now produced other dreams; anxiety for one. Because two voices appear to come into his now separate mind. In the dream His Christ Mind seemed to split off from the Oneness of Heaven and observe the Whole of Oneness. What a silly dream that anything could stand outside of Oneness and observe it. As soon as The Son fell into His dream of separation His Mind seemed to split off into a separate mind. None of this could ever truly happen. In this state of an "observer" the Son is now conscious for the first time and since this is a dream CONSCIOUSNESS is the dream. CONSCIOUSNESS is a dream. In that state the split off Son hears two voices come into his split off mind. The first voice that comes to the Son's split off, dreaming mind, says, "You have really done it this time. You have diminished Heaven. God gave you everything and you spit in His face and left Heaven. You have stolen from God. Do you think He is going to let you get away with that? He is going to hunt you down like the dog that you are and He is going to annihilate you. You have 'sinned and the wages of sin is death.'" This voice, the Course calls, "The Ego." The other voice that comes to him says, "This is not happening. You are as God created you. This is a dream. You can wake up now." This voice is the truth that came with the Son into His dream. The Course calls this voice, "The Holy Spirit." The Holy Spirit gently says, "You have done nothing. This is a silly dream. You are as God created You! You can wake up now and see that all is OK." Now for some reason we don't know, the Son chose to believe the voice of the ego and as he believes it, he believes himself to be guilty, sinful and afraid. The ego's trinity, sin, guilt and fear, has now been accepted by the Son and he now sees himself to be those. Then the ego tells the Son, "Don’t listen to that other voice (The Holy Spirit). He is God's general who has been dispatched to bring you back for punishment. The ego tells him, "you had better hide from God real well because He will get you." This is all a dream and the Son now makes his dream even more of a nightmare. He projects himself into a physical universe (Big Bang) which he dreamed up as a hiding place from God. But as he enters this universe he splits into zillions and zillions of pieces, gas, light, matter, galaxies, planets, life-forms, animals and (wait for it) human bodies. Each split off piece contains the whole within it like a hologram. The body was made as an attack on God, someplace where God could never find the deranged, insane son who thinks himself to be sinful, guilty, and terrified. Now this is where we find ourselves today, in a universe which is not real, in a body that is not real. But some pieces of the son have begun listening to the voice of the Holy Spirit. We are beginning to wake up! We are beginning to intuit the Oneness in a spiritual universe. This fake, physical universe and world cannot be real, or God is not. God does not even know about this world. If He knew it, it would have to be real and that it never could be. God does not know dreams. While the separated pieces of the son, or sonship, are hiding in bodies, the Holy Spirit is getting through to some. We begin to forgive our brothers and as we do, a little more memory of our true nature of spirit returns to us. The Holy Spirit will eventually bring together all the pieces of the splintered sonship. On our way back to our One Self, we forgive the world and we begin to see reflections of Heaven within it. We are waking from the dream. Our job in the dream is to be a light by offering forgiveness to our brothers. Jesus was the first to totally awaken from the dream and He has been placed in charge of the atonement. His voice and the Holy Spirit's are One. Jesus did not die on the cross for our "sins." Jesus died as a teaching lesson to show that the son of God cannot die, cannot be harmed, cannot be changed. The son of God is not a body! "It is his reality that is your brother, as is yours to him. 6 Your mind and his are joined in brotherhood. 7 His body and his dreams but seem to make a little gap, where yours have joined with his. p598 T-28.IV.4. And yet, between your minds there is no gap. 2 To join his dreams is thus to meet him not, because his dreams would separate from you. 3 Therefore release him, merely by your claim on brotherhood, and not on dreams of fear. 4 Let him acknowledge who he is, by not supporting his illusions by your faith, for if you do, you will have faith in yours. 5 With faith in yours, he will not be released, and you are kept in bondage to his dreams. 6 And dreams of fear will haunt the little gap, inhabited but by illusions which you have supported in your brother's mind. T-28.IV.5. Be certain, if you do your part, he will do his, for he will join you where you stand. 2 Call not to him to meet you in the gap between you, or you must believe that it is your reality as well as his. 3 You cannot do his part, but this you [do] when you become a passive figure in his dreams, instead of dreamer of your own. 4 Identity in dreams is meaningless because the dreamer and the dream are one. 5 Who shares a dream must be the dream he shares, because by sharing is a cause produced. T-28.IV.6. You share confusion and you are confused, for in the gap no stable self exists. 2 What is the same seems different, because what is the same appears to be unlike. 3 His dreams are yours because you let them be. 4 But if you took your own away would he be free of them, and of his own as well. 5 Your dreams are witnesses to his, and his attest the truth of yours. 6 Yet if you see there is no truth in yours, his dreams will go, and he will understand what made the dream. T-28.IV.7. The Holy Spirit is in both your minds, and He is One because there is no gap that separates His Oneness from Itself. 2 The gap between your bodies matters not, for what is joined in Him is always one. 3 No one is sick if someone else accepts his union with him. 4 His desire to be a sick and separated mind can not remain without a witness or a cause. 5 And both are gone if someone wills to be united with him. 6 He has dreams that he was separated from his brother who, by sharing not his dream, has left the space between them vacant. 7 And the Father comes to join His Son the Holy Spirit joined. T-28.IV.8. The Holy Spirit's function is to take the broken picture of the Son of God and put the pieces into place again. 2 This holy picture, healed entirely, does He hold out to every separate piece that thinks it is a picture in itself. 3 To each He offers his Identity, which the whole picture represents, instead of just a little, broken bit that he insisted was himself. p599 4 And when he sees this picture he will recognize himself. 5 If you share not your brother's evil dream, this is the picture that the miracle will place within the little gap, left clean of all the seeds of sickness and of sin. 6 And here the Father will receive His Son, because His Son was gracious to himself. T-28.IV.9. I thank You, Father, knowing You will come to close each little gap that lies between the broken pieces of Your holy Son. 2 Your Holiness, complete and perfect, lies in every one of them. 3 And they are joined because what is in one is in them all. 4 How holy is the smallest grain of sand, when it is recognized as being part of the completed picture of God's Son! 5 The forms the broken pieces seem to take mean nothing. 6 For the whole is in each one. 7 And every aspect of the Son of God is just the same as every other part. T-28.IV.10. Join not your brother's dreams but join with him, and where you join His Son the Father is. 2 Who seeks for substitutes when he perceives he has lost nothing? 3 Who would want to have the "benefits" of sickness when he has received the simple happiness of health? 4 What God has given cannot be a loss, and what is not of Him has no effects. 5 What, then, would you perceive within the gap? 6 The seeds of sickness come from the belief that there is joy in separation, and its giving up would be a sacrifice. 7 But miracles are the result when you do not insist on seeing in the gap what is not there. 8 Your willingness to let illusions go is all the Healer of God's Son requires. 9 He will place the miracle of healing where the seeds of sickness were. 10 And there will be no loss, but only gain." When all the pieces of the sonship have been brought back together, God Himself will make the final move and lift us back into Heaven from which we have never in truth left. Now is the Father and Son in their universe of Oneness. Now is the flow of Love extended. Now is the One Song of Love heard throughout our true Home.

How much do we care about others? There is a tremendous need for that movement within human awakening, to create a society in which people are earning their ang...el wings by showing concern for others. In the States right now, how many people in the general population truly care for others, and it is always "as God cares for them." I moved to Canada because I thought the society was on the verge of developing a caring society. The enemy of caring is here in many forms. At the biggest scale, Capitalism creates a society which has no morality and no care.It is incompatible with either democracy or a higher advanced society. It promotes greed and separateness and certainly knows no God or ultimate GOOD. When you haven't enough for yourself you begin to think you have nothing to give others, and that truly is poverty. We allowed the wrong people with the wrong ideas to develop our societies! Imagine a society in which the highest evolved, awakened persons, were the rent collectors!! They could see who could pay and who needed. They would collector only what people could pay and give out to the needy. At the top of the society they would develop caring for people as a social gain. Every Christian person should want to build a society based on the sermon on the mount! Not on Adam Smith or Karl Marx. Who the hell were they? There is a society that higher beings could create out of the sermon on the mount: "1. Now when Jesus saw the crowds, he went up on a mountainside and sat down. His disciples came to him, 2 and he began to teach them. The Beatitudes He said: 3 Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 4 Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. 5 Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. 6 Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. 7 Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy. 8 Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. 9 Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God. 10 Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 11 Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. 12 Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you. Salt and Light 13 You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot. 14 You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. 15 Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. 16 In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven." In a highly awakened society the "rent collectors" would be the people who knew these principles the deepest in their core. And every time a family made it through a crisis, a rent collector would earn his wings and become truly an angel. <3 For we must see that we do not change simply by experiencing pain but by how much we learn to care for others and bring them into our hearts. This current world is based only on greed and fear. Nothing but catastrophe can come of it. Even the Bible includes this advanced knowledge, "15.Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. 16.For all that is in the worldthe desires of the flesh, the desires of the eyes, and the pride of lifeis not from the Father but from the world." Think about a new society based on the Beatitudes. Thinking is how everything starts...ah...I heard a bell. Some rent collector has just earned his wings! <3

An important read fron Dr. Horowitz https://medicalveritas.org/coronavirus-bioterrorism-tips-/ Coronavirus Bioterrorism: Tips for Personal Health & Heightened Immunity

https://maestroshore.com//more-thoughts-on-journey-to-the/

If you get something from A Course in Miracles, this will be a good reading! IV. The Gift of Freedom T-8.IV.1. If God's Will for you is complete peace and joy, ...unless you experience only this you must be refusing to acknowledge His Will. 2 His Will does not vacillate, being changeless forever. 3 When you are not at peace it can only be because you do not believe you are in Him. 4 Yet He is All in all. 5 His peace is complete, and you must be included in it. p143 6 His laws govern you because they govern everything. 7 You cannot exempt yourself from His laws, although you can disobey them. 8 Yet if you do, and only if you do, you will feel lonely and helpless, because you are denying yourself everything. T-8.IV.2. I am come as a light into a world that does deny itself everything. 2 It does this simply by dissociating itself from everything. 3 It is therefore an illusion of isolation, maintained by fear of the same loneliness that [is] its illusion. 4 I said that I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. 5 That is why I am the light of the world. 6 If I am with you in the loneliness of the world, the loneliness is gone. 7 You cannot maintain the illusion of loneliness if you are not alone. 8 My purpose, then, is still to overcome the world. 9 I do not attack it, but my light must dispel it because of what it is. 10 Light does not attack darkness, but it does shine it away. 11 If my light goes with you everywhere, you shine it away with me. 12 The light becomes ours, and you cannot abide in darkness any more than darkness can abide wherever you go. 13 The remembrance of me is the remembrance of yourself, and of Him Who sent me to you. T-8.IV.3. You were in darkness until God's Will was done completely by any part of the Sonship. 2 When this was done, it was perfectly accomplished by all. 3 How else could it be perfectly accomplished? 4 My mission was simply to unite the will of the Sonship with the Will of the Father by being aware of the Father's Will myself. 5 This is the awareness I came to give you, and your problem in accepting it is the problem of this world. 6 Dispelling it is salvation, and in this sense I [am] the salvation of the world. 7 The world must therefore despise and reject me, because the world [is] the belief that love is impossible. 8 If you will accept the fact that I am with you, you are denying the world and accepting God. 9 My will is His, and your decision to hear me is the decision to hear His Voice and abide in His Will. 10 As God sent me to you so will I send you to others. 11 And I will go to them with you, so we can teach them peace and union. T-8.IV.4. Do you not think the world needs peace as much as you do? 2 Do you not want to give it to the world as much as you want to receive it? 3 For unless you do, you will not receive it. 4 If you want to have it of me, you must give it. 5 Healing does not come from anyone else. 6 You must accept guidance from within. 7 The guidance must be what you want, or it will be meaningless to you. p144 8 That is why healing is a collaborative venture. 9 I can tell you what to do, but you must collaborate by believing that I know what you should do. 10 Only then will your mind choose to follow me. 11 Without this choice you could not be healed because you would have decided against healing, and this rejection of my decision for you makes healing impossible. T-8.IV.5. Healing reflects our joint will. 2 This is obvious when you consider what healing is for. 3 Healing is the way in which the separation is overcome. 4 Separation is overcome by union. 5 It cannot be overcome by separating. 6 The decision to unite must be unequivocal, or the mind itself is divided and not whole. 7 Your mind is the means by which you determine your own condition, because mind is the mechanism of decision. 8 It is the power by which you separate or join, and experience pain or joy accordingly. 9 My decision cannot overcome yours, because yours is as powerful as mine. 10 If it were not so the Sons of God would be unequal. 11 All things are possible through our joint decision, but mine alone cannot help you. 12 Your will is as free as mine, and God Himself would not go against it. 13 I cannot will what God does not will. 14 I can offer my strength to make yours invincible, but I cannot oppose your decision without competing with it and thereby violating God's Will for you. T-8.IV.6. Nothing God created can oppose your decision, as nothing God created can oppose His Will. 2 God gave your will its power, which I can only acknowledge in honor of His. 3 If you want to be like me I will help you, knowing that we are alike. 4 If you want to be different, I will wait until you change your mind. 5 I can teach you, but only you can choose to listen to my teaching. 6 How else can it be, if God's Kingdom is freedom? 7 Freedom cannot be learned by tyranny of any kind, and the perfect equality of all God's Sons cannot be recognized through the dominion of one mind over another. 8 God's Sons are equal in will, all being the Will of their Father. 9 This is the only lesson I came to teach. T-8.IV.7. If your will were not mine it would not be our Father's. 2 This would mean you have imprisoned yours, and have not let it be free. 3 Of yourself you can do nothing, because of yourself you [are] nothing. 4 I am nothing without the Father and you are nothing without me, because by denying the Father you deny yourself. 5 I will always remember you, and in my remembrance of you lies your remembrance of yourself. 6 In our remembrance of each other lies our remembrance of God. 7 And in this remembrance lies your freedom because your freedom is in Him. p145 8 Join, then, with me in praise of Him and you whom He created. 9 This is our gift of gratitude to Him, which He will share with all His creations, to whom He gives equally whatever is acceptable to Him. 10 Because it is acceptable to Him it is the gift of freedom, which is His Will for all His Sons. 11 By offering freedom you will be free. T-8.IV.8. Freedom is the only gift you can offer to God's Sons, being an acknowledgment of what they are and what He is. 2 Freedom is creation, because it is love. 3 Whom you seek to imprison you do not love. 4 Therefore, when you seek to imprison anyone, including yourself, you do not love him and you cannot identify with him. 5 When you imprison yourself you are losing sight of your true identification with me and with the Father. 6 Your identification is with the Father [and] with the Son. 7 It cannot be with One and not the Other. 8 If you are part of One you must be part of the Other, because They are One. 9 The Holy Trinity is holy [because] It is One. 10 If you exclude yourself from this union, you are perceiving the Holy Trinity as separated. 11 You must be included in It, because It is everything. 12 Unless you take your place in It and fulfill your function as part of It, the Holy Trinity is as bereft as you are. 13 No part of It can be imprisoned if Its truth is to be known. 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There is a great battle going on today throughout the world. It is a battle of right verses wrong or Truth versus evil. It is a battle of Light versus darkness ...and maybe it is happening throughout the galaxy but for sure it is happening on earth. Not only in the USA with the election of Trump but all over the world, Strong men, dictators are being put into power. Citizens are acting crazy ways like they have lost their minds. Trump is strong right now because he is not natural. He is empowered by a major demon. Americans are hoping that good will prevail in the November election. One thing is for sure, if Trump is re-elected it is a big flush down the toilet for planet earth. The scientist's doomsday clock is ever so close to midnight, closer than it has been since the H bomb was invented. Climate change is happening faster than scientists expected. Every day countless animal species become extinct. National Geographic scientists have told us that we have now fished out of the sea over half of all the fish alive. By 2050 they say, all fish will be gone from the ocean. The path ahead is dark but there is an inner light in all of us that can carry us through with a faith that we are truly spirit and invulnerable. The body may die, even the earth cast us off as its abusers, but we are all One Loving Thought in the Mind of God and thoughts leave not their Thinker! See more

Make the most out of life Joseph Shore I wrote a partial autobiography named Good Dreams for many reasons, among them, to encourage people who are born with def...ormities not to give up on their dreams. I am such a person. I was born with coarctation syndrome. Until recently, most people born with this defect died young. This is a deformity of the heart and the blood vessels which affects the circulation system, the immune system, and the functions of the heart, lungs, and kidneys. When I was born, so long ago, this condition was not even well understood. The country doctor who delivered me did not have the instruments to detect the condition. My childhood doctor in small-town Missouri, likewise could only hear a heart murmur, but he wondered why little Joe-boy’s immune system didn’t work very well. He tried giving me monthly injections of bicyllin to boost my immune system. That seemed to keep me from getting sick as often. For his next trick he gave my mother an enormous jar of tetracycline and said, Whenever he starts to get sick, give him a few of these. That helped a little bit, but soon I was immune to tetracycline and my teeth were permanently yellowed. We look back at the primitive nature of medicine in the early 1950’s and wonder how any of us survived. I grew into my childhood as a little boy with an undiagnosed, untreated birth defect. I was just different. I could not do things that other boys could do. I had ability in all sports which I played in sandlot. I was a good baseball player. I could hit really far, field and throw well. I could even run fast if it was just a short distance. I was good in basketball, had a good jump shot, and could jump really well. What I couldn’t do was keep pace running up and down the court. I was good in football, could throw the ball a long way and could place kick the ball really well. Nevertheless, when I would try out for any team at school, the doctor would get one listen to my heart and say, Sorry Joe, I just can’t let you play.I grew up feeling sort of like a leper. I couldn’t do anything that normal boys could do. I wanted to play sports so badly that I found ways to get around the doctor. I played intramural sports and excelled. I took physical education in high school and excelled in all areas except long-distance running. I was running the 60 yard dash one day and the coach was watching. I ran it really fast and it caught his attention. Wow, Shore is really fast. Then he let me run the 880 relay, and I couldn’t keep up the pace for the longer distance. But that one little bit of praise for my 60 yard dash meant so much to me. It made me feel almost normal. I had a very kind coach in high school who noticed some of my frustrations, even if he didn’t know what was physically wrong with me. He saw that I wanted to play organized baseball but couldn’t because I had failed the physical. He had been a professional baseball umpire after WWII and he still umpired area baseball. He took me under his wing and gave me free instructions on how to be an umpire. I worked at it with full diligence, like this was my chance to be near the game and be normal. He took me with him to umpire college ball when I was still a kid in high school. Then he took me to the big time, to semi-pro baseball. I was a good umpire and I loved being in control of the game I wanted to play. My endurance was not a problem for the limited mobility required of an umpire. It seemed like I had found a niche in sports. The next step was to go to umpire school and get a placement in the minor leagues. That hope was stopped however by my need for glasses. In those days umpires were not allowed to wear contact lenses. If you didn’t have 20/20 vision uncorrected, you could not be a professional umpire. By the time I was 19, my family doctor finally got around to telling my parents, There is something wrong with Joe-boy that I can’t understand. You should take him down to the Houston Methodist Hospital and let Dr. Debakey examine him. So off we went. In 1967 heart surgery was still primitive by today’s standards. But they found the coarctation in the aorta and removed it. But even then the full details of coarctation syndrome were not well understood. They sent me home without explaining what I could and could not do and what I should expect my health to be like in the future. The reason is that even Debakey didn’t know back then. In reality all they had done was to fix the aorta. The stenotic aortic valve was still left in place. They could not change the fact that in 19 years, the blood vessels in the lower part of my body had grown small because of the coarctation. They could not change the fact that in 19 years the condition had made my lungs and kidneys weak. When we talk today about stem cell research, we are envisioning a future when the developing fetus within the womb can be scanned for genetic birth defects, and when found, those defects can be eliminated during fetal development by the insertion of stem cells. We are envisioning a future when nobody has to be born with birth defects. Today, had I been born with coarctation syndrome, it would have been detected at birth and surgery could have corrected it before its effects rampaged through childhood growth. When modern doctors today hear my story they ask, Why didn’t they detect this at birth. I answer, Because in 1948 in small-town Missouri there were no instruments to detect this at birth. They are always amazed at this as if they cannot remember such an era. When I went to college I didn’t really know what I wanted to do since sports was out of the question. My grandfather, Vernon Shore, had been a well-known Baptist preacher during the depression and afterwards. I felt pressured to move into his shoes, not knowing just exactly where my shoes were at the time. I graduated from high school in 1966 and headed to Southwest Baptist University the next year. Southwest Baptist University was a beautiful place, situated in rural Missouri near rivers and lakes, in a small town. I liked it right away. I had this funny idea that I wanted to take voice lessons as well as study theology. After all, I had always sung in choirs and it had been a great joy in High School. I drew a voice teacher named Nathan McCallister who was a bear with a very little brain, a Baptist church choir leader with a voice that sounded just right for the job. He heard me sing in the first lesson and announced that I had no talent. Instead of assigning me the standard early Italian songs that all singers cut their teeth on, he let it be known that I was not even ready for them. He assigned instead, "Stand-in' on the corner watchin all the girls go by." After one semester I decided voice lessons were not for me. I still had music in my life. Even though I had given up on voice lessons, I had been accepted into the choir. I was happy but a bit timid because there were a lot of music majors in it with "real" talent. To make matters more intimidating, the director, Dr. Cowan, was a star. He had sung with the famous Robert Shaw Chorale. He let us hear his rich, bass-baritone voice from time to time and we were all convinced that only Ted Harris had a better voice in all of Missouri. Ted Harris was a Professor of Voice who had sung with Jerome Hines of the Metropolitan Opera. Mr. Harris commanded respect and more than a little awe. The year that I arrived at SBU, Mr. Harris was preparing a role in Jerome Hines' sacred opera on the life of Jesus called I Am The Way, which was going to be performed in Los Angeles. I sat outside Mr. Harris' door listening to the indescribable sounds coming out of his office as he rehearsed. I had never heard anything like those sounds. I just wanted to sit there on the floor and listen, and hope he would continue to sing. Later Jerome Hines himself told me that Ted's voice was tremendous at Los Angeles, sounding, in Hines' words, "like a canon." No small praise coming from Hines! A lot of good things happened at SBU. One of them was that I was elected to Who’s Who in American Colleges and Universities for my work in Drama. I wandered why I had never experienced a call to the ministry. My colleagues in theology could point to a specific call they had to the ministry. I tried to put it out of my mind. I was a scholar and scholars had things to do in the world. I would go to seminary to the most scholarly seminary Southern Baptists had to offer, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary at Louisville, Kentucky. There I would find happiness as a great scholar, or so I thought! I graduated from Southwest Baptist University in 1970 with a Bachelor’s Degree in Theology and Drama. Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville Kentucky was the jewel in the crown of the Southern Baptist Convention. As I packed everything into my 1961 Buick LeSabre and set out on the interstate, I knew I was going to more than a seminary. I was going to the best the Southern Baptist tradition had to offer. That's what I thought then. The campus was Southern beauty itself, situated in rolling, Louisville green. This was the Yankee Stadium for a Baptist theology student. This was the House that A.T. Robertson built. Scholars taught here, great men like Dale Moody, Professor of Systematic Theology. He had studied with Barth, Tillich and Brunner, actually lived with Brunner. His academic robes were from Oxford. When the faculty donned their caps and gowns, Moody looked like the Pope himself, proudly clad in his bright red Oxford finest. Of course, the Southern Baptists wanted no Pope and they certainly would not have wanted a scholar like Moody, if they had. For these were the McCarthy witch hunt days. Fundamentalists were rising in numbers like a hundred year flood that no one could stop. There were not enough theological sand bags in all the country to hold back these flood waters. The Southern Baptist Convention was teetering on the edge of Civil War, and like any Civil War, it would be very unholy. The fundamentalists within the denomination were fearful of all that Southern Seminary stood for. They distrusted modern scholarship. They wanted the old time religion where everyone knew his place! And they wanted every modern professor and student OUT of the denomination. As much as anything, the war was about political power. The one student who always competed with me for top grade was an interesting fellow named Lynn Fann. Some might have called Lynn an odd duck. He played opera in the dorm, morning, noon, and night and drove everyone crazy. He had no real, serious voice but would fancy himself an operatic tenor as he sang along to the records. He essentially introduced me to Grand Opera. The only kind of opera we knew in the Ozarks was the "Grand Ole Opery." Still, as a university student I had been introduced to some great singers and this experience whetted my appetite for more. I listened to records of most of the great singers of the second golden age of singing there in the seminary dorm, including one great bass from the Metropolitan Opera named Jerome Hines. He stood out not just because of his wonderful bass voice, but because he was also an evangelical Christian who witnessed on skid-row in New York when he wasn't singing at the Met. These great voices I heard spoke to me. There was something about the sound of their voices that grabbed me and I began to listen to opera in my room while I studied theology. I grew more and more empty inside in seminary. I wanted desperately to be a minister but I felt very much out of place, like I didn’t really belong there. It was 1972 and while I was at my most desperate I cried out to God for help. I actually heard an inner Voice say to me, "Your sermons can be your characters on stage. The stage can be your pulpit. The audience can be your congregation. Now go put feet to your faith." I had absolutely no reason to believe this Voice. Baptists do not hear voices. Maybe Pentecostals do but not Baptists! I had taken no voice lessons. Nobody heard any special singing talent in me of this magnitude. Remember my only teacher in university, Nathan MacAllister, had even refused to teach me because I was so untalented. I had no reason to think that I could ever get on a professional stage and sing Grand Opera. It sounded like a stupid idea! But at some level deep inside of me I must have believed it. I wondered why I had never really felt a call to the ministry. But this experience definitely fit the description of a call to sing opera. Eventually, after fighting seminary another semester, I left, got an apartment across the street and a job in a pizza restaurant. When I wasn't working I was listening to opera. One day in 1973 I opened my mouth to see if I could make a sound like one of those guys on the records and out came the essential sound that I have today. A couple of weeks later a friend heard me singing as he came for a visit and said, "Wow, you've got quite a voice. You ought to enter the Metropolitan Opera Auditions." I didn't know what they were but I said. "Ok." I sent off and got an entrance form. The first level of the competition was in Tulsa where I was supposed to sing five operatic arias. I knew none of course but I had records. So I picked out what I thought were the five hardest bass arias on the records and learned them by listening! Four were in Italian, and one was in Russian. Both languages I learned phonetically by listening. I can admit all of this now because the whole affair was such a miracle. In 1974 I went to Tulsa without a care in the world, sang without any nervousness and was easily named one of the winners. I seemed to be stepping into something that was very comfortable to me, something that I had done before. People from Tulsa Opera were there and offered me beginning roles with their company as well as a scholarship to Tulsa University. One of the judges was from The Santa Fe Opera which was also hearing singers audition for Apprentice Artists. Later I discovered that ten thousand singers across America were auditioning to become one of forty apprentices chosen for that summer season. An apprenticeship with The Santa Fe Opera was one of the most highly sought plums for a young opera singer trying to turn professional. The Artistic Administrator came back stage and said to me, "You haven't applied to us but would you like to be an apprentice?" I didn't even know what that was but I said, "Yes," and my career in opera had begun. "This opera business is a snap," I thought. Before going to Santa Fe, I made my debut with The Tulsa Opera singing a small but important part in Madama Butterfly alongside stars from The Metropolitan Opera. At Tulsa University I sang scenes from The Marriage of Figaro, The Magic Flute, and Don Giovanni, then packed up my old car and drove to Santa Fe in the summer of 1974 for a high profiled new beginning. I was determined to have the athletic career I had been denied. It was a strange form of sports, not baseball, basketball or football, but extreme sports for the voice. The next year, 1975 I was one of the ten winners of the Met National Auditions and the following year I won The WGN Auditions. I was off to a flying start. I had no intention of telling anyone that I had heart disease. When you are competing with thousands of good singers, the last thing you want to announce is some major heart problem you have. I didn't want to give the business an excuse to get rid of me. So I tried to put on an act that nothing was wrong with me and I was as strong as an ox. My voice was as strong as any Verdi baritone of my day. But my heart and lungs were weak. I would be in the middle of rehearsals for heavy roles like "Rigoletto" and my body would just break down from the stress. I would have to lay out of rehearsals for a few days and come back in. But I can honestly say that I always came through in performance, and out of over 300 reviews there may be only two or three that are not just glowing--like your manager wrote them himself. But I pushed myself relentlessly to be able to perform in this high environment. If you look at all the Rigolettos I did, all the big roles like Macbeth, Telramund, Amonasro, Boris Godounov, Barnaba, Scarpia, I literally had to draw on my will in order to command my body so that I could do the role. The great basso, Martti Talvela, had heart disease and he dropped dead at his daughter's wedding. A diseased heart and lungs are not well suited to opera. This is what I had to overcome each performance, without anyone knowing about it. I was determined to make as much out of my singing life as I could. I sang the greatest roles for baritone in the best opera houses in the United States, among them, Rigoletto, Germont, Amonasro, Renato, and Falstaff, among the Verdi roles, as well as for Alfio, Tonio, Scarpia, Barnaba, Telramund, Boris, Pizarro, and Salieri. I achieved my dream of moving an audience with great singing and acting and shared the stage with some of the greatest singers of my day: Jerome Hines, James McCracken, Lucine Amara, Carlo Cossutta, Ezio Flagello, Gilda Cruz-Romo, Frances Yeend, Lucia Evangelista, Sherrill Milnes, Paul Plishka, and many others. Some people complained that I was difficult to work with. My combination of heroic vocalism and fragile health was confusing. Perhaps I erred in not telling the truth about my heart from the beginning, but I was afraid they would not cast me in the big roles if they knew. Instead I got a reputation of being difficult to work with---which I am not really. I really pushed my heart and body hard in some roles, Telramund, Barnaba, et al, and finally it all caught up to me. In 1994 I had to have another heart surgery. I recovered from that one quickly and was back on the stage in three months. Then in 2006 my artificial heart valve cracked and I began drowning in my own blood. It took the Canadian medical system almost a year to give me a new surgery. By that time my lungs were damaged. Now my heart is too weak to sing and my lungs hold enough air for about four tones. Singing, my art, my greatest joy, my calling, I can do no more. But I made the most of my life. My sadness now is a part of the joy then. That's the deal. If in 1974 when I debuted in opera, a psychic had told me that I could play it safe with my voice and sing less demanding roles and have a longer career, or sing the greatest roles in opera and wear my heart out early, I would not change a thing. I would still sing Rigoletto, Macbeth, Amonasro, Renato, Falstaff, Boris, Pizarro, Telramund, with a mind possessed of a dream to unite legitimate acting with world-class vocalism. Of course I am sad now that I can no longer sing, but the sadness now is a part of the high times then. That's the deal. For all of you who were born with a birth defect: I know how it feels to be different. I know how easily one can feel like a prisoner inside your defective body. My message to you is this: Whatever limitation you have been given in life, make the most of your life. Don’t let anyone define for you what you can do or can’t do. YOU make the call. There is something you can do with your life even with the limitations you have been given. When you find that something, give it all you’ve got. Don’t hold back. Play the game as hard as you can. Life is too short to hold back. Go for it on fourth down. Don’t punt. Swing away for the fence. Don’t slap at the ball. Shoot that three point jump shot. Don’t pass for the lay-up. Go for that knock out. Don’t win on points. Sing with all your might and with all your heart and soul, and be grateful for the chance to live and make the most out of your life. That’s what I have learned this life-time.

I made my visit to Burnaby Lake one evening in summer, when Blanche was still with me in body. I wanted to be there for twilight. The air was still and peace wa...s sparkling. The birds were singing the most beautiful chorale. Before I got more than a few steps into the park I saw a Belted King Fisher, a bird I had never seen before. One of my friends was there, an old Chinese lady who comes most every day to feed the ducks and geese. She pointed him out to me. In addition to the usual Mallards, who are plenty beautiful, there were also Wood Ducks, Teals, Pied-billed Grebes, lovely summer ducklings who have survived the crows now almost a month, Canada Geese, beavers and muskrats! Last year we had a mink living under the bank and he was so aggressive and belligerent that they had to trap him and re-locate him. He was a mean sucker! But I guess if people were hunting you to get your fur, you might get mean too! Just a thought. At Piper Spit we have the oldest beaver dam on the lake, and tonight two lovely beavers came out to show us their industrious selves, muskrats following along. The ducks were so happy tonight. They made us happy. When I go there, I go to put myself back into the flow of all things, the Tao of the marsh, and try to turn off the "observer." The "observer" is the problem! Where there is the observer peace cannot be experienced. We must flow into the immensity to know peace and then peace is there, in every duck, every bird, every flower, every worm, every bee, and every "me." What is the observer but the ego? There are no observers in Heaven! Everything is Oneness, which means there is no observer. In peaceful eternity when the tiny mad idea crept into the Mind of the Son that He could be something different from His Father, he fell into a dream, and in that dream he became an "observer," separate from everything he observed. Since this is impossible it never really happened. It only seemed to happen in the dream. That's where we are! But one person who has seen through the observer and felt his immensity, his Oneness with all things, has discovered something to give to the world, and that something is peace! In my immensity I stand by the Lake in a body and know that I am not a body! I am part of this perfect beauty. This peace also contains within it Love that knows no end. I stand there and flow into timelessness. There is eternity waiting for us in that marsh and so easily does it give itself to us. You cannot look at a Wood Duck or Teal and not be stopped in your time! A simple garden slug can stop you in your tracks and bring the Truth back to you that you are a part of all things! You are just as God created you! Whole, not a part; spirit, not a body; immense, not localized! You ARE the flow. You are not the observer!! If you are the observer you are a body, localized and limited to your senses. Thank God that is a LIE! Such grandeur can be known. I know it when I am sane. Then I put the key into the ignition and back the car out and I become the observer again! Such insanity we have made for ourselves. I vowed tonight that I would spend one complete day this summer at Burnaby Lake and lose the observer!! I did and was awake for three weeks. See more