God’s Dictionary: Respond

By on November 2, 2009 in Relationships, Spirituality

Respond 

respondere = to promise in return 

      As I’m sure you know, spiritual beings having a human experience are encouraged always to respond and never to react. I say, maybe. Sometimes the best response in the world is silence.  

      A client called me once to say that she’d cheated on her lover. I said nothing. Finally, she sputtered at me something about me giving her Hail Marys or some sort of penance. I laughed, and told her that’s not why she’d called me. She called to see if she would still be loved despite the fact that she’d cheated on her lover. Then she laughed with the sheer freedom of it.   

      The point was: what was she going to choose now? People cheat on their lovers all the time. What is your best response to that choice?   

      So, X happened, and now, heeding the Latin root of the word, what Y do you want to promise in return? The best response is always a way to go forward from where you are to where you want to be. My client promised herself she would be true to her lover from then on. Ask:  How can I best respond to what is happening right now? 

Infinition: 

      

I choose my responses consciously today. I ask myself what I want to promise in return to any happening, and I keep my promises.

 


For spiritual nourishment, visit Dr. Susan Corso’s website and blog, Seeds for Sanctuary. Follow her on Twitter @PeaceCorso and Friend her on Facebook. Decipher the divinity of your everyday language using God’s Dictionary.

About peacecorso

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Dr. Susan Corso is a spiritual author, speaker, and counselor. An omnifaith minister and the author of God’s Dictionary (Tarcher/Putnam 2002) and The Peace Diet, she has had a spiritual counseling practice for more than 25 years. She has been an intuitive since childhood. 
 
Susan’s blogosphere writing may be found at Seeds for Sanctuary, Ode Magazine and The Huffington Post, and Beliefnet. Her website is SusanCorso.com 
 
One of her favorite occupations is writing spiritual fiction. She is the author of The Healing Mysteries of Mex Stone under the pseudonym Shulamith Burton. The audiobook of the first in the series, Oklahoma! Hex, came out in September 2008.
 
Susan is the founder of Sanctuary and ten-year author/publisher of a free e-newsletter, Seeds. As a professor at the accredited College of Divine Metaphysics, she teaches and ordains ministers.
 
Susan has been published in magazines, online magazines and newsletters including Business Ethics, Beliefnet.com, Ode Magazine, Science of Mind, Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich, New York House, Q-Spirit, Self, and Winning Ways. She is the author of several tape series. Susan also writes for the theatre: The God Show, I Would Never, Fight or Flight, and PeaceWomen. 
 
For many years, Susan was an organizational consultant and motivational speaker guiding nuclear scientists as well as entrepreneurs into their life purposes. Some of her former clients include Westinghouse Hanford Company, Mary Kay Cosmetics, Gila River Casinos, and the American Nuclear Society, among many others.

Today she functions as Chief Spiritual Officer for corporations. She lives in one-sixth of a Victorian house outside of Boston, with her beloved spouse, director/actress/teacher Sheriden Thomas, and the spirit of her familiar cat, Charles of the Ritz. 
 
Her mission in life is peace. 

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One Response to God’s Dictionary: Respond

  1. zenmonk November 6, 2009 at 1:18 am #

    Respond

    re?spond??/r??sp?nd/