The COSA Newsletter

UPDATES AND ANNOUNCEMENTS

Dear Members and Friends,

We’re halfway through the year, and summer has officially arrived! The summer solstice occurs on June 21st, which is the longest day of the year. Official June holidays include Flag Day on the 14th, Father’s Day on the 18th, and many other important dates to look up and put on your calendar. Happy June!

I have been asked on many occasions when we will be starting in-person Tuesday Circles again. The short answer is as soon as we can find a suitable new home for our church center. I can honestly say I didn't think it would be as difficult or take as long as it is doing to find somewhere. Nonetheless, we are diligently looking all over the area to find the right long-term place for all our center's needs. Please keep the faith (as they say) and hopefully it won't be too long now.

In the meantime, don't forget that we are holding in-person services on Sundays where there is 'Laying on of Hands Healing' from 10:00am to 10:25am, followed by our 10:30am service. We thank Tanya Soper for giving us the use of her Hunter's Creek Office on Sundays.

Looking forward to seeing you again very soon!

Love and Light.

Michael

If you would like any further information regarding any of the announcements in this section, please email us at thechurchofspiritualawakening@msn.com

WHAT'S AROUND THE CORNER?

Please check our website for up-to-date services and events by clicking here. Thank you.
 

June 4th	June 11th	June 18th	June 25th
Tanya Soper	Shari Dworkin-Smith	Rev. Rosie Bouch	Chris Gunn

Once again, we look forward to a great line up of wonderful, talented speakers & mediums this month! Thank you!

Printable Version: Click Here

Upcoming Events for June 2023
PLEASE CHECK THE SPIRITUAL AWAKENING CENTER WEBSITE FOR UPDATES OR CHANGES TO OUR SCHEDULE.
For more information on any of these events please visit our website at: http://www.churchofspiritualawakening.com

'MEDIUMSHIP WORKSHOP '
SATURDAY 17th: For more information about this meeting please click here. Love donation of $5.00. Thank you

PRIVATE READINGS
Private Readings will be available on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays & Saturday mornings, starting at 10:00am.
To book, please go to the booking page on our website or click here
http://www.churchofspiritualawakening.com/BookAReading.html

Please Click this link for Printer Friendly Schedule/
Calendar for June 2023 (churchofspiritualawakening.com)

For more information on any of these events please visit our website at: http://www.churchofspiritualawakening.com

FRIENDS OLD AND NEW

To Members: Chris Gunn, 4th - Lisa Kushnick, 9th - Janet Rossiter, 9th - Kathy Poppitt, 22nd.

A Very Happy June Birthday to you All!

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________

If you feel that you would like to become a member of our Spiritual Awakening Family and have been a regular for a while. Please click on the Membership link below for more information. Thank You!

Membership

MEDITATION

Please click link below or picture to watch and hear Meditation:

GUIDED MEDITATION: A Haven for Your Mind

In this guided meditation we will help you to create a haven, a sanctuary in your mind.

You can build it and return to it whenever you wish, making it your safe place. Here you can put aside everything that does not serve you, and it will be there whenever you need it.

VOICES FROM THE PAST AND PRESENT: THE PAST

FREE LOVE MOVEMENT, SPIRITUALISM AND FOUNTAIN GROVE UTOPIA

A political cause that many Spiritualists embraced, after the 14th Amendment was passed in (1868), was the idea of an utopian society where free love, Spiritualism and natural law could be experienced by all. Free Love meant that everyone had the freedom to marry or divorce. Marriage, for this movement, was not based on society, family or religion or based on dictated standards. Marriage was to be based on love. But the notion that a committed couple, regardless of gender or status, could fall in and out of love was unthinkable in the Victorian era. Women were viewed as property and in Victoian marriages, it was usually a planned business deal between families.

Spiritualists and women suffragettes, such as Victoria Woodhull and activist like Mary Howland, wanted to transform the institution of marriage by opposing government and religious interference in all matters of love. This push to allow Americans to marry anyone regardless of gender or status, to voluntarily decide to procreate plus an acceptance of divorce, became a social justice platform for some women’s suffragettes and Spiritualists.

One specific event spurred this campaign. In November of 1870, Laura D. Fair killed her married lover, Alexander Crittenden after he promised marriage but then he refused to leave his family to marry her. This case became connected to the Free Love movement when the California suffragette, Emily Pitts-Stevens spoke out that the court proceeding was “Masculine” biased because they blamed Laura for the affair. Fair was found guilty and became the first woman sentenced to hang in California. Pitts-Stevens was labeled a member of the radical club linking her with Spiritualists and Free Love Women Suffragettes. She would be publicly ostracized. Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton came to support Pitts-Stevens in gaining Fair a stay of execution. But their involvement in the Fair case labeled the women’s suffragettes as Free Love Spiritualist. Despite Anthony, Stanton and Pitts-Stevens’ claim to not be tied to the Free Love movement or to Spiritualism, they would not deny the contribuions that the Spiritualist movement had made to women’s fight for equality or the right to free love.

Victoria Woodhull would run for President of the United States in 1872 election despite opposition referring to her as “Mrs. Satan.” Her goal was to push for the rights for women. That same year, Woodhull created a public scandal about the affair between Reverend Henry Ward Beecher and Elizabeth Tilton. Both Beecher and Tilton were married and their spouses were very active in the women’s suffrage movement.

Woodhull will be imprisoned for six weeks for publicly writing and discussing this extra-marital affair in her newspaper the Claflin & Woodhull' Weekly under the newly passed antiobscenity legislation known as the Comstock Law. Woodhull’s accusations led Isabella Beecher Hooker to contact Stanton and ask for her stance on the Free Love movement regarding the situation with her brother. The connection to the Women’s Suffragettes movement led women’s equality supporters to reject Free Love’s original purpose in order to save the Suffrage movement.

Soon nationwide opposition to this Free Love movement claimed that if women could choose who they wanted to marry, or choose if they want to be mothers, then they would not choose wisely. The opposition also questioned women’s sexuality, claiming it would be out of control citing the two previous adultery cases which blamed the woman not the man. Many religions opposed the Free Love movement and even distorted the platform in the media to claim that the Free Love movement was a prostitution/hyper-sexual/queer agenda by Spiritualists. This attack on Free Love led Woodhull to give the speech, The Elixir of Life in 1873, at the 10th Annual convention of the American Association of Spiritualists in Chicago. She stated: “Sexual intercourse that is in accordance with nature, and therefore proper, is that which is based upon mutual love and desire, and that ultimates in reciprocal benefit. Sexual intercourse that is improper is that which is not based upon mutual love and desire, and that does not ultimate in reciprocal benefit. Of the former there is but one class of cases, since in this class, all the conditions of perfectness are present. First, Love; Second, desire based upon love; and, Third, mutual happiness as the result. Who is there that shall dare to interfere with such sexual relations? Let it be whoever it may, he is an impious wretch, and an enemy to human happiness, and consequently to humanity.” Her public platform split many Spiritualist communities and led to organizations denouncing Woodhull over her connection to the Free Love Movement. Even the Association of American Spiritualists will split ties from Victoria Woodhull, who served as their President from 1871 to 1873. By 1876, Woodhull would walk away from America after being ostracized, and she would go on to renounce the Free Love movement after political backlash and harassment.

Soon Spiritualists groups were splitting over women having the right to marry, procreation and the right to divorce. With the religious and governmental groups fixating on Free Love being a radical and sexualized movement that distorted women’s views of themselves and their place in society, these oppositional groups would use this view to attack Spiritualism. Soon these anti-Spiritualist groups blamed female trance mediums, citing that when they would give message from male spirits, they were gender impersonating. Many in Spiritualism were questioning if these male entities were influencing women mediums to act as a man and in acting as men, influencing these radical ideas. Some Spiritualist churches and groups disassociated themselves and their services from allowing trance mediumship in their churches, groups, or camps, and sided with the opposition against the movement.

Spiritualist camps that supported the Free Love Movement and had allowed same-sex couples to be married in their church and to live as a married union on the camp property were being exposed in public and threatened with closure by zealots bent on stopping the movement of marriage equality and rights to love. One camp was known as the Fountain Grove Spiritualist camp in Santa Rosa, California. The camp was a diverse Spiritualist utopian community that included race mixing and free love beliefs.

The Fountain Grove leader was Thomas Harris, and he was a widowed self-declared androgynous minister. Harris was originally ordained as an universalist minister from New York City and had connected with Andrew Jackson Davis through studying Mesmerism. He later joined the Spiritualist circles that were created by the Fox Sisters and Amy Post. Harris bought a winery in California which he turned into his utopian Spiritualist camp in 1875. His support of the Free Love movement was due to following Swedenbourg’s theory of “conjugial love” where he believed every human soul has a perfect soul match. Spiritualist’s teachings of the time concentrated on soul mates, Harris encouraged his congregation that as spirits, they should seek affinities with other spirits whether alive or transitioned, regardless of race or gender. Harris believed his spirit match was a transitioned spirit named Lily Queen.

A Spiritualist named Alzire Chevailler, an admirer whose advances were said to be rejected by Harris, filed a formal complaint and publicly discussed what she witnessed while living at Harris’ Fountain Grove camp. She charged Harris with sexual misconduct and acts that resemble a sex cult. She viewed the freedom exhibited at this camp as improper and against Victorian society. Soon Chevailler was supported in her lawsuit by domestic and international Spiritualist and Swedenborgian groups who did not want Harris or the scandal of a sex cult in Fountain Grove distorting Spiritualist or influencing others on the Free Love ideology. Harris was also charged with allowing Japanese immigrants to join his services and camp events and he was accused of practicing Oriental “Black Magic” occultism by intermixing with this minority group. Some claims brought against Harris include queer marriages, lude behavior, nymphomania, sexual insanity, nude communal living, and polygamy. Due to the San Francisco fire of 1906, the evidence collected against Harris and Fountain Grove was destroyed, so historians do not know what was discovered through the investigations of the 1890s. Harris will go onto publicly remarry an Asian woman named Jane Lee Waring despite the prejudice of California society. His famous Fountain Grove camp will be destroyed by an arsonist in 1892, influencing Harris to move back to New York. By 1900, Chevailler would disassociate herself from Spiritualism after people questioned her piety and purity after living at Fountain Grove. The Free Love movement will continue with a resurgence in the 1920s after the passing of the 19th Amendment and again during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. Today in 2022, most of the charges brought against Harris and Fountain Grove are no longer considered illegal or unaccepted in society. And historians acknowledge that original 1870’s Free Love Movement was mainly about a women’s right to choose the direction of her life, which included the choice of marriage, sexuality, procreation and the freedom to love.

SPIRITUALISM AND SPIRITUALISTS - What we Believe:

Spiritualism is too diverse to have a universal code of beliefs; instead, Spiritualists accept sets of more wide ranging principles.

We believe in freedom of religion and freedom of worship - and that you worship God in your own way. Spiritualism gives you a set of values that enables you to think about how your relationship with God should be.

Principles of Spiritualism in detail

Declaration of Principles (The Spiritualists' National Union Version)

The SNU declaration of principles provides a good basis to explain the Spiritualist view of the world.

         The Fatherhood of God

         • The creative force in the universe is what Spiritualists know as God

         • That force created life in the beginning and still does so today

         • Spiritualists acknowledge God as their Father because they are part of the Life            created by God

         The Brotherhood of Man

         • All human beings are members of one divine family because they spring from the            same creative force

         • Each person should understand the needs of other individuals in order to assist            them

         • Spiritualists must look not only to the material necessities of their fellow creatures            but also to their spiritual needs

         The Communion of Spirits and the Ministry of Angels

         • All religions believe in life after death but only Spiritualism shows that it is true by            showing that communication with departed spirits actually occurs

         • Spiritualist Churches provide one of the venues where communication, through            mediumship, is possible

         • Many physically deceased relatives and friends take advantage of this opportunity            to continue to take an interest in the welfare of the living

         The continuous existence of the human soul

         • Matter (being part of the creative force, or energy) cannot be destroyed; it merely            changes its form. Spirit, as part of the Creative Force is, therefore, indestructible.

         • On the death of the physical body, the spirit continues as an integral part of the            spiritual world

         • The spiritual world interpenetrates this material world, but in a different dimension

         • In spirit life we have a spirit body, which, until we progress far enough, is a replica            of our earthly body

         • Individuals in the spirit world remain the same individuals with the same            personalities and characteristics Individuals in the spirit world only progress            through their own efforts

         • Individual personal responsibilities do not stop at death.

         Personal responsibility

         • Each individual is responsible for their wrongful thoughts and deeds

         • No other person, or outside influence can interfere with an individual's spiritual            development, unless they allow them to

         Compensation and retribution hereafter for all the good and evil          deeds done on earth

         • As you sow, so shall you reap

         • The compensatory or retributive effects of this law operate now - they do not wait            until life in the Spirit World.

         Eternal progress open to every human soul

         • Every human spirit has the power to progress in wisdom and love

         • The rate of progress is directly proportional to the desire for mental and spiritual            understanding

         • Each spirit always has the opportunity to reform, and to deal with the wrong            things it has done in the past

THIS MONTH'S MOVIE

Please click link below or picture to watch movie:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzt98mr_jdM

The Healer - A man discovers that he has the family gift of healing. As he struggles to understand his new reality, a cancer patient inspires him to believe, and by helping others, he will find his life purpose.

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

Cognitive Dissonance

One of the problems with human intelligence is that we are so good at defending ideas we arrived at irrationally.

That’s an interesting point. It’s true that humans can be very good at defending their beliefs even if they arrived at them irrationally. This is known as cognitive dissonance. It’s a psychological phenomenon where people tend to hold onto their beliefs even when presented with evidence that contradicts them.

People worldwide hold on to their religious, and political beliefs even though science and irrefutable facts prove otherwise.

Please click picture below to watch short video:

"As the sunflower turns towards the sun, so Spiritualism turns toward the light of truth."

FROM THE BOARD

Michael Davies	Tanya Soper	Janine Russell	Chris Gunn	Patsy McGowan

The next Board Meeting will be held on Saturday, July 1st, 2023.

Please look-out for a report of this meeting in July's Newsletter.

THE FUNNY CORNER

SIMPLY DELICIOUS

Perfect balance of sweet to tart, the texture is perfection. The perfect amount for 2-4 people.

Please click link below or picture to watch Video:

Small Batch Lemon Bars for Two
Please Click Here For Recipe and Instructions

AND FINALLY

Thank you for reading the June 2023 COSA Newsletter, we hope you enjoyed it and found the articles and videos interesting.

Further details of services and events listed in this newsletter, together with suggested love donation and Zoom log-in details, will be emailed directly to you prior to the event dates.

Love and light

Tanya and Michael