MISSIONARY INDEPENDENT SPIRITUAL CHURCH
Newsletter Vol. 3 No. 3
08-12-08
EASTERN FOO DOG AND JADE PLANT AT MISSIONARY INDEPENDENT SPIRITUAL CHURCH
IN THE SUMMER TIME
Greetings, brothers and sisters, comrades, spiritual accomplices, friends, and extended family.
I hope that this summer season is treating everyone well. I have been very busy with my duties here at the Church. Our altars are full to the top; it seems that everyone has a prayer or two that they would like to offer up for divine consideration.
We have had the pleasure of seeing many people here at Church recently, which has been lovely. Lots of people are coming to visit as well as coming for readings. It's always so fun to show people the Church; I love to watch them look around and to answer their questions. Of course summer is such a wonderful time of warmth and deliciousness here on the actual property of the church as well: fruit trees and berry bushes continue to provide truly organic fabulousness to us, from huge jewel-like lemons to a rainbow of the most incredible plums, berries, flowers, fragrant herbs, and apples. But of course we are not the only ones enjoying the bounty: The yard by the Black Walnut trees boasts house cat size grey squirrels and there is a virtual apiary of birds all around perched in the redwoods, singing all day long. We are all truly blessed in so many unique and yet universal ways.
It is so important to recognize the blessings in our life, to give thanks and praise where it is due (to our friends, family, Gods, Goddesses, Spirit Guides, co workers, self, etc.), to realize the abundance that we have. It is very easy to get caught in a trap of always wanting more; more money, a better job, nicer things, bigger vacation package. However, if you instead change your outlook and change the way you think to being positive, to waking up every day and looking around at all the wonderful things in your life, to trying to see the most special part of the people that irritate you the most, to everyday speaking and living your gratitude, then things will change for you. If you are positive, your life will reflect positive things back to you. If you are loving and kind and compassionate, those around you will be as well. If you laugh, the world will laugh with you!
The same is true for your inner thoughts, the thoughts you think over and over are going to co-create the world around you. If you are constantly thinking that your life is terrible and you marriage is failing and you're broke and your kids are monsters, this is what you will create around yourself. If however you say, "I'm not going to create this anymore; today I am going to be grateful that my children are creative and dramatic stars in my life, I am going to create a budget for myself so that I am more finically stable, I am going to love, honor, and cherish my partner and myself, I am going to communicate differently and think wonderful things," these thoughts will change your perspective and your life. We must accept that we are responsible for our own lives; good, bad, or indifferent. We choose our path and we create our reality by the way we choose to see the world and ourselves within it, by the way that we treat people as well as the way we think, talk, and feel about them, by the way that we choose to carry ourselves and the image that we choose to project of ourselves. We are responsible for manifesting our own reality.
So, in closing, I am encouraging everyone to try to radiate positive thoughts and feelings, to try to embrace the blessings in your life and the people around you that make your life mo' better just because they are in it. Pick flowers, not fights; hug your friends; do a glitter paint finger painting with a kid; sit on a beach; watch a butterfly; drink some water and be grateful that you have it to drink. Change any negative self talk to encouragement, compliment yourself and compliment someone that you struggle to get along with, go into your day saying this day is wonderful and that is what I am going to make of it. We need to empower ourselves, take the reins back in our lives and guide ourselves where we need to go. We need to stop putting so much energy into thinking about and complaining about what's wrong and instead to change it, to use that time to talk about something good, something generous, something really magical that happened in our lives. It will work; it will change your life and the life of those around you and what could be more powerful than that?
Reverend Mother Sienna Baratti
THANKS TO LARA HOPKINS RIVERA
We want to send a big, happy THANK YOU to our wonderful Texas-based volunteer and helper Lara Hopkins Rivera. Lara has been working for the Lucky Mojo Curio Co. on an assortment of internet projects, including a free forum, where shop customers can discuss their purchases and how to use them, and get quick customer service replies to their questions.
The layout and design for this forum features a place for a rotating roster of banner ads, and Lara designed this one FREE for the Church, to bring some attention to us and the work we are doing. Since one good freebie deserves another, Lucky Mojo is donating the banner ad space for free.
The banner ad looks like this:
By the way, for those who would like to promote the church but don't have room for regulation-size banner ads at their sites, we also have a little mini-banner that looks like this:
It's plain and simple, but it does the job in a tight space.
If you want to install either banner ad on your site and need the html code to back up the image so it links to the church, simply "view page source" for this page and you will see it right there.
REV. CAT TO AGAIN OFFER DIVINATORY READINGS
For as long as our church has existed, we have offered the services of private readers, diviners, spirit mediums, and spiritual counsellors to members, guests, visors, and the general public. However, the church itself did not host reading services under its own auspices; rather, we let out the church space for the use of readers and spirit mediums who worked in person and/or by telephone.
Those who give readings in the church generally charge for their services, as is traditional in our community, and, for use of the building space, they pay a small "table fee" -- similar to the chair fee in a barber shop or beauty salon, or the rental fee that we paid for the use of church meeting rooms at the Home of Truth earlier this year. In the case of Missionary Independent, the table fee for those who utilize the building space for their work is 15% of what they earn while they oocupy the building.
What follows is a message from Rev. cat, the pastor of Missionary Independent Spiritual Church. It concerns reading, counseling, and divination services offered at the church to the public, and signals a major shift or change in those services that will be effective immediately.
July 12th, 2008
Hello, friends:
This is Sister cat, with important news about changes at our chuch regarding spiritual readings. In order to explain what is going on, i am going to give a bit of my personal history here. Most of you will have little or no idea of what i am talking about -- and may care less! -- but for those of you who know me, here's the story:
Beginning in 1965, when i was 18 years old, i became a professional astrologer. For the next 20 years of my life i earned money by casting horoscopes, as well as by reading cards, palms, tea-leaves, and the I Ching for clients. At times this was my primary source of income, but usually, because i am a strong believer in "the union of head, heart, and hand" it was one-third of my income, the other portions coming from "head" work (writing) and "hand" work, including handicrafts such as quilt-making, embroidery, sewing, spinning, and weaving, and agricultural labour such as fruit picking, hay hauling, and animal husbandry (raising goats, rabbits, and chickens for home use and for sale).
Between 1985 and 1986, i phased out my astrological work for clients. I had a good job in the comic book industry, and my then-husband, a publisher, strongly discouraged any activity on my part which he felt made me look "too weird" to our readers, distributors, or business associates. I continued to read for friends and family, of course, but no longer for paying clients.
In 1994, with that marriage and that job finished, i went online, and people began to ask me for readings again. I declined, even after my close friend Fred Burke -- who ran one of the first online horoscope services -- gave me a copy of an astrological calculation program that saved me many hours of mathematical work.
In 1996, in order to satisfy demands for readings, while also fulfilling an obligation i felt to return services to the African American community which had supported my studies in rootwork and conjure, i began to give free one-hour-long "spiritual consultations" on a daily basis. I did not call these free appointments "readings," but, depending on whom i was helping, i would give a free reading as well as prescribe spiritual charms, spells, and rituals within the hoodoo tradition.
For 12 years i have faithfully given one free reading or consultation per day to anyone who would sign up in advance. I have refused all offers to read for money. My calendar has consistently been booked up one month in advance. The only limitation that i have put on the free readings is that each person only gets one per lifetime, in order that the work may reach the widest number of clients.
My natal chart shows a well-placed but afflicted and essentially self-limiting Jupiter. It is retrograde, in Scorpio, in my 6th house, opposed to my Sun and Mercury, which are conjunct in the 12th house, and forms a double-quincunx or "finger of God" pattern with my Venus-Mars conjunction in the 11th house and my Uranus-Ascendent conjunction in the first house.
As a result, i was born poor and remained poverty-stricken -- often voluntarily so, as a form of political protest against the grindingly cruel capitalist system -- until the year that my Jupiter turned direct by progression. After that event, money came easily to me through my work, without my encouraging it, and since that time, although i have voluntarily lived below the national "poverty line," i have always had enough money to meet my needs and to allow me to indulge my personal aesthetic interests as a collector-accumulator of pre-WWII architecture, furniture, prints, labels, jewelry, dinnerware, music, movies, radio shows, and "stuff."
I mention my Jupiter because its cycles have always had a strong influence upon my relationship to money. At this time, right now, Jupiter is at 17 degrees Capricorn, trine my natal Mercury-Sun conjunction.
I woke up this morning to find that my 12 years (one Jupiter cycle) of doing free readings and spiritual consultations for the public is now ended. I will re-commence doing paid readings.
During the next month -- July and August of 2008 -- i will honour my free reading bookings, but as of today, July 12th, 2008, no more appointments for free readings will be taken for me by my staff.
The establishment of a Paypal account for Missionary Independent Spiritual Church means that the church will now receive a "table fee" payment for the paid readings that i -- as a church employee -- provide at the church.
My terms of service and fee schedule for performing readings will be presented online at the church website with the explicit notation that a portion of the reading fees will go to support the church. Additionally, at the Lucky Mojo web site page on readers, i will list myself among my colleagues (at least until the UISP site is online, at which point that page will point to UISP). Other readers may, of course, continue to book time in the church space for their own readings, by paying the usual nominal table fee, as always.
Spirit sometimes moves in obscure and unknown ways. My 12 years of performing free readings and consultations for the public were a wonderful time, and i would have willingly continued them for the rest of my life, but when the time was up, i found myself glad -- VERY glad -- to return to my former occupation as a professional reader, knowing that a portion of the money earned will go to a good cause -- the church -- and that my clients will recompense me for my labour as a worker in the fields of the Lord.
Thank you all for reading this. And wish me luck as Jupiter again guides me in mysterious ways.
Rev. cat
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