Willa White's Blog

For those of you who were unable to attend my lecture on Sunday January 13th in Lily Dale, you can access an audio recording of the lecture here at the Church of the Living Spirit website. Click on my name, turn up the volume, and have a good listen! The subject of my lecture is "Living a Life of Faith thru Prayer" and I focus on the life experiences and journals of George Müller, a 19th century Christian evangelist from England.  His life of prayer is an inspiration and I recommend reading his autobiography. He opened 5 orphanage houses in England and he was well known for providing an education to the children under his care, to the point where he was accused of raising the poor above their natural station in life. He also established 117 schools which offered Christian education to over 120,000 children, many of them being orphans. Through all this, Müller never made requests for financial support, nor did he go into debt, even though the five homes cost over £100,

I am thrilled to say that the Lyceum program is up and running again in Lily Dale.  What is Lyceum?   Lyceum is the Spiritualist's version of Sunday school.  The formation of Lyceums in the United States and the United Kingdom was inspired by Andrew Jackson Davis, an American visionary and lecturer who, in 1863, spoke of the benefit of training youngsters in both worldly and spiritual matters.  Not long after his lecture, some inspired members of the audience established the first 'Children's Progressive Lyceum.' The word 'Lyceum' comes from the garden in ancient Athens where Aristotle taught philosophy to his followers. And in America, during the 1800's the word 'lyceum' meant a "literary institution, lecture hall or teaching place." Children's Lyceum classes are designed to create healthy-minded "free thinkers" and include lessons in Spiritual Natural Law, the Golden Rule as well as many others. The purpose of the

This Sunday, I will be the Featured Speaker and Medium at the Church of the Living Spirit. Church services are held at the Assembly Hall in Lily Dale, NY at 10:30 a.m. For those of you who are not familiar with a Spiritualist church service, here is a basic outline of events: •Lecture from the featured speaker (me, this Sunday) •Healing time - opportunity to receive beautiful, channeled energy from one of the healers •Messages from Spirit - demonstrations of mediumship are presented by the medium (me, again!) giving short messages to those in the audience •Music - songs with live music accompaniment So there you go - if you are coming to church, you will see me! For more info, visit http://www.willawhite.com/ and http://www.churchofthelivingspiritlilydale.com/ .

Recently, I attended a beautiful wedding in a Christian church.  During the service, the officiating minister stated, "Other people may think we are 'weird' for our beliefs, but we feel we are following the dictates of God." This particular comment got me thinking about how people of EVERY religion out there feel that others think they are 'weird' for their religious and/or spiritual beliefs.  Sometimes this is expressed in statements of victimhood or defensiveness by the religious group or individual.  Sometimes these perceived 'weirdnesses' are made the subject of jokes.  Misunderstandings and generalities abound.  Whole groups get assigned a catch-phrase or pigeon-hole category that may or may not fit. Other times, there can be a 'spiritual superiority' that emerges... almost like children showing off, my 'religion' is better than yours.  Cases of "I've got it all figured out and you are clueless" emerge.  Through