Mostly, My children see Me as an ongoing Complaint Department or as a Dear Lovelorn columnist or a Welfare Department.

There is a story of a young man who said he would dedicate himself to Me if I would grant him a special favor this one time. As the story goes, I helped out, and the young man who begged for an answer to his question then found a loophole to get out of his promise. I forgot what the loophole was. Of course, I never asked for his promise, nor is such a promise required.

I do not ask you to be devoted to Me as a kind of return on My investment. It is in your best interest to remember that I am here and that I love you. It is in your best interest to know this. I ask no promises of you. It is My desire that you go for happiness.

Consider Me the Tour Guide to Happiness. I beckon you to happiness. This Way to Happiness. I point the way. You are welcome on My bus, yet by no means do you have to get on. You don’t have to. You have choice. Remember, I give you Free Will. It is yours. Free Will is not a promise I make. It is already done. You are the object of this game We call Life. You are also the subject.

You can take the Game of Life lightly. Life is not quite so serious as you have made it. Of course, you may well want to argue this with Me. You may well want to show Me that life is very serious indeed. I understand your point of view. This is one way to look at life. This view is a good way to make suffering a sure thing.

Anything can be taken seriously, yet not everything is to be taken seriously. You are not indebted to seriousness. That life is holy doesn’t have to mean that life has to be somber. That you serve in life doesn’t mean you serve through suffering. It takes no talent to suffer. Suffering is as easy as pie. I would not take suffering as a matter of pride. Take joy instead.

Life does offer you joy. What do you want to major in? Joy or suffering? To find joy in life is not sacrilegious nor is it frivolous or unworthy.

What if joy had no opposite? What if just being alive were enough for joy? You really don’t have to win every hand at life. Life does not have to be about winning or losing at all. Life can just be about living it. When you live life, you win.

Of course, even in what is called death, you also win. There is no death except of the body. In the world, there is a point when every masterpiece wears out. The most beautiful building crumbles. From boulders, sand is born. There is good in everything regardless of how you see it.

All the people walking around in bodies are alive. All the people who have let go of their bodies are also alive except they returned their bodies to the soil one way or another. You who are presently alive in your bodies see absence of body as a tragic loss. All those who are no longer in their bodies, and this is the majority, are also alive and well only without their bodies. They are no longer concrete the way you are. They are more subtle, and subtle is powerful. You see loss in death which is another way to say that life is less concrete and vaster-reaching.

When your body is gone, you are more mobile, and you travel to vaster regions. Let’s find a better word than death, for death has enormous connotations that go with it. Death is not a wasteland. It is a fertile field with wonders. I declare: Death is a fertile field with many wonders.