Hi, this is Michelle Medrano with another episode of Contemplate This where we consider
and contemplate your spiritual questions.
This may not seem like a deeply spiritual question, but I think it’s an important
one.
Here at Mile Hi Church, in the teaching we study, the founder of that teaching is a wonderful
man named Ernest Holmes.
And there are Centers for Spiritual Living all over the world that have been born out
of the wonderful ideas, philosophy and teaching of Ernest Holmes.
And so today I’d like to talk a little bit about, “Who was this guy?”
Who was Ernest Holmes?
He was a wonderful man who was born in the very late 1800’s, the 1880’s and lived
until 1960 and during that time he was quite a philosopher his whole life.
In fact, as a little kid, he was called a human question mark because he always had
lots of questions.
And his questions were always about important things.
Some of the things we talk about on this show.
Spiritual questions: the nature of the universe, what is God?
What is everything made of?
Where did everything come from?…
those important questions.
And so, he was very powerful at asking those kind of questions; had a deep yearning for
an understanding of such things.
And so, as he grew older and was part of his family, there was a spiritual tradition and
a philosophy that was Christian and much of that was deeply embraced and some of that
was rejected.
In fact, I’ve heard stories of him going home after church in horse and buggy with
his family and his parents pulling the buggy over and saying ‘You know, that preacher
did a pretty good job but don’t believe any of that stuff about hellfire and damnation.
That’s just not what we believe is true.’
And so he was raised in a teaching of religion and a spiritual atmosphere that invited there
to be more questions and more explanation.
As he grew older, as a young man he discovered the works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, the wonderful
transcendentalist, and that totally broke him open.
In fact, Ernest Holmes would say that, for him, reading Emerson was like drinking water.
He loved what Emerson had to say.
And as we read the works of Ernest Holmes, we see a lot of Emerson’s influence in his
writing and his teaching.
And it’s a powerful correlation and so we study the transcendentalists ourselves here.
Ernest Holmes went on to organically discover this spiritual nature and loved talking with
people about their spiritual beliefs and their sense of the cosmos and eventually became
well known in dinner parties and circles and began being invited to speak and to teach
and eventually, in 1927, he formed what we call the Institute of Religious Science because
he was all about learning and growing and class work and as that continued to evolve
it became clear that this was a spiritual tradition, a spiritual teaching and those
around him encouraged him to create a spiritual organization and out of that was formed a
church; a spiritual community.
The first one was in Los Angeles; Founder’s Church.
And it was toward the end of Ernest Holmes’ life that he was a part of creating this wonderful
church that is still alive in Los Angeles.
And out of that was born Practitioners and Ministers and more churches that have spread
across the United States and now, today in 2018 we have teaching centers all over the
globe.
And while we love and respect Ernest Holmes and he was extremely influential in his lifetime,
we don’t revere him or put him on a pedestal, we don’t worship him, we don’t make him
the end-all be-all, and I’ve always loved that about us and our teaching; that we have
a healthy respect for him.
Look him up!
Look him up on some search engine.
You’ll find that he was a prolific author, a wonderful speaker, a wonderful teacher and
his life has born out of it Centers for Spiritual Living communities all over the globe that
are serving and supporting people like you and me in deepening on our spiritual path.
Thanks so much for joining us for this episode.
I hope that you will consider subscribing through YouTube to Contemplate This and that
you will ask me some questions, make some comments, I’d love to hear from you.
If you’re watching on Face Book you can make comments and questions there too.
Thanks so much, bye.