Thom Stecher and Associates is dedicated to assisting schools, educators and students in achieving their highest level of potential. We strive to foster open relationships where the sharing of ideas, philosophy, knowledge, beliefs, values and passion is channeled into creating constructive solutions. We aim to build healthy communities where we grow as instruments for positive change.
When I pray, I am often very quiet. I breathe in unconditional love. Unconditional love is my understanding of what many referred to as God. There are times each day, when I am alone in contemplation and reflection, and I know God is with me. I also know God is with me when I walk my favorite nature trail, swim at the YMCA, and doing my daily yoga. God is also with me when I plan my masters classes, when I talk with my workmates, and when I greet strangers with a clear hello. God is in my thoughts, in my feelings, and in my actions. My prayer and contemplation with God is unceasing.
God is with me when I see beauty and when I see ugly. God is with me when I hear pleasant and when I hear static. God is with me when I think loving thoughts and when I think fearful thoughts. God is with me in sorrow and in joy.
God is with me.
God is.
Our world is facing significant challenges; war, hatred, climate change, and the lack of basic respect and dialogue skills. Our worldwide challenges ask us for worldwide solutions. Our interconnected humanity must become aware of how we think and act. Do we treat everyone, yes, everyone, with dignity and respect?
Education has always been the primary tool of transformation. We must see beyond the 3R's of reading, writing, and arithmetic. We must focus on the 3R's of respect, responsibility, and healthy relationships. We must share and celebrate our common core values.
We can begin with kindness, caring, and compassion. If you can't do that, at least do no harm.
Spirituality is an awareness of the sacredness of all life and an intimate relationship with an unconditional loving Higher Power.
When we experience the loss of a loved one, we are invited to be intensely engaged in the experience of the spiritual. Our relationship with our loved one and with the spiritual moves to a new, unique, and mystical experience. There is a daily communion that is transformational.
Our awareness of an unconditional loving Higher Power brings a sense of peace and connection with our loved one and with our higher self. We can bear the excruciatingly bittersweet pain of loss, knowing our loved one is transmitting unconditional love to us with every breath we take.
There is unconditional love in every breath.
Our lives can change in the blink of an eye. We have very little control over the challenges of life. We have complete control over how we respond to those same challenges. It is our response, our inner consciousness, that brings us joy or sorrow.
All the great stories have brought the same message, whether Shakespeare or George Lucas, the hero transforms their inner landscape. We are transformed by the challenge, or what is revealed by the challenge.
When we are transformed by challenge, we access our spiritual, social, emotional skills of resilience, empathy, compassion, courage, and love. Always love. Change and loss can still knock us out, but we get up quickly with each fall. With each fall, we rise, a little wiser, a little stronger. As life progresses, we gain more integrity and humility. Our faith in the meaning of life strengthens.
Our array of spiritual, social, and emotional tools expands. Meditation works, prayer works, therapy works, nature works, support groups work, art works, movement works, music works, stories work, science works, faith works, friendship works, love works.
Love fully.
Where? Where has the light gone? That spark, that unconditional love that saw only unconditional love. It is here. Here in our hearts.
Where is the person that sustained the process? They are here, in each one of us. They live in all they taught us and all we shared.
Let us find the qualities and characteristics of unconditional love in our lives.
We are all unconditional love, searching for our way back home to our source.
We are a world of immigrants and strangers. We began our journey by leaving our country, our homes, neighbors, friends, and families. We all are in search of a safe and hospitable place to settle and raise our loved ones. We all want to live without fear in a loving community.
Let us open our hearts and minds to those we perceive to be different. We live in a time of increasing fear, defensiveness, and hatred. Our task in this life is to welcome the immigrants and strangers because they once were us, and may be again. What we do for another, we do for ourselves.
We are all siblings in the family of God.
“…from the moment you arrive, you are bound to be concerned with love because love is not just something that happens to you. It is a certain special way of being alive. Love is, in fact, an intensification of life, a completeness, a fullness, a wholeness of life.”
- Thomas Merton
Ashley came to us from unconditional love. She was and still is unconditional love in an individual, very unique form. The entire expression of her life was solely unconditional love. When she left this life, she evolved back into universal unconditional love.
Ashley is a ray of pure love in the universe.
Pure love
Let us reflect on our lives as emanations of unconditional love. Let us live now and forever being aware of our oneness with unconditional love.
Spirituality is the intersection of the sublimely intimate with the miracle of infinity.
The human experience of birth and death are profoundly spiritual. The agony of a mother's cry becomes the joy of an infant's first cry. The spirit leaving a loved one's body transforms every soul in the room. We are witness to a passing, to a transition from body to pure spirit.
Our human experience with these miracles is a reminder that we are all a small part of unconditional, limitless, boundless love.
Let us keep our hearts and minds open.
There is always love.
