Reading "The Happy Learner" of Chapter 14 today for my Text Study group (A Course in Miracles CE-version).

Isn't it such an important lesson to know that I am seeking for happiness where it is not: I am seeking were literally nothing is to be found! It reminds me of that great song from the Sound of Music by Richard Rodgers “Something Good”. The lyrics of this song have always touched me. Now I know why….because they pointed to something true.

Look at the lyrics:
"Perhaps I had a wicked childhood
Perhaps I had a miserable youth
But somewhere in my wicked, miserable past
There must have been a moment of truth

For here you are, standing there, loving me
Whether or not you should
But somewhere in my youth or childhood
I must have done something good

Nothing comes from nothing
Nothing ever could
So somewhere in my youth or childhood
I must have done something good"

There is so much in here: Nothing comes from nothing? Isn't what this Happy Learner section is also telling me? If there is nothing, then there is nothing! Because, nothing can ever come from nothing, like the song also concludes so wisely.

Wicked childhood, miserable youth. Our lives, our world can be totally mad and insane. But: There must have been a moment of truth. Those moments we will have more and more because if we learn from the Holy Spirit, we will know that truth is in us.

I must have done something good. That is also a very beautiful sentence although the Course would say it is what we are. But we only know we are, when we indeed share the love that is in us, that love that we are. If we are in a relationship, a friendship, if we talk to colleagues, or to strangers. It does not matter how, but the light we bring to anyone, shines back to us. That is why every encounter, every conversation, every smile to another is where that light of truth can be found.

I have a deep respect for this beautiful song, with it lyrics that point to what the Course is also learning us in this Happy Learner section (paragraph 3):

3 The Holy Spirit, seeing where you are but knowing you are elsewhere, begins His lesson in simplicity with the fundamental teaching that truth is true. ²This is the hardest lesson you will ever learn, and in the end the only one. ³Simplicity is very difficult for twisted minds. ⁴Consider all the distortions you have made of nothing; all the strange forms and feelings, and actions and reactions, that you have woven out of it. ⁵Nothing is so alien to you as the simple truth, and nothing are you less inclined to listen to. ⁶The contrast between what is true and what is not is perfectly apparent, yet you do not see it. [CE T-14.II.3:1-6]

So maybe then, with the Course in mind, I could add a little something to these wise and inspirational lyrics of Richard Rodgers (written in 1965; the same year as the Course started to come through). Something like this?

"Nothing comes from nothing, nothing ever could
But truth is true and deep within me
I must have known that I am good"