The Light in the Woods

4/28/08 Inspirations              Gather together all the love you can come up with – wrap it up in your free will and give the whole package to God. He will accept it. If there is anything else to be done, He will not only tell you, but will also make it possible for you to do. How much more successful is your work of charity when it’s not done for self-congratulation, or in a sense of duty or guilt. When self has been abandoned and all is done is out of love, that quality will show in you, and that in itself counts for much. The first thing you should give to others is witness to the peace of spirit which comes with voluntary consecration to God. So accept this gift today so that you can gift others tomorrow.

4/26/08 Inspirations           If we exercise and expand our thinking, we can realize that we can never love as perfectly as God can, but then again, we don’t need to. God can continually give His entire love and attention to one person, and each and every one of us is that person! This isn’t possible for us to do because we are not divine, nor is it possible for us to easily conceive of because we live in a world where everything is measurable. God can give all of us all His love because His love is infinite – it doesn’t get “used up”. It’s a pure, soft blanket snuggling the world. Neighbors and strangers, friends and enemies – all are under the protection of God’s love. Having the most important thing of all in common, we have a starting point where we can look around and appreciate for ourselves what it is that God loves in the person who we put into our mind at the moment. It’s not too hard to discover; it’s the same thing God loves in us, and to the same degree — infinitely.

4/24/08 Inspirations            I see nothing in theology that would preclude life on other places in the universe. And if there’s life, there may be life made in the image of God – beings with intelligence and free will.

What percentage of these other worlds would likely not have been touched by the sin ours was? Who can know, but assume at least one is still the Garden of Eden – those beings would be unlikely to need to visit other corners of the universe, for they would still be in the state where perfection reigns and therefore there’s no need to change anything.

Or, perhaps, God might send these perfect humans out to evangelize the rest of us. I’m not a big believer in angels, but with God all things are possible and in a goofy sort of way it does fit (“goofy” because we would, of course, alter the concept of these angels to conform to a form that we know and can relate to).

Then consider the other worlds which, like ours, would have lost their perfection due to sin. They too would need salvation – would it be through the same Jesus? Would it be through a different Son of God in another time; another member of the trinity? To fit the essence of a savior, this Jesus would assume the same form as those to be redeemed – for all we know, different planets mean different biology, which would necessitate different lifeforms compatible with that environment. Their Jesus would not be recognizable to us. Neither would their Bible, which would contain an entirely different story, with different characters.

Who knows? I’m just wondering. But if you know me you know where I’m going with this. If you believe in a loving God you believe that He loves everyone, for no matter what we can do His love is so awesome and all-encompassing that we are powerless to escape His forgiveness. It stands to reason that the best thing everyone can do for this Creator is to love Him back. Not with outward signs, although these are acceptable provided they point only to His glory, but through the inward dedication of all we are for His designs.

When you bring creation, and the creatures’ proper response to the creator, down to its fundamental base, as the mystics do, there is no situation, no development, no new knowledge, no miracle, no theory, no circumstance, which is incompatible with this right-relationship with God. Love of our Creator, demonstrated by our dedication to only what pleases Him, is the only religion we need, for once we’ve done that, everything else comes to us naturally through Him.  All the rest of religion is human embellishment which, like all human interference with the divine, subtracts from the path to perfection. Considering there to be only one Creator, when you make a theological declaration, beware; you are stating what must be true throughout all the worlds of the universe, not just our own planet.

Devotional mysticism, this simplest of theologies, must be the most pleasing to God and the least likely to cause animosity among us. It is truly universal, simple, easy, and for all of these attributes, ridiculed – maybe on other planets, but certainly on this one.

4/22/08 Insights from Study               You have to recognize God before you can enjoy Him. But the recognition itself is His gift; the enjoyment is icing on the cake. You might recognize God in the violent tornado that leveled your home, but you don’t enjoy His presence from this until in your humility you are reminded of the ways He has shown you mercy. He has saved you from other fates worse than the loss of your home, He has spared your loved ones and taught you about values this way, He has demonstrated the goodness of unacquainted others toward you. Most times recognition of the presence of God comes in pleasant ways – an answered prayer, the birth of a baby, new nature on a warm spring day – and enjoyment of His works is immediate. But other times recognition of God comes about through trials whereby you are put in need of God, and appreciation only comes when you realize that He is present for you in this need. Life’s lessons come in many parables, all designed to allude to God and to make you think of Him. Start weighing events in your life, large and small, before this backdrop of the presence of God, and see where He takes you.

4/20/08 Insights from Prayer            Time means nothing – it just is. All is present time, spiritually; otherwise the concept of life without end would explode our brains. This problem of eternity is the perfect example of why we aren’t meant to understand God completely – we as we are cannot stand the enormity of it. Some things are meant to be taken on faith and that’s why science always ends up spinning its wheels when it delves into trying to know more than God wants it to know.  We are given subjective knowledge of the mind of God in dribs and drabs – this is the gemstone of spirituality called mysticism. It’s available as a gift from God so that we may experience a bit of the joy to come.  Don’t despair that we can’t know God’s mind; be thankful that we can feel His love demonstrated in the amount of grace He gives us, being just right in kind and measure.

4/20/08 Insights from Prayer             With their emphasis on Jesus, the Christian churches separate Jesus from God to an extent that, much as they say they believe Jesus is God, they don’t sound like they believe it. I understand the reason for the emphasis on Jesus – if you’re going to present God to the rest of the world you have to do it in a form the rest of the world can recognize and relate to. God understood this when He came to us as Jesus, and I understand it as well.

But to one who already believes and accepts, this emphasis on Jesus implies that not only do we have to keep being hit over the head with man’s importance because our belief is weak, but also that Jesus is more important than God because we don’t understand God but we do understand Jesus because of His humanity.

We know this is wrong on many counts, but we accept that as something we have to put up with in order to evangelize the world. But I don’t accept this stumbling block, because I keep running into it and feeling guilty that Jesus doesn’t mean enough to me. The truth is, while some have to resort to human semantics in order to grasp the concept of the trinity, I seem to be unable to distinguish the concept of God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit as somehow separate from each other. To me, no matter how God is named and assigned jobs in the tenets of the churches, it’s God doing what God does – He doesn’t start and stop, come and go, or advance and retreat. He is all-present and all-God, no more in one thing then in another.

I “get” Jesus and the way He is spoken of in the gospels – I truly do. But He is not something other than God to the point that He must be separated from God to be held up as a test –those who name Him go to heaven while those who worship God without naming Jesus go to hell. Maybe churches aren’t strictly teaching that God is Lord of Creation and Jesus is Lord of humanity, but in what they are teaching, the concept of Jesus as a lesser God, and the Holy Spirit as an even lesser God than that, keeps poking through. It makes no sense to me and I think it borders disturbingly on worship of a mortal when they insist on focusing on Jesus’ human nature.

Either Jesus saved humanity or He didn’t. Either God desires a certain group of people to be saved and the rest to go to hell, or He meant for all people to be saved in like manner. We Christians want to have it both ways. First we say that because one man, Adam, caused sin and therefore death to everlasting joy with God for all of humanity, so too one man, Jesus, brought about forgiveness of sin and rescued all of humanity from this certain death. Then we say, “Well really, Jesus didn’t save everybody. Actually He didn’t save anybody, except Christians.” Well, which is it? Is every non-Christian proof of Jesus’ failure as a savior? If there’s still a condition attached to our being saved, then how can we say Jesus successfully carried out God’s will on the cross? And how can we say we must have faith without works, if only Christians are saved by Christ? If God desires our sanctification above all else, how can we say who’s allowed to benefit from this master plan and who isn’t?

All the doubt comes about because of our insistence on separating Jesus from God. When we do this we separate Christianity from the rest of the God-loving world. We can’t afford this, and it can’t be what God wanted.  A righteous person in a holy relationship with his God may be privileged to be in this position by the redeeming work of Jesus without knowing it, but for us to insist that this is not enough to win his salvation because he has not been baptized as a Christian is a slap in the face to God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, the righteous person, the Christian accuser, and to any human being who cares about human spirituality. And using scripture as an excuse for religious intolerance and religious exclusivity is just as wrong for Christians as for any other religion. We all suffer shame and ridicule when this is done.

4/18/08 Reflections           Jesus is the essential light of God that fixed the relationship between God and man. It is finished.

But just as good things can still penetrate the sin-inspired imperfection of the world, we don’t escape the reparations we endure by existing with these imperfections, even though our sins are forgiven. Think deeply of the supernature of God and you’ll see it’s possible to know this – God won’t condone sin, but He can forgive it. You must understand the difference between the forgiving of sin and the pardoning from its punishment – they are two different things that can run concurrently.

Think of a parent and child. When the child does something wrong, the parent continues to love him and forgives his sin, but the child must still endure the consequences of his actions for his own good. Sin has turned the world that was our Garden of Eden into the scene of man’s punishment, but the message of Jesus is that there is a better place He has prepared for us.

I don’t understand it when people rant and rave at God for what has been handed them for the short time they’re here, if they believe in the ecstasy that will last through eternity. Fate, co-incidence, superstition, serendipity, chance, being at the wrong place at the wrong time, good luck, bad luck – no matter what you call the instigation of your circumstance, your circumstance is colored by the fact that you live in an imperfect world. This is not God’s wish, but because He is a loving God, He has tempered our pain by His promise, won for us by Jesus.

The pain and trauma of your own birth is meaningless to you – you don’t remember it and it won’t hurt you. It was the first occasion on which you accepted the inevitable and moved on. Getting over yourself is the most healing, positive thing you can do. It prepares you to recognize and enjoy the forgiveness and eternal promise that is what really counts in your life.

4/17/08 Insights from Study                 What great things God will do through the hands of someone totally committed to His will! If you want to be that person, God will find a way for you. But you must be totally committed to God Himself, not to the God of your fathers or to any methods from your past.

This doesn’t mean there are different rights and wrongs, only that there are different perceptions of God’s workings in us to achieve His goal. This goal transcends the matter of right versus wrong – these are functions of introduced sin and become moot when the focus is on God’s goal of reunification with man.

Any path that pleases God will lead to Him for anyone who is committed to Him, for having once been given our will, God will not deceive. But other human beings will deceive us. Being committed to God means letting Him choose your path, not some other person. If the path your teachers have set you on doesn’t please God, you’re not morally beholden to it. In this, you may be criticized by those you would otherwise look up to, for it’s human nature to want everyone to follow your own path.

But only if you can recognize God can you conform to God’s wishes. You know you are not just like the person standing next to you – in the big picture every other person in the world, billions of people, are standing next to you. God’s desire is for every one of them to come to Him despite their differences, and this will happen. It’s dangerous to listen to someone criticize your way because it isn’t the same as their way. God has chosen the way for you, and He will tell you where you’re going wrong. In the end only He can conquer the sinfulness that forces you to choose right from wrong. Once you have chosen His way, He will make it right and show it to you in your heart. That is where you might have to re-examine, and possibly throw out, what you’ve been told by someone less than God. The problem lies in our illusion – we think we are following God’s way, only to find we are following a construct of mere mortals.

How great God will be in us when we see Him as He really is. Often we are told this is not possible, but we force ourselves into conformity any time we allow someone to limit God for us. It’s a sign we have not totally committed to God at all. My Bible, my Quran, my mantra – these are not different paths; they’re different limitations. The different paths are what’s left when you throw away your past indoctrinations and gaze at God Himself, and He accepts your will and uses you personally, individually, for His purpose.

There are different paths, not because there are different rights and wrongs, but because there are different jobs God has given us to do. When you are graced to become comfortable with God, don’t let someone’s criticism of that jeopardize that higher relationship. Know God for yourself by petitioning this from Him, and then throw yourself unencumbered into God’s work in God’s way.

4/17/08 Reflections                  People want to know how I can be so sure my insights and spiritual writings come from God. It’s odd how each of us is the only one in the world who doesn’t need proof of how we feel inside.

Anyway, the answer is that I’ve become so immersed in God and committed to His will that it feels foreign and artificial when I try to do something on my own. By contrast I can see that there are activities that feel natural and automatic that are not even things I really know about or that I would choose to care about. I carry these tasks out as if I’m an expert that’s been doing this for years, with no struggle whatsoever.

You can walk around all day, but put yourself in the water of a swimming pool to try to walk along the bottom, and you know by the struggle you’re not in your own element.

For instance, this morning I wanted to write a poem about Jesus. I have a certain amount of unease when I think about how my perception of Jesus doesn’t jibe with what every other Christian seems to take for granted. How can I be right if it means everyone else is wrong? So I was going to write a forced poem about Jesus – the kind of thing that would get a smiling nod from a Baptist evangelical. It was like trying to write in a foreign language. It was as if I had suffered a stroke or something and couldn’t relate enough to make any sense. I was trying to pull words out of a covered-up well of knowledge — my own mind. The poem I had tried to write was not God-inspired. It was me-inspired; contrived for my own gratification.

In telling about this failure, though, my pen flies across the paper, racing to catch up with the words that are already formed. This telling about trying to write the poem without God’s inspiration was probably what God’s purpose was for the whole exercise in the first place.

It’s my fervent hope that God will work His contrasts in me yet again by having me write the Jesus Poem again – this time under His inspiration. This is like asking for a sign, so it may not happen. But if it does, it will appear here for your judgment.

4/14/08 Reflections             I offer you these personal inspirations as they come to me and in the form in which they come to me. I write down what I’m inspired to write at the time, and I don’t change anything except the grammar that gets away from me because I’m writing so fast. I assert that these are inspirations directly from God because it was never at all like me to delve into these subjects with myself, and it’s certainly not like me to write them down and publish them. I’m practically a hermit and I don’t evangelize to those I do come in contact with. But the imperative to post onto this blog is not of my own making, and the content often surprises me. I’m active in following my spiritual path, but it’s as a result of what I’ve been given to write down, not the other way around. I’m learning as I go, and I believe the point of God’s work in my spirit, besides getting me to come back to Him, is to bring others to Him so He can do His work in them as well.

My assignment is to encourage you to go to God with your hopes and fears – that’s all there is to it. I don’t want you to believe every and the only way I do – it’s God’s desires that you should fulfill. I don’t want you to like me – I’m already loved by God. I don’t want to put my intelligence on for show – all that I have has been an undeserved gift anyway. But neither do I hide God’s light for fear of what someone will think of it – it’s their loss if they pass it by. What I want is the same thing God wants – for us to return to Him by any path He points us to. To do that you have to ask for His guidance because you are always free to reject Him; that is how He created you.