The Light in the Woods

6/30/08 Inspirations          Among the benefits of a spiritual life, and the spiritual gifts that are a part of it, is the potency of our blessing. A person in a right-relationship with God shares in His grace, including the ability to share that grace with others. God prefers to expand His kingdom through us – often we are the catalyst for His miracles. Just as we should never think it a departure from humility to ask God for favors, it’s also God’s desire that we dare to bless each other and ourselves as well. In a worldview where God is “hands on” with every situation and perfection consists of accepting this with love, it’s the only way intercessory prayer makes sense.

God delegates His effects through us as He did with the prophets and Jesus’ disciples. It’s not a breach of humility to confer our blessing on others; it’s an act of obedience to intercede, sometimes silently and sometimes in the open. The Holy spirit will guide you when the situation calls for it. Don’t be overwhelmed by the job and don’t go out looking for opportunities and accolades. But when you’re moved in that direction, confer you blessings with confidence that you’re doing God’s work.

6/28/08 Reflections                    I read where the Spanish parliament is backing a new policy to extend human rights to include apes. I guess this is a noble gesture on the part of those people who don’t believe either apes or humans have a Creator who is able to decide what rights are appropriate. Or they believe in a Creator God, but want to take the responsibility for His creatures on to themselves, apparently because they can do a much better job of it. After all, who will protect the apes if we don’t? And if apes, why not mosquitoes?  

The animal rights people must be in a bit of a quandary – they must decry specieism, which they define as a member of one species feeling superior to another being which doesn’t belong to their species, but at the same time they must name themselves guardians over the apes and confer on them certain rights. Isn’t this a bit hypocritical? If you think it’s up to you to “save” other species, how can you deny the specieism in yourself?

But this doesn’t even touch on the more important problem of the arrogance of humans to belie their own God-given supremacy over the rest of creation. Unless you can see through to this theology, there’s really no point in using the reasoning powers that God has given to humans alone to be good stewards of the Earth.

If one of these anti-specieists were here, they would ask me how I know humans have something special the apes don’t. If I were to point out that the Creator obviously made things that way, they would ask how I could be so sure that there even was a God. How sad to know that there are people who haven’t experienced God to the point that they cannot even attest that He exists.

But my answer is the same to everybody: I once gave no thought to God either, and I too began to think that I was living without Him. I was never happy, never at peace, never satisfied with what I had or what I was. Until I found out about God from the source, something vital was missing; once I really recognized God, it felt like coming home at last. That is the main reason that I know that we were created by a loving God; in His image in that we have reason and will. Because I was lost and now I’m found – through no act of my own or anyone else’s.

It’s not nice to try to fool God; it isn’t smart either. He is the author of life itself, the inventor of love, and the distributor of everything we need to remain alive. That goes for apes and mosquitoes too. But we are not just another species, and while we’re God’s custodians of His creatures and want to be good at it, we are not invited to place our desires ahead of God’s.

While you shriek that man is arrogant to put himself above the apes, your audience includes people who think of you as arrogant to claim that man isn’t above the apes by design. If I say that God is the Creator of the Earth and all that’s on it, and you can’t demonstrate a certainty that He isn’t, don’t be surprised that your silly plan to improve on God makes me cringe inside.

6/28/08 Reflections                 God wanted Earth to be heaven – it is sin that made that impossible. All along God has been protecting us from the wages of sin, but all most of us seem to notice is the times when He withholds His protection, and we are left suffering. We never notice how badly we could have been suffering all this time, and yet when God does us a favor by reminding us – putting off His protection momentarily to teach us by contrast – we accuse Him of harming us.

God forgives our sins and protects us from their evil, but unless He leaves a sign of their consequences intact, we would never need to want to do better. How can God gather us into His arms if we won’t go with Him? How can we recognize what God does for us if we keep pushing Him away? And how can we stop sinning if we don’t understand the role of our own sin in our trials and troubles?

Are we afraid to acknowledge what we suspect in our hearts, because that would make us responsible? But God has promised that all we have to do is come to Him in humility and obedience, and He will show us the reality of His love for us. Beyond that, nothing else matters because we will have laid all this responsibility on God where He wants it. The hard part is getting past the human need for control. If only we would realize that it’s us, not God, that’s made a mess out of things, and that the way back is not impossible.

6/27/08 Reflections            I didn’t always have the special ability to feel God’s love for me. That doesn’t mean His love wasn’t there; it just means that I was too full of myself and my world to recognize and appreciate the love the Creator has for me personally. Now that by God’s grace I do recognize and appreciate His love, I can never imagine how I could survive without the gift of perception.

And added to this favor is another special gift – the delight in thanking God for what He’s awakened in me. I’m never so comfortable – so where I want to be no matter where I am — as when I’m praying my thanks to God. I am home when I am telling God of my gratefulness. I’m content because I’ve learned through my supernatural senses – through being in touch with my spirit and God within it – that God sees me as an individual and loves me that way too. So when I pray my thanks I know He hears it.

I remember well a time when I didn’t have that, even though I’ve always believed, because it hasn’t been that long ago that God was a very small part of what I considered necessary. I had all the right training, and I was always introspective enough to leave myself wide open to God’s call. Once in grade school we had to write about what we thought was the meaning of life. What my essay all boiled down to was that life on Earth is a proving ground – we do it right and we go to Heaven; we do it wrong and we go to Hell. My teacher gave me an excellent grade because she knew I put a lot of thought into the assignment, but she wrote on the bottom of my paper that I should not be disappointed if I changed my outlook over time. It took a long time before I changed that outlook, but when I did, it started my time as a dedicated student of God.

Now I’m on a different path and one that feels so right to me that I think about it almost all the time. So naturally I think about those who refuse God outright, and I feel a compassion for them. If only they could see reality beyond the small part of it discernible by our natural senses. That’s where I went wrong in my thinking when I was a child – I applied what I saw and gave it a cosmic dimension, when really it was what I never saw that constituted ultimate reality. Our lifestyle, our abilities, our natures are not up to the challenge of reality – this comes only from the Creator. What is up to us is to accept willingly and with all attention whatever He gives us.

I want for everyone the joy and peace that’s available when full reality hits them. That’s my favorite prayer of petition – that all may want to relate to God, because God would be happy to make it so.

6/21/08 Spiritual Presentations           I’ve been feeling kind of blue lately because I’ve been busy in the world and have not set my soul before God in a while. Tonight I was praying and as I did, the same worldly cares crept in. No matter how many times I tried to force them out of my mind so that I could communicate with God about the things of God, these thoughts kept slipping back in, demanding my attention. I prayed for God to stop them, but instead He did something else. About 100 feet away I heard a curious commotion on the water that I’ve never heard before. A beaver would cry mournfully for a second, then slap his tail and dive; 15 seconds later he would do it again. He repeated this behavior over and over until he was out of my hearing. It was just the kind of distraction I needed right then. My mind eased immediately. I didn’t pray – just wondered, because I believe that God controls every movement of the animals. I think He wanted to remind me that He often uses the things of the world to communicate with me, and for me not to overly disdain my straying thoughts because He is well capable of hearing me despite them. In other words, it’s not what I say to God that defines our relationship, but what He says to me in His own unique way. Like today’s vision of the sun behind the cloud, perfectly framed in the cloud’s whiteness and infinitely more spectacularly radiant because of it, God can come up with unique ways of reminding me of His presence. I never fail to pick up on the significance of these signs. God nods and smiles at me — “This is My creation and I will use it to remind you of My care.” As I listened for the new sound of nature I was treated to, and as I thought about the earlier, never-before experienced radiance of that cloud, I was praying in the way God wanted me to pray tonight. It didn’t matter that my other prayer was distracted. This prayer of God-wonderment was what was right for me at the moment, so God made it happen. I am so grateful for this; I am so very grateful to God! I started to fall asleep in peace, relaxed and not thinking about work and worries at all, when suddenly not over 40 feet from my open window, the beaver, noisily against the extreme quiet of the night, slapped his tail and dove once, then came up and did the same thing again. Then I could see it in the ambient light of night swimming off quickly and silently for the last time. That must have been the “Amen”.

6/17/08 Insights from Study                There’s a lot of reading available by mystic authors and about mystic principles. Much of it is hard reading – hard in the sense of difficulty in understanding, and hard in that certain truths demand a change in our attitude. But I’ve noticed something strange and heartening in my own reading – as I progress in my discernment of God, I become more able to understand what I read and apply it to my own life. It’s as if spiritual blinders have been peeled back for me; things that once were unclear are suddenly and miraculously brought into sharp focus. It’s not surprising that mystical writings seem vague to the uninitiated – it’s only after you experience these things for yourself that you can go back and relate to what was said. It’s the mysterious nature of our individual relationship with God that at first gives us pause and then finally breaks through with joy. God is not meant to persuade us; our mystical awareness is a gift that brings joy only when we break through our worldliness enough to recognize that it’s been given. Then our view changes, and so does our place in the everyday world. When you no longer look upon the world as you used to, that is when you ought to pick up a piece of mystical writing and read it again. You will be amazed at how something that once was so murky is now so clear. This is proof of God’s work in you.

6/12/08 Insights from Prayer         I am the temple where God resides, and so are you. Think of that! There used to be a curtain between us and God, so that no man dare come near. All man was to do was to obey. But then God came down and rent the curtain between the creator and humanity. He opened up a line of communication. He made Himself accessible to all. He forgave us and offered us everlasting life with Him. It is still up to us to obey, but now we obey out of respect for God’s love for us. We obey because God lives in us; an intimate blending of His master plan and our free will. When we pray we reach out to touch God dwelling in us, and each time we do we become more and more familiar with Him. This is how we come to know the unknowable. It is not a secret – it’s just beyond our comprehension. But we can accept what we can’t comprehend. We can listen to our inner core, recognize God’s spirit in our own, and reflect that presence through its effect on us. The best prayer is the prayer of silent submission. It reaffirms for you your possession of God, against which all else pales. When all else is in oblivion, then God is easily recognizable, and so are His desires for you.

6/11/08 Reflections         Like everyone else, I’m just existing here waiting to be born into real life. The difference is, I pass my time in a cloud of unknowing – I know the true nature of what is to be, but coming with it is the realization that I know very little about what I will be born into. Meanwhile, here in this world, I’m committed to care for those I’ve been entrusted with, and I must deal with those who think the womb is all there is to life. It takes great faith to see truth, but the gift has some drawbacks. I’m validated by the fact that those drawbacks are only worldly considerations. They make me feel like a fish out of water; like I’m a stranger in a strange land. That’s OK as long as I know I can trust in God.

6/10/08 Insights from Prayer          Lord, I can get so confused. You seem to want nothing from me but what I think I’ve already given, and yet you put in me the overwhelming desire to do more. All seems selfish to me – even the giving is not spontaneous, but a result of the human need to feel good about oneself. No matter how it starts out it feels like I’m only trying to get on Your good side.

6/6/08 Inspirations                God is all there is. He is everything in the world. It’s our perception, affected by evil, that keeps us from knowing this. In fact, we are so used to our own point of view that we cannot fathom reality. Don’t believe the humanness of our perception is powerful enough to hide reality so completely? Just now the wind was blowing so hard into our house it was driving the rain through the closed and locked casement windows; getting things wet inside that should never get wet. As I ran around with newspapers and towels, thinking “This is as bad as it gets”, suddenly a gust of wind came along that actually shook the house like a dog savaging a blanket. Suddenly the wet windows, which seemed like the end of the world a couple of seconds before, were not a problem in the least. The house was trying to lift off its foundation, with us in it. And the huge white pine 20 feet from the house was poised to blow over on it. Who could care at that moment if there was rain coming in the window? With the house crushed and our bodies crushed under it, the leaky windows would not be worth a thought. Perception! The fact that it can change completely in a matter of a second or two proves that it is highly variable, highly changeable, and highly subordinate to forces acting upon it. The reality, then, is in the forces, not the perception of them. It is God in the world, acting how God acts, that is reality. Everything else, no matter how important it seems to us at the time, is subject to that force. It’s God that is the constant; it’s God that matters. How utterly we have pushed that truth out of our lives! How surprised we are when something turns our world upside down. How soon after it’s over do we forget how fragile we are. The sky is brightening, the lake is getting calm, and the leaky window will once again be worthy of my attention. But the storm has reminded me “from whence comes my help”. I want to keep everything else in perspective; I want my perception to be based on reality.