The Light in the Woods

7/27/08 Reflections              I haven’t written much lately. I’ve been mad at God for not helping my brother when he was in trouble; for letting him suffer and die alone. But mostly I’m trying to get over the unfairness of my 93-year-old mother being hurt this badly. I’m supposed to be the spiritual guide, but when the time came, I had no explanations and no defense. I actually heard myself say in helplessness: “I’m ashamed of God for this”.

Clearly, I still haven’t given over everything to God and because of that, I’m not fully receiving the Holy Spirit and the measure of understanding I want to be gifted with.  And because of that I’m not able to pass it on as I wanted.

But then the demands on me are lifted for a few moments, and I find myself alone in prayer as before, enjoying the relationship with God that He’s allowed me. I find that I do have the understanding I need, but that in this case it isn’t given for me to be able to pass it along to others who need it. At least for now. I must accept that.  Even though it’s most important for me to spread the joy of spiritual virtues at this time, that is my desire and not God’s. That is not in His plan; therefore it’s not needed and I should get over it. As the days go by and things start to get better, I am more able to release the “humanness” that took me over just when I most needed “Godliness”.

I’m starting to return to the awareness of the presence of God that’s been cultivating in me and sustaining me. It’s all unfolding according to the way God wants it. Soon I will see the wisdom in what He did, and maybe convey that in a productive way.

7/21/08 Reflections        While I was into the subject of recognizing things on a higher level, I was reminded on my birthday how important it is to not only listen to that small inner voice, but to take what it says seriously as well. As I was using a knife to slice into some hard plastic wrap, I instantly knew I was going to slip and get hurt, and sure enough I plowed on, thinking I could be careful. I could almost hear the blood pulsing out of my fingertip.

This kind of inner warning incident comes to everyone at some time. A religious person may point to a guardian angel; a secular person to fate, luck or subconscious. As a spiritual person, I of course am well familiar with inner voice. No matter its source — outside influence or brain-firing sequence – I will attribute it to God’s will no matter what form it takes. If you approach life with the premise that this is God’s universe and we, like anything else, are a part of it, then you don’t need any further explanation. It all just – is. God didn’t want me hurt – He wanted me helped. My injury was necessary because I needed to learn from it, that I ought to listen to the small voice. Without the injury I would have discounted the small voice and its source. The next time, I may listen, but I may never know if that is what saved me. Yet the knowing isn’t the important thing; it’s the recognition of God’s work in my life, whether carried on in silence or through that small voice.

7/21/08 Insights from Prayer             I just remembered during morning prayer: I did ask for a sign, and I said I would recognize it from a mark on my body, and accept that for what it is no matter how disfiguring. Now I’m fighting with myself over how to approach my suspicions of Inflammatory Breast Cancer, which shows up not as a lump but as sores that might be mistaken for insect bites. Exactly! I ignored them because they got better; now I have to do more research. But the important thing is this: I’ve already decided to accept my pains as necessary for the work of God. A muscle twinge or breast cancer, there is no difference in this – that I accept all as what God deems necessary to carry out His work. I know I shouldn’t need signs of God outside my interior insights, but having said I would accept one anyway, I believe it was preparation for what God wanted to tell me. I stand by my vow – this bad, like everything good, I will welcome and thank God for.

7/11/08 Reflections             Years ago my mother was visited by some radical Christian evangelicals. She had strong convictions of her own, but was vulnerable because she felt uncomfortable saying “no” to anyone. But as for me, I don’t know what came over me, except I felt like Jesus clearing the temple of moneychangers. I was far from holy myself, but even then I had no patience for it when good people skewed the word of God and insisted that their interpretation was the only valid one. It really didn’t matter what they believed – they were out to tell us anything we believed beyond that was wrong.

I was gracious enough to ask my mother if she wanted these people in her house, but when she indicated that she didn’t but it didn’t seem right to slam the door on them, I told them they had ten minutes to do their thing, and at the end of that time I was coming back to make sure they were gone. Of course they didn’t respect that, but I made it so.   As they left they said something to the effect that I was not open to the truth, and at that point in my life I probably wasn’t, but even then I recognized that I wasn’t shutting out God; just them.

Now I have a vivid spirituality; looking back on the incident I don’t think I would handle it much differently, other than today I would have explained to them why I objected to what they were doing. If you limit God’s word to the Bible, you miss out on His most effective means of communication. If you limit God’s commandments to the way they appear in scripture, you miss the importance of His immanence. If you limit God’s “people” to those who are baptized Christians with a literal belief in the Bible, you are proposing the exact opposite of what the Bible hints at – God’s focused presence and interaction in every spirit. The important things of God do not come out of a book – Jesus said that over and over again and then proved it through His death. It’s your experience of God that makes you a whole person; your relationship with God that steers your course. First Jesus taught this through His own example, and then He made it alive by sacrificing God’s insistence on His covenant rights in favor of unwarranted mercy. We could not become God’s people by following scriptural dictates if all we were doing was letting scriptural interpreters tell us what we must do. Our relationship with God must come from inside our very being, willfully and humbly. This, like all things, is a gift from God – resulting in a recognition of God in our lives and our desire to do His will through love of Him, and not fear of the consequences of not doing His will.

It was the evangelical’s limitation of God’s presence in each individual – the denial of His personal communication through our spirits – that I was objecting to those many years ago, even if I didn’t know it then. It’s the same for me today with all good-intentioned people who fear back and forth communication with God; who call any word of God other than the Bible a dangerous deception. I don’t want anything to limit what God has gifted me. If I am humble and willing to place myself in front of God for His guidance and I am deceived, then the deception itself has been ordered by God for His use. The Bible is certainly useful, but it is only God Himself that is infallible. So it is God I will come to for guidance, for providing what I need when I need it, for protection from bad theology, and for the relationship I crave, as all mankind has, does, and will crave.

7/6/08 Insights from Study               God has never spoken to me of everlasting damnation. He has spoken of making my will inseparable from His, and He’s told me to love my enemies. If God’s enemies are my enemies and my will is God’s will, and if I am told to treat my enemies with the same mercy God does, then where does hell fit in? These principles cannot all be right. If one is to be maintained, some other is to be denied.

Could my perception be made clearer, allowing this discrepancy to disappear? Maybe, but that would be to say that my perception is faultier than the perception of, say, the biblical authors. Why should that be so?  When a pastor works on his next sermon, should he put a disclaimer in at the end? “Note: Inspirations in this sermon should be received with great skepticism because God is incapable of overriding the authority of a group of self-proclaimed scholars who have closed the window of opportunity for God to witness to His people.”

No, I know in my heart that God loves me and doesn’t trip me up. I know that he loves the worst sinner in the world as well. I know God intervenes when He deems it right to do so. I don’t believe in eternal damnation, and certainly not for the sin of being unbaptised in Christianity. I cannot care what the Bible says about it and remain true to my God. Nobody can even tell me for sure who wrote the Bible, so why do they automatically believe Biblical inspirations to the letter and call mine delusional crap? But I know what’s in my heart was put there by my Creator. I’ll go with Him every time.

7/6/08 Insights from Prayer        How gloriously blessed I am! To have put in a day when I cleared up a bothersome commitment, to sleep by an open window; wake up and talk to God about a good deed I want to do, and get out of bed at daybreak to swim naked in the cool water of the lake just outside my door. No, my life isn’t perfect, but at times like this I think of what the world was before it was tainted by sin. That’s when I wonder that for me, and for those considerably less blessed than I have been, there is a place to look forward to that is perfect because sin doesn’t exist there. Now I’m sipping hot lemon tea and am getting ready for my daily devotionals.  I will want to glorify God for His plan for His children. On that day when it has been carried out, all of us will do exactly what we want, and what we want will be to glorify God.  Let’s start doing that now, and discover the wonderful things an imperfect world provides when we perceive it from within a right-relationship with God.

7/3/08 Reflections               Another trip into the real world, and another set of indications that God is with me. Because I’m willing to subjugate my desires for His, I not only can relax in my convictions when the going gets rough, but also I can recognize God’s help when it comes to me.

The decision to combine two necessary trips into one. A document I included at the last minute for one duty being just the document I could use at the other appointment to make things hugely more convenient. How carrying out one drudgery forced me into doing something else I should be doing but never would have done unless the way had been smoothed during the carrying out of the first thing. Of all the documents I carefully packed, finding a useful, forgotten one in the pocket of my raincoat after I was already on my way.

I don’t feel like I’m being shuffled around like a helpless pawn on a chessboard – I feel like the chessboard has to be crossed and I need and get help to cross it in the best way. So many people worry about losing their independence when they find God; yet when they find God, those things just don’t count anymore. I no longer slap away God’s help like an insistent child who wants to do it her way. I now see the wisdom of welcoming all the power God lends me. I don’t consider this a loss of personal freedom, but a discovery of new satisfaction in the meaning of “enjoying the good life.”

7/2/08 Reflections                    As I traveled this week into civilization, I was noticing the transition between the spring-blooming flowers and the summer-blooming flowers. It got me to wondering: What force is behind the blooming of wildflowers living at the start of my journey being exactly on time with the blooming of the wildflowers many miles away and in a different ecosystem than where I ended up?

If everything is subject only to Earth forces, which are different here than there, how do all the flowers come out at the same time? How do they know the exact moment to bloom? How do birds know when to nest, or animals to breed? Inanimate objects just react to physical forces, but living things, although heavily subject to physical forces, develop from within. But if you cut them open, you won’t find the gland or organ that provides the information as to what is best for them. It seems to me that this information has to come from something other than themselves or the physical forces that move them, otherwise you wouldn’t have the phenomenon of diversity of species mixed with similarity of behavior.

For instance, geese migrate and hummingbirds migrate – the physical forces scientists say regulate migratory behavior can change dramatically, but still one day geese and hummingbirds start to migrate, or to breed, or to nest. Cold or hot weather; dry in one place and flooded in another – one day all the red clover appears; one day the white clover. Each individual knows what to do and when to do it, no matter the change in their environment from one area to the next, or from one year to the next. Mosquitoes hatch in the millions and make life miserable for us; then one day at one hour, when the regeneration of the mosquito population is assured, the dragonflies appear like magic by the thousands to mop up unneeded mosquitoes, and we can be outdoors again.

Why is it more believable to assume there is scientific explanation for the unexplainable than to believe that God knows every one of His creatures perfectly and directs their comings and goings? Is human pride so powerful it must insist on any explanation other than God, for fear that it’s God directing us, rather than our own pitiful input, that makes the world go around? We didn’t create, and we don’t direct creation. Whatever natural or man-made forces we try to attribute to what we witness also had to be created in the first place. Every earthquake, flood, thunderstorm, tornado, hurricane, rogue wave, and drought should remind us of that, for these existed from the beginning, for reasons that aren’t dependent on us.