The Light in the Woods

9/28/08 Inspirations               I welcome you into my life in order to be polite. I listen to your words because in this way I reflect God in the holiest light. I allow you to interfere with my peace because to do otherwise would be to put myself ahead of another of the children of God.

But while I lend my body & soul to you when I have to, my true life lies within my spirit, where I wish to be completely and continuously. While this is not possible here, it’s what I wish anyway. There is a part of me that you can’t have, a higher place in my spirit where you can’t go. A place where you are recognized for what you are and for what you aren’t; where thoughts are turned away in longing for the next kingdom, a higher kingdom than you can provide. A place where I dwell alone with God in the peace of His protection.

I want to stay there always, but you won’t let me and it would be ungodly for me not to give in. But one day I will have my way; I will enter the real kingdom after I’m through with yours, and I will totally dedicate myself to God because I at last can perceive the perfect love of God I couldn’t perceive here on Earth.

Until that time, I must be content with grasping at the light that is given me while I walk my path through you. There is a light at the end of that path that makes the journey worthwhile. If I have to stop and take care of you on the way, then that’s what God has ordered for me and I accept it.  I will be polite to you, but my allegiance is to God, and you hardly ever speak His name.

Sometimes I must live inside myself in order to forget you and be with God. How easily, most times, I fall into this practice of the presence of God. It’s as if I’m going home when I’m on my way, and finally home when I’m there. No wonder I leave you behind whenever God allows it. I’m not hiding from you; I’m not running from any responsibility to you. I’m just doing what God has designed me for. I don’t expect you to understand, but if you could accept it as I accept it, that would be nice.

9/26/08 Reflections            The reason I don’t think the Bible is the infallible word of God is because man had a hand in its making. It’s that simple. That doesn’t mean I don’t believe the writers were inspired by God, or that the Bible doesn’t speak to me of truths that inspire me in turn — I do and it does. It’s that every single person who wrote it, translates it, annotates it, studies it, preaches it, publishes it, and reads it has their own personal agenda about it. And the only agenda I trust or care about is God’s.

To illustrate what I mean: There was a popular song that quoted a beautiful Bible passage teaching that to everything there is a season. Birth and death, planting and sowing, killing and healing, breaking down and building up, weeping and laughing, mourning and dancing, casting stones and gathering them together, embracing and refraining from embracing, getting and losing, keeping and casting away, rending and sewing, keeping silence and speaking. But it was the 1960s and there was an unpopular war going on; the group had an anti-war agenda. So as a result there’s a generation that likely still thinks Ecclesiastes 3:8 goes “A time to love, a time to hate; a time for peace, I swear it’s not too late!”

Change the Bible to fit your agenda – it happens all the time. That’s human nature, and the best way to bypass human nature is to go directly to God for guidance. I trust that God will guide me in any spiritual reading I do, so I am able to love the Bible and learn from it. But I’m not a slave to the words themselves. Words can be corrupted; even God’s words. To some this makes me a “relativist” — picking out which parts of God’s word I want to obey and which I don’t. But that assumes not only that the Bible is God’s word, but also that I can’t receive His word any other way.

This is the point where fundamentalist do all God-lovers a big disservice – for if you’re right and everyone else is deceived, that gives you the moral right to insist that God wants everyone to do just as you do. Well, maybe He doesn’t. Maybe other paths fit into His plan. I would say certainly other paths fit into His plan. We look around and see saintly people who love God and avoid sin; condemned to hell in the minds of fundamentalists of any religion. No wonder people look critically at religion in general.

Especially in this era of religious terrorism, religion itself is under scrutiny. This too is part of God’s plan. Let’s not spoil it by turning to exclusivity – truly the God who created all, loves all. Let Him be the guide and judge of each one. Keep your religion if it’s what you think is right with God, but use it to lead each other to the spirituality that will help them depend on God’s word; not man’s.

After the song is over and the time and the season for everything under heaven is acknowledged, move along to verse 11 which teaches that all of this is God’s responsibility. I think deep down we all know this intuitively.

9/25/08 Inspirations               It’s been bothering me for a long time that since I can somehow see the nature of the God/man relationship so clearly, I don’t separate out Jesus, and so feel left out of Christianity. I very much believe in Christ and I understand well His makeup and His mission – it’s just that I don’t see Him as separate from God the way most Christians do, in practice if not in doctrine. It’s not that everyone else is wrong or that my way of thinking is better – it’s just that I think of Jesus and the Holy Spirit as the work of God’s hands; as something God does for us to make Himself felt in a way we human beings can understand and relate to.

This disparity between my view and that of others was brought home to me quite clearly when I was taking my mom to her flight home; when she would have to deal with putting my dead brother’s affairs in order and reestablishing friendships that may or may not be strained by the specter of death in a community where intimations of mortality stalk the hallways and leap out of doorways without warning.

At the motel on the way she couldn’t sleep, and I stayed up with her trying to pass along to her the sure comfort of God that constantly washes over me. This comfort was not at all sure for her, and my attempts to fix that were inept. I’ve come to find out that I’m terrible at conveying the certitude of the presence of God, because it’s like trying to convince someone else of my own existence. It shouldn’t need explaining and cannot bear explaining – there are no words for it.

The next evening we had a little family reunion, and my mother mentioned her fears of returning to places that would remind her of my brother and the finality of his absence. My other brother’s ex-mother-in-law told my mother: “Just take Jesus with you when you go in.”

Those words were all it took — I’m convinced they are what got my mom through the next day and all the days since. She told me she “took Jesus with her” to those rough places. She doesn’t hide from the memories, but lets Jesus’ strength help her face what needs facing and therefore allow healing.

It was what I was trying to get across in the wee hours of that morning, but I was telling of using God, while what she needed was to use Jesus. Humanly, my mom separates the two unconsciously. It’s like God allowed this awful thing, but Jesus got her through because He Himself experienced horrible things and she could relate better to a sympathetic Jesus than an almighty God who was punishing her with this atrocity.

I can almost see God smiling knowingly at this human attitude. It illustrates His wisdom in presenting Himself as Jesus — God knows how badly we need this. He knows how unable we may feel in relating to Him, and just how to remedy that by offering Himself to us as Jesus.  It’s why we turn to Jesus when we need understanding and cling to the Holy Spirit when we seem unworthy of God Himself. It plays into our human weakness – it’s part of God’s wise plan.  It’s why I believe in Jesus and the Holy Spirit – because it seems exactly the way God would do things. Quietly, effectively; without the distraction of fanfare or human intellect.

Which brings it all back to my role. It seems a logical fit that God would choose to make some people as perfectly comfortable with the relationship of “friends with God” as some people are appalled by the concept. How dare I presume to be friendly with God? Well, I presume because that’s what He has put inside my heart for His purposes; what would be presumptuous would be to spit in His eye and say “No way!”

But mysticism isn’t for everybody, and it’s not something we can pass along to others if they are not ready. The best we can do is be true to ourselves, do not judge other paths or let it bother us to be judged by anyone other than God, and let God show us what He wants us to do; then do it. Our way will not be the same as the next person’s way, but the job will get done all the better for this. It’s all in the plan.

9/24/08 Reflections             We were driving from town and the muscle spasms that plague me when I’ve been still too long set in. All my tricks for easing them I tried with no relief. Then something about the scenery became interesting, weird clouds began to show up, it started to spit rain and we began to make plans for how to conduct the boat trip to our island so that our groceries didn’t get wet. Then my husband asked me how my muscle pains were – that’s when I realized they were gone; as if they’d never been there at all.

God works this way with my aches and pains often, but He also works with emotional and spiritual difficulties as well.  Have you ever thought back on a difficult time and wondered: “I can’t believe I gave that so much anxiety when it turned out not to be such a big deal after all”? You think that the next time you will have learned your lesson and will save yourself the anxiety; sometimes you do and sometimes you don’t.  Either way, the realization sneaks up on you that someone has been working on the problem quietly in the background; making your pain of less or no account. That has to be either God or you yourself. Your mystic intuition humbles you; you know where your help comes from. It’s time to acknowledge God’s presence, and reap the hope and joy that this admission brings. Once again He’s used suffering to better you. Thanks be to God.

9/22/08 Reflections                     I think we’d be appalled to realize how often we judge God with disapproval. Think about the enormous arrogance required to do this; then think of how easily we can fall into it.

To me, the main problem is that we so often fail to recognize things as being gifts of God. If we don’t see everything as contributing to God’s master plan, that leaves everything open to human judgment. We love to judge – it feeds our self-pride. But every time we do it we fly in the face of the Creator who presented us with life and the means to live it. His judgment is perfect – who are we to override it? Our first thought is to deny we do this, but at some rate we all judge God by what we do.

When God places a child safely in it’s mother’s womb, do you condone getting rid of it for convenience sake? Do you think anyone is qualified to decide which prisoner should be put to death? Do you forget the Creator is powerful enough to adjust the climate of the Earth without our intervention? Do you think it’s within our right to dismiss God’s obvious intention that a sexual relationship be a bond between a male and a female? Are you more pious and compassionate than God when you refuse His gift of meat to eat? Do you ever complain about the weather God has seen fit to send the Earth at your particular place and moment?

This is not to say we should never work with what God has provided so it suits us better or in order to make it more available to us. If we want to live on the coast we need to build levees to keep God’s ocean water away from us. The gift of oil or ore is useless if we don’t remove it from where God put it. And we do not put medical advances away just because they open up ethical questions.

But it’s the human judgment of God’s decisions that needs to be cautioned against. We fall so easily into forgetting who God is. We are unclear as to why He does what He does, so in order to make sense of it, we grab the responsibility away from Him. What a mistake, when God is so infinitely more capable than we could ever imagine.

9/22/08 Insights from Prayer                 Dear God: Today You showed me that You can answer my deepest prayers by working in the background in my time of silence. What a surprise to find my prayer for Your help had been answered when I wasn’t looking! Now my job is to use this knowledge; apply it towards faith in You so I’m as confident in my prayers for others as well. I have much less chance of seeing if my prayers for them come to fruition. By letting me experience how quietly You work, You show me that it’s the praying itself that’s important. I don’t need to define the answers so much as go on living in virtue, with the trust that the answers are there – that they are right and good – and come out of Your perfect love.

9/21/08 Reflections             In Hollywood culture, any attention you can call to yourself has merit. Sweet or shocking – there’s no difference. Good publicity or bad, as long as they’re looked at and talked about, their lives are complete. The world is all about them, and any consideration they can suck out of someone else’s life is welcome. When that starts to slow down they will do anything to pep it up, and usually the most effective thing is something shocking and anti-establishment.

So we give credence to nonsense presented for dubious reasons. The sad fact is, Hollywood culture has a big effect on culture in general because it’s far-reaching and has gladly made itself seem important when really it isn’t. Why do small people have this need to see and be seen? Why are shallow people the most mouthy? I think it’s because of the significance our culture puts on Self; it naturally leads to self-promotion.

No wonder the movement to deny something higher than ourselves is so great. Atheism is the latest fad. If you have trouble believing in something the majority of humanity since the beginning of humanity has intuited, that’s a good thing because that promotes the seeking of God and the great joy that this seeking can provide. But if you are an atheist because that’s counter-norm and likely to bring you attention, you are as wasteful of God’s love as any Hollywood fame-seeker. When I hear you, the best I can think of is: “I’m grateful on your behalf that nevertheless God believes in you.”

9/21/08 Insights from Study          A couple of related Bible verses I never could understand became suddenly clear today. (Luke 8:10) “And he said, Unto you it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God: but to others in parables; that seeing they might not see, and hearing they might not understand.” and (John 12:40) “He hath blinded their eyes, and hardened their heart; that they should not see with their eyes, nor understand with their heart, and be converted, and I should heal them.”

It always seemed a contradiction to be told that it was good for the people not to understand Christ’s message. But these passages are meant to bring out that there are two kinds of understanding – the worldly understanding that we gain through our senses, and real understanding that we attain when we open up to God’s graces with our hearts. We are more likely to do that with the right amount of obscurity and interest, which doesn’t seem to manifest when we are told things plainly and authoritatively. Something in our nature rebels against “being told”. We would rather discover for ourselves, and the point of these two verses is that in mystery lies the impetus to listen with the heart instead of just with the ears; to mull things over inside instead of merely passing over external information.

This is how mystics approach their relationship with the Creator – on a higher level that that of the worldly realm of senses that dictates everything we absorb when we don’t aspire to absorb the supernatural through mysticism.

9/19/08 Insights from Study                       Firstfruits – here’s a concept that strikes a chord of discovery in me. To give the first – the best and most important for me – to God for His use, is a worthy sacrifice. It isn’t lambs without blemish for me, but every time I turn my thoughts from something I have in the world, I put God first and so honor Him. It all goes back to humility – a virtue unexalted in today’s world, but as highly praised by God as ever.

To give to God in sacrifice is what Jesus taught. Firstfruits are different for everyone according to what he has, but we learn from Christ that our best sacrifice is to give up our self-regard in favor of humility. It means putting God first instead of ourselves. It means matching what we desire to what God desires. Some sacrifice — every time I do this I receive back benefits a hundred times as precious as what I gave up. Even knowing this, I still have to be watchful – I have faults, temptations, and weaknesses that keep me from paying attention to the firstfruits and what I do with them.

But the desire to put God first is there, and God will help me carry it out. Not that God needs anything I have, but each of us needs each other’s example to realize what true beauty is in our real possession – love of God. Jesus is our supreme example for this; when we emulate Him we ourselves are a good influence.

9/18/08 Reflections                Choice is a big consideration in my belief system. I believe God gave humanity free will because without it we wouldn’t need to consider God at all. His plan for the Earth would have no meaning to it if at least one species didn’t have the ability to play into it. But free will was given before sin entered in; sin has brought an element into free will which makes it more than a gift. Sin makes free will something to be overcome, because with sin comes temptation.

The big job for us is to use our free wills to accept God over and above the things of the world. This is from where we recognize His help and love. But there are also neutral choices – they involve decisions that neither make or break our relationship with God from our end. They make it possible for us to move through life; to guide our bodies from birth to death. To understand what you would be without choice, imagine you’re a marionette. Nothing you wanted to do could be carried out without being first subject to the decision of a higher power, and then dependent on how it pulled the strings and which strings it pulled. What a helpless feeling!

We know from experience that this isn’t the way it is with God. We know we have a freedom of choice, but we also know that our choice has consequence. We feel there’s an arbitrator of that consequence because the same choice doesn’t have the same result every time for us. Or it may have one outcome for us and a completely different outcome for someone else. This is a given, but if you explore it further you begin to realize how perfect the plan is. You have a freedom to choose and divine guidance to help you make the smart choice. It’s the best of both worlds; a perfect system set up by a Supremacy who wants your input but wants it all to come out right for you.

I think of it this way: you can choose to come in from the storm or stay out in it. But you’ve been given self-preservation as a guide, and if you choose to go against that, a few lightning strikes in your vicinity might help you make the better decision.

I find this comforting – the right amount of freedom and guidance for my situation, in perfect measure, overseen by a mighty entity bent on my good. I know there are people who fight this, but I don’t even begin to understand why.