The Light in the Woods

12/30/08 Inspirations             Many scientifically-minded people discount faith because they think we are naïve to believe in something that can’t be proven. Yet what keeps science itself going is the faith that something previously unknown can eventually be studied and measured.

For example, science can’t deny the universe because it knows the universe exists, but science must go on faith that the universe can give up its secrets, or else there would be no reason to pursue such knowledge. Faith is the feeling that there is truth unrevealed – no different for scientists than for spiritual contemplatives.

Scientific fact is absolute, but it’s the potentiality of new experience that is not only the goal of science, it’s also the mysticism that is so reviled when it comes to a spiritual person dealing with the Creator instead of the created. No one would think of preventing scientists from studying the universe just because it’s beyond our imagination that science could affect the universe even if we did know it. But when mystics seek to experience the Creator of that universe, suddenly faith is delusional.

The universe is truly an awesome entity. Man may know all about it eventually, but he will never stop its course or create a new one. In the end, we are only observers, and the answer to all questions is “Because God wants it that way.”

12/29/08 Insights from Study          Religious fundamentalists deride mysticism because it says that divine knowledge and grace can be instilled in other authority than just the Bible. Atheists scorn mysticism because anticipating divine infusion into the human spirit is the greatest leap of pure faith possible. The enemy opposites of fundamentalism and atheism can find common ground in the ridicule of mystics in that, with their heads in the clouds, mystics have nothing to offer the real world.

Mystics, who know that the real world doesn’t exist in our temporal realm at all, quietly go about doing what they do — not trying to please or convince their detractors from either side so much as to hope that the peace and joy evident in themselves draws others to want what they have. It is that very intuition of the will of divine reality, so different from what passes for reality here, that elevates mystics above the fray. Nothing we can do will convince the immovable. Fundamentalist exclusivity is just as much a denial of God’s will as atheist pig-headedness is a denial of God’s existence.

The irony is that the open-minded tendency of mysticism is the very thing that allows its faithful to “catch” the favor of divine reality when others are busy belittling the mystic’s experience of God. The double irony is that through their welcoming of communication with God, mystics are far more likely to trigger definitive proof of God than either biblical faith or science. So far only mystics, by definition, are privy to the direct experience of God that would offer inarguable proof to the scoffers on both sides of the God controversy. Yet to mystics there is no controversy and no need to offer a defense.

Mystics know they will not be the ones to enlighten others as they have been enlightened. That is a function of God’s master plan; we will know exactly what God wants us to know, and no more, for our own good. From Moses to St. Paul to Mohammed to Dawkins, no book in the hands of a seeker will enlighten him to the truth without a personal, specific, inspirational visit from the Creator. It is this miracle that introduces a person to reality, and this truth comes from God, not any human being no matter how deeply inspired or object-oriented.

Only God can prove God – He does it all the time in subtle, loving, beautiful ways. If you can see His effects, you’re too far advanced in your relationship with God to need any proof of Him. As for unbelievers, even religious unbelievers, God will provide proof when and how He wishes. Nobody receiving this gift will any longer ridicule the gifted – the great proof will be mystical; all who receive it will be mystics.

12/24/08 Insights from Prayer               Dear Lord, when I tune out what I know and gaze upon You alone, I see at first only darkness – I’ve put my salvation on You and You’re too wonderful for me to know. There’s darkness in my world, but the darkness of You in which I hide is more of a clean slate than darkness. Because I see nothing on it, I don’t see what’s troubling me on Earth. I see instead the pure promise of reality.

When I get used to the dark, I begin to make out the life that You meant for me. It’s all the more clear in the backdrop of darkness – little pinpoints of insight through which a beautiful beam of light can emerge, making me know that beyond the darkness all is bright and familiar. The more pinpoints to appear in the blackness, the more I will know and the closer I will be to what I long to reclaim.

How many times I’ve gazed at the night sky – the darker it got the more stars I could see. With the whole sky eventually scattered with stars, I could feel clearly Your presence and Your promise of full light. How wonderful the Christmas tree lights are when darkness descends to show them off the way they’re meant to be seen. Without darkness, I would never truly experience the light.

You have arranged all this, and now that I understand it better, Lord I can thank You for knowing exactly what’s right for me. I still need Your help, but the first thing You do has already been done – You have made Yourself available to me. Your love, hope, understanding and grace, extended to all mankind despite what we do to one another, is the promise of experiencing Your presence which defines the Christmas celebration as well as anything can.

12/23/08 Insights from Prayer         Dear God, I sought to keep society with the just and have been called high-minded by others, as if that were a bad thing. I tried to follow Your precepts, but other men’s laws have taken precedence over them without my permission. In trying to elevate my thoughts to You, I’ve been called deluded by others, who don’t believe You exist since they know nothing of You. I’ve been forced to support abominations committed by others and to accept these sins as normal behavior. My love for You has become offensive to others. Others are determined to undermine my opportunities to spread the joy of You. I’ve been accused by others of hating people when I’ve only hated their sins. I’ve been upbraided by my own kind for aspiring to communicate with You on a higher level than others have dealt with You.

Lord, at first I began to draw within myself because I was seeking. Now things have become so bad in my society that I’m living inside myself because I’m hiding. How could I bear to watch others slap the face of God? How much longer could I allow others to intrude on my purity through their unbridled power and greed? How low can others debase my culture without fear of retribution? How will I remain Your child when others insist on interfering with my freedoms and downsizing my individuality?

My Father, if I must draw away completely from the world in order to receive Your spirit, I’m willing to go it alone. If You must destroy my society in order to bring it back to what it should be, then I quietly, humbly and obediently accept that despite the harm that may come to me in passing. If I must suffer along with everyone else because my culture has been grievously defiled, I will suffer with patience and compassion. I know I should pray that others will be able to use the trials of the world as the impetus to come to You as well.  But this time let me do this, Lord God, for You, as I want to do everything for You, and You alone. 

12/21/08 Insights from Study             True peace is not the absence of war – the opposite of peace is pride. The abdication of pride brings true peace – inwardly in essence and outwardly in effect.

The current peace movement misses the mark by a wide margin. You only invite chaos by allowing an aggressive entity to ride rough-shod over anyone who will not oppose him. Only a response can stem the tide of aggression, for if the aggressor wins the entire world, opposition to him is guaranteed to well up forever. Our best hope for outward peace, as long as human greed for power remains supreme, is mutual polarization – you stay on your side of the fence and I’ll stay on mine.

This balance becomes upset by globalization and globalization seems unstoppable. While the benefits of world commerce are great for the greatest number of world inhabitants, artificial attempts to regulate the various interests with no safeguard of mutual polarization invites the spoils to go to whoever strikes first without regard to morality. Global control is even more attractive than regional control, and the constraint against any righteous response insures immorality wins out over morality on a global scale. While this is not war, it certainly isn’t peace.

True peace begins in the individual – the smaller the field the higher the success rate. Even a megalomaniac, when confronting his Creator, must feel a certain twinge of humility. It’s why God asks us to go to our inner room, closing the door and praying where no one can see us. A man who has met his God face to face comes out a better man, and better men make better societies. With the underpinnings of humility and obedience in place of pride and power, whole cultures can peacefully influence the world in the name of God. In this direction lies true peace; deep peace in which all men want the right things; the holy things that God desires for them to want. This sounds like a hopeless utopia, but remember that when human beings share the same will as God, God will perform miracles.

Pay for power with pride and you have the kind of power that does not diminish when given away and so cannot be coveted. Power from God is available to all without rank or rancor, in immeasurably more quantity than we could ever use up. Therefore it’s unnecessary to aspire to more by climbing over someone else. Pride is not there to motivate when everything we desire is given free for the asking.

Peacemakers themselves can act out of the pride of self-righteousness in order to make others live the way the peacemaker has deemed to be right. It only brings resistance, no different from the resistance to the goodness of Christianity; resistance that comes from exposure to the intolerance of radical evangelicals. It doesn’t matter if the message is right when the messenger is motivated by human pride and exclusivity. Human pride engenders prejudice in peacemakers as well as in warmongers.

The deep peace of individual, inner humility and abandonment of will is the only peace that is up to you. It’s limited on its surface, but it’s extremely contagious when spurred on by almighty God. Sharing God’s power by being one with His desires, it has unstoppable potential. But we must not use this power out of pride or others will run away in fear. We must passively emit this grace while going about our business. It’s God’s business if He wants to spread your individual peace along. It’s God’s decision whether peace will reign among nations. It’s God’s master plan that allows you to contribute by asking for your own right-relationship with God. Beyond that you regress into the persistent realm of pride, and will only interfere with God.

12/21/08 Reflections          We have a huge white pine tree at the corner of our cabin which is slated to be cut down because if left to itself it could fall in such a way as it could kill us.

There are millions of acres of huge white pines just like it around us. Our lake is ringed by white pine forest, our island is covered mostly in white pine, and there are even other white pines in our yard that could fall on our cabin. But this particular white pine has an ant nest at its base; it’s very old and probably the ants have compromised it. Woodpeckers land on it and listen – they know the ants are there, and because the woodpeckers are listening for the ants, we know the ants are there too.

Because the white pine is still healthy at the top we know that it might stand for many years – white pines many times die from the top down and it often takes a long time. But because this one is healthy at the top, its sap and moisture makes it a lightning rod just a few feet from our cabin. And because it’s healthy at the top, it’s needles catch every breeze; when the breeze turns into a gale the tree’s healthy top will twist and turn and possibly break. If it breaks in one direction it will fall on our cabin. Or the tree could uproot completely in the wind, bringing down the whole tree instead of just the top.

The white pine is very big and very heavy. If we are in the cabin when the tree falls on the cabin, it could kill us. If it falls a bit to one side it could destroy our dock and the boats tied to it. These boats aren’t disposable pleasure craft. They are our transportation in the way that others have a car in their driveway.

Because of all this the white pine is slated to be cut down. Before the water froze we had moved the dock to the other shore so that the white pine would not fall on the dock when we cut it. We have waited for winter because if we fall the white pine into the water we can’t retrieve it. We want to retrieve it because otherwise it would be an eyesore and get in the way of the boats coming into the dock. We also want to use the wood of the white pine to burn in the woodstove to keep us warm.

We are waiting for the ice on the lake to get thicker so that when the heavy tree falls on the ice the ice won’t break through or crack, making the water come up and soak through the snow in such a way as to make us have to wade through slush in order to get to our cabin. And if the ice is thick enough to hold up when the white pine falls on it, this is better for cutting the tree into blocks for firewood, because if we fall the tree onto the ice instead of aimingl it for the ground of the shoreline, we will not have to worry about dulling the chain saw by hitting rocks — hitting the ice with the chain saw doesn’t dull the chain saw.

I’m telling you all this to underscore the preparations we are going through to plan for our change to what God has wrought for the white pine. God put the white pine there for a reason, and the good of human life is the reason. When the white pine threatens that good, it’s within our stewardship to cut down the tree and remove the threat. We should have done that when we renovated this boathouse and moved in. Since then, whenever the wind howls and the lightning flashes, I’ve thought of the threat the white pine is to our safety. But when the storm is over we move on to other worries and forget how scary the tree is.

There is a reason why we keep putting off cutting down the white pine. Out from one if its huge branches there is a maple tree growing. Though we know it’s there, it’s too difficult to see until fall. Then its bright red leaves shine triumphantly through the deep green needles of its host.

The hand of God clearly planted a maple tree high up in the limb of a white pine. There are most likely other instances of this in places that will never be seen by man. But God put this phenomenon here in front of us. I love the presence of God in the maple in the white pine. It’s almost like God’s little joke. It’s also a reminder that He is in control and can appear anywhere.

I know I will want to honor God some way by doing something clever with the maple if it survives the falling. But it’s enough to know that when I first saw it my first thought was: “Yes, God, I do understand what You’re telling me, and I thank You for that”.

12/21/08 Insights from Study                Today two devotionals warn me to accept my subjective experiences in secret silence. It strikes me as the same thing I intuit during these experiences – they are not to be kept to oneself because they are shameful, but they are too much to take for the person who isn’t familiar with them.

I always wondered at how often in the New Testament Jesus would perform a miracle and then tell the gifted person not to speak of it. Now, when the deaf hear and the blind see and the dumb speak, someone’s going to notice without being told. But I don’t think that’s what Jesus was really saying – there’s a higher level that quickens once a puzzling statement has been made. In this case it may be that Jesus didn’t want the favor of the miracle to override the fact that God’s love shines on the individual. It’s this love that is the real gift, and it’s the fact that the almighty Creator blesses each individual that should be held silently close to a person’s heart.

If we receive a miracle and proclaim it to the world, what would be lost is the importance of the love of God that prompted the miracle. It is the miracle worker, not the miracle, that’s important. It is the relationship of the giver, not the gift itself, that should thrill us. And this unique relationship should be glorified interiorly, where it can’t be sullied or diluted by worldly pride.  The spirit of God in me that shines forth should be the announcement of the true miracle – not my babbling, unsuccessful attempts to explain the unexplainable on a lower level than the original miracle was received.

12/17/08 Reflections               See the world through your spirit instead of through your senses, and you will see the world as God sees it. The things that have importance in your sensual world have very little to do with your spiritual core, where God resides.

We were meant to be all-spiritual; to be fully immersed in God. Sin has changed our perception for the worse. God is in everything, but God does not show through in a spirit polluted by sin. But empty the spirit of sin any way you can, and God’s grace will rush in to fill up the void. Not completely, not in this imperfect world – in our present state we could no more bear the full presence of God than a bluebird could handle being suddenly human – but as a hope for the life beyond these limitations.

You have not been abandoned here – the world you perceive would be far more fearful if that were so. But you can regain a bit of what you’ve lost if you would show your desire for it. God is willing to show the way. That is all prayer is – asking God to show you the way. It seems unimportant because it’s such a small, easy-to-do thing. But it isn’t small in God’s eyes. It’s the thing He wants more than anything else. We know this because, when you think about it, what else is there that you have that God would need? And wouldn’t He need it only in order to benefit you anyway?

You can’t get away from God’s love, but you can refuse to appreciate it. Offer your spirit to God for a dwelling place and He will enter. You will know what to do, and when you begin to see things in a new way, you will understand that God’s work is being done in you. Then the things of the world will lose their allure and their sting. What matters to God will matter to you, and the things that don’t matter will release their grip on you at last.

12/14/08 Insights from Study           I suspect that the current fashion of anti-Christianity is taken up by those who don’t know what Christianity is. They may have more than a few different agendas to fill in regards to Christians, but it’s hard to fathom what they would object to in Christ.

The depiction of Christ as a role model is a given for Christians and non-Christians alike. Jesus advocated peace, kindness, forgiveness, understanding, charity, poverty of spirit, humility, love, obedience, gentleness, loyalty, patience, tolerance. How easy it should be for all of us to love Christ and to fashion ourselves after Him. I can’t think of any true religion or sane individual that couldn’t hold a man like Jesus up as a holy person.

But the way in which Jesus holds the highest inspiration for Christians is in His devotion to God and in His own divinity. As a model, Jesus tells us of the divine inheritance of God’s children and how we respect God for His love for us as integral parts of His plan. In loving Jesus, we are able to love God. And in loving God we are able to love all of God’s children, for Jesus is both God and man.

Here’s where we lose people. A lot of people are mad at God and a lot don’t even acknowledge that He exists. So if Jesus is God incarnate these people must distance themselves from Him no matter how they admire His principles, or else honor Him as Jesus, but not as the Christ.

What should practicing Christians do? It seems better that they should not confront the critics. Love God and the morality that’s His desire for us. Keep on doing the humanitarian good worldwide that’s a result of the Christians’ seeing the God dwelling in others through the humanity of Christ. Speak of God to those who don’t know of Him. Pray for those who hurt Him. The best way to upset the enemy is to remain holy and effective. Debate only when the spirit is upon us. And for heaven’s sake don’t spoil it all by going against the spirit of Christ’s teaching. We can stay true to Christianity without being offensive and exclusive. When we are praying for our critics, we need to listen to see if there’s any Jesus in what they’re saying.

12/14/08 Insights from Study           If you must look for points from God, then at least look at it this way: To God there is no measurement for acts of kindness – kindness is a cultivated trait, because it is a free-will offering. You don’t get ten points for saving a life and one point for holding a door open. You get the full amount of God’s love for both acts. There’s no “fairness” — I wouldn’t even want to imagine how ugly the world would look if God could only give us what we deserve. A loving act is a loving act – it’s your state of mind that urges you to do a kindness, and it’s that state of mind that impresses God.

Of course, there are degrees of compassion in man’s eyes, and it’s natural for you to rate kindness according to quality and quantity. But you will avoid spiritual pride if you remember that in the God/man relationship the only thing you possess that God needs is your free-will desire to love Him. All good flows from that desire and is blessed by God whether you are a martyred missionary or a bed-ridden senior who can do nothing more than pray for others. Each has offered himself to God – any act that flows from that is God’s accomplishment. Only man’s love toward God is negotiable, and God accepts that with mighty totality irregardless of other acts of man.