The Light in the Woods

2/28/09 Insights from Study           I don’t want my life run by powerful corporations. Neither do I want my life run by government and the bureaucracies that suck their lives from it. I don’t want a dictator and I don’t want mob rule. No pope; no deacons telling me how I feel. No rich men; no tramps making my mind up for me. Polluters and protesters – there’s no difference. Looters and donors – they all come from the same place.

We could all get together and agree to provide things for each other. We could decide as a whole on mutual protection for mutual survival. We could be happy to excel in one thing in return for the services of another who excels in something else.

We could be courteous in the expectation that we will be treated courteously. We could practice virtue and take others’ virtue for granted. We could care for those who sorrow and have an assurance that someone would do the same for us.

We could all enjoy the fruits of our labor as long as we labored. We could all feel free to have an opinion as long as we kept informed. We could all have enough as long as we knew what’s too much.

But we don’t do things this way. I don’t have to elaborate – you know what I mean about human nature. I only point out that the human need to have power over another human will step in front of virtuous leanings every time, needing to be constantly monitored and adjusted. This is so obvious that you might want to consider that it’s part of the master plan – present at the moment of creation and played out in a host of different ways. Why? To make it obvious to us that we can’t be entirely virtuous on our own; that we can’t obtain heaven by ourselves; that since we can’t give and receive perfect justice we must give and receive mercy instead.

That is why I don’t want my life to be run by any human being, including myself – because of the persistence of human nature and the affordability of divine nature. I am spiritual; I will allow myself to be powered by God and by God only. I defer my human nature to Him, to receive a degree of perfection even though my role on Earth is small. My role in eternity, in God’s eyes, as His creation, is enormously important. I leave my wishes for God’s, and I welcome Him to run my life. Why wouldn’t I? He’s well more capable than I or any other human.

2/24/09 Reflections           I’m a sinner being tested within an imperfect world, just like everyone else, and my life is not lived in ecstasy all the time by any means. But I have also been wonderfully gifted with the Peace of God.

In the blogs and journals I follow there seem to be so many cases where people are suffering from lifelong disfunctions; we all have troubles but when they start early they must add up and turn into something that may not prove able to be overcome.

Here’s an idea for you – write down during the day short notes on what spirit principles are at work in the events of your day. Each event has a spiritual overtone; you must be diligent to grab the spiritual content of these happenings out of the air and record them on paper. The more you do this the easier it becomes and the more you will recognize that there is a higher plane on which you are invited to live.

• Humility is the thing valued most because it gets me where I want to be

   

• I enjoy God’s presence more often than I must seek Him

   

• What can’t be explained is evidence of God’s greatness

   

• I strive for purity of soul in honor of my Creator

   

• Mundane things can take on a beauty as something created for my use

   

• My problems, trials, pains and fears are shared with God and made bearable by being absorbed by Him

   

• My purpose, no matter how inconsequential it seems, gives me joy and contentment

   

• I have what I need and no compelling reason to acquire more

   

• I delight in the hope of the next stage — no matter how uncertain it is, I will be taking God with me for protection

   

• There is no competition for the things that matter because the things that matter are infinitely abundant

As you look over this sample of my day lists, you might help your own journey by reflecting that the Creator has a wonderful gift for us all. What we can do to deserve it is very little, but also very easy. God gives me this gift and since it’s a gift it’s mine to give away to someone else. I don’t diminish it this way, because the more I give the more I receive, and the same goes for the person I have given to. In this way the world is won over to God.

2/22/09 Insights from Prayer               When I pray it’s really for my own sake and it does me good independent of what it does for the person I’m praying for. Praying is far from being selfish — it’s OK that I benefit from my prayer because I’m in need of God’s beneficence as much as anyone.

God already knows what’s on my mind, God already knows that what I’m asking for needs doing, and if what I’m praying for is His will anyway, it would be done whether I pray for it or not. So it’s for me to benefit from prayer – to be reminded this way that God wants rather than needs my co-operation. My input in the form of prayer or good acts may be helpful to others and that may be my motive, but I also realize that prayer affirms my own standing as God’s child. It’s not egotistical to want to be a good child of God.

Through prayer I get to realize that all goodness is a gift bestowed on me; not my own accomplishment. I pray then to let myself know that I’m worthy to intercede for someone else; not for what I can do but for what God can do. I’m not ordering God’s mercy for someone – I’m offering myself as God’s instrumental force however He would use it. In this greatest humility of prayer, I lift my eyes to God and say “I’m willing to use those gifts You gave me for the sake of others, with Your help.” This is a prayer God will answer every time, and this is a good for which I shouldn’t feel unworthy.

2/22/09 Insights from Study            I may have paid less attention at times, but now I see reality beyond illusion. If not God – who? If not for my benefit – whose?

Life can be simple if we live it outside the confines of the material world we know so well. Things other than God, our only need, mess up our perception. But we’re in this worldly cell with our worldly bodies; we look for a way out while at the same time hesitant in fear of the unknown.

We are all headed for the same ending – why go kicking and screaming when you could progress in peace and quiet? Live in the world contentedly, but let your spirit, which is not confined, freely communicate with Reality; to come back to report that the ending is fine and not something to be feared. With this hope realized, you can go about your worldly life soothed and resilient; a model of peace for others to benefit from and emulate.

2/21/09 Inspirations             Truly we can chose to sin, but what we can’t do is to choose to be sinless. From our little white lie designed to spare someone’s feelings to the reality of Hitler’s ovens, sin is necessary because we cannot return to God without overcoming it.

All sin puts distance between us and God, but there is also sin that isn’t sin by intention but sin by design. If man had never sinned there would be no imperfect Earth to put him in, and no hope of the perfection to come in eternity. God has His reasons and His methods; sometimes sin and pain figure in and we must accept that if we are to accept God at all.

But neither the failure to accept God nor the sin that puts our striving to accept God in motion can keep us from God’s kingdom, for that is not what God has designed. In this world, we will not truly understand that we are already being punished for sin by having to endure living amongst it. But when we are living in God’s presence in God’s kingdom, our spirits will have been purified completely and we will know perfect love and joy and peace. Damnation isn’t the end; it’s part of the process. We all enter the world with the burden of sin as our lot, but we all come out of the process as perfect; to live forever with God.

2/16/09 Inspirations               You might want to run to God in these unsure times, because He can make it all better in a heartbeat. You might want to promote God’s goodness by being goodness itself – to be as generous with your spiritual lights as God is with His power to give you this gift of goodness to pass on to others.

You might feel overwhelmed by theological logistics, the nooks and crannies where understanding hides, to the point that you feel powerless to try to please God, Who is so unknowable. But your deception doesn’t lie in what you have not been told about your Creator. You are deceived because you assume there’s something you can do to receive God’s gift of holiness, other than be willing to accept this gift.

You don’t have to know theology, or the history of religion, to have a right-relationship with God. You don’t need to be instructed in the doctrine, the ritual, the language of worship of God. All you need is to humbly and obediently give to God what He wants from you and has already given to you to freely offer.

This is the main reason contemplative prayer is so valuable – in silent focus you see all you have and how unimportant what you don’t have is to God. Contemplation is placing yourself before God in willingness to absorb the insight He gives you. This insight is greater than anything you can get by study or practice. It all points to the mystic principle, the only necessary thing, the powerful ability you have to do what you should.

Love God by wanting only what He wants above anything you may wish for yourself. It’s simple, it’s available, it’s painless, and it’s complete — abandon your will to God’s will and you have done all that’s in your power to do to please God. Theological scholars have no greater ability than this. Great philosophers, psychologists, or sociologists cannot know God better than this or do more to please Him.  Pastors, priests and popes have no more ability for this than you have.

And having done what you are called to do, you will gain further insight and perception as God uses your holiness in His work. Revisit the basic principle of abandonment in silent prayer and do your living in concert with God, and you will be living your purpose perfectly. Many will never enjoy this contentment; not because they’re unable, but because they have not been moved to do the one thing God asks of them. But often they will find themselves in despair, asking for God’s help without really knowing how wonderfully He can give that help. Often that is the opening they need. With the power of God behind you, you can bring others to this point of asking before the despair becomes necessary. It’s something we do not know unless we examine our hearts – often what is needed is for you to suggest a person go to God in prayer to ask for guidance.

 2/12/09 Reflections           When you’re in trouble there’s always one place you can go to visit someone who knows how you feel. When you think about it, our traditional tendency to hold God up as unreachable and untouchable has caused us great harm. God’s power and His knowledge is ours to use in the measure that He gives it to us. But we’ve been taught more about how it’s impossible to know God, and not enough about how we don’t need to know Him in order to experience holiness.

Prayer in any form asserts in us our acceptance that God is almighty and our willingness to ask Him to use His power for what we need. But it does so much more than that. Prayer acknowledges that we are sharing this divinity whenever we hold our spirits up for God’s influence. There is a level of God’s makeup that He is willing to share with us; a part of Him that He does want us to know.

If you believe this sharing of divinity with mere humans makes God something less than almighty, then you don’t give God much credit. This is a classic case of not being able to think outside your humanity. You cannot experience the God/man relationship until you convince yourself that such a relationship is possible. God is not diminished by His gift of shared divinity – He is honored by it and through this is carrying out His master plan.

So we can pray however it fits us to pray. We can worship whatever way feels right to us. We are not held to a formula for being charitable. There are no benchmarks for if we’ve evangelized enough. The regulation of our relationship with God is a function of religion – an allowance for other human beings to determine God’s desires for an individual. You don’t have to let this happen to you. When you’re confused go to God in prayer and ask Him what He wants your role to be. Then believe in His goodness and don’t let anyone limit what He is able to tell you. God is not in one place and you in another. God is in your spirit and you are in God’s.

2/12/09 Reflections         The story of Jesus chokes me up because through it God is saying “As powerful as I am, your sins can hurt Me because I love you and whatever you do against Me you do against yourself.”

It’s not about reward and punishment. Without God’s propping us up at every moment we would fail — why would God damn us to hell for something we all would do if He didn’t guide us? Our nature is to do what it takes to survive in a hostile environment; the Creator of us and that environment is unlikely to damn us when we do what we must.

That isn’t to say there isn’t goodness on the other end of the spectrum. In fact, this goodness is what proves to me that God is at work in us. Any good we do, no matter how compassionate, ends up being for our own good. Charity results in survival on a higher plane; we not only make it in this world but we do so with personal satisfaction. But this too is a function of God’s master plan – it’s His gift to us to be able to do not only what we must, but what we can.

In summary, we are given a free will to use within God’s master plan, but it’s not in God’s plan to lose even one of us. This was so important that He sent the human manifestation of Himself to tell us so in our own language. He still does this through inspiration and revelation for those brave independents prepared to accept His spirit as their own.

Free will decisions are made to get us through day-to-day life on Earth. They can please God or disappoint God, but He doesn’t react to this with anything but understanding and mercy. God does not need our decisions for His own good, but He knows our decisions affect us, and He wants the best for us. This cannot include eternal damnation.

To those who think this theology is blasphemous, I submit that what you are doing is taking it upon yourself to declare that Jesus has failed in His mission. This chokes me up more than any other sin man can commit. I challenge you and say that beings exist and events occur because God wants things the way they are for His own reasons. We don’t have a say in the master plan, only in how we react to it. If we react in a holy way God shows mercy; if we sin God shows mercy. Our actions don’t change God’s plan for us, and if God is a loving God His plan is not our eternal damnation but our eternal presence with Him. This holy comfort is what God-as-Jesus suffered so deeply to show us – once and forever, for all. So when I hear you ask someone if they’ve “been saved” it makes me want to cry in incredulous exasperation and sadness.

2/10/09 Inspirations       I am just small, Dear Lord, in my own eyes. Teach me to pray so that I’m reminded how precious I am to You. Then, and only then, am I certain that I am what You make me, and You make me holy and whole.

When I run out of answers, and the strength to find answers, teach me to pray so I remember where answers really lie. If I should feel abandoned by those I thought cared for me, teach me to pray so I know again how much You love me and how fulfilling this love is. As darkness falls over the world to the point where morality and initiative is a thing too well hidden, teach me to pray so I want to remain pure for You despite what others think is right for me.

This life isn’t easy and sometimes there’s ugliness on all sides, threatening innocents. Teach me to pray so that I can form a bond with others on Your behalf. That is when we may together understand that beauty is more precious when snatched out of the claws of despair.

I thank you, Dear God, for the visible signs of hidden glory as yet to be exposed. Teach me to pray so that all can see Your work in nature and in circumstances. That way all may trade pride in for the humility and obedience that is the divine part of our human nature.

My one request is that all of us may become tuned to the frequency on which You transmit. Teach me to pray so that I never lose Your gift of inspiration; always ready to pass along the secret to joy.

When I feel my enemies closing in, Dear Lord, teach me to pray so that I can welcome them with courage and soften their hearts with revelation. If I find that someone is in need in body or in spirit, teach me to pray so that Your own spirit can give me the words I need to comfort them. As it becomes harder to swim against the tide of self-regard in today’s society, teach me to pray so that I can always return to what is important to You. Then, and only then, can I feel satisfied that I have found the way; that it doesn’t lie in me and what I can do, but in You and the spiritual gifts You give me.

I want to walk in Your ways, Dear God. Teach me to pray so that I may always have a place to go where I can recharge, refocus, and remember from where my strength originates and to where my journey is taking me.

2/9/09 Reflections         It’s human nature to get caught up in discovery. The world is full of mysteries, and it’s entertaining to play at figuring them out. It’s normal to want to attach ourselves to others doing the same thing, to “be on board” for the adventure. It’s OK to have the joy of discovery and fellowship.

Secularists will never get rid of faith and spirituality – we know without being taught that these will always remain a mystery and will always attract thinkers. We don’t always expect an answer to our questions. Even those quite sure of their path to the truth don’t expect to know all there is to know. We go in prepared to be content with just bits and pieces; to be satisfied with the search itself.

But humans also have a burning need to know something for sure; something so basically true that they can pin theories all over it and still recognize it underneath. It doesn’t necessarily have to be proven, only known in the mysterious way we know things deep inside without being told or shown.

What is this thing we all possess but cannot explain? Each person has their own reaction to it; their own concept of how it makes them feel. Often there is a sense that we are not really controlling things – that there is something bigger than us that provides exactly what we need in order to have meaning.

For me it’s the certainty that someone knows more about me than I know of myself. There’s that inward suspicion that as much as I know about myself and my feelings, my thoughts, my memories, and my picture of myself that only I can consult, my Creator not only know this, but knows infinitely more than this about me.

I can put away all thoughts of my life on Earth and still have this conviction. Everything else is just window-dressing, or a fad to be picked up and put down. So now and again I put aside all the searching for meaning while I dedicate myself to the one thing I can believe in – I have a Creator and the Creator loves me. I just want to love God back. I’m in it for real, I’m in it for good, and I’m in it for ever.