The Light in the Woods

 

#7 – THE LIGHT IN THE WOODS – FEBRUARY 2006

 

© Aubri Dennison 2006

 

2/2/06 Reflections           The more we work toward self-disregard the easier it is to deny ourselves the luxury of anger when we feel we’ve been wronged. Instead, we take the opportunity to be able to serve God in righteousness despite the adversity. The bad things are an opportunity to see the good things in a better contrast. Only when I turn my back on the blazing sun can I use it to see clearly.

 

2/4/06 Reflections         I believe wholeheartedly in Jesus, and I feel blessed that I’ve been gifted with the desire to serve God by imitation of the Christ. God sent Christ to Earth as a missionary, and He still sends humans on missions, using Jesus as an example. Is Jesus the Son of God? I’m not prepared to say He is, because son-ship is a human status, not a divine one. Calling Him Son-of-God goes a long way to explain how God adapts His plan to conform with our nature – we have sons, so when God came to Earth His manifestation was labeled Son-of-God because this is how we could understand His mission, in God’s name. But it was really God Himself, in whose kingdom there is no need of sons. It’s only words and labels, but the distinction becomes important — it’s to be hoped that the billions on Earth who don’t believe Jesus is the Son of God can still honor His mission, imitate His attitudes, and be like Him in His worship and obedience. To me, Jesus was a manifestation of God Himself, presented to us on Earth as hope.

 

2/7/06 Reflections            My joy in study is growing less and less — with some books I’m just going through the motions. I understand that this is normal and that God is accepting of my request for union with Him and is delivering me from earthly pleasures. This is a great consolation, although my human habits are deeply ingrained and I still fear the loss of satisfaction in this human endeavor. Soon this delight will have paled in comparison — I’m glad I studied hard, because it’s given me the means to understand the transition I must go through and the infinitely more intense joy that will come from it. Harder to get used to is the way I miss getting new revelations in the frequency that I did when I first started. I have no doubt that the revelations were really divine, without knowing how to explain how I know, but anyone would be suspicious that they quit just as suddenly. If I hadn’t studied and found out that this is common in mystics, I would have never been able to trust my convictions again.

 

2/7/06 Reflections           I think I’m way too proactive in my journey to God – there’s so much variance in theory as to how much a person can or should put into their devotions, it’s no wonder the way is unclear. The problem is that my whole life I’ve tended to emphasize self-responsibility, and suddenly, instead of that being a respected virtue, it’s an obstacle in my seeking. I do feel that the correct way is to stop struggling and trust God’s way, but self-sufficiency is an especially tenacious habit because although inappropriate in a journey to perfection, it’s a noble quality for success in the world. I still haven’t fully given my life’s work to the correct goal, even though I know what the correct goal is – the world is still too much with me. I need to quit trying to help God — my good motives are only working against me, because God can and will do better than I can, and He’s perfectly willing to give me His gifts. All I need is to learn how to accept taking the back seat.

 

2/7/06 Reflections         I believe that God made the universe perfect. I believe that He then created human beings perfect, with perfect knowledge and perfect love. But above all other creations, man was made in God’s image – to me this means we were given free wills. On the occasion of original sin God didn’t take away His gifts of perfection – He hid them, so that from that time on we have had to seek God instead of languish in His glorious presence here on Earth. But the knowledge and love that matches God’s own is here and available to us; the gift is hidden but finding it is not hard. It involves asking — of humbly putting ourselves in God’s hands, ready to receive His grace, which opens up a little the door behind which perfection that we were always meant to share still waits. We can glimpse it here on Earth, although because of sin we can’t have it’s full fruition here. Though hidden, the gifts are easily accessible to everyone if we just ask and prepare ourselves to receive.

 

2/9/06 Insights from Prayer           I’m starting to lose understanding about prayers of intercession and petition. Lately, it seems false and not a little bit prideful to ask God for favors, even with the best of intentions, because the divine plan rolls on despite our desires; we can’t change it with our prayers and when we realize we can’t, to keep on praying for a favor is like putting God on the spot. Like, you’d better show me there’s use to all this praying. Then I remember “Ask and you shall receive.” God wants us to ask him for favors — it shows the proper humility to admit that without him we can do nothing. So I’m both right and wrong in my thinking. What I glean from it all is that intercession and petition is a good thing, but we need to remind ourselves that we ask because we ourselves are incapable of making a difference. There is really only one petition we are justified in making — for enlightenment and grace, the help that comes with union with God. All else comes naturally as a gift when we succumb our wills. Unless we abandon our wills to conform with that of God, all is work, and futile, unrewarded work too. We can never do better than God would do if we would only ask, and our desire for unity with Him is really all he requires and all we need to seek. We can take our instruction from Christ, who also prayed to God even though He was sinless. In imitation of Christ, we fulfill all God asks of us (our side of the new covenant), for after all this model is the reason Christ was manifested on earth in the first place. We now have a real, human standard to look up to — the Way (to union with God), the Truth (knowledge, especially of good and evil), and Life (eternal happiness through grace provided us by God).

2/12/06 Inspirations                (This came very near to being a revelation but I didn’t count it as such because the subject has been so much on my mind lately it could be my own intellectual reasoning; also, the feeling of a definite divine presence was missing.) Verify what your teachers teach, for if you don’t and they prove to be wrong, you propagate error and it will rightly be attributed to you. I asked if the Christian God was the same God as the Muslim God and the answer was yes. I asked if that meant, then, due to the global religious war sought after by the Muslims, that one side is favored by God and one side is not, and the answer was no, in the end it is what the individual does that determines their righteousness. I asked then if Muslims are better than Christians because they live their religion out in the open better and our society is becoming more and more secular, and the answer was that many more Muslims are hypocrites than I realize, just as in my experience there are many Sunday-only Christians. I asked if, since the Christian God and the Muslim God are the same thing, in a religious war He would be on the side of the Muslims because they want to spread fundamental religion to counteract Western secularism, and the answer was that evil means do not justify righteous ends; that God could not take either side because both sides were evil. I asked if since God would not take sides, does that mean that Jesus becomes irrelevant in that God would not stick up for Him? The answer was, I need to look at those seen as God’s messengers to find the real difference between the faiths. That Mohammad was a product of what the people needed at that moment in time to fulfill their ideal of religion — a warrior that would serve God by conquering the entire world. Contrast that to Jesus, who could have conquered the entire world if He had wanted to, but He came in peace, dashing the hopes of many, even among His chosen apostles. There was no evil in Jesus — no sin, no thought for Himself, no possibility of disobedience to God’s will. Imitation of Christ, then, was the way to ask for the favor of God, whether you be Muslim or Christian. Many Muslims imitate Christ although that may not be the name they put on it; many Christians do not, even though they put his name on their religion. There is disagreement among the Muslims and among the Christians. In the end God will be on the side of the true believers in the goodness of God and the perfection of his laws, no matter what their religion. I asked if, then, I should only worry about myself and shouldn’t worry that God will not be on the Christian side because so many in the Christian countries are morally bankrupt; the answer was no, as a true Christian I’m obliged to serve God, and His will is to bring all people to Him. That in a religious war God will not be on the side of any nations, because nations are of no interest to God, only the moral state of their people. In the same way, God will not be on the side of one religion over another, because churches are of no interest to God, only the moral state of their people. God does take sides — He takes the side of the righteous no matter where they live or what form of worship they practice. If they worship sincerely and humbly, and put themselves honestly at the Lord’s disposal, they will be given the grace to survive the holocaust or to pass on to their eternal life — either way is a favor of God to be looked forward to by the righteous.

2/14/06 Insights from Study               Mystics bring everything down to the basics in order to ensure that nothing of the world creeps into our regard for God; I think it’s silly to pooh-pooh the balance of creation as if we’re all so weak-willed we can’t honor God without denying the joy we get from His gifts. Then the reformists claim it’s sacrilegious to want more than salvation; that good works are attempts to buy one’s way into heaven — I think good works are a form of worship and gratitude for one already saved by his desire to serve God. Even if good works are actually works of God, are they evil if they bring a person satisfaction? We can’t fully abandon earthly pleasures — they are infused in us by an all-pervading presence of God’s love; to deny that is a holier-than-God attitude that makes me cringe. Yes, of course, we get the grace through our passive abandonment to God’s will, but if God’s will is for us to be happy and enjoy life, are we being holy by moroseness and denial of things we weren’t meant to escape? ((It really bugs me when people, even people I admire, say that we shouldn’t strive to know God through study of the thoughts of those who have gone before — why would you want to tie one hand behind your back in getting to know God?)) Of course, the best way is to reach out to Him, and I would always use Him to verify anything I learn from man, but if study keeps God in my thoughts I don’t see it as a guilty pleasure. The same people who say a desire to do good works is misguided are the ones who say if you study, you should study only the Bible. Trying to understand God by studying scripture is like trying to explain the ocean by looking into a pail of water collected at the beach. It only takes you as far as your sense and past experience provide, and leaves out an enormous amount of insight. We don’t know all it is that we don’t know. Our best tool is faith, and the favors of the Creator bestowed on those who are sensitive to His divine will. This isn’t to take away anything from those who maintain that the scriptures contain all we need to know in order to be saved — this is true, considering all we need to do to please God can be read in one sentence: Love God above all else, and your neighbor in emulation of the love God gives you. But if we never aspire to go beyond the minimum necessary, we surely would be missing the joy that comes with union to the divine will; the knowledge and grace that this union affords us in order that we may serve God. True, not much is required of us to reach salvation, but I don’t want to just get by, thinking that the ocean is nothing more than a great number of pails of water. I want to dive into the ocean and experience its goodness with everything I have been given. God gives us the gift of Himself – what right do we have to refuse any of this banquet and take only bread and water because that’s all we need?

 

2/15/06 Inspirations        Could spiritual dryness be God’s way of forcing us to take time out to seek Christ, to whom we are better able to relate on some matters?

 

2/21/06 Presentations             In a sense, science has the same function as Jesus – to take the miracles of God and make them understandable to mortals. God is perfectly capable of unexplainable miracles, and the contrast makes them all the more awesome. But miracles that do have scientific explanations also are the voice of God, who, after all, created science as well. This morning a clearly defined bank of fog descended on the lake. It was opaque, but under it for a height of twenty feet or so it was perfectly clear air. The fog was almost a living thing the way it appeared out of nowhere, moved and changed, then disappeared. I know there’s a scientific explanation for it, but unlike those who point to scientific explanation as arguments against God’s creation, I see God as all-pervasive who sends His messengers of nature and science to make Himself visible and understandable. How is it possible for people to miss this except by studied stubbornness?

 

2/24/06 Reflections             I look at how the culture I live in is turning more selfish and more secular with every passing day, and I worry that now that the world is being forced into a war of religion we are going to be the losers, as we aren’t turning toward God like the enemy is. But then I remember the enemies of Christ and how He described them, and it sounds familiar. Maybe we don’t honor God as much as we should, but maybe we’re giving Muslims too much credit just because they honor Him in public; because five times a day they’re required to pray; because they tend to take their religious cause to the street when things aren’t going right; because they go about in public to be seen to uphold God’s law in a way that offends it – committing crimes against humanity in the name of God and forcing other to do the same in order to ensure the success of their power. It isn’t about God with them any more than it is with us. To win this war we don’t need more religion, we need more honest love of God – in this way the good people of the world will win no matter what their religion. Religious fanatics are the scribes and Pharisees of our day, and we must oppose them as Jesus did in His time, by teaching and appealing to the good people in the way of the beatitudes.

 

2/24/06 Reflections            To despair of ever feeling that I can be the one that God gives His favors to shows a lack of faith and a lack of humility. If I were truly and fully giving my will over to His, I wouldn’t question my standing because that would be questioning His power too.

 

2/25/06 Insights from Prayer                     Although I’ve been pleased to have an extraordinary portion of tranquility and satisfaction, I do have my moments of frustration and disappointment. Jesus, being truly human, would have the same interior reaction as I would, but His exterior response would be correct and holy, which in turn would heal any bad effects within His interior that His initial, human reaction would bring about. So after three weeks of dieting and self-denial, when I find I’m still at the point I was three weeks ago, I can react either negatively or positively – my choice. If I react negatively, I’m hurting myself again. If I look for the positive and react accordingly, I not only avoid making things even worse, I act righteously and regain my composure.

 

2/26/06 Reflections             Just as the body has its five senses to gather and discern information, so the soul has sense of its own by which we detect and react to the presence of God, who resides in each and every soul. We don’t tend to pay as much attention to the soul’s senses as we do to the body’s, and it’s for this reason that we can’t as much experience the presence of God within us. But He is there, because if the Creator ever lost His love for us or took His regard for us away for one second, we wouldn’t function. As different as the soul’s senses are, their effects on us are as certain as those from the body’s senses. I’ve never seen an apparition or heard God’s voice with my ears, but I have heard His voice and felt His presence within my soul’s faculties – I can’t describe how it feels, but it’s there with all the certainty I would have if I was seeing the flames of a house fire, tasting the soot of it in the air, smelling the acrid smoke, feeling the waves of heat, and hearing the approaching sirens of the fire truck. With God in the soul, you have to pay much more attention. But God is there all the same, and like our body’s senses, the soul’s senses are there to teach us what we need to know. Miracles occur in the soul, but we need to be attuned to God’s love and presence within us in order to absorb their effects. Yesterday, I had a righteous reaction to a great disappointment, and today that frustration was wiped away by satisfaction of my desire after all. Now, God doesn’t care how I look, but He does care about how I chose to handle my frustration, and He appreciates how I’ve come to see His work in everything — how my own efforts are really His work on my behalf. He shows this is the right way; that this pleases Him, by giving me my desire in a way that’s obviously not the result of my own effort. No, how I look isn’t important to God, but how I live is. If I’m doing that right, He will fix everything with an efficiency I could never come up with on my own. But I couldn’t have discerned His presence withing me or appreciated his overpowering love for we without having learned how to pay attention to the senses of the soul, and I wouldn’t have learned that without His love and presence in my soul in the first place. Something stirred me up to seek Him there, and I found Him. But in order to find Him I had to think less about myself and the things of the world that had been taking up my time and focus; I as well had to admit that without His care I couldn’t succeed at this, and to ask Him to take over. Realizing all I have to do is love Him and serve Him, it simplifies and immensly improves my life. My hope now is that God will want me to share this joy with others, but if that isn’t His plan, I accept whatever it is with humility and focus on what He does want from me.  If I don’t know, He’ll tell me; what I can’t do, He will give me the grace to do.  I don’t need reward for what God does through me, and yet the rewards are there if one opens their sould to the experience.