The Light in the Woods

1/28/10 Insights from Study                  To demonstrate the goodness of God everyday, we live expressively, showing by our very being that when we are with God we shine as dew, and when we are feeling away from God we are cold, dead sticks. We don’t have to be holy to passively instruct our neighbors – they also can pick up on the ramifications of the absence of God through our restless evil and misfortune. One way or another we demonstrate the presence of God, either by our welcoming of it or by our rejection of it.

But if you want to calm your demeanor, empty your spirit of all that isn’t God to make room for His peace. You can do this in mere seconds by the deliberate giving over of your self to God in prayer. Let Him know you want to be a good influence on those around you. God can always use workers to lead through their good example, as there is no shortage of those who lead us into temptation.

12/13/09 Reflections                 The job of the world is a simple one. It doesn’t matter what your vision of God is – as long as you appeal to goodness, you love your Creator. It’s not difficult to do, and from where we are we might be amazed to know how well the world already does this. The world isn’t as bad off as it seems – much is said about its negative aspects, but then little is reported about our spiritual state. You think global spirituality will never happen, but the world has already come a long way toward it. The great religions, and most of the obscure ones, are all based on goodness. From the time human beings were created, we have looked up to the Creator in awe and wonder, looking for goodness from Him and within ourselves.

You don’t even have to believe in the Creator in order to worship Him. Even atheists show honor to God each time they do something good for others. Goodness doesn’t have to spring from religion; goodness reflects on God no matter what we believe, because God is goodness Himself. The job is simple because it comes naturally to us. We are our own reward system. Of course there are objects pulling us the other way, but while they may provide happiness, they don’t provide safety and contentment. And there are always the spoilers, who seem to thrive on evil, yet who can say how they are inside?

But global goodness doesn’t take global government – that would be sure to polarize people because government is about power, and only one power can reign supreme, leaving lesser powers resentful. It takes individuals working on a local scale with what they know and the means to advertise it.

It’s absolutely amazing how our lives intertwine and intersect, though we be total strangers. Now with the availability of instant communication worldwide via the internet it’s infinitely more possible to have an effect on someone without even knowing it. Interestingly, the probability of this being a polarizing factor is just as likely as it being something that brings us together. But the point is – it’s getting harder and harder to deny that, living under the same sun, we may have a lot more in common than the ten o’clock news might imply. We are not as diverse as we think because in God’s eyes we are all the same — everything!

Our differences can’t cancel out our overriding essence – we are all spiritual beings lost in a world of matter. Any differences we have are superficial, because only the spirit matters in the great scheme of things. Our one job is to care for our spirits and encourage, whether actively or passively, others to care for theirs. If left alone we do this naturally, because all spirits are the same and we know others’ exactly as well as we know ours. The difference is only in the degree of the grace we allow to pervade our spirits. It’s the goodness of God that wishes to live in us, and the joy we receive from His presence (our spirits are lifted) makes us tend to want to cooperate in this plan.

But we are spirits in a material world, and there is happiness to be had. Material happiness is not evil, but what it does is prevent the spirit from being filled with God through the neglect that comes from our preoccupation with worldly things. The body is the tool that moves us through the world. The mind is the lever that makes the body go. The soul is the emotion that directs the mind toward which levers to pull. All this for not only survival, but for happiness.

None of this though is the essence of what we really are – that is the spirit. The spirit is the container for however much of God we are willing to invite. In the end it is what of us survives for eternity. If it is full of God we have joy; if it isn’t, we have longing for God. The filling of the spirit with God takes place now and continues until perfection is reached. Allow God in, and seeing as God seeks all spirits, encourage others to allow God in. Make God more important to you and the effects of this will spill over to the lives of others as well.

11/25/09 Insights from Prayer           What greater honor could I show to my Creator than to give Him my full attention? He made me perfectly, He watches over me in my trials, and He lives with me on a higher plane, which I will again understand fully when time is over for me. He gives me His full attention and His full capacity for love, and that is a great deal of attention and love indeed. My contribution is to love and honor Him with the most of what I have to give.

This gets harder and harder as my society turns its back on God, and the culture I live under no longer resembles anything I care for. But I am full of faith and willing for God to be my government no matter who it offends. I love the allegory of the Hound of Heaven because it reminds me that no one can unbelieve the truth out of reality; no one can change truth by their opinion, or make reality disappear by willing it so.

We have an innate drive to connect with our Creator. The more others deny Him, the more we seek Him. The more we allow Him in, the better we are at it. The more others try to suppress our devotion, the greater our need to seek God.  And the more our detractors succeed in their persecution, all the more consumed we are in carrying on our worship of God from within our spirit – that secret place where only God and His child can go.

There we are not judged, but simply loved. There we finally find what we need, and our persecutors become God’s means for our joy and contentment. Therefore, love your enemy – he brings you closer to God as part of God’s design. And if he is your enemy because of your spirituality, he is an even greater blessing. Much as some hate the thought of it, there is no way anyone can stop me from praying for them, as the beauty of prayer lies in its unobtrusiveness. You can’t see me praying for you, but I wonder – can you feel the Hound of Heaven closing in behind you?

11/9/09 Inspirations           God has everything. But there is one thing to have that is meaningless if not received from someone else. God would like to be loved. That is why He created us in His image – with free wills so that we can voluntarily love Him. For what good is love if it is mandated instead of freely given? Even if you’re God, love has to be received to be meaningful.

Here on Earth, the distortion of reality is the result of free wills used for other purposes than to honor God. But that makes the love potential all that much more significant, because our love for God can come through above human weakness and human suffering, without which there would be nothing for love to overcome.

When we come out of this coma of life on Earth and enter the reality of heaven, we will love and honor God without question, as divine beings. But here and now, love for God does not come so easily; here our humanity takes hold of us and demands all we’ve got. How specially it must please God then, when we freely volunteer to love Him despite the strikes against it! This is love in the extreme; valuable because it comes from self-willed creations who can and, indeed, are of a nature to withhold it.

To mystics then, this is the greatest privilege and the focus of life itself – to honor God by loving Him. Despite all it might take to get to that point, the commission is simple — all we do is honor our Creator by loving Him. Rites and groupings and dogmas and scriptures are redundant, because we know how to love God without all these things. To love God is, after all, what we were created for.

In this we embark on a journey that will not fail, for the moment we decide for God, all His power and knowledge is at our disposal in the measure that we allow ourselves to ask for it and to put it to use. And one spark of love sent to God is returned in a totality we can’t even grasp, but know in our hearts is how reality will feel when we reach it at last.

11/7/09 Inspirations          Ever since my Great Epiphany coming up on 5 years ago, I’ve been beating myself up over the fact that, much as I want to, I really don’t like people all that much.

Now that I feel so much closer to God, I assumed that I would become the ideal – someone who sees all human beings as children of God, and projects God’s love for His children as my own love for my brothers and sisters all-inclusively. When that didn’t happen I began to think of myself as the problem.

It’s true that the effort to love my neighbor is still my goal because it fits with what I know of what God wants, but the closer I get to God the further I get from people in general. The contrast between divinity and humanity becomes clearer and more essential the more I know of God. I had thought the more I experienced God the more adept I would be in pleasing Him. But when it comes to other people, all I have gained is a clearer, and darker, view of humanity.  I see us as walking egos, opposed to the goodness and mercy of God at every turn.

As the contrast between divinity and humanity grows in knowledge and grace in me, I’ve seemed to have drifted in the opposite direction that greater experience of God should have led me. Is this God teaching me through contrast again? I believe it is. Somehow it fits that this disdain for humanity, including my own, must dominate me for a while. It is a process I must learn to accept and quit fighting against.

With the darkest view of what people are as a whole emerges a brightness whenever an individual breaks through with unexpected goodness. This is what I am meant to learn in the main – that individuals can overcome the egoism of humanity and radiate loving attributes of divinity. And they do if I look with purpose for this phenomenon. Because I’ve concentrated on the worst that is in people I am that much more in awe of the goodness of individuals when it emerges out of the darkness.

This is a theory, but one thing I do know is that God is working on me as He is working on us all. What a privilege to be shaped by our Creator, and to be able to contribute to the process with His blessing.

10/1/09 Reflections               It’s hard for us to just be. It’s natural to be cooking dinner, be preparing for a meeting, be disciplining a child, be checking out what’s on TV. But in the midst of life as we live it, everything we do is constantly measured by what came before and what will come after. We never seem to just be.

If you were suddenly snatched up from your place on Earth and plunked down on Mars, you would be forced to live in that present moment because Martian past and future is meaningless to you. The present is all you would have and it’s there you would live. In such a situation, where you are stripped of all faculties of intellect, will, and memory, it becomes just you and your Creator and the very moment that is existing. Is it any wonder that this is the situation which is conducive to communication with God?

We make this escape, sometimes unconsciously, by projecting ourselves into a scene far removed from reality. A driver in rush-hour traffic may longingly imagine being instead in a field of gently-waving grass, where all that needs to be done is to “just be”.

If we’re lucky, we have an actual place we can go to hide ourselves away from activity – a quiet garden, a forest trail, a dark closet smelling of cedar. In these places we experience life as it is without us or the cares that move us. If, for example, you are gazing at a rock in a stream, you might realize that the rock exists only in the present. It doesn’t change its being no matter what goes on with the rest of the world. Financial needs, political mayhem, mental meltdown, the next terrorist attack – the rock will still be there where God put it, doing what God asks of it. What a wonderful thing if I, with my free-will capabilities, would choose to be as complacent as this rock!

For mystics, the retreat that recharges our living in the present is contemplative prayer. Here we place ourselves in front of God and away from the things of the world, receptive to God’s input far from the distractions of time and space. Here, with no action of our own, we exist as God would have us; totally attentive to him and doing what we are supposed to do.  It’s a liberating feeling to be pleasing God, and what we get from this prayer we can take back with us to our everyday lives so that we are in effect praying constantly.

 9/29/09 Insights from Study           The beatitudes read like a blueprint for acquiring union with God. The beatitudes correspond to the mystic process, where by increments we receive grace and knowledge until we reach perfection in life after life. In the mystic process we take human life and, through the blessings of the God who made us, build a divine life out of it. The beatitudes are more than a listing of virtues and what we get out of them; they are the process by which we get back to how God created us to be. The sad part is that the people who have the farthest to go are the ones who have the most trouble getting started because they lack the trust in God that is the engine on this train.

9/16/09 Insights from Study          Why don’t we seek virtues as relentlessly as we seek worldly possessions? Because we don’t understand that the goal of life is love of God; not love of ourselves.

How different the world would be if patience was diamonds and compassion was gold; if we could amass love like money and spend it freely by giving it away. If we went to work each day to make a right-relationship with God instead of a wage. If we could go around dripping with inner peace instead of pearls. If a nation’s main export was prayer instead of cars, and each night we’d all go home and get drunk on the grace of God. If schools taught holiness, if humility was cool, if witness of God’s favors made up the number-one rated TV show. If awards were given out for small but steady acts of kindness instead of foul-mouthed bitterness. If obedience to our Creator was our constitution and everyone followed it in delight. If we could walk our streets in perfect safety because everyone was pushing love of God and there’s always plenty of that to go around.

Utopia has nothing to do with economics or politics or entertainment; it’s about spirit – the state of our relationship with our Creator. Many don’t even know there’s such a relationship possible because they haven’t asked or don’t feel worthy or they have been taught there’s no such thing. What riches we’ve passed by, what favors we’ve refused, what joy we’ve missed, what gifts we’ve left unopened because we’re too busy pleasing ourselves to recognize real goodness when it’s offered.

The kingdom of God is the real Utopia; we will claim it in heaven when our trials here are done. But if spiritual virtues are good enough for everlasting heaven, shouldn’t they be honored as well in this short-lived world? We all have spirituality and it can be cultivated. The seeds are there in every spirit. But it’s God who does the growing, and God loves to be asked to begin. That is when spiritual virtues arrive, and they are supremely precious.

9/13/09 Insights from Prayer                  Lord, You’re the flame that overheats me and the cooling water that refreshes me again. You’re the breeze that chills me and the warmth that blankets me over. In all my life, it’s to Your purpose I live, whether I think highly or lowly of it. You are the Creator; I am the created. My opinion is not needed; my help is not necessary.

And yet You welcome me into Your arms as if in gratitude when I please You. You rejoice when I proclaim Your glory. You pour out Your love on me whether I love You back or not. But when I love You back You make Your love work overtime – to show me things that no one else is shown; things shared by us alone. Through Your grace You’ve given me knowledge of things I didn’t have to know, but the knowledge of which completes me like the smooth healing over of a wound or the discovery of something thought lost forever.

And so in this companionship I want to bask forever growing in love so that I might please You more and more. It remains to me to welcome You always, if I do nothing else in this life. I am in complete trust; as I walk I don’t want to ever let go of Your hand. I live on this Earth because You will it, but my eyes remain locked in on Your light. I will keep approaching, with my hands out for Your guidance, even when the world pulls me back. I will step on the stones you’ve provided because the ground between and around them is soggy and perilous.

If I’m called away off to the side of the path by other voices, it’s Yours I will seek out of the noise, to walk straight and true towards You. I won’t be lost because You know where I am. I have everything I need for the journey because You are my father and You provide good things.

It lifts my spirit to see others on the way – I want to use Your gifts to me to encourage them and invite others in to join us on the journey.  The time will come when we reach not just Your glorious light but You Yourself at the end of it. I won’t fear that day because my eyes have been on You all along.

8/15/09 Inspirations            You can ask God for anything and He can give it. He can give you anything and He can give you everything. But He never gives you everything, because He’s very careful to give you what you need.

A parent may be able to serve his child all the ice cream the child could want, but He doesn’t do it, because that isn’t what’s best for the child. In the same way, not all our prayers are answered in the way we want them answered. We aren’t in a position to know what’s best for us, so the wisest thing we can do is leave the decisions up to God.

This is an important concept because within it lies all the secrets to a peaceful life, not only in our relationship with God but also in our dealings with others. Think of it this way – if everyone on Earth understood God’s responsibility in providing for us each as we require, what would be the need for the human power grab that is the cause of so much human suffering? If everyone conceded that God knows best, wouldn’t that logically be the end of human striving for position in favor of human striving to honor God?

We don’t kid ourselves that such a thing will come to pass, but if we understand that God thinks of us as individuals, our individual acceptance of God and His desires should be sufficient for us. We are justified if we do our part, and we bless God when we go further by encouraging others to do theirs. But never should we take over things that are better left to God, and never should we question the answers God gives to our prayers.