Where is God in Darkness?

I have written in other spaces about my concern that the incoming Trump administration represents the rise of fascism in the US.   This raises interesting spiritual questions about how we respond to destructive things happening around us, where is God in dark times and what does this mean about evil?

Has God abandoned us, or is punishing us by allowing this to happen?
If one holds to the view that God created us with free will then that means that those who are not listening to God are always free to stray from what God might intend for us and to do great destruction or evil.  That evil affects other people.  The price of freedom is a God who is omni-present, but not all powerful.

Where is God in this situation?
God is always present as a source of guidance, comfort, and strength.   It is even more important in crisis to turn to God.  God cannot however stop the suffering caused by others' application of their free will.  Buddhism does have much to say about how we manage suffering.

What does God require of us?
The Bible answers this question of what God requires of us saying:
"To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God."  Micah 6:8
I think those spiritual theologies that say we are co-creators of the world we live in and the lives we walk in, also suggest that we are to embrace the highest truth we know and live it.   I think in a time where hatred rises up and causes the scapegoating and targeting of some people that means saying no to that.  I think in a time where violence rises up it means acting with non-violence.  I think in a time where the earth is pillaged, polluted and destroyed it means aligning our life style with an honoring and protecting of the earth (as currently modeled by Native people at Standing Rock).  In a time where there is an increasing assault on free speech, on free press, and on civil liberties it means standing up for those and protecting supporting those others who also speak out.   In a time where vote suppression and gerrymandering threaten our very democracy it means standing up to fight for democracy.   And all of these things mean turning to God for the courage to act for justice.  In short, in a universe where people can do destructive or evil things, we are called upon to speak truth, take action and to hold up the Light of Love.   To remain silent or passive is to passively allow the evil.

Is there no Light in this Darkness?
Neale Donald Walsh has written quite a bit about how it is only the dark that allows us to know the Light.   That the Light longs to be known by us.   Perhaps another way of saying this is that we sometime must struggle in order to learn; contrast is one of the ways by which we learn.  If one believe in reincarnation then we have come to earth in incarnations intended to maximize our learning, and the encounter with darkness or evil is not a detour or a mistake, it is an opportunity for learning, and opportunity to bring forth light.  We are not called to do this alone, it is what community, especially spiritual community is for.

Why is this happening when I don't want it to?
While we may co-create our own personal reality, it is also the case that as a collective humanity, or a society we also create certain shared realities through our shared consciousness. There are lessons we are trying to learn as a collective.  It is worth asking: How could it serve the learning of the American people to grapple with the person of Donald Trump and the type of leadership he is bringing?  It is easy to point fingers of blame at figures in history like Hitler or Trump who are the apparent center of so much darkness, but that really gets all the rest of us off the hook.   We must look at the fear that is always the fertile ground for fascism.   We must examine where we have stood in relationship to fear? We must do the spiritual work of looking at the anger, the pull for easy answers, for power, the arrogance, etc that live within us and are mirrored by Trump, rather than simply demonize him.

How do we respond to this spirituality?
Responding to an already negative situation with more anger, violence or fear only magnifies the negative energy.  Going numb or in denial also does not serve the Light.  Joanna Macy tells the story of the Tibetan Shambala prophecy.   The Tibetan's believe that there comes a time of great darkness and chaos when the world as we know it is completely threatened.   At that time many souls come to earth for one purpose: to fight for our world as Shambala warriors.   They are not intended to fight with normal weapons of violence, but rather with spiritual weapons of wisdom and compassion.   Wisdom brings great clarity and vision, but clarity alone does not bring the passion for action.   Compassion brings great love which can move people to action, but action alone is not productive without clarity or focus.   So they must use wisdom and compassion together to fight for our world.  I believe that this is a time when we all must become Shambala warriors.

Is their an opportunity is this experience?
When lived spiritually all experience contain an opportunity.  Chaos, danger, conflict, destruction.... all of these things carry in them the seeds of change and the possibilities for transformation.   If Hillary Clinton had been elected, most good liberals would have continued to focus little on the situation, even as our planet is threatened by the crisis of climate change, even as racism was literally killing Black people in the streets daily.  When evil becomes as blatant and undeniable as it now is, there is a moral imperative put before us all.  The addition of the Trump administration to the Climate crisis demands we quite literally transform the current power structure or we will die.  So it is time for each of us to reach down to the foundations of our spiritual traditions and see what God calls us to do.

Coming Home to the Holy One

Becoming disconnected from the Divine or losing our spiritual way is an age old spiritual problem. Almost all religions proscribe steps one is to take if one is disconnected from God to reconnect. Prayer of course is one of the main ways we are encouraged to make that connection.  Recently I was listening to a talk by Tara Brach (which I highly recommend checking out: https://www.tarabrach.com/) When she made the comment that the surest way to turn back to the Holy was to turn towards love.  I noticed that just asking myself the question: which direction is loving? seems to help re-orientate me.

Buddhism suggests that the first spiritual motion is to stop, to reflect, to pause and to be mindfully aware of what we notice in the gap.   While Buddhism does not believe in a Divine entity I find that for myself taking this pause on a daily basis is the best way for me to take inventory and notice both if I am connected or disconnected from the Divine Parent.   It is also the best way for me to notice what are the spiritual issues in my life.

Buddhism also describes the Mara (the demon), said to have 5 daughters or Kleśa-māra (unskillful emotions - or the things that make us off center): greed/attachment/desire/passion, hate, delusion, aversion/discontentment and the worst being fear.  It is said that as the Buddha was about to reach enlightment Mara sent all 5 to tempt the Buddha. Buddha had resisted the first 4, but to resist fear Buddha touches the earth drawing upon its strength and energy as an anchor.  As a therapist I often find that when working with people in facing the hardest emotions: fear, rage, grief....that people are greatly aided by calling upon God but that for those who do not believe in God that calling on something Vast and mighty like earth, wind, fire, the ocean or mountain is what it takes to anchor us.

What can anchor you? What can help keep you from negative emotions that take you away from God? What kind of prayer practice keeps you connected?   What have you learned disconnects you?

Is God Angry?

We know that early cultural tribes often prayed to multiple Gods - often having Gods that represented different aspects of life: war, love, justice, etc.   or in other cases represented the spirit within various aspects of nature: mountains, the ocean, trees, etc.   But under either of these schema natural disasters were viewed as a sign that the God's were angry.  In fact even after cultures increasingly went to Monotheism, the belief in one God, it was believed that God was mad when an earthquake or hurricane or a plague came.   I mean think about it, before one understood what germs were or how they spread how do you make sense of a plague coming to a town and wiping out most of the population?   It would seem arbitrary and cruel...like someone was trying to punish.   Before one could know about the plates underneath the earth shifting and causing earthquakes this too would seem arbitrary and mighty in its power to destroy.   Before one could understand conflicting hot and cold fronts and how they effected water bodies a hurricane would seem crazy - normally the water has predictable tides and now it has risen up in a destroying rage.

By the time we have reached the 21st century, science has become such a force that it can explain many if not most things.   It has increasingly shaped how humans understand our environment and the way our universe works.   It is taught in our schools around the developed world.  It binds us to a common understanding of the world even across language barriers.   In fact some sociologist have postulated that the waning of both church attendance and church influence in certainly the US is because of the rise of science - a fact that has made many fundamentalist churches actively hostile towards science.   Well that and the fact that the religious texts of most religions, written 2,000 some years ago reflect the scientific understanding of that era about the earth, and thus stand in opposition to certain current scientific findings like that humans evolved from apes, and that the earth was not created in 7 days.  Some sociologists argue that religion is simply a system by which humanity explains reality, which is increasingly being replaced by a new system for explaining reality: science.

So we stand in a curious time where many Americans have abandoned religion altogether as not a reliable source of truth - a sort of quaint mythology of the past.   At the same time that many religions cling stubbornly to their holy books claiming them as a more accurate source of truth than science and fight to keep science out of the school or even out of court cases.  So we have a battle in the US right now about what is the more accurate source of truth: religion or science.   (Just as several centuries ago the battle of European society was over whether the Bible or the clergy was the more accurate source of knowing Truth.)   No where can this disputes difference be more clearly seen than in US response to climate change.  While at first a non-partisan issue, the Republican party has increasingly made it matter of doctrine within the Republican party that all "true" party members reject the truth of climate change by pretending that the 97% agreement among scientists means there is not scientific agreement about climate change being created by human activity.  The party has actually refused to support financially members who will not embrace this orthodoxy.  (Just as the church of  a previous era persecuted those who subscribed to the idea that the world was round.)

I read something recently that startled me.  It pointed out that for the percentage of the world population that is not literate (~14%), they mostly do not even know the word climate change, much less what it means.   It was a shocking idea thinking of people facing tsunamis and droughts with no understanding of why it is happening.  Will they again believe that the God(s) are mad?  But then the thought occurs to me that if one does not believe in science then again how does one explain all these catastrophes that are coming with increasing frequency.  Is God mad at us?  

And if you believe in both science and God as the vast majority of Americans do - so science explains to you what is happening in regards to climate change - that begs the question of how God feels about climate change.  If God is the creator/designer of all life on this planet through mechanisms exquisitely described by science - how would God not be ....well if not quite angry than certainly heartbroken over what this one species of creation has done to all the rest of creation?  I have heard human's very cynically say that if we destroy all life on earth than we will get what we deserve - that we will destroy ourselves, but that the planet will go on without us.   This I think is hubris of a different sort and a falsely comforting notion.  It denies what happens to a planet if you make its ocean dead, and somehow justifies the destruction of every other species.  In science systems have feedback loops, those carry both information and consequences.  It is time for us to start listening to the increasingly urgent messages of the planet: earthquakes, droughts, hurricanes, forest fires, and tsunamis and hear the Creator's voice begging us to protect creation.   It is time for people of faith to rise up with one voice in moral indignation at what we are doing to the planet.

Praying to all the Faces of God

In a previous post I have described my written prayer practice, and also in other writings I have talked about my struggle decades ago to figure out to what God did I pray?  How did I start my prayers: Lord... as I had been taught (but felt so wrong),  Creator, Father, Mother, Protector, etc?  Each name felt incomplete and lacking while still also rich in its own right.  I eventually came to understand that God was a name for calling spirit as a noun, but not who I prayed to, and that no name was complete and all were valid.   I learned to pray by feeling into how I was experiencing God at that moment and calling out that name.   Curiously my written prayer practice as previously described does not call out to any name of God.

This weekend I realized that what has been missing in the last year of my prayer life has been the part that has to do with laying a burden down, giving things that trouble me over to God, not trying to be my own All powerful Being!   As I was trying to reflect on how to weave that successfully into my prayer life I realized I need to pray to all the faces of God.  I am going to interweave the steps that have been part of my practice with actually calling out to the faces of the Holy One in the following way.  (They are in a different and better order now)

Dear Provider:   This is the face of God for me that is God as Abundant and Provider of all Blessings.  So just as I have started with naming my blessings, now I will thank the Provider for those Blessings and that Grace.  I may even add on here prayers to the Holy One which for me is about the awe, wonder, beauty and mystery made by the Creator.  So I may also give thanks for that level of blessing here.

The second motion of my prayer practice has been to identify the worst event of the day and ask the magic question "How can it get any better than this?"   That question has helped loosen my despair and attachment to the stuckness of things.  It has allowed me to see possibilities and to be open to change.  However it has been sadly devoid of God. So now I will pray:

Aba:(or Father): This is addressing to the listening and loving God - a naming of the struggles and burdens of my day.

Dear Transformer:    By praying to the source of all transformation and asking the above magical question I can notice better that it is God who enters that difficulty and loosens and transforms it.

Mother (or Comforter):  This is the place where I used to notice whether I was in fear or love (which I eventually stopped doing because I was pretty much always in fear which just got discouraging.) By turning to the Comforting God is where I can now begin to lay down my burdens and my fears.  I have an image of crying in the Mother Gods arms, or laying upon her breast like when I lie on the sand of a beach.  I can even take this one step farther and call out to My Rock if I need to be anchored and grounded for challenges ahead.

Dear Creator:  This is where I usually say prayers for others.  I have said those as Thanksgiving for that which already exists in the mind of the Creator even though as I make the prayer it has not yet happened.  For example Thank you for Carla's new job.  So these prayers of Thanksgiving I will make specifically to the Creator in the awareness that it is the Creating force that brings these.

Gardener:  I am adding this one in.  I'm realizing I need to ask The Holy Gardener to root out, to weed from my soul that which stands in the way of other healthy growth and life.   I need to ask that One to also plant seeds where s/he sees fit and where I may not know to even ask!  This face of God is helping me to notice the need for humility about all that is unknown about the human journey.

Lover:  This is to call in the face of God what loves me...a face I have been sadly disconnected from my whole life.   (I did not grow up in one of those churches that sang hymn about "Jesus loves me this I know", or how "God loves all the little children of the world".)  I have always believed in a loving God but somehow that did not really translate in to noticing that God loves me specifically.  It will be good to pause for a moment in this prayer process and simply feel that and let that in.

Dear Source:  This has been the place where I have set spiritual intention for the next day (to walk in love, to forgive, to be grounded, etc.)   But again I must notice that all of my intentions must connect to Source or else they are but vain and puny motions of the ego.

And even as I sit back joyously prepared to pray a new I am aware that in another year, or more? or less? Spirit may move me to pray in yet another way as this is a process within the soul, not a practice graven in stone.

Holy One

Holy One:

Please take this burden from me.
Allow me to lay this down -
to give it into your care and your wisdom greater and deeper than my own.

Allow me to rest in your arms like a child in one's Mother's arm,
Like a shipwrecked sailor tossed up upon your shore.
Let me sleep knowing that what ever comes you will be with be with me, with us unwaveringly
not in perfection, not in everything being fine or without trouble - but that you will be with us
as our Comforter and our Teacher.

Teach me in this moment.
Help me to understand what you would have me learn here
Teach me to make sense out of the missed turns and broken dreams, the series of disappointments that make up this life, that make up all human lives.
Grow me
Grow me into a more perfect disciple of your love,  a better vessel of your message.

Heal me.
Heal me of the scar tissue that acts as a barrier to the new or the now.
Heal me of the fears rooted in the past and bring into the present with you.

Forgive me
Forgive me for my timidity that has kept me from action or faithfulness.
Forgive me for the actions I have taken in anger or in hurt that were not as you would have had me act - that were not pure.
Forgive me me from the arrogance of thinking I had forever, for tarrying and wasting precious time, for false priorities or missed opportunities to draw closer to you.
Forgive me for when I forget you and live completely in the Kingdom of Man rather than your Kin-dom.

I would ask you to be with me, but you have already promised me to always be with me.
So open my eyes so I may see you clearly and without fail.
Hold me in your gaze, so I am not wander into the veil of forgetting.

Show me what you want me to do.
Make sense for me out of these confusing maze of life events.
Does this mean stop or does it mean try harder?
Does this mean rest in solitude or does it mean wait for your companion?
Your language is hard for me to understand - help me to hear clearly your intent.

Sitting at The River of God

In my last post, I mentioned Michael Singer's book The Untethered Soul -- how good he is at bringing Eastern ideas of meditation or mindfulness to our Western minds.  In the first two chapters of the book, Singer patiently explains how there is a constant stream of noise going on in our mind. In fact in the second chapter he, to my amusement, refers to "the roommate" - the voice that is always talking to us.  He invites us to really observe that voice by imagining it as a roommate who sits on a coach, and to listen to what is it saying to you?  I have previously been taught by meditation instructors to watch my thoughts, to label them "thought" and return to breathing. This frankly seemed like an endless, pointless, and not very useful process of noticing that as I am still breathing and thus also still thinking. But Singer engaged my curiosity about noticing "but what am I thinking?"

As a therapist I am aware from the different avenue of Internal Family Systems Theory (a modality which I practice) that we all have "parts" within us: a very effective project manager, a wounded child part, a nurturing parent part, etc, etc, and that these parts are not always in accord. (Yes this is not the same as someone having the diagnosis of multiple personality disorder.)  In fact the most common reason why my clients can get stuck is two parts inside them are at war, literally, with each other.  Singer invites us when we are upset to notice "who is upset?"  (He would argue that none of our parts are our true self.  IFS would argue that all of our parts are our true self, but that we function best when the parts work in concert rather than randomly and independently).  IFS would suggest that when we can notice which part is upset that we need to step into an observing part and learn to speak for a part, not from it.   An example of this would be the difference between speaking from a hurt child part and saying to a spouse:  "I hate you" vs speaking for that hurt child and saying "When you ignore me I feel hurt and unloved, and it makes me angry with you."

Interestingly, Singer also suggests we go into an observing part, and that from that place we can release being in the drama of that part.  Singer says: 

"The process of seeing something requires a subject-object relationship.  The subject is called "the Witness" because it is the one who sees what's happening.  The object is what you are seeing, in this case the inner disturbance.  The act of maintaining objective awareness of the inner problem is always better than losing yourself in the outer situation.   This is the essential difference between a spiritually minded person and a worldly person."

His reference to the spiritually minded person and the worldly person is interesting to me in how often Christianity makes the distinction between God's kingdom and worldly kingdoms - or the powers and principalities.

He goes on to say:  "There's a separation between you and the anger or the jealousy (or substitute any emotion here.)  You are the one who's in there noticing these things.  Once you take the seat of consciousness, you can get rid of these personal disturbances.  You start by watching."

As my friend, Scott Gaul, has mentioned this seat of the consciousness or this witness, is not just a place in the brain, it is actually the place of our soul.   Think of that: your soul is observing your life.  Sometimes very passively without you having any real awareness of it, and sometimes like in meditation very distinctly so.

I have written elsewhere about my own experience of what I call "the river of God".   This for me is an experience of going out to a wide lens shot, of sitting on the river bank of humanity, and looking at the teeming masses, the abundance of nature, the dramas of human life: birth, coming of age, marriage, illness, striving, conflict, love, and death as God views it.  Being quite and observing it all.  Not from judgment, not from intervention, but as witness to the eternal aspects of life itself.   From this vantage point I can let go of my own knot of emotion, my own 'caughtness' in the dramas of this hour, this day or this year.  Things drop into perspective - they may still be "issues", but no longer ones that grip me by the throat.  For in fact with a wide enough lens we realize that all issues are temporary - even those which are life and death - are life and death of this one life time.  When I can remember to do it (and that is the catch to all mindfulness) it is a reliable way for me to enter into my observer part, or to my soul sitting in the lap of the divine to watch life itself unfold.

Knowing how profound and how comforting that experience of being in the witness position is, has brought me full circle from the part of me fairly disinterested in the encouragements to watch my thoughts and label them "thought" to an appreciation of the power and groundedness of stepping out of my thoughts and emotions, to observing them.

Living as part of LIfe Itself

Recently I have been reading the book "Tomorrow's God" by Neale Donald Walsh.  In this book he both says we will (need to) move into a new spiritual renaissance if we are to save the planet and that it will include a new understanding of God which he calls Tomorrow's God.  He says we will (or suggests we should) stop using the word God (or Allah, or any similar words) because of the huge amount of misunderstandings and baggage we have attached to that word.  Instead he suggests we use the word LIFE.

Notice how this does shift some misunderstandings.  I for one think the ideas that God as vengeful, punishing, jealous or only blessing the US are distorted understanding of the Divine Being.  So in his schema of substituting the word Life you get:

A punishing God = A punishing Life.   Well that sort of clears up that Life does not punish us.  Sometimes other people do, but that is based upon their will, beliefs, or values.  They were not directed by the Life force to punish anyone.

A vengeful God = a vengeful Life.  Again there is no evidence of Life creating vengeance.  Some animals eat others but it is not vengeance.  Some people are vengeful to other people but again out of their emotions, or beliefs.  But the Life force does not make them vengeful.  In fact it is easier to notice that when a group acts vengefully towards another that the life force does not direct them to do so....they may call on beliefs to explain their actions, especially religious beliefs or as Walsh would say "the Old God".

A jealous God = a jealous Life.  Now it starts to seem rather absurd doesn't it?  How can life be jealous?

God Bless America = Life Bless America.  Well Life does bless America, and every other country too. While certainly some have far less material goods or sometimes less useful natural resources, none are without laughter, kindness, creativity, etc....in other words the blessings of life.

And then there is the other side of this:
A Loving God = A Loving Life.  Yes indeed as we look around we see all kinds of evidence of Life providing love, and love coming through all aspects of life and in fact creating life.

God the Creator = Life the Creator.  Well that one is fairly obvious huh?

God as my refuge = Life as my refuge.  Here I notice that if I use the word Life it helps me to notice how I should be approaching life.  Rather than trying to run to God as a refuge against life!

God the Provider = Life the Provider.  Certainly life provides many things, but what we want?  In the old way of turning to God and praying for things to be provided we were always like helpless children and what we wanted may or may not be provided.  (Some religions claiming that only if you were virtuous or hard working did God provide.)  But life seems to provide in no predictable pattern....or does it provide what our intentions are?  What we co-create in alignment with life's energy?

This also syncs up very well with what both Walsh and Wayne Dyer (and countless others) say about manifesting.   Dyer refers to The Universe (instead of God) and both talk about the Universe or Life as being neutral about what is created or provided.  Ask for sorrow or anger and that can be provided.  Ask for Love and joy and that can be provided.   We need therefore to be conscious about what we ask for and where we put our attention because what we dwell upon Dyer says is what we manifest.  Think endlessly "Oh I have so many bills to pay" and sure enough more bills will show up.  Think endlessly "Oh my life is blessed" and sure enough more blessings will show up.  So I would like to put my attention on the goodness of life and the love that is abundant in life.  I think if I put my attention on love and goodness I'm liking to live Life more deeply, more consciously.

When we pray to God this often evokes a sense of receiving or being denied, of a "power over" or a parent or "the Santa Claus God" who I have written about in a previous blog.  It is also to get mad at God for what we decide God has done. If we call this energy Life, it is I think still possible to pray to it, but it does sort of change the interaction.  There is wonder, awe, gratitude and joy, and there is the attempt to perceive the Life Energy and to align with it.  But any appealing to it...well you just have to go more into that co-creation or aligning the life energy with the bigger life energy.  From my point of view that keeps me more true to how I want to pray anyway.

Joanna Macy talks about how in systems theory you have living parts that make up bigger living parts.  So for example we have cells that make up organs (also parts of our life) which make up our live bodies and then our bodies join with other bodies to make up living communities, etc.   She points out that these parts at each level cooperate to make the larger level function.  But something much more profound is able to happen when any level has self-reflection upon itself as a separate living being and ALSO part of a living being.  So if I engage in being consciously aware (mindfulness) of being a part of Life/God this is different than living as part of Life with no awareness of anything beyond my own self.  It centers us into life itself.

God Who? and the Garden of Eden

As I have previously written about (See: God Who 1/12 post) I can frequently go into a “God Who?” state. This is not a state where I doubt the existence of God but rather where I forget The Holy One.  Simply drop into the World and forget that I’m divinely connected to a Higher Power.  What I have also learned after decades of struggling with this is that fear is the surest path into this God who? state.

I was in a relationship that God lead me into and yet when the going got hard I got so scared that I went into the “God who? state” which eventually lead to its end.  I am pleased that at least in the beginning I did a better job of staying connected with the divine.  In one conflict, meeting my partner’s self-righteous anger, I felt defensive and also angry.  However, when the next day we went to sit in silent meditation I remembered in that silence that the position my partner had argued for was one I had been lead to many years ago and in fact reflected the Truth as I knew it.  It was a series of life events, accommodations to life struggles, that had taken me in another direction.  I realized that while my partner’s anger was agitating me that he was in fact calling me back to the Truth as I had found it, and with that clarity I was able to easily change my behavior.  In this incident I did not feel the fear of loosing our relationship and so I was not derailed from listening to and hearing the Holy One’s voice.

In the previous post I talked about how the Story of the Garden of Eden has also something to say about the state of forgetting God.  I’m not a bible fan, but certain stories are powerful allegories, and the story of Adam and Eve is such a story.  It is story of being in a seemingly perfect place, much like love is when we first fall in love.  As anyone who has ever been in love will tell you, as well as quite a bit of research, we sadly cannot stay in that rosy colored classes, oxytocin induced state forever.  Eventually, we come in contact with knowledge that makes us see the world/ our partner as they really are, to come in touch with the difficult places.  However, there is more than one possibility at that point.  There is the exile from Eden or there is the learning of how to navigate love inside of reality, the learning of the lessons The Teacher would have us learn at that point.  But that does require remembering that there is a Teacher and being attuned to that Teacher.  Adam and Eve forgot God, and so they did not receive his guidance but the false guidance of the serpent instead and thus were exiled from Eden.

For myself fear is a sure way to forget God and once the fear of the relationship breaking up hits I go into that frozen fear state.  As I did when I was a scared child I try to think my way out of the problem, I take actions or desperately demand actions out of others.  Both of these are out of the head and not out of the Spirit.  In Adam and Eve terms they are listening to the Serpent rather than the Creator of the Garden.  Unfortunately, when I’m in that scared frozen place nothing seems to help, not being at the Ocean – normally a sure path to the Holy, not sitting in prayer asking for answers…only sometimes can the message be delivered to me through others.  And of course it does not help if both me and my partner are in a state of fear for no Light can come thru either of us in this state.

So what next?  Now comes the learning we do after we have left the Garden of  Eden about how to walk with The Gardener in the World where we now live.

Living with our own Darkness

Recently my daughter did something and she was embarrassed by and she feared the judgment of others. So she kept it secret.  Not really unusual behavior.  All of us have done this at some point in time.  My reaction was mainly that I was sad that she had struggled with it alone and that she has felt so self-judgmental.  It was not the best choice she has ever made, but it was not the worst either.  She was primarily the victim of some bad luck in an arena in which our society is harshly judgmental.

When we talked about it later I told her I did not want her to ever live her life with the feeling that she had to keep secrets or be ashamed of anything because then she would become separated from a part of herself.  "What do you mean she asked?  This was hard to articulate.  I think of her father, my ex-husband, who literally committed a horrible crime.  This was something that he rightfully felt horrible about and carries much guilt about.  Some who read this will say that is a feeling of self-loathing that should never be laid down.  Do we contribute to the Good of the All by keeping ourselves small and in shame?

However, if we believe that all humans are children of a Divine Parent and an Unending Source of Love, then it follows that God has the capacity to forgive us all our diversions from the path of the Holy One. It follows that more good will be done by overcoming our own personal patch of darkness.  I believe that in the journey of the soul that everything we do holds the capacity for learning and growth in the Spirit. When I met her father he was in an Alternatives to Violence Project workshop, a program he participated in for eight years.  I also met Dan in AVP, a friend to this day, who two years ago was released from prison after serving everyday of a 30 year term for committing multiple rapes.

What these two men did represents extremes that most of us do not go to. However, the basic problem is the same; after we do something bad, something regrettable, or something embarrassing there is no taking it back.  Sometimes there are big consequences.  How do we integrate our own darkness into the tapestry of our own life?  How do we make peace with that which we regret and cannot undo?  Trite as the saying is: "How do we make lemonade out of lemons?"

I thought when I met both of them and all the men who came through the AVP workshops that they were doing the only thing we can do with darkness....redeem it. I have quoted the late Rev. Jon Nelson saying: (see 7/11/11 post) "Lean into the pain, that is where the redemptive possibilities lie." If one has come to this life to learn about violence in its most decisive way then to engage in violence and learn first-hand its horrible cost, and to renounce it, and to live without it, is as complete a learning as I imagine one life could achieve. (I believe my own walk as pacifist reflects the learning of many lifetimes, of being both the victim and the perpetrator of violence.)  

The two of them exemplified the two paths people can take in attempting to reconcile with ones own darkness.  My ex-husband could never internally reconcile what he did, so he hid it, and in so doing separated from himself. He could not be at peace in this separated state.  Over time this went beyond not putting down an accurate job history, to actually making up a whole fictional life which he told to others, thus severing himself forever from the Truth.  

Dan on the other hand, chose to tell the truth in prison about why he was there, earning him the lowest place on the prison totem pole and yet allowing him to live with the Truth of who he was.  Thus when he got out he also told the truth on every resume and job application.  He was rejected over and over but was loved by his wife and friends and eventually hired by an acquaintance who appreciated his integrity and his skill set.  He said he had expected to feel out of place when he got out of prison after such a long absence as he had before he went to prison; instead because he walks in his own skin and knows his own intentions towards others he feels deeply at home in the world.  

It has occurred to me that this indeed is the difference between leaning into the pain and not doing so.  When we are so afraid of pain, or of our own darkness that we avoid it, we never learn what it has to teach us.  We live separated from the Spirit whom we are afraid to approach and we live in constant fear of others and their judgment of us if they were to truly know us.  When we have the courage to go through the pain we come out the other side, not unlike a mother giving birth to a child.  The only way out is through, and we are "baptized" by our own struggle and its integrity—or lack of.

I'm not suggesting we just throw ourselves into darkness, or surrender to whatever evil impulse we may feel tugging at us, or lie in depression.  I'm saying that we recognize that darkness exists also on the spiritual path just as surely as night and day co-exist.  And that in whatever darkness we find ourselves we never stop looking for the Presence of the Light.  That we use as a lantern in the darkness the question, "What is my soul trying to learn from this experience?"  Redemption, if there is such a thing, must be in learning the lessons we came here to learn.

Note to reader:  My New Year's resolution was one post a month and I was doing very well until the end of May.  Then came the end of school and two church conferences in July and ...no June or July post.  Please read this as my July post!

Santa Claus Prayers

I have in past posts covered various ideas of how God might speak to us, and I have also described several people’s experience of asking God for answers and the answers they received.  Various denominations teach various ways of praying from meditation, to chanting, to memorized prayers which are repeated at appointed times, to prayers made on one’s behalf by others, etc.  And again I would ask the reader to consider all these forms and how they fit or do not fit with the Image of the Divine which you have embraced for yourself.  If you don’t know if they fit I encourage you to try these different forms and find your own experiences with them.  I don’t believe there is a right way to pray.  I think you will have to find the way that brings you into intimate and reliable relationship with the Holy One.

Once I had a conversation with a friend where we agreed that the “trap” in prayer is to make the Santa Claus prayer.  This is sort of praying for things.  It seems to me that we need to be clear in ourselves what it is we really need: to pray for a home not a house, for transportation rather than a car, etc. and have faith that the Divine Provider will sort out what best provides for us.  I remember really wanting a baby, but instead being given the Divine nudge to go to graduate school.  As it later turned out after she was born my circumstances changed, and I needed that degree to provide for that baby.  The Provider had known the right order for everything to unfold as it should.

Part of praying in my experience is reflecting on my current situation and being able to name in what ways I need help, and to name the truer need – not the outer package of that need.  It also means seeing my emotional state and recognizing when I need to ask for comfort, recognizing when there is fear, anger, worries, or confusion that I need to turn over to the Divine Comforter.  It can be way to easy to try to carry everything going on in one’s life oneself, or to try to make a partner or parent be Godlike in what we want from them.  This is when it is good to offer up the burdens or the desires of our heart and then let go of the outcome and be able to listen for God’s response.  This listening would be the kind of listening as described in previous posts.

Praying for others, or intercessory prayer as it is called in some traditions, takes into account some of these same qualities (avoiding Santa Claus prayers on behalf of other people) and offering up to God our concerns for others and then letting go of them.  As a therapist I carry concerns for many people; if I kept them all as mine to carry I would loose my mind.  It is the Sheppard that makes it possible for me to be with people’s pain and not be overpowered by it.  Prayer for others is also remarkably effective.  There are studies where people in hospitals have been put in two groups: those not prayed for and those who had people praying for them. Those who were prayed for healed faster and did better.   My partner tells a story of when he had been diagnosed with a tumor pressing on his inner ear and was scheduled for surgery.  Many people prayed for him.  When a finally scan was done to give the surgeon an image to work from, he was called by the doctor to say that in a month’s time it had shrunk to almost nothing and that he no longer needed surgery!

There are of course many different traditions which suggest that prayers be made in a certain way, calling on God by a certain name, using certain objects or postures or rituals to aid the prayer or make it more powerful.  If you find yourself drawn to these traditions it will be important to learn these ways of praying and to be sure that the methods of a religion you are attracted to really assist you. 

I know what God Looks Like

My daughter when she was about 7 told me casually one day:  "I know what God looks like".   "Oh," I said like one who has had a butterfly land on them and does not want to scare it away by to quickly moving, "what does God look like?"  She calmly described for me something that had happened when she was about three, a time when we were camping right down at the ocean's edge.  The water coming up to about two feet below us during the night, and then in the morning it was low tide and it was also foggy.  As we walked along in the fog we could find marvelous things: starfish and barnacles now exposed on big rocks,  little fish caught in tide pools, objects washed up in the night by waves.  There was a mysterious, magical and yes mystical nature to that moment.  And this moment was the one my daughter now described and then pronounced:  "That is what God looks like"  

There are parents somewhere who would have felt the need to explain that that was just "low tide", or to say that there was nothing to see, or to tell them instead about Jesus Christ, or Allah, or to otherwise deny or argue with their child's spiritual experience.  Who is to say that children do not see God more clearly, easily and with less distortion than adults?  For me it was important to simply validate her spiritual experience.  I simply said: "Yes that is what God looks like?"  She has grown up into a young woman who is confident of her relationship with The Holy Mystery and able to tune in to the Inner Voice.

I remember a client of mine who sees auras, telling me that when she was young she tried to describe this to her parents, and they made her feel so crazy for this that first she stopped telling them, and then she stopped noticing herself, till as an adult she had to work hard to reconnect to her ability to perceive spiritual energies.

How were your spiritual experiences or instincts responded to by adults around you?
How do you nurture the spirituality of children around you?
Do you believe that people of all ages can experience the Divine?
What if the Divine does not look the way we think that God should look?

How Does God speak?

People often complain that God is silent or at least very unclear!  The God of the Old Testament leaves 12 commandments, parts seas, punishes an innocent man (Job) just because he can, and says clearly you shall have no other God but me.  (ie the claim in strongly made for monotheism.) The God of the New Testament says Love is the only commandment and works miracles through his son Jesus.  (speaking therefore thru a person and also thru miracles.)  Unfortunately, most people do not find these answers very helpful in figuring out the role of God in the daily world they live in.  As always, I encourage people to find theological answers, from where ever you find them, that serve you in your life.

I have a client who says that because she has never heard God's voice she feels God is a Creator who finished the job and watches with mild interest, but is "definitely not interventionist."  For me this simply returns us to the idea of how do you hear Inward Voice?  If we are looking for a thundering voice in the wilderness, commandments on a tablet, a burning bush, or the fulfillment of a prophecy then most people would conclude that indeed God is dead.  But I think we have been done a big disservice by being taught that that is how God's voice is heard.  Most modern clergy would urge people to turn to prayer and listen for answers, but again I don't think much instruction is given on recognizing the answers.

This reminds me of the joke (previously related in another post-clearly one I'm fond of) :  A man is in a flood and he goes on the roof of his house and prays to God to save him.  As he watches the water rising, another man floats by on a log and offers him to get on "no he says, I will be saved."  After a while more a man comes by in a row boat and offers him to get in.  He again refuses saying he will be saved.  With alarm he sees the water now reaching the roof and as he stands ankle deep a helicopter comes and lowers a rope.  He again refuses shouting "I will be saved".  But he drowns, and after he does he gets to the gates of Heaven and he says to St. Peter  "I prayed to God to be saved, why did he let me drown."  And Peter says with annoyance:  "For heaven sakes, he sent you a log, a boat, and a helicopter....what more did you want."

For me this "joke" speaks to the idea that we can fail to hear God's answer to our prayers if we have preconceived ideas of what the answer will be.  Not only do we have to offer the desires of our heart and then let go of the outcome, but we have to be able to "hear" with special ears.  My experience of how God speaks is on bill board signs, thru nature, thru other people's mouths, through lines in various books, thru amazing sychronicties, etc.  But I have had to learn how to recognize the sort of invisible "red circle" around the answer.  One of my friend's told me she had learned to pray and ask for a "very clear unmistakable signs" to be given.  At first I thought "Well that is a lot of hutzpah telling God how to deliver the answer".  However, then I realized: "but I do need for the answer to be clear."  So now I ask that too sometimes.    

I remember hearing a man giving a talk, and he talked about praying for direction as to whether he should go to Divinity School.  He said:  "God if I should go to divinity school send a sign"  A redtailed hawk suddenly flew across the sky.  They were very rare where he lived, but he thought this could be a coincidence.  So he said  "Send a clearer sign."  Then two hawks flew above him.  Thinking it might be the mate he asked for a clearer sign.  He admits that when it got up to 4 he resigned himself that God wanted him to go to Divinity School.

I know there are those who will still say both the joke and the story of the hawks are coincidences, not signs from God.  Those folks will also scoff at the popular practice of asking something in prayer and opening a holy book (or I find any meaningful book will do) randomly to a page and understanding that something in the content of the page contains the answer.  They say:  "wishful thinking.  Reading into it the answer you want, etc."  Except that the friend mentioned in that story did not want to go to divinity school.  He was already examining the question because of other spiritual nigglings he had received.  Many ethical humanists will also argue that this is all just a fancy way of listening to our conscience which is innately human inborn trait.  I do agree it is innate.  However, I also happen to think that having one is one way that God calls us to a certain path.  So the whistle blower who takes great personal risk to serve the good of the many; the spark that makes us tell the truth instead of a lie, the civil servant or the Good Samaritan that risks their own safety to save another, I think listen to the Inward Light that burns in each of us, speaking of the Greater Good that the Creator desires for us all.

But I must also acknowledge that another difference between the skeptics, or the Humanist, and those of us who believe that God does speak to us, is actually having a spiritual experience.  When one has had an experience of an answer so clear and so undeniable that to deny it would be a kind of blaspheme,  or has had an Experience of The Presense that was overpowering, or life changing, or as some would say a second birth, then there is a kind of certainty that comes.  This certainty is not faith, any more than it is faith to believe that the sun exists during the night time.  I have met people whose fear and skeptism was so thick that I do not know how they could have such an experience - how they could notice the log, the boat or the helicopter as a Presence.  In fact I have met people who have gotten in that boat and helicopter and talk about their great good fortune and how they have worked hard for everything they have, noticing not the abundance of Grace they have experienced.  But I have also met people who earnestly seek and long for that confirming Presence and haven’t found it.  I do not know why they have not had it - other than perhaps again expecting it to look a certain way - like Jesus or Mohammad or a parting of the seas.  I would encourage those who seek such experiences to be open to it looking any sort of way, but also being able to answer your question "Is this what I think it is" with at least 4 more hawks.

This is also to say that if you want God to speak to you than you must be in dialogue; you must start the conversation.  Funny how friends never call if you never call them.  So if we ask The Divine Teacher for answers we are much more likely to get them, if we ask the Divine Mother for comfort we are much more likely to get it.  If we ask the Divine Provider for our hearts desire, we are much more likely to receive it.  If we sit silently saying nothing, or even brooding about the lack of communication from God than we are likely to continue to get silence back.  When we put the question out there than we can wait for the answer that comes not immediately, but in a sort of metaphorical language, which is still quite obvious when the answer appears before you.

God the Father; God the Mother

When I was in my 20's I was looking at how I prayed and I realized I started prayers with "Dear Lord"...well this I realized was really messed up!  After all the Lord, was the oppressive master in a feudal system of economic oppression....hardly how I wanted to think of the Holy One!  So I started trying to decide how I wanted to call God:  Father...no that implied God was male.  Mother....no that implied God was female.  Goddess...same issue.  Creator? Nice but seemed to overlook the time with God after creation.  Aba...same issue as Father above.  After I read Yahweh was Hebrew for “the One who cannot be Named” I liked that for weeks...but it simply did not ring for me.  Eventually one day in worship I heard the melody of a popular song that says in one line  "Oh by beloved I'm crying".  I had always thought of that verse as being about a human lover, but it occurred to me that God had to be the Most Beloved.  But even that seemed to ignore other aspect of God - God the Creator, or the Divine Parent, etc.  Then suddenly to the same melody I heard all of the names playing in succession and then I realized they were all the right name!  The problem was trying to reduce God to only one name.  I then saw that what I really wanted to do was be in the present moment naming the Most Miraculous One as I experienced God in that very moment.  From then on this is indeed how I have called The Great Soul and have saved the word God for a coin of the realm when I want to be sure another knows what I mean or when I am simply intellectually talking about God and not relating to my Creator.

In the many years I have spent talking to people about their experience of the Spirit I see however that our concept of God is highly shaped by our own personal experience of our parents.  After all our parents were the first all powerful beings we experienced, and if things went well they were also the first beings we felt loved by.  Unfortunately they were also the first people who punished us, and the first people who hurt us.  So I find if someone had a distant aloof parent they tend to see God that way.  If they had a loving supportive parent they tend to see God that way.  If their parent was very punishing they believe in a God of the Old Testament.  And so it goes.  In fact once I gave a workshop entitled "Healing our Spiritual Wounds" and almost all the wounds people brought were a difficulty in feeling connected to God.   When I asked about their relationship to their parents they would describe a very similar difficulty in that relationship.   So I invite you to consider for a moment in what ways do you see God as like your parents?

So are you just in trouble forever if you had a terrible relationship to your parents?  No, not at all, but it does mean that you need to connect to where in your life have you felt unconditional love or at least most strongly loved.  It helps to then consciously strengthen the connection in your mind between that behavior and set feelings and your concept of God.  That person has modeled to you a small portion of the Divine Lover.  I think this is very important because I think a large portion of people who give up on religion or even on God do so because the images in the Bible often describe an angry, or vengeful or punitive God and that way too easily connects to painful parental images.  Apparently, Aba is Hebrew for essentially Daddy - Jesus calls God Aba in this very familiar and tender way.  I think we need to be able to call God in ways that are familiar and tender because they allow us much more easily to connect to a Loving God!

I think one of the disillusioning and difficult moments of life is when we first realize our parents are not perfect or all powerful!  This I think is its’ own fall from Eden.  In facing the difficulties and travails of life I think there are times when we all need to be able to turn to someone or something larger than ourselves. If we are lucky, sometimes we can lean on a partner, but even they are not big enough for some of the trauma’s and loses of life.  Some of my agnostic friends say  “Oh this is why people make up the concept of God – to have a crutch to rely on.”  I’m not concerned about this.  I’m not concerned because I have been able to rely on The Rock and that has been real.  But I’m also not concerned about it because the pragmatist in me says:  So if we make something up and it helps and we even live a better life for it… then what is the problem?  Studies show that people who identify as religious have better mental health over all and tend to rate themselves as happier on happiness scales.   So is this such a bad idea?

A friend of mine shared with me that her spiritual life was always a struggle - then one day she went to a workshop where she was invited to call God Mother- in that moment she says something revolutionarily changed in her spiritual life.  Suddenly she could see God in her own image.  She could notice the gentle, nurturing, life giving qualities of God.  This is not everyone's experience.  For some of us to give God any gender again traps and makes smaller The Infinite One. 

But I do invite you to examine: is God male or female or genderless in your experience of the Only One?  Is God the Creator of everything , or the co-creators with all of Life?  Is God all powerful, or simply the field of Unity upon which the Universe rests?  Is God the creator of our conscience or is God neutral and unconcerned with the choices of mankind or of a (wo)man? What qualities and traits do you experience in God? How big is the God you know? What names call out to that which you have known in your own soul?  But most importantly, how do we get really personal with the Inward Dwelling One?

Why is There Evil?

"Why is there evil?"  this is a question a client asked me recently, but is also I think one of the most common spiritual or theological questions throughout the ages.  (Right along side of why do we die?)  Various religions answer this differently - because of original sin, because of free choice, because of the devil, as a karmic punishment, because the nature of life is suffering, etc.  Some find one of those answers to be a satisfying answer; most of us I think do not.  For those of patchwork faith (those who construct their own theology as they seek truth where ever they find it) this question does engage a  lot of other questions - like what is the nature of God?  How powerful is God? Is there sin?  Do we have free choice or live predestined lives?  Is there Karma?  Do we reincarnate?

Part of the purpose of this blog is to ask you to engage deeply with all of those questions.  And I will try humbly to answer here the question as I understand it.

I do believe in free will.  If there was not free will we would live lives of fate and predestined outcomes.  So we are free to choose what we do, whether it is good or bad.  Most of us unless very psychologically damaged have consciences, so one psychological answer is: damage results in more damage.  Violence and oppression become passed on. Statistics are pretty clear that those who were sexually abused often become perpetrators; those who experienced domestic violence growing up are at higher risk to act out violently.  

But freewill certainly does not explain things like Enron or Hitler.  The example of Nazi Germany certainly gives us the example of ordinary people in mass numbers doing terrible things.  We see the impact of a whole culture of propaganda, education, youth groups, and societal pressure and punishments creating a cultural normal that did evil things.  A less intense but still powerful example of societal norms supporting evil is slavery in the US or I would argue environmental destruction in our current age.

But even these psychological or sociologic explanations do not account for why between two victims in a family where sexual abuse happens, one goes out and becomes abusive, and the other does not.  Nor does it account for how people in torture centers come up with the things they do.  It also does not address the disturbing answer to the other side of the coin - why do some people become the victims?  It cannot be as easily answered as "in the wrong place at the wrong time"  Yes sometimes, but why are children born with AIDS or drug addiction.   Then we might ask how does a just Creator allow such suffering?

I do not believe God can both grant free will and be all powerful.  So in granting us freewill this means God grants us the power to intentionally or unintentionally cause harm to other human beings, and the power to deny what God might want for us.  Some people are simply there at the wrong moment.  But I also do believe in reincarnation, so I believe we all choose the lives and circumstances we are born into to maximize the growth intentions of this life time.  Which is to say when we live many lifetimes, we do not and cannot learn all there is to learn in just one lifetime.  Just like the learning within one life, some of our early choices effect  or limit the choices available or logical to follow later. 

This is perhaps another way of talking about Karma.  I believe young souls learn elemental lessons about violence, love, trust, truth...which is why as a society we have a lot of struggles in those areas.  But from those lessons we choose more complicated situations, or sometimes opposite situations in order to learn the lessons we need to learn.  Thus two souls in similar circumstances may make quite different choices. So having perpetrated violence in one lifetime we may choose a life where we will be a victim of violence as a way of learning about all sides of violence.  Some people call that Karma.

So back to why would a child be born with AIDS or drug addiction?  I do not believe Karma is a punishment but simply a learning opportunity.  So if one needed to learn about dependency, about meaning based not on accomplishments, about addiction itself, about the overcoming of addiction, etc  all of these are reasons one could choose such a life.

It is still hard to understand why one might be born into famine and starvation: what learning could come of this, or to die in a death camp?  Several writers I have read suggest that in order for us to see Light that we must have the contrast of dark.  They suggest that God allows for our bad choices as contrast that leads to learning for good choices.  These same writers suggest that some souls choose lives of suffering or victimhood as a sacrifice and a contribution to the collective human consciousness and learning.  These writers suggest that the Holocaust and the several genocides since then in Africa and Bosnia are occasions that have laid bare to the world the horror of scapegoating a whole ethnic group, of doing enemy think on such a massive level, of the reign of terror of one group of people turned on another.  Given that the word Hitler is almost a synonym for evil in our culture, it does serve as a powerful symbol in our collective consciousness.  Yes much better that we would have learned the lesson on a permanent level, but there were still souls who did not learn that lesson by the conclusion of WWII or people whose lives were so wholly focused on other lessons during that time (or souls not on earth then) that there were still souls needing to learn that lesson in Darfur, etc. 

Does humanity make any progress or do we just go round in circles?  There is far less child abuse on the planet that 200 years ago, in many cultures it now so widely condemned that it must be hidden.   Studies show that there is less wars being fought right now than ever before in history proportionate to the population.  Slavery while not abolished is also far less prevalent and universally condemned as a "bad" thing.  So it does seem as Martin Luther King, Jr. said that "the arc of history is long and bends towards justice."  Our souls are linked not just in this lifetime to a web of Friends and family, but also through many lifetimes to a collective shared experience and a slow but steady learning curve.

This also suggests to me that how we respond to the suffering or evil that falls over our own life is incredibly important, both for ourselves and for the collective consciousness.   I once watched on tv the sentencing for the Green River Killer, a serial murderer in the State of WA.  Family members were all getting a chance to make a statement to him before his sentencing.  Some were full of anger, condemnation and hatred.  A very few offered him forgiveness.  Most tragic to me was a woman who blamed him for every wrong that had befallen her since the murder of a family member, including her husband getting Alzheimer’s!  What a convenient scapegoat he was for her, and yet she was full of bitterness and misery.  By contrast the man who testified to his faith and that God had given him the power to forgive as Jesus forgives us, had clearly much more peace and also happiness while still clearly loving and missing his deceased daughter.  If we are here to learn, than how we respond to evil either means we learn from the lesson handed us, or tragically we fail to learn, and may dance with that particular evil many more times while trying to learn its lessons.

Courage or Serenity

Recently I finished reading the book: The Wisdom to Know the Difference by Eileen Flanigan, a Quaker woman.  It is a book about the Serenity prayer: 
     "God grant me the courage to change the things I can and the serenity to accept
      the things I cannot change and the wisdom to know the difference."  

One of the things that is very clear to me is that we are all "bent" one way or the other by our childhood experience.  Some of us always strive to change things, other anticipate accepting the situation as it is and "letting go" that which distresses them.  But for the most part on either side of this fence I think we do it as a secular activity.  By this I mean I think we do what we do as a pattern, barely considered, and certainly with no thought for the Divine Actor.

What if instead we were checking in with the Creator?  What if we learned to routinely hold the events of our life and are responses to them up to the guidance of the Holy One?  What if we really asked The Holy One to show us when we needed to take action and give us the needed courage to do so,  or to show us that we needed to be still and find peace and contentment with what is?  What if the Wisdom to know the difference is not something that our little brains figure out but something that the All Mighty shows us?

God Who?

As my friends will tell you, for years I have suffered from what I call "God Who?"   This is a state of forgetting God when the chips are down.   It is not, as is the case for some people, that I doubt the existence of God or have any sort of faith crisis.  No in fact if someone would ask me while I'm in a state of fear or anger if I believe in God I would say "absolutely".  But in such states I forget all about God; I'm knocked off center and living in a soup of miserable emotions.  My brain is busy trying to figure out what to do and why things are this way, and "blah, blah, blah."  When something reminds me of God again, whether it is someone else's statement of faith, a sneeze (which brings to mind "God blesses you") or my next faith experience - I'm very quickly "righted" like a partially capsized boat, and brought back to center.  Then I can relate to God and draw upon my faith in dealing with the situation at hand.

Some years ago I came to understand why I have this affliction.  The greatest crisis of my life occurred when I was 11 and my mother died.  I had not been raised with faith and had no particular conception of God.  I think this is true for most children and their childhood crises even when they are raised in a church.   So I had no where to turn - just lost in my pain and fear.   So even now as I feel pain and fear I return to this state where I do not know God.  I thought realizing that would help me not go into "God Who?" mode but it did not help.

I have spend a lot of time sort of beating myself up about this, wondering why I cannot stay in a state of remembering God and trying to figure out how I could not fall out of knowing.   A few years ago I had the helpful realization that throughout time humanity has struggled with this.  This I think is part of the meaning of the story of the Garden of Eden and the fall - we fall out of that wonderful place that we dwell with God (in that case through pride or shame - I imagine different emotions can take different people out of a state of unity with God.)  I realized that this is the human spiritual condition and the reason for the practices of so many religions -to bring us back to a state of awareness and connection to God.   So I decided then that when I noticed with dismay that I was out of connect that instead of judging or berating myself I would simply notice that it was the first step of my returning to God.  That has helped it to be less painful- I don't think it has decreased its frequency.

For a while I was trying a practice of spiritual journaling as a way to try to not "forget" God.  But what I found was that when in a state of anger or fear I did not want to write in the journal because I tended to just write about what was making me feel that way and the feelings.  So I have now decided to try a new path - it is the path of regular contact with spiritual inspiration.  I have resolved to do some spiritual reading each day as a way to connect with God regardless of my emotional state.

What is your experience with God Who?

Why God Why?

Recently at my place of worship we had a worship sharing for the adults.  What this usually means is that there are queries (questions which have no correct answer that are philosophical in nature) which we examine together and share with each other the answers we each find.   So usually the group is given the questions.  But the topic was "Why God, why?"  addressing the angst we all feel at times in our spiritual life, the puzzlement, frustration and confusion we have about why God is apparently the way God appears to us, why religion says God is a certain way, or why we cannot seem to get on the same page with God.  So this time instead of doing things the way we usually do people were given slips of paper and invited to write their "why God Why?" questions down to preserve anonymity.  People wrote them down they went into a bowl and were ceremoniously read.

The questions were, not surprisingly, the same ones that theologians and philosophers have asked throughout the ages.
Why does god allow suffering?
Why is there so much violence and war?
Why do I not have enough time to do all the things that you have asked me to do?
Why do I attract people to me who seem to bring suffering?
How do I know what you want me to do with my life?
How should I respond to the suffering that I see around me?  Why am I fortunate?
Why are there things that seem to remain in mystery not for us to know?
What happens when we die?

Long ago I lead a workshop called: Patchwork Faith.  The idea of it was the recognition that those who live a spiritual path but do not just embrace the theology of a given church must work out for themselves all these kinds of theological questions and that the answers we find our often a patchwork of faith beliefs.  In the coming year I will be taking some of these questions and writing about them.

I invite you to send the questions that pull at you.  I invite you to send the answers that you have found.

My apologies to my readers that I was quiet so many months on this blog.  I got very caught up in matters of the Occupation Movement and also my family.  My intention for next year is to return to monthly postings.

 

In Gratitude to our Ancestors

Recently I walked through the Highland (Scotland) Folk Museum.  This is an outdoor museum with a recreation of an 18^th century “crofters” village, as well as another section with a farm, home, post office, general store, tailor shop, wood shop, school and bus from 1890-1930 era all with original items inside each.  The crofter village has holmes with three foot high stone walls and tree branch and sod roofs.  We were soberly told that in the night, even in the winter they could not keep the fire going.  People worked hard during the day to tend sheep, weave fabric, grow, gather and prepare food.  Quarters were tight and simple.  It looked like a hard life.

There is a song that Libby Roderick sings where she talks about how we are all descends of dead people: “I come from a long line of dead people.  I come from a tall pile of bones. My people lie sleeping all under the world….”  I always thought this a somewhat strange song…in fact a bit morbid.  But I now have a whole new appreciation of the song.   I suddenly realized that every one of us living on this planet is here because our ancestors worked hard to survive.  Some made it only far enough to reproduce before dying in childbirth or marched off to war, but they worked hard to survive. Because they did survive long enough to have children, and those children then also struggled forward to the next generation….here, centuries later, stand you and I.  Even many of those who did not reproduce made significant contributions to ensuring the survival of the species.

It is not a remarkable thing that we all have the capacity to reproduce.  What is remarkable are the things our ancestors have done to survive.  From early people who lived nomadically: working to find enough food and to avoid wild animals, dehydration and vicious weather in order to survive.  To tribal cultures who struggled to survive squirmishes with the neighbors, and illness born of a lack of understanding of basic hygiene.  To the countless men who were marched off to wars that they may or may not have believed in to fight for land or a way of life.  The untold generations of women who were treated as second class citizens all their lives with abuse, poverty, and hardship raised their children.  To those who were born into and lived desperate and pleasureless lives as slaves or servants and simply dreamed their children could have better lives.  To those who endured months of seasickness and storms to come to a new land: fleeing famine, war or political oppression and again hoping things could be better.  I suddenly see this long line of dead people that Libby was singing about.

When you bring it down to the generations of your grandparents, or great grandparents or those who first immigrated to this country on both sides of your family, you may know some of the specifics of the sacrifices and struggles that occurred.  Somehow we take this for granted.  We assume, I think, that of course they struggled to survive because that is the instinct that we are all programmed with deep in our DNA.  But what kept them going?  What role did hope, love, and Spirit play in their endurance and determination?   Slowly we have made generation by generation, a more comfortable life, a more humane life.  Our work is not done by any means, we have far to go….and our descendents count on that.

First I think we must acknowledge the debt of gratitude we owe to our ancestors for our very existence, and second of all we must ask how we are doing on assuring the survival of the species so that someone several hundred years can be grateful that we struggled forward?  I have written before about the River of God….this endless procession of humanity, human’s struggles and innovations; of passion, sorrow and going forth…that is the River of God.  It is the march of the eternal.   And for me when I see this march I also feel the Creator’s steady presence woven through it all.