HOW STRONG IS YOUR FAITH?

So many people get so upset about our melting pot society and how things are changing. All things change like it or not.

One of the things that people get the most upset about is thinking that your faith/religion is being taken from you. Believe it or not, this county was not just put together by men of the Christian faith. If you are pretty solid in your faith why are you worried that it is being taken away from you? I don’t know about you but my faith is in pretty good shape, after all, it is mine, is it not?  If your faith and belief, whatever it may, be is still in there solid when the winds of change blow, then it is not gone. It may be tested but it can’t be taken away from you. Only if and when YOU want to “update” how you believe or what you believe does it, in fact, change. You are free to go to a church or temple or sit under a tree and meditate if you want to.

Your “religion” or faith is who you are and what you are. It is the blueprint (or should be) for guiding your choices and behaviours. Can that really be taken from you? Whatever happens outside in the society may not be to your liken or hard to get used to but it is within you, not outside in society. Hang out with people who believe as you do but you can hang out with people who do not share your beliefs as long as being a loving human being is the goal. If the goal is to argue about who is right and wrong and what you should or should not believe, then, it is impossible.

What if you knew someone and religion was never brought up and you found that person to be the kind of person you want to be around. Perhaps you have some things in common and enjoy one anothers company and companionship. Then one day one of you mentions what you believe about God. Has that person become the enemy of your believe system? Will that person corrupt you or take away what you believe? If that person tries to, then you either have to suggest that you not go into that with one another or you may have to give up the friendship if they are pushy about it or they tell you how wrong you are. If you both realize that beliefs are not meant to be swords with which to divide but an opportunity to be mutually respected, then what is the problem? Nothing.

So during this time of year when people practice their various ways of celebrating or choosing not to acknowledge the reason for the season, how about putting those swords away or at least think about it? More than anything it is the season of Love that should be carried out all year long. Be thankful  you are still able to practice your faith whatever it may be. They can’t take that away from you. Be thankful that this country allows you to believe what you want even during times of change.

SHOW ME THE MONEY

What Does It Mean to Walk Your Talk

In the movie “Jerry Maguire” the famous words that keeps getting used and repeated is, “Show me the money.” Don’t talk about it, show me.

How many times have you heard people talk about their religion or their relationship with God or Allah or whom or whatever and are so sure that they are walking the right spiritual path? Well for them, that might very well be the right path; but whatever spiritual path a person may take is less important to me than how they treat other people.

Yes, show me the money. Show me in every word, every action. Don’t tell me how great your God is, show me how your God treats others. Don’t just tell me how much better you feel or that your salvation is secure. Show me your love for all people whether you agree or not with their religion, their politics, their sexual orientation, their color, their life style. You don’t have to join them. You don’t have to like it or agree with it but do you allow them loving spiritual space to be who and what they are without tearing them down, fighting them, trying to force them to change, or treating them as what I call, others.

Once you put yourself into one category and put another person or group in an opposing camp, you can easily make them into the enemy. You start treating them as less than human and it them becomes easy to harm them or bully them or cause them grief. It is even easier to kill them if you let your idea of your need to control their behavior reaches that level of righteous intensity.

How do you treat yourself? How do you show love and affection or do you? How do you treat your mate or your children? How do you treat your neighbors? Is your heart tender? Do you see beauty everywhere or garbage or do you even notice? Do you want the best for others or is your goal to win or outdo or outshine or to be jealous? Does your heart go out to others in their suffering? Do you try to smile more and make someone’s day a little brighter by the things you say and do?

Show me the money. Don’t talk about it. Leave this world one day having known you did your best to leave it a better place. Show me a loving, caring, person. Show me a discerning person who knows how to handle the unpleasantness of life. There will be those who cannot or will not respond to love, who are bad to the bone it would seem. You don’t have to love the behavior but love them anyway if you can. Know when to hold them. Know when to fold them. Know when to walk away. But love them anyway. Show me the divinity within you. That’s all I ask of you. Show me.

LOVE IS A MANY-PERSPECTIVE THING

LOVE IS A MANY-PERSPECTIVE THING

 

I was just thinking about all the friends and relatives I have in “real life” and those I have on the social media side of life and how much I love them all no matter how they express themselves, their lives, their beliefs or the things in which they do not believe. How could I possibly do that? How could I love others when we don’t have the exact same beliefs, principles, likes, dislikes, behaviors, ideals, or understanding about God. God to me is a very broad something that encompasses all, knows all, and is everywhere present. It to me God is that something that bursts forth into material being, material objects, the things seen and unseen, the mystery, the knowledge, the talents, and even those behaviors which do not fit the norm or acceptable. That’s pretty broad and encompassing would you not agree? Love knows no limits. And if indeed, God is Love then Love is my religion. 

Love (you may insert God, Goddess, Jesus, Christ, Great Spirit, The All That Is, The Great I Am or any word that expresses your belief – it is all the same) can burrow right through all the barriers we erect in IT’s name. Love, understands what our own human capacity cannot. Love sees beyond our limited views. Love finds beauty and worth where we see wrong, ugly, distasteful, sinful, abnormal. Love never shuns someone who is loved because of the rules of their religion. Love accepts that we do not always agree with one another even about something as miniscule as how to properly scramble eggs and presents no case in any direction regarding the “right” way. Love understands that as human beings we make choices about what to do and how to do it because we have a need to have something to believe in and cling to so that we can know what and how we are to live life. It is the rare human being who knows that he does not know. It is the rare human being that knows that she does not know and accepts that. It is rarer yet to find one who leaves open the heart for the things that they do not accept as their own truth. 

Love has many perspectives and is open to all possibilities. Love’s policy, I believe, is to live and let live giving others their own space, their own journey without damning them to hell or to punishment for not sticking to the one perspective or concept of God or the non-existence of such a Presence, that you do. 

Love is simply Love. It expresses through us, in us, and as us. It brings forth all the forms of life there is. It folds us into ONE even when we pout, fold our arms and say, “No!” It is has many perspectives. It enjoys chaos and uncertainty because Love knows that within all things is peace if we just let go. Love is the one thing that matters, that sees us through, that binds us, that carries us. Love is my decision and my religion.

LOVE AND BREATH

Breathe in the pain; exhale the peace. Breathe in the anger; exhale the love. Breathe in the fear; exhale the courage. Breathe in the confusion; exhale the need to know. Breathe in the hurt; exhale the compassion. Breathe in the disappointment; exhale the gratitude. Breathe in the prison; exhale the freedom. Breathe in the control; exhale release. Breathe in the hesitation; breathe out the steps. Breathe in dying; exhale life.

Breathe through the feelings – especially the painful ones – feel them, let them express then allow them to be transformed back into the silence from which they came when your thought gave them life.  Grieve them, allow them but do not make a bed in them.   Rather chose the place to lay your head and your heart that brings you peace, joy. and love.  Every though gives birth to feelings and feelings need to be acknowledged and allowed to have expression.  They are real and you are alive because of all feelings – both those you enjoy and those you do not.  Each feeling is just the flip side of the other and  within the whole of them is where your being springs forth and that being that you are is awesome, fantastic, beautiful, alive, full of promise, and precious.  Breathe that in and exhale the wonder that you are.

LOVE’S NEW EYES

Many years ago now there arose a wave of what became known as the “Charismatic Movement” and being a seeker who yearned with all my heart to actually know and experience what we call God, I dove into that wave head first. At the time I was a member of the Catholic religion after coming from a Baptist/Methodist background. I officially converted a few years after my marriage to my part-time Catholic husband. I say part-time because he found living life to the fullest was much more satisfying and fulfilling than being a full-time practicing Catholic. This living life to the fullest and gobbling up all the different and interesting things life had to offer was his religion.. This was not a bad thing because this man could love like his very next breath depended upon it. At the time I did not understand a lot of things like I do now and I often resented his plunging into experiencing all of life that he could experience because it left me alone a lot of hours with the job of rearing our children pretty much entirely by myself. I was not as free as he was to pursue interests and flit about unaffected by all the responsibility that came with caring for children minute by minute.. John did hold a job and worked very hard but any and all his free time was his. Let me hasten to say that what this restlessness, resentment,and the emotional pain in my life (including guilt) did for me was to make me all the more hungry for finding peace, love, joy, contentment and understanding of myself, my life, and my God. So were it not for that, perhaps I would never have become what I call a Christian mystic though I hesitate to pin a label upon that which does not wear a label well. I will deal with the subject of mysticism in another chapter.

While I resented my husband’s religion of plunging as deeply as possible into experiencing all that life had to offer, he never resisted my seeking my own way to make peace with life. He fully supported me in anything I pursued and that included financially if that was called for. Was he perfect? No, but he was a prince among men and one whom I never really fully appreciated until I could see with new eyes. He and our life together looks so differently to me now as I look back and re-evaluate everything from a different point of view – that is, seeing through new eyes.

My path is what it is day by day minute by minute. And as my new eyes have grown through the years to see yet more clearly, that which has been, is now, or will ever be, changes each time I look at it.

How did I find myself in this enchanted land where nothing is as it seems or seemed, where thorns and roses can abide on the same one stem and be understood? How does one, for example, find in a person or condition or event both the good and bad, the wanted and unwanted, or an adversary and a supporter simultaneously? How can we find both tears and joy in one event? How can we find sense in those things that do not make sense? How can we find the whole in the world of division? Why do we even care about such things? One usually gets the urged to explore beyond what they think they know and understand, because of curiosity or pain or something that they cannot explain. It can be one thing or another of these or combination thereof. What made Alice go through the looking glass or chase the white rabbit? What made Dorothy want to go somewhere over the rainbow to make her way to the city of Oz and the Great Wizard? Whatever it was (and as undefinable as it might be) you know it when it calls your name and urges you out of your familiar comfort zone. As an aside, a “comfort zone” may not be all that comfortable but it is familiar and there is some comfort in the familiar; so, something has to call us to leave that comfort zone and to explore the unknown. So if you hear that call, let us leave behind what we thought we knew and begin the journey to chase the White Rabbit and slide over the rainbow to find the Great Oz.

SWEET MYSTERY OF LIFE

SWEET MYSTERY OF LIFE

Way back in the land of long, long ago, when I was a mere future thought in my parent’s head there were movies called “talkies”. They were the first attempts at movie making that gone from the silent films to having sound tracks and dialog. Somewhere in the 1930s there were two actors Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy who made numerous films together. They ran these old films on TV when I was a child. I remember one film they made in which they sang a song “Ah Sweet Mystery of Life”

The lyrics: Jeanette MacDonald & Nelson Eddy – Ah Sweet Mystery Of Life

Ah, sweet mystery of life
At last I’ve found thee
Ah, I know at last the secret of it all
All the longing, seeking, striving, waiting, yearning

The burning hopes, the joy and idle tears that fall
For ’tis love and love alone, the world is seeking
And ’tis love and love alone that can repay
‘Tis the answer, ’tis the end and all of living

For it is love alone that rules for aye
Love and love alone, the world is seeking
For ’tis love and love alone that can repay
‘Tis the answer, ’tis the end and all of living
For it is love alone that rules for aye

Here in the film are two people who found each other and are “in” love. Love comes in many forms and comes to us and through us in many forms yet there is only one LOVE that comes from one Source and until we find that core, that endless well within us – until we find that Sweet Mystery of Life and surrender to It, become it, we cannot see the infinity of IT. Forms die, forms change, forms turn on us, forms leave but the Love Itself that, as the song says, is the end and all of living. This is what we all seek. How do you “find” It. Ah, now there’s the rub. Are you willing to do whatever it takes? Then you are on the right path. Follow that yellow brick road. More to come in this blog regarding the yellow brick road.

 

MYSTICS AND LOVE

People in Georgia and other pockets of traditional and fundamental churches often want to know what church you go to and they mean “What are your beliefs” or “Are you a Christian?” and the tail on that donkey is “Are you saved?” It makes me think now this Sunday morning just what am I in the categories of religious beliefs. I think I am now, at this point in life, a Mystical Christian and yet I would like to drop the word Christian because if often conjures up ideas that others have about that word. To say I am a mystic, well maybe that comes closer to describing my Spiritual orientation. I have been through the “fires” and learning experiences of traditional churches and “new thought” churches as well.

First I was raised in a Baptist church got in touch with “Jesus” there. Later I was drawn to the Catholic church but years later realized that it was the mystical core that I was drawn to. The solid pillars upon which that church stands are those who have trod the mystical way. Though little is said about those pillars in the church itself and no one much delves into the mystics of the church nor are encouraged to, it is the glue that has held that structure together even as it may creak and crack. Being the quiet rebel that I am, I did delve into all of that. Soon after that I found that the church structure was like a worn out garment that was too small for me. Ah, but the mystics of that church and the mystics of other persuasions were unspoiled and unsoiled by the structure and called to me in a voice so familiar.

As I now think back to when I decided to join the Third Order of Discalced Carmelites years ago, which is a secular order of the Order that St. Teresa of Avila belonged to, it was the mystical side of Christianity or Catholicism that I was drawn to. I still have the Scapular that I received when I joined the Order. I don’t do the Office nor follow The Rule of St. Albert but at heart I am a mystic.

In our world of names and categories, we get our label gun out and proceed to stick them on everything and everybody. I guess as humans we just can’t help it. After all, we have to have something to hold onto or we think we will float off into unfamiliar territory and that scares us. For some it is extremely important to add to that label, “Okay” or “Not Okay”. What follows is more duality and more separation between us.

The mystics are the ones who experience things that others cannot comprehend with Western thought. The mystical way is too abstract, to nebulous, too unexplainable. The mind can’t wrap itself around it so the Western mind puts into place that which can be comprehended better, is more tangible and makes more sense to the intellect like rules and a n attitude of the right and only way to God or Spirit.  I do not condemn these, I just say that I cannot personally abide in such a narrow and small space.

What has this to do with love? Actually it has a lot to do with it. No matter whether you take the more traditional way or the mystical path your job is to find or awaken to Spirit and the Love that is always there for you to rejoice in and to share with others. The unconditional love you seek is alive and well. We see moments during a disaster when people put aside their prejudices and work together side by side to rebuild and out of those ashes the Phoenix arises. But after things are back to normal, that time when we loved unconditionally, is forgotten.

When you love and accept others and accept your perceived flaws and theirs and when you put aside your needs, ideas, and beliefs, LOVE steps in and sweeps you into the world of mystics.