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.

DON’T BE THE SNAKE THAT BIT HIS OWN TONGUE

Have you ever bitten your tongue or cut you nose off to spite your face? One is a metaphor for keeping your mouth shut when you want to say something and the other is a metaphor for doing something that doesn’t help your situation but makes it worse.

Sometimes you need to keep your mouth shut. You should know those times but there are times when you need to speak up and you should know those times as well. How many times do we get that backwards? Sometimes you need to shut your mouth and jump out of the emotion long enough to use your guts, your head, and your common sense before opening your mouth and speaking up. It’s always a good idea to cool down, find love or understand somewhere inside of you and lead with that. It’s not always our words but how we use and deliver them that determines the outcome.

What about the times when you poison yourself, so to speak, when you keep making choices that bite you in your rear because these choices were made in the heat of sexual or violet or angry passion? What about the times when you don’t want to face your own responsibility for doing exactly what you know is going to give you nothing but grief in the long run? That being said, if some people didn’t open their mouths when they knew they would be in danger or ridiculed or in prison some social changes would not have taken place. Some laws would not have been changed or revised. Progress would not have been made.

So we come to the word discretion and the word discernment. Use your powers of discretion and discernment when making choices. The only other choice is to let your passions and your ignorance run your life. In those cases you usually take others down with you and you don’t get what you thought you wanted in the end. Some nooses are not quite so hard to slip out of or to tolerate while you rectify, as best you can, the choice that you made, while others will surely suck the life out of you. Try not to be the snake that bit his own tongue and poisoned himself.

SEEKING HOME

We can’t go back to the places we have lived and find the life that we lived and were. It doesn’t stop me from wanting to go back and visit where I have lived my different lives. Some of the homes I lived in have been torn down, burned down, or are occupied by other families.

We can’t go back really. A good question to ask is why we would want to? For reconciliations? To fix the missteps? To swim in a familiar pond that might have yielded some loving times, warm times, times of feeling loved or okay. To go back and try to see things differently? To laugh or cry with joy or sadness about the way it was at times? To find the answers to the mystery of your self? To have made different decisions? To have stood up for yourself when you didn’t? To once more hug someone you have lost since then? To go around and clean up some of the poop you though was slung all over the house or to realize there was no real poop, only humanity not quite living up to its potential?

Sometimes it might be helpful to go back to the physical house and put the ghosts to rest that way. If impossible to do that, take a mystical, magical, meditation in the quiet of yourself. Ask the questions you want to ask. Say the things you want to say. Ask to see the bigger picture and to understand, to forgive, to let go of that which holds you back. Ask to have your heart opened to loving where the hurt or disappointment might have been. Ask to see all the blessings you did have, the love you did have, the people who gave you hope and encouragement that you may have forgotten and those who did show you kindness. As I write this I am reminded of a teacher I had whom I knew had an idea about the hurt and the loneliness I often felt. He knew I was at the bottom of the elite list of kids who had privileges and money or popularity. He knew that often I came to school with colds and chapped lips that were neglected or unattended as though I had some absences of parental due diligence. I could feel that he was empathetic and caring. I will never forget that.

You can’t go back. Why would you want to? But you can in your mind and heart travels remake, redo, re-evaluate, reconstruct, forgive, remember the blessings, shed any illusions about your worthiness or the poop you though was all around and being flung at you. Visit but don’t go back to stay. Your home is within you and the life you make this very day each and every day. Make it the way you want it but don’t lie about it. Be honest, be loving, and take care of you and remember that home is where your heart is not a building or structure. That’s a house. It is not a home.

LOVING WHAT IS AND GROWING OLDER

When I was young it seemed as though time walked at a slower pace. In fact I had been known on more than one occasion to get behind time with a broom and try to hurry it along, sweeping in desperation and angst. I couldn’t get to a certain age fast enough or I couldn’t get through a difficulty or challenge fast enough or the goal or special something I was looking forward to just could not get there fast enough.

Fast forward to middle age. Time began to seem like I was riding on a train watching the events go by outside my window slow enough to be seen but fast enough that at times I seem to miss some of the scenery. I began at times to search inside my head for memories that were not sticking because time was moving faster than before. Then I noticed that every time I turned around, my children were becoming women and preparing to go out and begin lives of their own on their own.

Fast forward and my children are having children who are growing at a faster rate than mine did,. And the mate I though would grow old with me is given a death sentence by an oncologist. What? No! This isn’t happening to me. Time finally got me to an age where we finally had a little more money and more time to enjoy our “Golden” years. This cannot be. At first I wanted to grab the hem of time and slow it down again so that I could have more time with my husband but as his pain worsened and every organ in his body was dying for lack of oxygen I wanted time to be merciful and pass a little more quickly for his sake and not mine.

Time stopped for a while after that. I was not the “me” with whom I was familiar. I was dead inside. Yet, there was a spark that would not let me give up. One day time started back up, slowly at first, until I had begun to see that I had redefined myself. I had become a familiar being to myself yet different than before. Once again time was going at a nice pace that I was nether hurrying along nor trying to slow down. I started building a new life and open to dating again which seemed to throw me happily back to my teenage years. I thought for a while I had pushed time back, was reborn into my teens (in my head) and started finally seeing a second chance for a whole new squeal to my first book of life. The second book would contain some of the same people and things and yet many, many more different characters added, new places to live, new life style, new way of looking at things. This was not to say it was all peaches and cream. I had to learn about managing money and a whole lot of things that I never had to mange before. Some things I did not know how to do or who to talk to or who to hire to do things I could not do. Time for me was exciting, scary, tearful, joyful, and challenging. Sometimes time flew, sometimes it stalled in the air, sometimes it crawled and sometimes it enjoyed tangling me up it its web.

Fast forward to now. Has time been good to me? Yes. Has time been painful sometimes? Yes. What is time doing now? Time is going faster and faster now. I look down at my hands and my arms and I see the container in which I have lived these many years is shriveling up. Mother nature knows I am way past child bearing so has called back the estrogen that kept my skin a little more moist, my hair thicker, the wrinkles at bay, and muscle tone with ability to hold things where they belong instead of sagging or dropping south so I shrivel with every day that passes. Though I have a lot to be thankful for including activities if I feel up to them; people who love me and whom I love; enough money right now to sustain me; a roof over my head; a wonderful little dog; traveling planned; and a nice place to live, I find that time is slipping away. People whom I have known all my life, famous people who lived in my life time so far, and all that composed my life all my life are dying or dead. I am feeling more like I am becoming the last leaf on the tree. My whole life now is geared towards its end. Time is still there but even if I live twenty more years, those twenty will gather momentum and pass with the speed of light. So I am in my final times of my life and the next big transition will be my final one. At times I start to grieve my own demise like I grieved the loss of my first and second husbands and my boyfriend who also died long before the transitions were made. It is a preparation that cannot be avoided.

Through every state of my life thus far, time has been on my side whether it went quickly or slowly I know that time is always now. It is only fast or slow in my head. Looking back I can see more clearly now and know that I can love every bit of life – the good, the bad, the ugly of it all. I know I will continue to do so as I come to terms with growing older and beginning to transition from a life looking forward to life loosing its meaning and hold upon me. I am starting to embrace the body changes more and resist them less, to love what is. I’m not alone in this transitional time of life. I may be more aware or willing to talk about it than some are and I know the key to love what is at all stages of life. The “what is” are things we cannot change. The things we can change, we should of course.

It has been said that growing old is not for sissies. Life is not for sissies either but it is a most fantastic and deliriously, ever-changing whirlwind of being whose form we must embrace at all times or suffer through a resistance that is futile. I have not choice but to love it what is and to grow old with it.

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’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.