Responses to the question, "Where was your god . . . "

I spend too much time in discussions on Christianity. Sometimes I write too much and sometimes I think it may be helpful to keep that stuff--it didn't do any good where it was posted. There are so many in this world who now hate Christianity and badger and berate all Christians. I completely identify with what they are saying considering what "Christians" proclaim quite loudly and most often wrongly. You'll have to assume the questions that spawned the essays because I can't, of course, copy the words of those I responded to.

I. In Haiti--in such a quick disaster--it is difficult to know what prayers God answered or what lives were saved or what will be for those who died in those awful minutes and those who suffered beneath the rubble for days but were never found. We believe that there is life after death--that life is eternal or we are already dead in the here and now. That what Jesus teaches us. I believe that eventually we will all come to God--rejoin our maker in the way God has planned--and this life with its miseries and sufferings and the difficulties we've surmounted will some how play into that other life. But I also believe that in the love that is shown, in the love of the people who are struggling in the aftermath of this disaster some of the greatest spiritual growth will occur--it is our human nature. But some will be angry, too.

The greater question may be why create the trouble in the first place? What is our purpose? Why do we suffer? Why do we hunger, thirst, go naked, get sick, have injustices done to us, work our lives away, suffer earthquakes, fires, floods and storms? We don't have those answers. We are so often wounded in the heart. But it seems to be a part of the creation. We aren't in paradise, we are on earth. There are myths that explain this stuff but some of us don't take them literally as in that is exactly how it happened even if we see that some purpose or thing we should understand is worked into the myth. Some would say, "So we will know our need of God." And some note that God does comfort us through our trials. For those of faith, we often see many small miracles--but we can't convince those who have no faith.

So, we come to the question that really matters: what is the nature of God--the Creator. And we can't answer that either. Some of us believe or sense that God is in all things and is everywhere--God is spirit. When Jesus entered Jerusalem the very rocks would cry aloud.

Does God speak to us? Yes, in the silence of our hearts, God speaks. God does guide and God does, through faith, help us. But God is more about relationships and love than God is about miracles and preventing disasters. Could God prevent the disaster? Perhaps--but what is his hidden purpose? (Yes, that is in scripture) I am a gifted intercessor and I have done intercessions and healing was reported back to me. I have prophesied little bits that pertain to our relationship to God. I believe that when our hearts ache when we see someone who is suffering and we appeal to God, God makes our help possible--we become God's hands in this world through love. I know that I need to pray daily . . . I'm a contemplative and so I actually don't have rigid prayer times so much as prayers of intent as I go about my day. I know the love of God is the love we all ache for. That God understands us the way we ache to be understood. These things God has worked into our being in such a way that we spend our lives searching for them until we find them--even searching in all the wrong places--until this aching need is finally satisfied and the only true answer is God. A friends said that most gods are gods of something: war, harvest, moon, sun; but our God is a god of relationships as in the "God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob." Our lives are enriched by faith and the practice of faith and once we have perceived the presence of God we "hunger and thirst" for more.

I'm not about fairy tales and I'm not a spin master of stories. I can't explain why all these years the Church has furthered untruths and mislead the people in the pew and then time and again the people are left with nothing. Or why the Church has fostered our fear of death, selfishness, self-aggrandizement and especially our hatreds--all brick walls between ourselves and our God. But the knowledge of the experience of God has been recorded time and again by many on the spiritual path and it is out there and has been all along--more in ancient times than in these days.

We all seek something greater than ourselves, we sense it deep within our being. No doubt we will and should reject those ways that do not work for us. This is the sad truth that the churches should hear. Nobody here is immortal--everybody on earth eventually dies--why promise that this God will save our lives in this world when scripture never promises that and none of us--not even the most holy saints--have lived beyond our years. Our hope begins here and is eternal--and ends with God . . .

We shouldn't try to make up answers when we don't have any.

II. For what it is worth, I totally agree with you that the evidence here suggests religion gone horribly wrong. And one of the reasons I am on this board is to try to figure out a way to combat this kind of ungodly theology that creates these monsters who teach, preach, practice hate in the name of God. It is absolutely impossible to have faith in God and do intentional harm to another. If they have faith of any kind it is in the twisted lies, twisted myths. These lies, perpetrated against scripture and our God that have been harranged into them by controlling, self-aggrandizing clergy relying on chopped up scripture to support whatever soapbox issue is in their sights because they love the sound of their own voice and are jealous of power. In short: Brainwashing. It is spiritual abuse! (And it isn't limited to Christianity, either). And unlike the tradition, they rely more on mass hysteria as their experience of god than the silence and stillness that even is described in scripture and taught by Christ.

There are many religions--probably the best, imho, as far as not going wrong, is Buddhism, albeit Buddhism is more often thought of as a philosophy, it is still a religion. I don't believe the world will ever be freed of religion, so the only solution I can think of is for those of us who actually belong to a religion with a mystical basis, is to try to set things to rights. The sad thing is that there is a good and beautiful, PASSIVE, loving basis for the "Peaceful" Abrahamic religions--yes, all three claim the God of PEACE. All three teach LOVE, love of God and love of neighbor. All three have great spiritual leaders and a great and beautiful tradition and a mystical branch to which those who really love God will aspire (notwithstanding a little sexual bias . . . ). Despite the fact that they all have factions that have dredged up and maintained the war god image--that power monger god that never existed but was always wished for. There IS no relationship with the living God of LOVE in an environment of hate--so no, I do not call it faith! Hate precludes the experience of God! Faith is not religion, religion is not faith. If it is faith it is empty and their hopes are always dashed, their god won't come through. That imagined god does not exist! There are a lot of Christians who won't own the title "Christian" anymore. It is so tangled up with the bible cults and extremists and their hateful and despicable actions.

I cannot and will not try to control you, what you think or what you believe. But I will defend the beautiful and loving Christ who never did any harm but loved all (even those who are hard to love), taught love and commanded love; who was persecuted, suffered and died for loving and healing humanity and spent three years preaching to those who--unfortunately did exactly what most religionists do now--created their own god out of their desires instead of accepting the real God that is. This--MURDER--is the extent to which people will go to defend their created traditions and brainwashed cults. What we see in the Passion of the Christ is that we all stand in the crowd that yelled, "Crucify him!"--we are all guilty, it is human nature to want to use a god's gloss to control others and bring about our idealized, albeit sick, concept of what godless good is. But we crucify that nature to take on Christ--to be filled by Christ. We can only do (God's) good, we cannot harbor hate, we cannot try to control others--control issues are at the heart of the lower nature. Hate to say it, but just like the Buddhists we are busy meditating . . . you don't hear much from us.

For what it is worth I admire real science, I accept evolution, I am not a creationist and I believe in reason. True, in some random way, I believe God directed it all--but I don't believe that science can lean on that or we'd all be back to the middle ages . . . I abhore rewriting history and anti-intellectualism, shutting down people's minds to accept a fictionalized view of god is grotesque in my opinion and I don't believe you will burn in hell. Book burning is anathema to me. And I don't care what others believe as long as they don't smear Christ or do harm to others in the name of God!

For what it is worth--I am utterly amazed that Christians are being attacked because God didn't stop the earthquake! Then there should never have been earthquakes! What?! Is it supposed to be paradise?! Talk about imagined gods! lol!

November walk:

For a better look at these photos, click on them!



A sycamore in full fall glory at sunset!



The prairie



This was a great year for tallgrass prairie! It is as tall as my husband and he's 6'2" tall! And, yes, in case you are wondering, we were walking through it. We were hunting trees.



Photo taken from a low water bridge on Turkey Creek

This is the place that has been a game preserve of one kind or another since the 1930's when it was established by a local oil baron that we visited last week for the first time. We returned today ostensibly to locate trees for the owner to transplant near his home. The present owner runs elk and deer. What can I say? It is a beautiful place to walk and I could post twice as many photos and they are all equally beautiful!

Stunted growth:

This past spring a number of maples came up in the shady garden on the north side of the house. I chose the healthiest and largest and had my husband dig it up and transplant it to a large bare grassy area of the yard. As the summer wore on, I watered it and watched it, but it never grew. In the meantime, the ones we had left in the unweeded garden tripled in size. The other day, I puzzled over it and realized he must have cut off the tap root. I'm surprised because he knows trees and has worked with them for the past thirty years.

I think that a lot of us are this way about our faith, too. We cut off our tap roots. One of the lessons learned in my spiritual journey was the profound realization of how little I do know. I heard others say that too. It seems the inverse happens, the more I know, the more certain I am of the deficit in my knowledge base. It is in a state of uncertainty that I am most certain! It is in openess that I am ready to receive the message. My own measure of myself was to realize that I don't have the mind of God even though I make the mistake of feeling as though I do. And, so I test what I believe. I allow myself to be challenged by what I read or hear or see. It reminds me of Jesus telling the Jewish people who were in the crowd to "open their ears and hear." Their certainties were keeping their ears closed to his message. And so, in obedience to Christ, I listen with my whole self.

What inspired me in the idea of the tap root today was a discussion with some "mystics" who hate religion. They seem to be hoping to bring an end to the established religions and to teach people that they can be spiritual outside of the traditions and baggage of religion. I copied the definition of religion out of the dictionary and posted it for them to read. I attempted to tell them that even if they shun religion, they are practicing a religion. And given wings, it will develop all the ills of traditional religion. It will have its instruction, its taboos, its praxis and even its tradition. But more importantly to me is that our taproot is the tried and true! It is the centuries of knowledge and experience, success and failure, sharing and loving and hating together that makes our religion a rich resource for us to follow. I'm sorry to say that as I watched the conversation develop, I think their religion is hating religion.

My argument was and is that there is a body of knowledge about the way of the mystics in all the ancient religions. I felt surprised that I even had to point out that I believe religion springs from mystical experience and we gain by the preservation and repetition of it. The contemplative/mystical aspect of traditional praxis in the Christian tradition is often glossed over or misunderstood, rituals practiced without comprehending the full benefits--but of course, I finally came to see the spiritual value in them--so it awaits discovery by each participant one precious gift at a time. Once this is revealed, we look forward to it, joyfully sharing it with the other members of our community, generously encouraging others to come to our table to share it with us. Several times, I have met somebody who said that it was during the Eucharist that they first encountered the risen Lord.

My tap root is the means of being open to the leading of the Holy Spirit as a tap root brings up the living water to nourish the growing tree, so does the Holy Spirit bring me the living water to nourish my growing faith. It is trusting that if in anything I am remiss or I am mistaken, through the Grace of God, I will be set to rights.

I thirst . . .

Procrastinating

I've been dawdling about moving out of this house to a house we own across town that we had been using as a rental. But I have decided to quit dawdling and get it done. I may be in Internet silence for a few days or more.

It's the rain, you know. It keeps raining! We need a few essentials like beds.

Spring walk by the river:

I took my camera with me today when we took our walk down by the river. I'm always talking about it here, so I thought I would share some photos I took today. They should be clickable so you can get a better view.

The oddest thing happened! I have no idea how many times I have walked past that old barn. Last year we scrounged around in that area to pick up seedpods and things that I could use to decorate for Thanksgiving. But today wass the first time I have ever noticed the old car. I suppose that the site is an old homestead, but no evidence of a house could be found.

Signs of Spring

I know, it isn't an original title. This morning as I drove into the driveway, I noticed that the elm trees have that green haze that is the sure sign of spring!

Most assuredly, it is the cat playing in the daffodils that is the most perfect sign of spring! This is Miss Squeaky. She must enjoy being photographed. She struck several interesting poses. (Please ignore the leaf litter. I'll rake it up, I promise!)

I'm married to an Okie!

My son and I get a kick out of this. We shouldn't but we always do.

I made a quick trip to Braum's tonight and once there I wondered if we had any salad dressing in the fridge. I called my husband on my handy li'l cell phone, "Do we have any ranch dressing?"
After a pause I heard him answer, "Uh huh . . . but some Franch would be nice."
There was quite a lot of background noise in the store. To double check, I asked, "What did you say?"
"I said, uh huh, but some Franch would be nice."
"Franch? Oh, okay. I'll get that at the grocery store tomorrow. Just so long as we have ranch."
A few minutes later, I climbed into the car where Ike was waiting for me, listening to his tunes. As I backed out for the drive home, I told him about the call. By the time we'd gotten to the left turn lane and were waiting for the traffic light, we were having great fun with it.
"I guess that if it comes from France it must be Franch." Gut wrenching laughter.
"We're ranchers here, so we think the Franchers are ranchers, too." Another bout of hilarity.
"We go to the restaurant and he wonders why he got ranch dressing instead of franch dressing." Aren't we just pitiful! Don't tell him we do this.

In other news: It is spring! The daffodils bloomed.