Failing Faith

The greatest failing I have found in what we call "Christianity" is the inability of those in community to confront one another's actions with responsible compassion for the person and the full community. There is a difference between judgement of a person's character or morality and confrontation for actions which are harmful to the community. It is this lack of definition that I believe continues the cycles of abuse even in the most religious "Christian" cultures.

Our bodies are born as animals with the ability to embrace a higher level of life. The Sacred Spirit enables us to rise above our animal instincts. The purpose of Jesus' life seems to me to show humans how to act in the spirit of a community, creating a heaven on earth through fellowship as families of intention. The trend to create huge church "families" is, in my opinion, harmful to the intimacy required to have responsibly compassionate communities. We must open ourselves up completely to interact on a spiritual basis. Unfortunately, hiding one's most vulnerable self and hypocrisy seem to be the norm in the mega church environments.

Real families have rules, and they confront each other when behaviors are harming anyone in the community, including harming of oneself. Lying, cheating, and bullying behaviors harm the full family. They break trust. When people gather to witness weddings or baby blessings, they are supposed to be signing on to help in supporting the inclusion in the boundaries of the family and greater community entered into with the rituals. How many take the rituals as including oneself in the support network for those being blessed by the church community?

I believe we have lost the meaning behind the rituals and have abandoned the true meaning of church family. We are simply a bunch of strangers mindlessly mouthing scriptures that have no bearing on how we live our lives as committed community. For this reason, many people have turned away from religion and are seeking The Sacred Spirit in their own neighborhoods and networks of friends.

Three-Year-Olds Define Divinity

Anyone saying he or she speaks for any one god
Is both a great liar and a horribly corrupt thief.
They are guilty of ultimate earthly arrogance,
And the killing of innocents' hope and belief.

Why do we believe in visions of hope and love
From any child older than the magic age of three?
These are The Sacred Spirit's bodies on earth
That still clearly see our full family's unity.

Why do we, as frightened adults, spend time
Teaching them that their visions are wrong?
We stop them from telling their hope-filled stories
And convince them to stop singing their pure songs.

We then fill their innocent spirits with our own pain,
Teaching them to subject themselves to our fears.
How do we continue justifying teaching of untruths,
That, in so many places and times, have been made clear?

When will humans stop reversing ourselves
On our hard-earned and honored knowledge gained?
It was not the new insight of humanity that was wrong;
Perhaps the loss of community wasn't worth what remained.

God is simply the awe in every creature able to think;
It is wrong for shamans, witches and priests create fear.
All energy that is beyond our own capacity is awesome;
This is the only belief in divine otherness that I hold dear.

How Horribly Hypocrisy Hurts

How horribly it hurts me to continue to challenge my best friends and family,
But until they understand their own prejudices, they will not the truth be able to see.
The strongest religious beliefs present all others as less worthy than themselves.
Until they put a loved one's face on condemnation, these beliefs, in their hearts, dwell.

My mother died believing that her children were mostly condemned to hell;
I ask myself how any mother could believe in those who, these horrible lies, tell.
If a child is born of my body and blood through the sacrament of shared sacred,
How could anyone support the notion that, without religious ritual, they are foresaked?

It may be true that these rituals were to bond many not of the same parental blood,
But the chosen sacred family has long been abandoned for the greedy church's good.
Empty promises to protect and participate in the spiritual lives of many others
Has created a closed society of only unthinking, passive sisters and brothers.

Like sheep led to their slaughters, communities follow the loudest voices,
They leave no time for thoughtful discussion, in order to make their own choices.
Religions and churches that once were centers of descent from greed and genocide
Have become temples of money changers in which the most cowardly humans hide.

I am a self-avowed heretic, in the truest meaning of this death-penalty word.
I shout out and reject hypocrisy wherever, through religion, it is, by me, heard.
Anyone or any group assigning, to The Sacred Spirit, demands of human sacrifice
Is not a group that is promoting the sacramental in a joyful earthly life.

Priests are the hands of inflicting mortal pain as punishment to humans,
As if this is what The Eternal, Universal  Sacred Spirit, from us, demands.
I refuse to believe that any of us are entered into earth to suffer and perish,
Without ample opportunity to create memories and energy to be cherished.

It is up to each of us to decide to embrace life or to promote eternal death;
I have been asked repeatedly, and to this prejudice, I am freely willing to confess:
Unless others are willing to give themselves totally to bonding with others,
Our species will continue to be a pack of competitive, feral animal sisters and brothers.

Any religion that promotes itself as the only path to full eternal divinity
Is continuing the wars that keep us from acting as interdependent humanity.
I have no fear of physical death; my spirit long ago died with religion's words,
Telling me that only the children's voices of my own religion were heard.

I knew that they were lies; I also knew that my soul would be saved
If I lied about my beliefs, if asked about them, by those who are depraved.
How foolish was the God whom so many religious presented to me,
That no matter what I said, The Sacred Spirit couldn't, my intentions, see.

I suppose I will die without many like-minded friends of my own,
Because so many want to save me and bring me to their God's home.
I am not interested in entering their faith or their eternal life's heaven;
I honestly believe that heaven on earth is where I've, most of my life, been.

This is because I believe what we sow on earth, our loved one's and theirs reap;
"On earth as it is in heaven" is the promise I try, with the whole earth, to keep.
It is for this reason that I continually walk away from my family's confusion;
Only with my physical absence will the good memories of me be a sacred infusion.

The Problem with Prayers

I never believed in prayers of supplication because they always felt wrong to me;
Good weather for my wedding paled in light of a farmer's need for a crop's rain.
As I became older, I understood the problem in a different light of logic.
I could not trust a divine entity that allowed others to influence his decisions.

I do not understand those who believe they have power over Providence.
What if two prayer warriors pray at cross purposes to the same god?
There may be some at the bedside of the sick praying for continued life,
While others are praying as fervently for the invalid's release from life's pain.

People have said that they daily pray for me; for what they pray I don't know.
The problem with their prayers seems to be that they pray to the wrong entity.
I do not want the favor of the god of Adam, nor the god of Abraham;
This god is full of vengeance and demands fear from his most faithful progeny.

My only prayer throughout my life is that I be able to handle all my pain,
But I now know that pain placed on me by others is not a fire that cleanses.
I still pray for stoic acceptance of pain that is part of rebirth of myself and others,
But I no longer silently, sweetly tolerate agony inflicted to cause my spiritual death.

Forgiveness of seventy times seven may serve to heal old memories,
But it should not grant permission to others to continue harming me.
There are only two cheeks to turn in any altercation between combatants;
Once they are both broken or bruised, it is time to seek solace in separation.

From the beginning of humanity, we've brought destruction on ourselves,
Constantly insisting that life is about competition and winning over others.
It seems to matter not how many generations have already poisoned themselves;
Our religions teach that only a few will ever be favored by their one and only god.

This is why I wish that those who love me would not pray for me;
I would rather that they accept their own chairs in the heaven of their divine entity.
I do not want to live for eternity in a place where we will look for infinite salvation
On the pain and despair of those who spent their lives being, by god, crucified.

I have no use for any entity that takes pleasure in the pain of his progeny;
Much less is my affection for one who creates children for him to destroy.
I do believe in the examples of life attributed to the Joyful Jew Jesus;
I accept the path he is said to have walked as a path that, if followed, promotes peace.

Comfort and Cowardice

It has been such a huge disappointment in my life
To recognize my most passionate friends as cowards.
They justify the fact that they don't blow whistles
On the excuse that they need to support their families.

I have waited for decades on their families to grow;
They have still not changed their allegiances.
How many more generations will it take
Before those who betrayed me will stand up as friends?

The only efforts worth dying for are those about values;
It hurts me to realize that most would prefer to fit in.
My life has come down to a pretense at friendship,
Based on what we eat and what people we both know.

How I had hoped that my children would accept
That we each can choose family of faithful beliefs.
Unfortunately my children have chosen paths
That give them comfort at the expense of cowardice.

I'm considered mentally deranged because I refuse to fold,
In a world where the majority wishes to return to war.
How is peaceful engagement considered the ill to overcome?
Aren't humans more than worshipers of gods who require blood?

I cannot fight the masses who are content to live in fear.
Does only a true fool continue to believe in miracles?
I have seen the future of  our earth with human hubris,
And I am happy that my grandchildren are enjoying today.

There will be no future as long as we continue to hurry,
And impose competition on all we human beings touch.
Only accessing quiet and humble acquiescence to nature
Gives humans the template for saving something for our young.

None of us have to compete with other human beings;
We can compete with ourselves in learning life lessons.
When we ask only what are our own gifts and life goals,
We will stop destroying earth, and to eternity be blessings.

Is Pain Punishment or Prelude to Pleasure?

How long have religions proclaimed that pain is just punishment,
Not only for our own mistakes, but for those of ancestors long gone?
Is the purpose to frighten us into inaction for fear of repeating mistakes?
How much more healing it would be to present pain as prelude to pleasure;
For all new life comes at the cost of the physical pressure of stress.
The mother anticipating her child can even laugh when she labors in love.

Some say we should mourn at the births of babies and celebrate the grave;
Only those who see physical manifestation as the only journey can say this.
When we look at the universe as an ever-evolving organism through stress,
We can celebrate every moment as if they are all parts of the same.
We seem more foolish than are dogs and cats who live fully in the moment,
Anticipation and fear of failure never clouding their innocent minds.

Civilization has, for too long, meant deadening our animal instincts,
Pretending that humans are wiser because we walk upon two feet.
The effort to stay upright plays havoc on our human bodies.
Does the stress of pushing blood upward also starve our brains?
Education, life, death and worship have all become simply sterile.
Burning mulch is madness, but we do these destructive things everyday.

How have we lost the pleasure of playing in a huge autumn leaf pile,
Before it is carried over to protect tender roots and new life's shoots?
Why do we build concrete pastures rather than embracing sunlight,
As the energy that has sustained us since the beginning of our earth?
And what of the water that this stops our earth from absorbing and cleansing,
Without any human intervention needed to affect this miracle?

There is no pleasure in process when we take no time with nature;
All metamorphosis requires gestation and great stress for rebirth.
Until we are willing to watch and wait while earth unfolds miracles,
We will continue running from one to another Pyrrhic victory.
The question is not whether we will experience discomfort;
The question is whether we see it as punishment or new birth.

Perhaps when we begin to see all life as preparation to seed the new,
We'll stop poisoning our earth to hurry and experience the most events.
If we can begin to enjoy watching one generation gently fold into another,
We will concentrate on our natural rhythms and cycles of earthly rebirth.
A leaf that falls from a tree, when left alone, feeds new plants and people,
By allowing its sacred energy to be dispersed at the pleasure of the planet.

How wonderful it is that I now have sisters sharing our spirits
Across oceans, cultures, religions, ages and walks of very different lives.
How freeing to me has been this realization that my body won't be reborn;
As my spirit has always seemed much too big for only one life and body.
I have been able to calm my restless nomadic soul with the new knowledge
That my spirit may live on in many corners and forms of life in the great universe.

Gullible or Guilty?

At what point do we become guilty when we sit on the sidelines?
At what age or level of vulnerability are we honor-bound to intervene?
How can we accept the murder of innocent children while we watch,
All the while protesting conception control for their war-weary mothers?
How can we march against abortion without offering our own homes?
Aren't all guilty of continued abuse when they protect themselves with pretense?

The bile that rises in my throat when others offer prayers to their personal god
Threatens to choke and kill me with every prayer offered to their deity.
How smug they are in believing that their supplications have power,
As if they have the secrets that those born to lesser circumstances lack.
I ask for the opportunity to stand with a mother of different color and culture
As she stands before a jury of the white wealthy who are supposed to be her peers.

I am weary unto death of those who cluck disapproval while denying solutions.
How many masks and costumes must I continue to wear as camouflage,
As I infiltrate the hatred that has been accepted as patriotism and Christianity?
I am becoming increasingly unable to smile sweetly as they betray me
By allowing others to dishonor me while in their celebrations and in their homes.
I don't ask for them to change, but can no longer act as if they are my trusted family.

How sad it is to continue to spend life as a loop of unending personal loss;
My consolation is in my belief that all memories are parts of eternal energy.
As long as I stop allowing others to attack me, I can preserve what was positive.
The lesson we must learn in adult relationships is that we can control our vulnerability.
It is our duty as adult guardians of trust to protect the sacred innocence of others.
How can we continue to save our own skins at the expense of all earthly innocence?

I have a voice; I will use it to expose the hypocrisy and fraud of those in power.
I fear not for my own safety; I have completed my mission of motherhood.
There is no power on earth stronger than one that lives for future generations,
Knowing that only they can become focused, not only on now, but on eternity.
What greater gift can I have in my waning years than to be a trusted elder,
And use the pain that I suffered to help empower a young person's energy?

In addition to my voice, I'm available and willing to offer my physical self,
To stand as a shield between the vulnerable and those who would harm them.
Would that I had more than one body to offer as a human shield
Knowing that after I do so, I will be attacked by those I protected.
Only the youngest children are actually totally innocent of guile;
Others will do anything to earn the pretend protection of abusive gods.

Until humans are willing to accept no gods or others who rule with fear,
Those who refuse to quiver will be martyrs to those that they save.
Rather than feeling grateful, they feel as if they have been exposed;
In order to feel empowered, they rise up against their shields from harm.
The abused are in the arms of the oppressors, and now a favored child.
It seems only death will release me from the cycle of second-hand abuse.