"There is nothing else exactly like the joy of friendship. It is such a blessing to have a person on earth in whom you can confide with confidence. However, that is just a small taste of what it is like to have a relationship with the son of God. Jesus is a friend that 'sticketh closer than a brother'." This is a quote from a follower of this blog who is a man of the cloth and a life-long missionary.
I'm currently recuperating from surgery. It is the friends who surround me with their willing hands, offered with loving hearts that sustain me. They may be praying for me in the silence of their rooms, but they also put their prayers in action when asked for assistance in healing and nourishing my body and those of their fellow friends. They have laid their loving hands on each other and on me with hugs, kind words, gifts of laughter and reminiscences, time simply watching and waiting, and many meals. All of this ministry fans the flames of our friendship, drawing us ever closer to each other.
I believe that we are all siblings in Divinity, and that Jesus is an exemplar for how to be the best family of humanity members we can be. He combined the extreme power of his own Divinity with the rules for right living handed down to him from the many generations of righteous ancestors preceding him. He taught us a new way, not through blood but through our Spirits of Divinity, to connect to our fellow humans. He set this example by being fully human and fully friend to all who asked for his friendship.
Friendship is the food that feeds our souls. The Divine Spirit that Jesus embodied in the flesh is still with us and in us, and is meant to grow as we share it with others. We are all called to be exemplars of The Divine in our earthly forms. Our challenge is to stay open to all others while remaining true to our own spark of The Divine.
Saturday, July 2, 2011
Friday, July 1, 2011
Friends Are Family that We Choose
The baggage that we carry from generation to generation
Prohibit us from reaching our Divinely ordained stations.
We sometimes have to seek clean emotional slates
To start anew without our ancestors' mistakes.
Friends are family that we choose;
They may be replacements for family we lose.
Whether through entreaties of our own or of theirs,
Friends answer the lonesome heart's prayers.
So many people want to manipulate
Our emotions to control us or their own fates.
We must be careful to only call friend
Those we can trust with the self within.
What peace resides in an open heart,
Shared with someone who is truly a part
Of our journey toward Eternal Grace
On earth as in our final resting place.
Prohibit us from reaching our Divinely ordained stations.
We sometimes have to seek clean emotional slates
To start anew without our ancestors' mistakes.
Friends are family that we choose;
They may be replacements for family we lose.
Whether through entreaties of our own or of theirs,
Friends answer the lonesome heart's prayers.
So many people want to manipulate
Our emotions to control us or their own fates.
We must be careful to only call friend
Those we can trust with the self within.
What peace resides in an open heart,
Shared with someone who is truly a part
Of our journey toward Eternal Grace
On earth as in our final resting place.
Sunday, June 26, 2011
Our Infinite Auras
"There will be enmity between your seed and her seed." How well we humans are living up to this prediction, as is obvious in the state of family life, a microcosm of the community of all humans. Adam and Eve taught Cain and Able to be in competition for their god's favor, and every generation since then has been destroying each other in an effort to garner the most grace. How sad it is that we don't see we are all descendants of Divinity.
The way we choose our networks reminds me of a cruel game that was practiced on the playground of my parochial grade school. When the "in" crowd wanted to exclude someone that they didn't consider "cool," they would gather in a circle, entwine their arms and chant, "Criss-cross, apple sauce, nobody else can play with us." This seems to be the way of so many societies.
The majority builds their masses by creating contests to become part of the perceived privileged in receiving a stake in a limited amount of resources. Even the grace of their god is featured as finite. What hubris for any group to act like only they have seen the face of The Infinite!
I am encouraged by the Pentecostal movement, even if most of my exposure has been to the Christian version. It seems that we are slowly moving back into an era of understanding that the Spirit of Wholeness (Holiness) is infinite and universally available. What we each have to do is embrace Grace and allow others into our Infinite auras.
The way we choose our networks reminds me of a cruel game that was practiced on the playground of my parochial grade school. When the "in" crowd wanted to exclude someone that they didn't consider "cool," they would gather in a circle, entwine their arms and chant, "Criss-cross, apple sauce, nobody else can play with us." This seems to be the way of so many societies.
The majority builds their masses by creating contests to become part of the perceived privileged in receiving a stake in a limited amount of resources. Even the grace of their god is featured as finite. What hubris for any group to act like only they have seen the face of The Infinite!
I am encouraged by the Pentecostal movement, even if most of my exposure has been to the Christian version. It seems that we are slowly moving back into an era of understanding that the Spirit of Wholeness (Holiness) is infinite and universally available. What we each have to do is embrace Grace and allow others into our Infinite auras.
Saturday, June 25, 2011
Painful Pasts
When our parents are too soon taken,
We're not able to walk away,
Deciding which of their values should go
And which values we wish would stay.
We forget what they were really like
In both their goodness and their bad.
We begin to imagine they had lives
That our parents never really had.
This process works well for some,
Until they encounter others
Who had their own experiences
With our fathers and our mothers.
Suddenly we are squarely faced
With feelings long thought dead.
Encounters with people we love,
We may then begin to dread.
How are we to mend the wounds
When they are carried on in family?
Will we ever, from our painful pasts,
Ever really be set free?
We're not able to walk away,
Deciding which of their values should go
And which values we wish would stay.
We forget what they were really like
In both their goodness and their bad.
We begin to imagine they had lives
That our parents never really had.
This process works well for some,
Until they encounter others
Who had their own experiences
With our fathers and our mothers.
Suddenly we are squarely faced
With feelings long thought dead.
Encounters with people we love,
We may then begin to dread.
How are we to mend the wounds
When they are carried on in family?
Will we ever, from our painful pasts,
Ever really be set free?
Friday, June 24, 2011
Sacred Sea and Sky
Earth and sky are one on the water, reflecting each other's glory;
Here, I can feel the fluidity of the eternal creation story.
Fish is food for families; sunlight turns water into rain;
All that is existing in one form waits to be created again.
People in times of old paused to appreciate creation,
But we have allowed greed to destroy the sacred in all nations.
Our places of worship are palaces honoring our possessions,
Rather than our fields and forests, where we harvest Nature's blessings.
What we are destroying in our hurry to, human control, obtain
Is not within our corporate power to restore to balance again.
We're creating our own Armageddon with our illusion of ownership,
Forgetting that our individual lives are, on the radar of eternity, a blip.
I remember, as a child, we would seek a spreading tree's shade,
For the cool comfort found in these leafy glades.
We are now so far removed from the feelings of nature
That we have lost our compassion for the lesser creatures.
Even our animals are tamed to the point of uselessness;
We've forgotten the purpose for which each being exists.
All is for our entertainment rather than for the circle of life;
We don't allow that growth and balance are obtained by strife.
We see, but we don't study, the creatures as we ride by
On every motorized vehicle beneath our polluted sky.
We enclose our waste in products that keep them from becoming
The fuel upon which Nature has kept all creation running.
We use our knowledge of Nature to pervert the natural laws,
Never acknowledging the destruction of balance that we cause.
We must slow down and stop the seeking of more and greater thrills
Stop pretending that we can make all of Nature bow to our human wills.
Take moments in our day to simply see and marvel
At the power and beauty with which our world is full.
Allow our minds to rest upon our many natural blessings,
And hear the great redemption stories that all creation sings.
Here, I can feel the fluidity of the eternal creation story.
Fish is food for families; sunlight turns water into rain;
All that is existing in one form waits to be created again.
People in times of old paused to appreciate creation,
But we have allowed greed to destroy the sacred in all nations.
Our places of worship are palaces honoring our possessions,
Rather than our fields and forests, where we harvest Nature's blessings.
What we are destroying in our hurry to, human control, obtain
Is not within our corporate power to restore to balance again.
We're creating our own Armageddon with our illusion of ownership,
Forgetting that our individual lives are, on the radar of eternity, a blip.
I remember, as a child, we would seek a spreading tree's shade,
For the cool comfort found in these leafy glades.
We are now so far removed from the feelings of nature
That we have lost our compassion for the lesser creatures.
Even our animals are tamed to the point of uselessness;
We've forgotten the purpose for which each being exists.
All is for our entertainment rather than for the circle of life;
We don't allow that growth and balance are obtained by strife.
We see, but we don't study, the creatures as we ride by
On every motorized vehicle beneath our polluted sky.
We enclose our waste in products that keep them from becoming
The fuel upon which Nature has kept all creation running.
We use our knowledge of Nature to pervert the natural laws,
Never acknowledging the destruction of balance that we cause.
We must slow down and stop the seeking of more and greater thrills
Stop pretending that we can make all of Nature bow to our human wills.
Take moments in our day to simply see and marvel
At the power and beauty with which our world is full.
Allow our minds to rest upon our many natural blessings,
And hear the great redemption stories that all creation sings.
Thursday, June 23, 2011
Defining the Duties of the Day
What are a husband and wife's duties toward one another in a world where marriages may last over fifty years? What constitutes adultery; is stronger emotional or intellectual attachment, accompanied by time spent in communion, to someone other than one's spouse the same as physical attachment?
If marriage is a partnership, and families are communities, doesn't everything that affects one affect the whole family? When one community member is marginalized, doesn't that weaken the whole community? Where is one's fealty to one's family of origin superseded by one's responsibility to the family of one's making? Why don't we have sacred scriptures that address the issues of families in the modern age when we may live into our nineties and beyond?
How do we apply the Ten Commandments, written for a nomadic people fleeing persecution and a Bible that has very little to say about marriage, child rearing, and family life, to our long lives in the America of today?
If marriage is a partnership, and families are communities, doesn't everything that affects one affect the whole family? When one community member is marginalized, doesn't that weaken the whole community? Where is one's fealty to one's family of origin superseded by one's responsibility to the family of one's making? Why don't we have sacred scriptures that address the issues of families in the modern age when we may live into our nineties and beyond?
How do we apply the Ten Commandments, written for a nomadic people fleeing persecution and a Bible that has very little to say about marriage, child rearing, and family life, to our long lives in the America of today?
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
Do I Dishonor My Mother?
When I turned from my mother, I meant no disrespect, though she read my actions as such. I turned away in terror for her and for her family that was being consumed by the manipulations of a woman with lust in her heart for our father.
My father had always been a favorite with women, even enticing our staid school principal, a nun, to dance with him at Knights of Columbus dances. We were used to him and his baby sister serenading each other with love songs duets like, "That Old Black Magic," much to the delight of their mother and their spouses. These flirtations with females carried on to his consistent compliments about the talents and beauty of his five daughters. When his girls began reaching puberty, Daddy sank into the dark night of his soul.
When Daddy rose from his bed after two years in his own valley of darkness of deep depression, there was a woman waiting to take him into her arms. She seduced him with words of wonder about his religion, pretending that she was seeking enlightenment from our family. She was a lounge singer who could help him escape into his world of romance where there were no noisy children, as she had given her small children away.
My mother was so anxious that she do nothing to keep a convert from entering the church that she turned a blind eye to what we could see was happening, but were powerless to stop.
As this woman drew our father further and further into her web, my brother and grandparents fell for her, too. My teen-aged brother welcomed the warm arms of a woman who would spend her unfulfilled lust for our father on him. My grandparents were so proud of their son's supposed spiritual conquest, that they became the woman's spiritual parents at baptism.
Our mother accepted all of this rather than fight for the faith of her family. We were her lambs, but she chose to embrace the wolf devouring us, rather than uphold the law of her religion. This was all done in the spirit of Christian kindness to those who are less than we are. What hubris this was on the parts of my parents and their parents! This woman had walked away from her own children, and now she was preying on us.
So began a parade through the family home of priestly and other perverts, drug dealers, prostitutes, and others who sought our souls. What could I do but walk away? Does this mean that I have dishonored my father and mother? How can one honor anyone who insists on dishonoring him or her self?
My father had always been a favorite with women, even enticing our staid school principal, a nun, to dance with him at Knights of Columbus dances. We were used to him and his baby sister serenading each other with love songs duets like, "That Old Black Magic," much to the delight of their mother and their spouses. These flirtations with females carried on to his consistent compliments about the talents and beauty of his five daughters. When his girls began reaching puberty, Daddy sank into the dark night of his soul.
When Daddy rose from his bed after two years in his own valley of darkness of deep depression, there was a woman waiting to take him into her arms. She seduced him with words of wonder about his religion, pretending that she was seeking enlightenment from our family. She was a lounge singer who could help him escape into his world of romance where there were no noisy children, as she had given her small children away.
My mother was so anxious that she do nothing to keep a convert from entering the church that she turned a blind eye to what we could see was happening, but were powerless to stop.
As this woman drew our father further and further into her web, my brother and grandparents fell for her, too. My teen-aged brother welcomed the warm arms of a woman who would spend her unfulfilled lust for our father on him. My grandparents were so proud of their son's supposed spiritual conquest, that they became the woman's spiritual parents at baptism.
Our mother accepted all of this rather than fight for the faith of her family. We were her lambs, but she chose to embrace the wolf devouring us, rather than uphold the law of her religion. This was all done in the spirit of Christian kindness to those who are less than we are. What hubris this was on the parts of my parents and their parents! This woman had walked away from her own children, and now she was preying on us.
So began a parade through the family home of priestly and other perverts, drug dealers, prostitutes, and others who sought our souls. What could I do but walk away? Does this mean that I have dishonored my father and mother? How can one honor anyone who insists on dishonoring him or her self?
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