Faith in the Face of Pharisees

I knew a woman once who was considered immoral by many in our neighborhood. She seemed to fly high as the sky one day, and the next she'd take to her bed and refuse to even feed her children. She was magical to me. When she was flying high, she was more fun than any adult woman I'd ever known and more glamorous than any movie star, all on a thrift store budget.

Men were allowed to be, do, and say anything they wanted because, "That's how men are." They were almost never declared insane or defective. They were just men being men. A woman was always held to a higher standard, especially if she was a mom. Any weakness in women was a moral failing. Weakness in males was to be expected, and they were still allowed to have all the moral authority. No wonder women rebelled.

I heard men expound on the nature of God as they themselves abused their authority. But one of the greatest spiritual lessons that I ever learned was from this supposedly fallen woman when she brought over to our house one of her favorite records to share with our rule-bound mother.

"I Believe"
Words and music by Erwin Drake, Irvin Graham, Jimmy Shirl, Al Stillman

I believe for every drop of rain that falls
A flower grows
I believe that somewhere in the darkest night
A candle glows
I believe for everyone who goes astray, someone will come
To show the way
I believe, I believe

I believe above a storm the smallest prayer
Can still be heard
I believe that someone in the great somewhere
Hears every word

Every time I hear a new born baby cry,
Or touch a leaf or see the sky
Then I know why, I believe

I still marvel at her faith in the face of so many Pharisees.

Greed and Grief

Everybody has an agenda,
Whether we know it or not.
All of us want to protect our turf,
So unwelcome change, we stop.

It takes time to listen to others,
And it takes much energy
To ask myself what is better,
The ways of you or the ways of me.

It takes a lot of wisdom
To sort these questions out,
But few of us have the patience,
And the wisdom of others, we doubt.

Fairness is the basis of wisdom,
And few believe in this truth.
This seems to be why our earth
Is caught in an endless loop

Of jealousy, greed, and hatred
From the time of Adam and Eve
Because we feel ourselves powerless,
We continue to grieve.

A question isn't always accusation;
Silence may, or may not be, consent.
Perhaps we'd have more peace
If we asked others what they meant.

Healing Hearts and Heads

I believe that our inherited weaknesses are often what lead us to sin. If I can face my individual weakness and address it, I may be able to avoid turning the this weakness into sin. Sometimes the weakness presents in the form of sickness before it manifests itself as sin. There are many psychiatric illnesses that I think we use as excuses for sin, rather than as warning signs of weaknesses that need to be addressed before we turn to sin to make us "feel better".

The New Covenant made it impossible for us to blame our sins on the weaknesses of our parents. We are taught that salvation is not inherited; neither is sin. We can choose The Way or not. We also must choose a support group for The Way. Sadly, many who call themselves Christian, including many parents, are following paths that don't seem to be consistent with The Way of Christ.

As children, we are unable to follow any path but that set out for us by those who control our very survival. The way I was brought up, this authority over my life was transferred from my father, through my mother, to my pastor, to my husband. It wasn't until recently that I became aware that this was a great stumbling block to my being able to hear the voice of The Spirit inside my own soul.

I read scripture and often "hear" a different interpretation than what has been taught to me throughout my life. There are also many writings that I feel are sacred which are not contained in what we consider the totality of sacred scripture for now and for the future.

The Almighty's voice has always been available to anyone who seeks The Spirit of Holiness (Wholeness). We must stop believing that only the anointed few are privy to The Voice.

Holy Spirit Heal our hearts;
Holy Spirit heal our heads;
Holy Spirit take our tongues,
And have us speak Your words instead.

Sickness of the Soul

Sickness of the soul has long been called sin, but how often is it really sadness for the sin inflicted on our souls. So much is done to our spirits even before we're given birth, and when we're pre-verbal. How can we know when the seeds of the abscesses were planted? How can we name what was done to us before we had words?

We call so many afflictions genetic simply because they appear before birth. These are the same weaknesses that we used to blame on the sins of the fathers and/or demonic possession. At least we seem to be getting closer to discontinuation of blaming the afflicted for their own afflictions.

There are still those who practice spells and incantations over sick people, attempting to exorcise the demons. We are still afraid to hold those who are writhing in the greatest pain, afraid that what they have may be contagious. It is contagious. Psychologists say that one way to tell if a person is depressed is that the psychologist feels somewhat depressed after the patient leaves.

To love is to absorb some of the pain of the loved. We are told that Jesus felt "the energy go out" of him when he was touched by someone in need of healing. Even as grounded in goodness as was Jesus, he needed to retreat to the desert to exorcise the negative energy he had collected before he could enter the most challenging part of his ministry. What hubris to think that we can appoint confessors who absorb all the evil without falling ill themselves.

Sickness of the soul can only be healed with loving kindness in word and deed. Unfortunately, we often can't get at the root of the problem because we don't know the source of the "infection". How can we begin to peel the layers of dead "tissue" off the wounds if we don't know the history of the afflicted?

Perhaps this is where we can use the admonition that the weaknesses of the fathers are passed down to the children. If we assume this to be true, we can, hopefully, put ourselves in place of the parents and help to heal what we can't see. Laying of hands is not the same as holding.

Pills and incantations may open the wounds, but the only thing that will heal them is a new skin of love. We must keep ourselves strong so that we are able to absorb some of the pain without ourselves becoming infected. The only way to keep the healing going is to build a network of like-minded lovers to support one another in their ministries. We are all called to minister to one another; it's not a job. It's a vocation.

Couples, Kids, and Community

One of the hardest things in life is to figure out where we fit into the wholeness of creation. Do we have an internal sense of what is life-affirming and what is taking some of the growth energy away from the rest of what is created? Are some of us incapable of feeling empathy even at birth? When we think about the "sins" of the father being passed down to future generations, are we really talking about the chemical imbalances that are either part of our genetic code or part of what chemicals wash over our brains both before and after we are born? After all, the womb is the environment of the fetus, and all environmental influences affect our brain chemistry. This, in turn, affects our emotional responses and behaviors.

In animal husbandry, it used to be accepted that contented mothers produced healthier offspring. We have now industrialized all of the process of creation, down to creating humans in sterile environments, outside of the bonds of relationship even to the two people contributing their genetic material. We certainly don't give due consideration to the need for a nurturing network to help the mother and baby through the vulnerable times of maternity and child rearing.

Not everyone lives next door to the elders in their birth family. I thought that churches were places where we would be accountable to others of our faith network, but this has not been my experience with most church groups. I find that in churches there is more competition for who is holiest than there is a baring of souls to create cooperation.Why is it that there are more people all over America at Bible studies, marching at morality rallies, and sitting at Divine adoration than there are sitting in living rooms counseling couples and cuddling crying babies?

We leave each family unit to fend for themselves, without assistance from the elders who have time, experience, and wisdom to contribute. We seem to have less sense about these things than other mammals. Even wolves and elephants know that it takes more than two to keep a mother and her young from predators.

Stolen Souls

My soul was stolen from me;
I'm working to set it free.
When I was a child the good
Was replaced by religion's shoulds.

A newborn child is without sin;
It is worldliness that lets evil in,
When we punish instead of teach
Rather than practice, we preach.

Survival is the reason we cry;
Without compassion we would die.
But there are those in power who see
Pain as an evil from which to be free.

This may be because they don't know
That pain is the way that we grow.
It is not to be inflicted by others,
But absorbed by our sisters and brothers.

This pain, turned to passion, can find
The Spirit that transcends the mind,
And lights the path to world peace
For the most and for the very least.

Singing for the Spirit

The Church long stopped speaking to the sacred in me;
More than anything, I've long for them to set my soul free.
I have finally realized that this dream is not to be.

I've missed and mourned the rituals of my youth,
But I fell that they stood in the way of the truth,
And to find it, I have to set my soul loose.

It is time to stop waiting for The Church to make amends,
As I begin to gather with my faithful friends,
And share what has been, to our spirits' sails, the winds.

There have been many manifestations of the sacred in my life,
And so many shared their holiness in my worst times of strife;
To none of their beliefs, am I ready to take the knife.

Every bit of creation has a part - every breath, every seed,
But humans have designed ways to pervert this with our greed.
Do we really think there's not enough to fill all our need?

I want to hear the tales of how individual souls sing,
And these varied voices, to Sacred Scripture bring;
Only then will the bells of The Holiest Spirit ring.

All the universe, we are taught, has one beginning,
And the world of matter has no actual ending;
All energy will ultimately receive a final blending.

So, back to The Genesis all Creation will go.
How it will all be made right, is not ours to know,
Until, back to the Alpha and Omega, all of us go.

Let's put our bonds of individualism onto the pyre.
It is only with many varied voices in the choir
That we get the Celestial Sounds that we so admire.

We were meant to be part of a Universal Plan,
But we limit our dreams by the limits of man.
This has kept us from peace since human life began.

Most of us follow the loud and the strong,
Never imagining that they could be wrong.
It is not too late to heed different songs.

So sing out every child, every woman, man, and beast;
It is time to hear from the ones we've heard least.
Surely, their small voices will not hatred increase.

The strongest of minerals have been tempered by flame,
And by other stressors that go by many names.
Perhaps, out of this too, The Spirit's strength, we'll reclaim.