of course this is only my experience and everyone has their own…and that is something I find so fascinating and so beautiful…”

THAT’S beautiful. You’ve felt God’s presence in a personal and meaningful way, and established a loving relationship, AND you’re willing to allow for others to do the same in their own way.

I think that’s kind of the ideal.

Sara
http://saradode.wordpress.com

I’m reminded of this quote from the classic sci-fi film:

There can be no understanding between the hands and the brain unless the heart acts as mediator.

—Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, 1926

“what do I really know for sure? except what my heart tells me…”

I have never been able to prove, without a doubt, why I believe what I believe when asked…all I can reveal to people is what my heart tells me…

I too have made many mistakes but even when shown new ideas and new theories about Christianity or other religions I always come back to what feels right within my heart…and when I follow that I find peace…

There was a time in my life however, when I would believe almost anything a pastor or a professor would tell me and I rarely thought for myself…possibly out of fear that I would lose my faith or because I thought they must know the answers because they had letters behind their names…

but as I get older I realize God is bigger than any box we try to put him in…and as the old saying goes, the more I learn the less I know…

but instead of dismissing that there is a God, because there is so much that can’t be proven, I follow God because I can’t deny His Grace or the change that happened in my life when I first believed…

of course this is only my experience and everyone has their own…and that is something I find so fascinating and so beautiful…

It’s funny that you asked me this today, as it’s something I was thinking about a lot, for a few different reasons, this morning.

Just a couple of quick thoughts. Jesus taught, to a great extent, by his actions and by rather short parables and phrases that could seem very enigmatic. Those who heard him were forced (unless they were REALLY stubborn!) to really think about what he was doing and saying in terms of themselves, their own biases and experiences–from all sides. As far as I can tell, he wasn’t given to lecture and debate and handing out the “right answers.” He simply asked people to open their eyes, and pointed in certain directions.

In my own “direct experiences of grace/spiritual powers” (that’s a wonderful way to put it), the same has been true. I’m never spoon-fed answers to anything–just pointed in certain directions and given clues, and then expected to figure things out for myself. And I have been wrong, many times, and those times have tended to be when I let my preconceived ideas (products of everything from my Catholic upbringing to my nonconformist, “question authority” streak) make me think that I knew the answers right away.

I’m not saying that one has to ignore all of the ideas one has learned through life; to decide out-of-hand that none of them has value is as bad as assuming that they’re all absolutely right. But what set Jesus (and other great spiritual teachers) apart in his time was that he was able to “think outside the box,” and see beyond conventional wisdom to something different–it’s also what got him killed.

One of the words that keeps coming up in my “experiences” is “libbaw” (or some variation), which, in Hebrew, means heart/soul/understanding. I’m not anti-intellectual by any means, but I’m learning that I can often understand things better by paying attention to my heart and soul than by always trying to understand everything with my mind. My own sense is that Christianity (and perhaps other faiths with which I’m not so familiar) has lost in many ways that connection to the heart and soul and mysticism of what Jesus was trying to get at, in favor of absolutism and literalism. God, at least for me, seems to disappear in all of that. It seems that, if anything at all should be understood outside of the usual intellectual boundaries that we use for most things, it should be the Divine!

One thing that I even thought of posting this morning was this: If we all woke up one morning to find that all the spiritual texts, and conventional beliefs of the various religions, and everything we’d been taught to understand about God had disappeared or had never existed, how would we think of God then? What would we believe God’s will to be in our hearts? How would we treat others?

Um, did I say I was going to make that short? Oops…

Sara

I mean, sure, we can have direct experiences of grace or spiritual powers. But doesn’t a kind of interpretive process kick in shortly afterward? And wouldn’t our interpretations of spiritual experiences be influenced to some degree by our conditioning–i.e. ancestral roots, upbringing, peers, media, etc?

Just curious to see what you think on this matter.

Fortunately for me, I NEVER make any mistakes (NOT!!! )…

Happy Sunday,

Sara

I feel that God can work through anyone (or group) at any given time, and it’s an ongoing task to discern just when one should stand firm or perhaps soften one’s position a bit.

If I were perfect I’d never make any mistakes. Maybe psychopaths believe they never make mistakes. But the rest of us, well…

I think that part of what Jesus was trying to demonstrate is that we ALL have access to a “pipeline to God”–that the empty (unless we do them in a personal way that gives them real meaning) rituals, dogma, human-made divisions, etc., are not necessary, and may even act as impediments to that wonderful relationship.

Of course, we need laws to keep each other safe, and to maintain a livable order in society. My feeling is that we just need to be able to discern between OUR laws, and those of God. The fact that it’s so easy to “cherry-pick” from the Bible for one interpretation or another regarding what God’s will might be tells me that it’s dangerous and misleading to try to decide from the text exactly what God expects of us. I believe that Jesus was fully human, but that he did have that direct access and therefore came as close as humanly possible to acting as God’s ideal for us. I try to model (I did say TRY!) on his actions with regard to others, rather than on later interpretations by people who were no doubt still trapped by their own preconceptions and perhaps earthly ambitions. When Jesus reached out to touch and heal a leper, it was a simple, direct act of love and compassion, devoid of the human need to judge and make decisions regarding others’ worth. If we were all able to act like that, we would all truly dwell in God’s “Kingdom.”

My, how I do go on!

Anyway, have a good night!

Sara

and with it comes understanding…

thank you…