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Part 1 – On Being Satisfied with Life:

The Search for Emotional Health

Part 2 – The Satisfying Life:

The Search for Spirituality

By Henry S Rodgers, M Div

1999

2 – Materialism – I Look at the World around Me

Journal – 12/25/96 – New Jersey

Merry Christmas

Here in Morris County, one cannot escape the fact that America is a land of the haves and the have-nots. There are probably hundreds of millionaires here, if not thousands. I have met some of them and gotten a glimpse of their life style. Admittedly, it is only a glimpse, but from what I see, a life is a life and money doesn’t make it significantly better than a life with a modest amount of money.

I hope this isn’t a case of sour grapes. I don’t think it is, but we can fool ourselves.

I think it has been the experience of spiritual people of whatever conviction, that material possessions distract (detract? – almost synonyms) from the spiritual life. And conversely, material possessions do not contribute ‘materially’ to the full life.

Distract – v 1. To cause to turn away from the original focus of attention or interest; divert.

2. To pull in conflicting emotional directions; unsettle.

Detract – v.tr. To draw or take away; divert: They could detract little from so solid an argument.

v.intr. – To reduce the value, importance, or quality of something. Often used with from: testimony that only detracts from the strength of the plaintiff's case.

I think we are all aware that there are people out there who are well-adjusted to life, and who do seem to be able to live a fuller life when possessions are a part of it. Somehow, I think this is only appearance. I think the truth is that well-adjusted people can be just as contented and get just as much out of life whether they have much or little.

It is my impression that the average person is living proof that ‘Money can’t buy happiness.’ A life is a life and the major difference between full, fuller, and fullest is attitude.

12/27/96

This is a very difficult thought to put down. I don’t quite know why. Perhaps I am not sure I believe it myself.

Problem 1: How is happiness measured? Can I tell how happy a person is just by looking at him? He gives me some clues, but in the end my impression is just that – an impression.

Problem 2: Is happiness what we want to measure? Is ‘satisfaction’ a better measure of the full life? (I really need to consult with Abraham Maslow here – This was a problem of interest to him.)

Abraham Harold Maslow (April 1, 1908 – June 8, 1970) was an American psychologist. He is noted for his conceptualization of a "hierarchy of human needs", and is considered the father of humanistic psychology. Wikipedia

Surely, different people would have different definitions of the ‘full life’. A modest user of alcohol said, ‘No matter what you are doing while you are drinking, you are having fun.’ Heavy users of alcohol seem to be ‘having fun’ even if they are not doing anything. Users of drugs seem to like their life style.

I recall now my reference to the research monkeys with electrodes in their brains exhibiting the appearance of euphoria.

I think we can safely say that ‘happiness’ is all in the mind. If so; can we also say that the beatific saint or the ecstatic religious person have gotten where they are by some kind of self-induced ecstasy or sublime state. Even if this is true, what harm, if any, is done to escape life’s stress in this manner.

Problem 3: Is escape from life’s stresses a legitimate goal?

Problem 4: What is life’s goal? Personally, I don’t see one. [The Rational Brain doesn’t see one.]

Problem 5: What is the meaning of life?

[Others ask this same question:

From the Univ of NC at Wilmington - ”Spiritual (Values, Purpose, Intuition, Vitality)

The sense that life is meaningful and has a purpose; the ethics, values and morals that guide us and give meaning and direction in life.

Spiritual wellness is the search for purpose and meaning in one's life.  Spiritual wellness is the quest to finding what you believe in and living each day consistent with those beliefs. Spiritual wellness is finding harmony with one's self and others while working to balance inner needs with the rest of the world.”]

Re Problem 4: An individual can and should have a goal. If a person has a healthy childhood in a functional family; and if he has average intelligence or above, then he will likely attend college, preparing himself for a career. He will also be preparing himself for marriage and a family.

Of course, anywhere along the line he may hear a different drummer and pursue a different course, but he will still have a basic goal. “I enjoy doing this activity (or I believe that I will enjoy it). I believe that my primary interest lies in this direction.” Is the magic word here ‘enjoy’?

I don’t quite think it is. I think we need to look at ‘satisfaction’. I think of the ‘dedicated’ scientist pursuing his dream – endless hours in the laboratory or in the field. Is a life-time thus spent ‘satisfying’? Jane Goodall comes to mind, but there are hundreds more.

‘To satisfy’ implies that there was a basic hunger or ‘need’ there to begin with. (We might get back to Maslow, who listed the humans ‘needs’.)

Maslow's hierarchy of needs is a theory in psychology, proposed by Abraham Maslow in his 1943 paper A Theory of Human Motivation,^[1] which he subsequently extended to include his observations of humans' innate curiosity. Wikipedia

The sex drive was not primary with Goodall, nor is it with thousands of celibate people in ‘satisfying’ lives. Perceptive people may realize that life is a series of trade-offs. Many women have found it difficult, if not impossible to be both a career person and a homemaker.

It would be foolish for anyone to talk about the ‘average’ person, or to imply that here was a lifestyle that would ‘satisfy’ him. Yet that is what I seem to want to do. Not so.

What I want to do is to approach the person who is not satisfied – who is not living the full life – who believes that there is more to life than what he is getting out of it. What I propose to him is that he concentrate on becoming a whole, well-rounded person.

It looks like I have settled on the term ‘satisfy’ as the goal for living. That is, my choice of names for this book, The Satisfying Life, is satisfying.

[Look into the function of 'Life Coaches' - a profession that I believe has a great future.  In fact, I propose Universal Health care, which includes Emotional Health Care.]

Life-coaches all the rage – By Karen S. Peterson, USA TODAY

Personal growth is hot. Diagnosis is not. That is one reason America has seen a boom in the number of people offering their services as "life coaches." These guides give clients the confidence to get unstuck — to change careers, repair relationships, or simply get their act together. They also raise some eyebrows because they work in a field that is virtually unregulated.

"We are not talking about being incompetent or weak. They are everyday, normal people who have their lives together. They realize the value of having somebody to help them think outside the box." — life coach Laura Berman Fortgang.

As a person ages, he leaves behind most of his basic ‘needs’, and finally settles on the very few that continue with him.

I believe that we have a ‘need’ to learn. Looking back over my life, I see that this need was always with me and always a major part of my life. It is still a part of my life, but the ability has been tempered by my rapidly failing memory. [Thanks to Gingko Biloba that problem also is behind me.]

So also, my ability as a creative person has gradually faded away, because my mind is not as sharp as it once was. What was it that I created?

I created hypotheses. Hypotheses are tentative theories as to what has caused or is causing the observed facts. This is somewhat like being a detective. A detective observes the data (the facts). He then offers a tentative theory (a hypothesis) as to how the known result came about.

Scientific hypotheses are created in much the same way. We observe the facts (gather data), and then try to explain how the facts came to be.

A ‘pure’ scientist is one who is strictly an observer – This is what I see. Many of us are content to simply observe, being well aware that soon or late a ‘theoretical’ scientist will come along and explain our data.

Or it may be that a theory will almost force itself on our attention, in which case we become theoretical scientists in spite of ourselves. In many cases this has happened to me. I observe, and then I try to explain what I have observed.

[Fault-finding] As a professional scientist, my assignment was to observe. My supervisors were to do all the explaining. I could offer a tentative explanation only as long as it was understood that the supervisors got the ‘credit’.  [Poor me!]

I did not have a satisfying professional career, primarily because of my poor emotional health. There was more to it than that, but people with good emotional health could cope with the faulty system and survive.

My career is past history now, so also my marriage and family. [I consider myself a well-adjusted person now – one who can cope with life – solve problems and move on.] Any residual ‘needs’ found in these categories I must put aside as totally impractical. My financial health is largely outside of my control now. What is left?

What is left? The Spiritual Life. [We will get there eventually.]

The Spiritual Life 1/3/97

I had to get my life in order to be able to see the Big Picture. Certainly, Holistic Health was a part of the therapy, but I only touched on it. I didn’t have the grasp of the Big Picture that I do now.

So, assuming that I have my life in order now, what counsel do I have for other people who want to get their lives in order?

Step One – We admitted that we were powerless over our compulsions. We admitted that we could not manage our own lives. The 12-step Program is for compulsive people – primarily compulsive eaters and drinkers. The average normal healthy person may not have compulsions, but he has primal instincts that he will be powerless over unless he becomes aware of them and makes a conscious effort to resist them.

He will be better able to see these instincts in himself if he will admit that he is an animal with all the primitive traits of any other animal. To this end he should study animal behavior seriously, not simply as entertainment, but as a basic requirement for understanding himself. He will also study human behavior – he needs to know what we do and why we do it.

The Christian Faith is part of my heritage. It has a place in my life, and I am glad that it does. Holistic Health includes Spiritual Health. It need not be Christian, but it seems to me to be properly so, if a person has a Christian background, and has no serious bias against it. I know very little about the other religions, therefore my focus will be on Spiritual Health for the Christian.

 

The Art of Being Satisfied with Life implies that my goal is to learn to accept life the way it comes – Just barely tolerating it – Accepting life without anger. The new title implies getting all that we can out of life – complete satisfaction.

The Satisfying Life

People need a knowledge of the bible in order to have a knowledge of the Christian Faith, and people need a knowledge of the Christian Faith in order to become Spiritual Christians.

The Christian Faith also teaches Morals and Ethics. It has a great deal to say about Human Relations, about Peacemaking as the ‘Believer’s Calling’, about Community. Our goal is the Abundant Life. Not only do we want people to be ‘Satisfied with Life’, we want them to have a ‘Life that is Satisfying’.

To this end, we condemn Pride and Greed as appetites that can never be satisfied. Furthermore, they are harmful appetites, doing no one any good.

My goal in preaching is to help one become a better person as an individual, and a better citizen of his community. Is that enough?

Chapter 2 – The Satisfying Life – Swan Song

Sam Fleming (our pastor at New Milford) died this year (Monday Morning Mag).  He was 78.  When you get to be 77, you are living on borrowed time.  [I presume I was 77 at that time.  That would be 1995.

Some more or less random thoughts.]

The ranch hasn't been my whole life, but it has been an important part of it.  The most important part was the discovery of, and recovery from, my handicap.

It isn't exactly satisfying to look back over one’s life and see only the places where he screwed up; this is where he went wrong.

I am glad that I was finally able to see the big picture, and that I was able to describe it.  I hope you can learn from my mistakes.

Karen Horney's best book is Neurosis and Human Growth (1950).  It is the best book on neurosis ever, in my humble opinion. She wrote more "pop" versions called The Neurotic Personality of our Time (1937) and Our Inner Conflicts (1945). Her thoughts on therapy can be found in New Ways in Psychoanalysis (1939). For an early insight into feminist psychology, read Feminine Psychology (1967).  And to read about self-analysis read Self-Analysis (1942).

The whole situation tells me that KH was right:  the human species does have some kind of drive toward 'fulfillment'.  Somehow, we are working together to bring about 'The Kingdom of God'.  (Or as modern theologians like to put it 'The Government of God' or 'The Rule of God'.)  (Kings do not Dom[inate] any more.)

[It is my hypothesis that ‘The Kingdom of God’ or ‘The Kingdom of Heaven’ is a state of mind rather than some idealized place whether ‘real’ or ‘spiritual’.  In fact, it is the whole of ‘the Spiritual world’.]

What is the ideal situation?

KH speaks of 'healthy friction'.  It is an important part of the human situation, that we all have different ideas, different goals.  To say that the ideal situation allows these differences to exist is to lose sight of the most magnificent of human achievements:  We are different and the product of these differences will be human advancement.

Human differences are our greatest achievement, so far.

Common sense requires that we encourage every individual to contribute his ideas to the species – that each individual contribute his best offering to the future.

Charismatic Leaders

It is all too easy to delegate our responsibilities to someone else.  No one individual has all the 'secrets'.  To allow ourselves to follow a charismatic leader is to abandon our own 'real selves', and to become automatons.  We should try to find a leader who wants to bring out the best in us.  Our leader should have goals that are compatible with humanity's, as well as with our own.

Will we ever see the end of violence?  Probably not.  The human is violent by nature.  He is physical before he is mental.  So far, Emotional Man Rules Rational Man.  A desirable human goal is to put Rational Man in charge.

Even so, there are people who claim that there are times when Rational Man must resort to violence.  I cannot believe that under The Rule of God, violence will ever be acceptable.

Love is the key word in the Faith, in the Church, in our denomination.  Love in contrast to Hate, which is what recent and current TV programming portrays.  Hate is not a natural reaction; the human by nature is indifferent to his fellow human.

A clear and conspicuous part of The Rule of God is that individuals will love, respect, and accept each other as a part of the herd.

Love as we know it is not a part of the emotions of wildlife.  Domestic animals, especially dogs, feel love, so we cannot claim that love is exclusively human.

[I see on the nature channels that there is something among the wild animals that looks suspiciously like ‘love’.]

Monuments

9/18/95 - I just had another 'monument ' that I had built, torn down.  It hurt.  But I tried to be accepting of the fact that people are the way they are, and that I must learn to accept it or suffer.

Nobody's monument endures for long.

A lifetime is not very long compared to a 'monument'.  We have about 50 yrs to build and maintain monuments.  After that, the next guy takes over.  He may maintain it; he may tear it down, or he may let time tear it down.  Whatever happens, it is not your monument now.  It is his.

Pap [my father-in-law] never built monuments.  He said, 'There won't be anything left when I die.'

There was a monumental mess that I organized.  Now it’s gone.

[A large part of my in-law’s property consisted of ‘junk’ that my father-in-law had accumulated in his spare time. In PA the custom was to have ‘sales’ every Saturday, with a professional auctioneer doing the ‘selling’. One tactic they used, was to throw everything remaining, as the sale was drawing to a close, into a single lot, and ask for bids on the lot. My father-in-law (Pap) always bid on, and often was the high bidder on these ‘remainders’. It was this junk that was my heritage, and that I wanted to, but couldn’t, keep.]

Jack had said that I didn’t need this stuff. Jack was probably right.  He said, “How can you want anything more when you already have so much?”

2/20/93

I am in the process of reading "The Last Cathedral" by Ty Harrington, Prentise Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1979, ISBN 0-13-523878-1

Which brings me to this essay:

I believe that I have talent.  My talent lies in the ability to create and describe new and novel ideas.  There are not a lot of people in the world who are able to do this.

There are many people who are able to write, who have no worth-while subject, and many others who have brilliant ideas, but who are more or less inarticulate; they cannot express themselves.

Unfortunately, I also have a psychological problem.  I do not have faith in myself.  I continue to doubt that my ideas are worth while, and that my writing is clear.  I am also a compulsive pro­crastinator, a product of all this self-doubt.  Conse­quently, it does not take much of a set-back to stop me completely.

Some of the principal figures at the Nat’l Cathedral continued to work on it until they were 80 or close to it.  They had a single-mindedness of purpose that I do not have.  In fact, I doubt that we experience all of life by being so single-minded.

Each person has a right to mark his niche.  Whatever that means.

How do we do a Fourth-step Inventory?

It seems logical to start with The Big Book – AA.

"Resentment is the No 1 offender. It destroys more alcoholics than anything else. From it stems all forms of spiritual disease, for we have been not only mentally and physically ill, we have been spiritually sick. When the spiritual malady is overcome, we straighten out mentally and physically. In dealing with resentments, we set them on paper [we write them down]. We listed people, institutions, or principles with whom we were angry. We asked ourselves why we were angry."

AA then gives a step-by-step procedure for searching out these resentments – always asking ‘why?’ "We went back through our lives." AA says, "This was our course: We realized that the people who wronged us were perhaps spiritually sick…When a person offended [us] we said to ourselves, 'This is a sick man. How can I be helpful to him? God save me from being angry." "We reviewed our fears thoroughly. We put them down on paper… We asked ourselves why we had them."

My whole Commentary on Ecclesiastes is a exploration of some of the resentments I have. I am sure they are still there. I don't think AA stresses 'Forgiveness' enough – if it mentions it at all. It does, but not directly. We are to "take a kindly and tolerant view of each and every one."

 

6 – Fearless Moral Inventory Cont'd – Jnl – 8/20/98

Step Six – I am sitting above the Stone Rd (From Bill Stone) near one of the first sites we developed.

As I look over the area – primarily just enjoying it – I see several items that ‘need’ my attention:  a dead stalk that ‘needs’ to be pulled (it will soon fall down on its own) – a low branch that ‘needs’ to be bow-sawed – a rock that ‘needs’ to be picked up.

Perhaps it is a sign of growth on my part (or perhaps it is just old age) but I find myself being just a little more accepting of these ‘situations’ – situations that I could do something about (Petition 2).  [God grant me the courage to correct the things I can.]

If that is growth, then perhaps I will be able to accept some of those things that I cannot change (Petition 1).

It is my intention to focus on Step Six right now.  I have found in Step Four that I am:  Hostile, Vindictive, Resentful, Critical, Judgmental, Chauvinistic, Racist, Sexist, Accusatory.  These are ‘Character Defects’ that I want to get rid of.

I have done Step Five – confession – at my OA meetings.

Step Six requires that I be ‘ready and willing’ to give them up.  The ‘Book’ says that I am not ready and willing.  Why not?

Fact – I do want to be in control.

Fact – I do want the world and the people in it to be better than they are.

Fact – I do believe that I know what should be done – I know what is best for the world.

Fact – I am not in control.  Therefore, there is nothing I can do about the world’s ‘faulty people’.

Fact – for my own serenity, I must begin to accept the world’s ‘faulty people’ as they are.  If I can do that, then God will ‘take away my character defects.’

Is this adequate for ‘How I Was’?

Now the crucial part – What Happened?

The Book says that we need to take each character defect back to Step One, thus:  I admitted that I am powerless over my Resentments.

Step Two – I came to believe that my HP could restore me to sanity.

Step Three – I made a decision to turn my will and my life over to the care of God . . .

The ‘Big Book’  (AA) says, p64 “Resentment is the ‘Number One’ [character defect].  It destroys more alcoholics than anything else.  From it stem all forms of spiritual disease for we have been not only mentally and physically ill, we have been spiritually sick.  When the spiritual malady is overcome, we straighten out mentally and physically.”

P66 "It is plain that a life that includes deep resentment leads only to futility and unhappiness."

"If we were to live, we had to be free of anger.

This was our course:  We realized that people who wronged us were perhaps spiritually sick . . . We asked God to help us show them the same patience, pity, and tolerance we would gladly grant a sick friend.  When a person offended us we said to ourselves, 'This is a sick man.  How can I be helpful to him?  God save me from being angry.'”

P70 “If we have been thorough about our personal inventory, we have written down a lot.  We have listed and analyzed our resentments.  We have begun to comprehend their futility and their fatality.  We have commenced to see their terrible destructiveness.  We have begun to learn tolerance, patience and good will toward all men, even our enemies, for we look on them as sick people.”

Even though AA doesn’t use the word ‘forgiveness’ they imply it.

To forgive is hard – always has been – always will be.  This is a pus pocket that I need to open.

Commentary on:  “Forgiveness” – How To Make Peace With Your Past And Get On With Your Life.  Sidney B Simon, Ed D, And Suzanne Simon -1990 Warner Books, NYC

Sidney is Prof of Psychological Education at Univ of Mass, Amherst, MA – he is a workshop leader on a variety of subjects esp ‘Forgiveness’. He says:

P18 What Forgiveness Is

Forgiveness is a by-product of an on-going healing process.

Forgiveness is an internal process.

Forgiveness is a sign of positive self-esteem.

Forgiveness is letting go of the intense emotions attached to incidents from our past.

Forgiveness is recognizing that we no longer need our grudges and resentments, our hatred and self-pity.

Forgiveness is no longer wanting to punish the people who hurt us.

Forgiveness is accepting that nothing we do to punish them will heal us.

Forgiveness is freeing-up and putting to better use the energy once consumed by holding grudges, harboring resentments, and nursing unhealed wounds.

Forgiveness is moving on.

P19 “[a client] and the people you will read about in this book were able to forgive because they made a concerted, on-going effort to examine and heal their wounds, to clean up the unfinished business in their lives, to let go and to move on.  They changed their attitudes and behaviors, pushed through their fears, and gave up their grievances and condemning judgments.  And you can do those things, too – not as a favor to the people who hurt you, or because someone once told you that forgiving was the good and right thing to do – but for yourself, for your own health, happiness, and emotional well-being.

Forgiveness is Something You Do For You."

 

Jnl – Wed, Sept 16, 1998 – Priority:  Abstinence  is #1

Step Six – Became willing to let go

A Sermon – one that speaks to the ‘broken-hearted’.

A commentary on “Forgiveness”  by Simon.

Believe it or not, all this is related.

I finished the Sermon “Bind-up the Broken-hearted”.

Spirituality – Journal – 2/28/99 – The Idea of Spirituality

Step Twelve: “Having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these Steps, we tried to carry this message to compulsive overeaters and to practice these principles in all our affairs.”

In Step 12, OA and AA, we are moving from self-centered to other-centered – to service to others, as a means of recovery.

At the Homesite – It is mild – almost 70 deg – no wind – sunny.  I have a fire, as I usually have in the woods.  There is always slash to burn, and sometimes it is cold and we need a fire.

My intention for this morning was to contemplate the spiritual world.  Instead, I find myself always busy with the fire.  As usual, I am burning slash, though I have only a small (2’ dia) fire.

If one lets himself get involved with the fire – eg watching it – his mind is occupied with it – he cannot meditate or contemplate.  We need to get our minds on something immovable – like the landscape.  The landscape here is especially useful, because every part of the rocks and soil were affected by the glaciers – I presume 10,000 yrs ago.  Before recorded history.  My brief life is hardly significant in this period.  This consideration enables me to contemplate eternity.

The authors of Ecclesiastes and of Jonah were still alive when this land was given its present shape.

For some reason, I feel related to these writers, and to David, and to the Canaanites.  Their lives are a part of my life.  Perhaps, if I will accept it, I feel related to Adam and Eve – to Noah (properly pronounced Noh-ach)- to Mosheh [Hebrew for Moses].  Perhaps all this gives my Big Ego that sense of importance that it wants me to have.  The physical world alone will not do that for a full-awareness person.  [I am not sure I follow that, but 'full-awareness' means 'feeling the pain of the world'. .]

How ‘real’ is history?  Is ‘Pharoah’ (a title) any more ‘real’ than ‘Joseph’ (a name)?  [This statement doesn’t make sense to the Rational Mind; we hope that this is evidence that the Spiritual Mind is taking over.]

Soon or late, we must conclude that our spiritual lives are just as ‘real’ as our physical lives, and a lot more durable.

Now!  The message of the bible is that God loves us, each and every one, just as we are, and wants the best for us.

God is a ‘person’, albeit a very special kind of ‘person’, and as such, we can think of this ‘person’ as a ‘him’, if it helps us relate to God – and that God wants us to do.

The First Commandment (God’s wish) is that we ‘love’ God with our whole being.  Now! ‘Love’ is a term we use to describe a relationship with another human being.  Surely ‘love’ is not an appropriate term to describe our relationship with God.

Well!  Perhaps it is.  In fact, this usage may help define – at least clarify – what we mean by ‘love’.  How should you feel toward the ‘person’ who created you?  From atoms and molecules and atomic energy – literally from nothing you were created.  Do you feel gratitude for that?  And into this lifeless form – with no potential whatsoever – God breathed the spark of life – that miracle that we cannot yet grasp.  I cannot even grasp the miracle of the spark that keeps that fire going.

How do you feel toward this ‘person’?  Is ‘love’ an appropriate term?  This ‘person’ provided you with a Garden of Eden’; with everything you could want for a full and happy life.

This ‘person’ provided you with a mate, and the means of reproduction that you enjoy so much.  If you truly ‘love’ that mate, do you not see in that feeling at least a little of the feeling of ‘love’ for God?

Sure, there are other feelings that would be appropriate for God: Certainly, Awe – Respect – Reverence – Humility – perhaps fear, but a God who loved us and put us on this earth, and encourages us to prosper, is probably not going to hurt us.  A wrathful father might hurt us, but our Heavenly Father is perfect, therefore ‘he’ does not become ‘wrathful’ – ‘he’ is always serene.  He deals with us with ‘courtesy and respect’ – the way he has taught us to deal with others.

I don’t have any trouble with making this spiritual world a part of my life.  I want to, and do, encourage Rational Man to direct my life (this is in contrast to Emotional Man – who has gotten me into trouble in the past).

Therefore, Rational Man rejects those bible stories that could not have happened – this is the ‘liberal’ position.  This may be a trauma for you, but don’t throw out the baby with the bath water.  I think it helps to consider the mindset of those early people.  They didn’t know what we know today.  What they wrote seemed rational to them.

Today, we come to these stories with a different mindset.  Even the basic doctrines of the Church, eg the Atonement, do not conform to rational thinking today.  What we, the liberals, have done is to ‘rationalize’ these ancient doctrines so that they do not alienate Rational Man.

The spiritual world is definitely a different world – the rules are different – the feelings are different.

Here is an entry from a private ‘coaching’ organization:

Wellness Unlimited, LLC

“Optimum Function of the Human Spirit

What is spiritual wellness?  When we put the wholeness of life together, there is a part of us that seeks meaning, purpose, and connection with the rest of the universe. This is the human spirit.

Resting on our beliefs, values, and intuitive wisdom, our spiritual side provides the answers to the larger questions of where we fit in the cosmos – where we find significance in the scheme of life in the universe.  And this fuels the rest of life."

Spiritual wellness is a major frontier of wellness education today.

 

 

 

05/16/82 – Intro – Sermon Preparation

There are two approaches to sermon preparation. Usually, we start with the text. What message does this text have for us today? But occasionally we have a problem or a situation for which we need an answer. In this approach we ask, “What does Scripture say about this problem or situation? Today’s problem is Anger. How can we overcome anger in ourselves?

 

Peace, be still!

 

Special

The title for today’s sermon is taken from the NT Rdg, MK 4.35-41 – the story of Jesus’ stilling of the storm.

35] On that day, when evening had come, he said to them, "Let us go across to the other side."

[36] And leaving the crowd, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. And other boats were with him.[37] And a great storm of wind arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that the boat was already filling. [38] But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion; and they woke him and said to him, "Teacher, do you not care if we perish?"[39] And he awoke and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, "Peace! Be still!" And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm. [40] He said to them, "Why are you afraid? Have you no faith?" [41] And they were filled with awe, and said to one another, "Who then is this, that even wind and sea obey him?"

 

The concluding words of the passage tell us its purpose.

The disciples are amazed that Jesus has the power to still the storm. ‘Who then is this?’ they asked, that even the wind and the sea obey him. Clearly, the expected answer is ‘Such power must come from God.’

Today, we are amazed that Jesus has the power to still those storms, called ‘anger’, that unexpectedly arise within us, like that storm on Galilee – suddenly and without warning. (I don’t think that this interpretation is out of line with Mark’s understanding of the meaning of the story, because his next incident is the account of the healing of the Gerasene Demonic – Mark’s answer to the Incredible Hulk.) In this modern TV fantasy, isn’t it Anger that precipitates the transformation of a calm, peaceful, normal man into the incredible Hulk? Perhaps the demon that possessed that man in Gerasa, was Anger. It was after he came to know Jesus that he was able to control his rage. The people couldn’t believe it when they came out and saw this raving maniac sitting calmly at the feet of Jesus.

For our OT Rdg, we will read the story of one of the traditions that tell about the way David first came to the attention of the royal court. According to this tradition, David was called in as a court musician, where, it was hoped, the music would have a calming effect on Saul whenever the ‘evil spirit from God tormented him’.

To digress a moment, I might explain that to the ancient writers of the OT, everything that happened was caused by God, both good and evil, so, if an evil spirit tormented a person, it must have been God who caused it. Today, let us think about the nature of this ‘evil spirit’, and about how it could be calmed by music. The Rdg is from 1 Sam 16.14-23.

14]

14. Now the Spirit of the LORD departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from the LORD tormented him.

[15] And Saul's servants said to him, "Behold now, an evil spirit from God is tormenting you. [16] Let our lord now command your servants, who are before you, to seek out a man who is skilful in playing the lyre; and when the evil spirit from God is upon you, he will play it, and you will be well." [17] So Saul said to his servants, "Provide for me a man who can play well, and bring him to me." [18] One of the young men answered, "Behold, I have seen a son of Jesse the Bethlehemite, who is skilful in playing, a man of valor, a man of war, prudent in speech, and a man of good presence; and the LORD is with him." [19] Therefore Saul sent messengers to Jesse, and said, "Send me David your son, who is with the sheep." [20] And Jesse took an ass laden with bread, and a skin of wine and a kid, and sent them by David his son to Saul. [21] And David came to Saul, and entered his service. And Saul loved him greatly, and he became his armor-bearer. [22] And Saul sent to Jesse, saying, "Let David remain in my service, for he has found favor in my sight."

[23] And whenever the evil spirit from God was upon Saul, David took the lyre and played it with his hand; so Saul was refreshed, and was well, and the evil spirit departed from him.

 

Let us pray for illumination.

 

 

 

Peace, Be Still

 

In the Serenity Prayer, all 12-Step organizations, pray ‘God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change.’ ‘God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change.’

I personally, have seldom been granted that serenity. In fact, I wonder if we should be praying for it. Should we, for example, pray to be able to accept with serenity, with serene indifference, those cased of child-abuse, of battered women, and other vicious crimes we hear of, or read about?. The answer depends on what we mean by ‘to accept with serenity’.

More than once, I have been extremely bitter toward a person who has committed some terrible crime, only to learn later that the accused person was himself a victim of countless crimes, usually beginning with child-abuse. I discover that the accused person is more deserving of our compassion than of our condemnation. Even the psychopath, who has no compassion himself, still deserves ours, because it wasn’t his fault, or his will, that deprived him of compassion.

It has been said that a person is only as big as the things that make him angry. The fact is that most of us, even though we do get angry over terrible crimes, also get angry over trivial things – like the golfer who slices his ball into the rough.

I believe now, that the angry response to any situation is mostly a bad habit, and that we can change it if we want to and try hard enough. I don’t mean that we should try to conceal our anger while we continue to seethe inwardly. That would do us much psychological harm. I mean that we should try to stop feeling anger. We must know many people who see the same the same unhappiness we see, people who feel compassion when they see suffering, but who do not react with anger. One of the psychologist’s goals in counseling, is to lead his patients toward accepting the world the way it is. This should tell us that if we cannot accept the world with serenity, we ourselves might become candidates for psychological counseling.

There is a type of personality, called by some, ‘the angry man’. Tho the term is more literary than psychological, it meets a need for a term to describe a person whose chief characteristic is his anger. Saul was such a man.

In 1 Sam 11.5-f, we read and I paraphrase, Now Saul was coming from the field behind the oxen, when he saw all the people weeping. Why so?, he asked, and they told him that the Ammonites had threatened to gouge out the eyes of the men of Jabesh, as part of terms of a treaty. Then it says, “The Spirit of God came mightily upon Saul when he heard these words, and his anger was greatly kindled.”

Typically, we find that in Saul, anger produced a desire for vengeance – a bitter hatred that resulted in the death of many Ammonites.

Subsequently, Saul’s anger, out of control, found David as an object of hatred. Once, he tried unsuccessfully, to pin David to the wall with a spear.

Today, we know that Saul was basically a compassionate man. In fact, his compassion got him in trouble with Samuel.

But when he was angry, he began to strike out blindly, at any person, or animal, that happened to be in his way. In that first fit of anger that I just described, he killed his own oxen.

Now suppose we had to deal with a Saul, or a person like him, who was seething with anger, wouldn’t we begin by saying, ‘Calm down.’ We realize that ‘calm’ is the antidote for the ‘storm’ that is anger. ‘Calm down.’

“And Jesus awoke and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, “Peace! Be still!”, and the wind ceased, and there was a great calm. And they perceived that this was indeed a miracle.

How can we cope with anger? A popular saying for people who are inclined to react with anger is, Count to ten before you act. Meaning, ‘Give yourself time to calm down.’

Until we learn how to turn that great storm into a great calm, we are not going to be able to act rationally in any situation. We are able to calmly survey the situation, perhaps we will find that there is something that we can do to change things. If so, then we are ready to pray for the courage to change the things that can be changed. But first we have a two-step goal before us: Step One, we must learn how to calm down when that great surge of anger overwhelms us. But even before that, we must be sure that it is anger that we feel. Some people do not recognize what they are feeling until someone points it out to them. This is another goal in psychological counseling; to help a person ‘get in touch with his feelings’, as they put it. If we say we have no anger, we deceive ourselves. If we will admit that we do have anger, God is faithful and just, and will remove our anger, and enable us to calm down. We need to recognize anger when we feel it, we then can learn how to dispel it through conscious effort: Count to ten. Listen to David sing and play. Pray for calm – for serenity.

Step-two of our two-step goal is to teach ourselves how to avoid becoming angry in the first place. This is not easy. Years ago, I began trying to do this by telling myself over and over, “I don’t care. I don’t care.” That is I was trying to tell myself that I didn’t care that evil existed, and that people were hurting each other. This didn’t work for me at all.

Then a friend, a co-worker, half jokingly, suggested using the slogan, ‘People are good.’ This is typical of Humanist teaching, and to us it was a bitter joke. We knew very will that people are sinful by nature, but the object of this slogan was to keep the bitter truth out of our minds. A similar teaching, a Christian teaching, is, ‘The World is Good’.

The trouble with this approach is that it enables the practitioner to zero-in on himself, and put the world and its suffering out of his mind. If he can make himself feel good, then the world too must be good. Eli Siegel is not a promoter of one of the ‘feel-good’ religions, but he does say that the most critical factor in a person’s life is his attitude toward the world - that he must learn to accept the world if he expects to find his own life acceptable to him. This is uncomfortably close to say, Unity, or Norman Vincent Peale. I think it avoids the real problem. I am not saying that the threat of the Ammorites should not make us angry. I am saying that anger is not going to do any good – it will not help those threatened, and it certainly will not help us. What I suggest is that we should not be trying to put things out of our mind – what we should be trying to do is to put anger out of our hearts. Jesus cautioned that it is what comes from our hearts that defiles us. You know the teaching, he said, ‘You shall not kill, but I tell you, “Whoever is angry with his brother, has sinned.” Anger that comes from the heart can lead us into killing each other. Psychologists tend to agree. They say that it is not things outside of us that make us angry; we make ourselves angry.

If then, we can learn to control our anger over trivial things, surely, we can control our anger over serious things. It is not that we don’t care that the Jabeshites are in danger of having their eyes gouged out, it is that that we are more likely to be able to do something to relieve the situation if we can survey it calmly and act rationally. Perhaps we should be praying, God grant me the calmness (not the indifference), the self-control, to accept whatever happens, without anger, and where there is something that I can do to relieve, or avoid a bad situation, please O God, grant me the courage to do it. We pray for God’s help, but we must remember his words to Cain, “Why are you angry? And why has your countenance fallen? Sin, he warned, is couching at your door! Its desire is for you, but you must master it.” Meaning perhaps, you must master anger. Yes, God will help us, but it is we ourselves who must master anger.

 

Pastoral Prayer

 

Almighty God, our ever-present help in time of trouble, grant us we pray, the serenity, the calmness, to accept whatever happens without anger. When we discover a situation in which there is needless suffering, and it is a situation where we can do something to alleviate suffering, grant us we pray, the courage to act, either individually, or as a church, to further thy kingdom.

Grant us also, we pray the Faith to believe that the situation that looks hopeless to us is not hopeless to thee. Even so, may we not waste our energies on situations where the probability of success is minimal.

Our Father, we pray that the great calm that came upon the sea of Galilee – that great calm that came upon the Garasene Demoniac, through a simple word from Jesus, may also come upon us, for it is in his name we pray.

 

Comments as of 3/15/08

 

This is a vital topic. Back then anger was a problem for me – a major problem. It is not so much any more, but it is still a problem for some people, thus it is still a vital topic.

Today, I would do major surgery on this sermon, in light of what I have learned since 1982. I won’t do it now, not because it is not an important theme, but that I have other fish to fry.

 

The Living Word of God

2/12/00

The NT RDG for today is from the First Letter of Paul to the Church at Corinth; Chap 1, vs 1 through 3.

Listen for the word of God. You will notice that I always say ‘for’ the word of God, rather than ‘to’. The Prep ‘to’ implies that everything in the bible is the Word of God. I don’t think that it is, but that notion hinders me from seeing the word of God anywhere in it.

Alan Richardson, an English theologian, says, “ . . . the living Word of God is to be encountered in the Bible, wrapped in the ‘swaddling-clothes’ of poor, inadequate and fluctuating human words . . .”

Bibliography: A Theological Word Book Ed by Alan Richardson – 1950 – Macmillan – NYC

Theologians emphasize that ‘theology’ is perceived by the Feeling Brain, at least Alan Richardson sees it that way, and that if we let Rational Man intrude we just might miss out on the whole religious experience. We don’t even know what it is, but we are going to try today to feel ‘the grace of God’.

What I want to do, and what I invite you to do with me today is to read a few verses without having Rational Man looking over our shoulders.

Today, let us let Emotional Man guide us in our examination of these few verses. Let us look for the feelings we get while reading the greeting and salutation to this letter from Paul.

Listen for the word of God:

Paul, called by the will of God to be an apostle of Christ Jesus, and our brother Sosthenes, 2. To the church of God which is at Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints together with all those who in every place call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours:

3. Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

What feelings does the name ‘Paul’ conjure up? Paul wrote more of the NT than anyone else. He is the one who defined the faith, and who insisted that there be no deviations from it. Paul was an intense man, a dedicated man, a devout man. Paul was driven by inner demons to persecute the early Christians. Actually, he was driven by inner demons period, and would have struck out at anything he saw. The Christians were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. This was the man who became a ‘new person altogether’, and who promised us that we could also. Paul is a giant in the Christian faith. When Paul speaks, we listen. Surely, we all must have some feelings about Paul. Do we feel respect for him? This man went through a great deal of suffering in order to bring us these messages – are we grateful? The Catholics consider everyone mentioned in the NT a saint – Do we think of Paul as a saint?

“ . . . called by the will of God . . . “

‘To be called’ in a religious sense is a great honor – we think of ourselves as being ‘called’ – and we remember that Moses was ‘called’, Isaiah was ‘called’, Mary was ‘called’. Sometimes those called were reluctant to serve, but they did the best they could anyway. We have feelings about our call – about our mission – about our limitations.

‘called by the will of God’ – ‘the will of God’ is major theological concept. What does it mean theologically? What does it mean to us personally? What does in mean in this new millennium? Surely we have some feelings about it.

Called to do what? ‘Called to be an apostle.’ ‘apostelo’ – ‘one being sent out – away from’ – like Paul, we are called to be apostles – to be sent away from. We too are missionaries – we are not necessarily sent very far, perhaps only to the house next door, but we are missionaries in that we have a mission. Apostles in the bible are always apostles of Jesus Christ – Paul stresses this – ‘an apostle of Jesus Christ’ – Paul’s whole reason for being is now clear. “This is what my life is all about.” he says. This is an example of Paul’s dedication!

“ . . . and our brother Sosthenes . . .”

Paul almost always had a brother with him. We are not sure who Sosthenes is; he is probably the one who delivered this letter. The key word here is ‘brother’ – this is the way Paul felt about all men and women – this follows from the concept of ‘God our Father’.

“ . . . to the church of God . . .”

‘ekklesia’ – ‘the church’ – ‘the ones called out’. The Church is central to my faith. It is my family – my family tree – my heritage. It gives me continuity with the past. The ancient Hebrews bemoaned the fact that man sprouts in the morning and withers in the evening – that his life was as nothing.

The Christian Faith gives us immortality – we have escaped from ‘bondage to death’. Thus our loved ones do not die – never to be seen again. They are transported to that mystical kingdom called ‘Heaven’, where we will see them again.

“. . . to those sanctified . . .” “hagiasmenois” The root is ‘hagios’ – ‘holy’. ‘Holy’ means ‘set apart for God’. Thus, ‘to the ones having been set apart for God”

A priest or a nun has clearly been set apart for God. If we can accept this idea, then perhaps we can also see ourselves as a ‘priesthood of believers’. A priest ‘ministers’ – he ‘tends to’ his people. Jesus said, “Feed my sheep.” Do we know what that means?

We are sanctified – set apart for God. We are still in this physical world, but we have a mission here. The term ‘agent’ means one who represents and acts for someone else – thus we are ‘agents’ in a sense. We have been called – we have been sent out – and we have a mission – we are representing someone or something.

‘in Christ Jesus’ – I consider this to be a powerful expression because this is the state – and this is the place we want to be in. To be ‘in Christ Jesus’ is to be a ‘new person altogether’. This is OUR GOAL. Not just any new person but one who basks in his new person – who realizes that he is a new and improved person. I recall meeting a new convert who was just bubbling over with joy – I had never seen any one quite as happy as he was. He was a missionary just through his ebullience. He was a ‘new person’ and he knew it.

‘called holy ones’ – RSV – ‘called to be saints’. - “Am I getting through to you?” Paul asks. ‘Are you getting the message?’ You are set apart for God – for God’s service – for the mission of the church, which is Christ’s mission.’

‘together with all those who in every place’ – This letter is thus addressed to you personally, no matter where you are, or when you live.

“. . . who call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ . . .”

It is an ancient concept that the name of a person has at least some (if not all) of the power of that person.

It doesn’t mean a thing to Rational Man, but Feeling Man can relate to the idea. Some, if not most of us, pray ‘in the name of Jesus’. We do that because it is biblically sound, and because this is the way our people have prayed in past generations.

‘The Name’ therefore, deserves great respect. For example, neither the ancient nor the modern Hebrews pronounce the name of YHWH – they may say instead, ‘The Name’, or in a bible reading they will say ‘adonai’ – ‘the Lord’. They do not even say or write the word ‘God’, but substitute ‘G hyphen d’. My CD-ROM of the OT, after I call up a selection, always comes on with a caution – “Your selection may contain the name ‘G hyphen d’. Treat it with the respect it deserves.”

So also, in EX 29:7, we have the commandment, “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain (carelessly); for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.” (KJV) This is all part of the commandment to respect God. Not like you respect your father, or the mayor, or the president, but with awe and reverence.

The Ancient Hebrews used the term ‘to fear God’, an expression we do not use today, but which does convey the idea that God deserves a great deal of respect.

I think the idea is related to Micah’s admonition ‘to walk humbly with your God’. (Micah 6:8) This is hard to do. It is not in the human’s nature to walk humbly with anybody. That Big Ego Big Ego.doc wants us to walk proudly with everybody.

Theologians think that Job is one of the greatest books in the bible because in it, Job finally understands what it means ‘to walk humbly with God’. Not many people in the bible ever learn this.

The goal in seeking this kind of humility is to see our place in the grand scheme. This does not mean to see ourselves as insignificant. This means to see ourselves as members of the family of God – holy ones – set apart for God – called to be God’s trusted servants – called to be the body of Christ, both now and forever.

“. . . from God our Father . . .” The concept of ‘God our Father’ is strictly NT. The term does not appear in the OT. The concept is, therefore, a radical departure from OT understanding - a new concept of God – a new concept of ourselves. Not only is God our Father, suddenly we are a unit, as well as being individuals – it is almost like being God’s chosen people. This is a part of the ‘charis’ – the great gift that we have been given.

Ann Morrow Lindbergh said that she could see a tremendous change in human awareness during her lifetime. Slowly the human was becoming aware of his fellow human – of his quest for happiness – of his humanity.

Most people, not just Christians, now grasp the magnitude of the concept of the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. If this was only discovered during this past century, then I propose that it was the greatest discovery of the century. God, the Father of us all.

“. . . and our brother Sosthenes.” The Brotherhood of Humanity.

“Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.”

Both ‘grace’ and ‘peace’ are blessings, available from God. ‘Charis’ is translated ‘grace’ and we know that it is ‘amazing’, but that doesn’t tell us much. The Kingdom Version translates it ‘undeserved kindness’ which tells us something at least. We know that it is something of value, perhaps a ‘pearl of great value’ – something which we should, and will treasure after we know its value.

Perhaps the initial gift – the ability to perceive that we have been blessed – is the first and greatest gift.

Bearing in mind that everything in the spiritual world is feeling, the differences will be mainly in the feeling the word conjures-up.

‘ Grace to you and peace ‘. We know inner turmoil, as well as the world of physical violence. And we know that ‘eirene’ is the absence of both internal and external turmoil. We know what it feels like, and we know that it is a great blessing.

Paul considered ‘peace’ one of the greatest blessings he could have ever received. The reason for this was that before his conversion he was wretched from inner turmoil. Only after he became 'in Christ Jesus’ did he begin to understand the ‘the peace of God which is beyond understanding’.

 

In summary: Most of us hasten through greetings and salutations – perhaps too hastily. Today we have considered the greeting and salutation from Paul to the church at Corinth and to all of us. We have seen that it contains a wealth of spiritual nourishment that we might easily have overlooked. We have learned to look beyond the mere words. I hope and pray that we have learned to let the poor, inadequate, fallible words speak to us – to enable us to hear the Word of God that is in the Holy Scriptures.

May God add his blessings to these thoughts.

A:\New Book.docNew Book.doc

 

 

Wikipedia – By providing the user access to physiological information about which he or she is generally unaware, biofeedback allows users to gain control of physical processes previously considered an automatic response of the autonomous nervous system.

Journal – 02/14/09 – Bio-feed-back

I have a bio-feed-back tool that I carry around with me all the time. It is my waist-line. Right now it is about 42”. It should be no more than 32”. What is my waist-line telling me right now? It is telling me that I am eating too much. And why am I eating too much? Something is telling me that I am hungry all the time. My Rational brain knows that this is characteristic of all life. Most creatures spend their whole day looking for food, and eating it if they find it. Ordinarily, the human does that too; that’s why we Americans are overweight if not obese.

We know that this is a problem for us, therefore we build our lives around a life-style that subverts this natural tendency. Not every regimen works for every person, but every person must find a regimen that works for him. Starting with the most important item (because it is the most neglected), we devote say one hour a day to physical exercise. Second, we allocate one hour a day to mental exercise – we exercise our Rational brains. Third we allocate one hour a day (or perhaps seven hours a week) to our social life.

Of course, working people spend eight hours a day working – then, depending on circumstances, at least an hour a day in commuting. I am retired so these allocations don’t apply to me. My point is, we build our lives around a routine that works for us.

What’s wrong with my routine right now? I usually watch the local news at 4:00 PM, the national news at 5:00, Jeopardy at 6:00, and the Wheel at 6:30. It is my hope to escape from this routine. As I have said, Commercial TV is trying to self-destruct, and I want to help it. I get the news from Google – I don’t need to watch the game shows. (It isn’t worth much, but it is something that my wife and I do together.) I don’t need to give three hours of my day to watching commercials with very little substance thrown in. I say ‘watch’ – I ‘mute’ on the words ‘next’, or ‘stay with us’. One of the reasons I do not listen to radio is that there is no way of knowing, with mute on, when the commercial is over.

I am on the computer at least four hours a day so far, but commercials threaten that media too. I have pop-up blockers in place, and I soon learn the most obnoxious Pages and try to avoid them. At least part of this computer routine is exercise for my Rational Brain.

I listen to my MP3 player for at least one hour a day. I have on it carefully selected music that soothes my Feeling Brain. I don’t know whether this is ‘exercise’ or not, but it is at least escape from ‘this world’. What are the pressures from this world that I need to escape from? It is my responsibility as a citizen and a Christian missionary, to know what is going on in the world around me – ‘this world’. To this end, I read Information Clearing House, Common Dreams, and World Socialist Web Site. Once in a while I get information from other sources but not often.

I need this information in order to be a good missionary, and that is what I have been called to do.

(Right now, we have received a brochure from the Coalition for Medicare Choices. I am sure it is from the Medical Insurance Companies. This has been one of their weapons against universal health care. And fight it they will, every step of the way.)

The reason I read the above-mentioned News Sources is that BigMoney owns and controls the Commercial Media. They will tell us nothing against BigMoney, and BigMoney is our enemy.

We do what we can to escape his clutches – and that’s not much, but the struggle leaves us exhausted.

After we have given it our all, let’s escape to the Spiritual World. We need to allocate an hour a day to the Spiritual Life. The Spiritual world by its very nature is nebulous.

nebulous

1. 1) adjective, lacking definite form, shape, or content; vague or amorphous: nebulous reasons
2. 2) adjective, of, characteristic of, or resembling a nebula
3. 3) adjective, misty or hazy

Collins English Electronic Dictionary – Digital Edition: 2008 © HarperCollins Publishers 2008

Related words – Synonyms

obscure, misty, obscure, ambiguous, hazy, vague, indefinite, amorphous, dim, hazy, indeterminate, vague, murky, indeterminate, shapeless, confused, shadowy, imprecise, indistinct, uncertain, cloudy, indistinct (Rare)

About all we can say for sure is that we must put our rational Brains on ‘hold’. I can do this best back in the woods. Other people can do this by ‘gazing into the calyx of a yellow flower with black spots’ – any situation that will enable you to put the Rational Brain on ‘hold’.

I am aware that you can do this with hallucinogenic drugs, but they do irreparable damage to the Rational Brain, and that is neither necessary nor desirable.

Using no drugs, nor other stimulants, you will be able to recognize a rational thought if it presents itself, and to brush it aside. When you are able to hold all rational thoughts at bay, you should be able to ‘feel’ something. These feelings can’t be described by words, although many have tried. Christians sometimes say that they feel ‘at one’ with God, or with Jesus, or with the Holy Spirit. Sometimes they say that they feel the ‘in-dwelling’ Spirit – sometimes they feel ‘Ha Shekinah’ [the presence]. I often feel ‘at-one’ with the universe. When I project into the universe, I am far removed from all man-made objects, or anything affected by man in any way.

In Othello, the protagonist has a line – Had all his hairs been lives, my great revenge had stomach for them all. Othello has just killed Cassio, as I recall, and was saying that taking his one life was not satisfying. This story is a ‘tragedy’ – it is meant to be sad. Nobody is going to ‘satisfied’ in this story. But what I see in this one line is that revenge is never satisfied. I remember this line because I felt this way at one time. My enemy in this case was a fly, but it illustrates the point. Add another line to the human condition – Revenge is never satisfied.

Is it Well with My soul?

When peace, like a river, attendeth my way, when sorrows like sea billows roll; whatever my lot, thou hast taught me to say, It is well, it is well with my soul. It is well with my soul, it is well, it is well with my soul. Though Satan should buffet, though trials should come, let this blest assurance control; that Christ has regarded my helpless estate, and hath shed his own blood for my soul. My sin, oh, the bliss of this glorious thought! My sin, not in part but the whole, is nailed to the cross, and I bear it no more, praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul! And, Lord, haste the day when my faith shall be sight, the clouds be rolled back as a scroll; the trump shall resound, and the Lord shall descend, even so, it is well with my soul. It is well with my soul, it is well, it is well with my soul. Words by Horotio G. Spafford, 1873. Music by Philip P. Bliss, 1876

Meditation: It might be that Confession is the most important part of the Worship Service. If we accept what Paul says, then it is one of the givens of the bible that God does not need anything from us. It is we who have the need. It is the purpose of the Worship Service to bring us, his people, closer to him – to his Presence. And while we are this close – while we are at-one with God – this is our opportunity to unburden ourselves of some of the rubbish we have been carrying around the past week. Is there a long list of things that are included in this catch-all term? Not really. Have we been selfish? Have we not been loving persons? If so, and we will admit it, God will forgive our sins, and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

The Christian Message – Salvation

Do we need to be ‘saved’? If so, from what?

We need to be saved from ourselves. We are driven by our genes to look out for ourselves only. All of us have similar genes. What kind of a world would it be if none of us looked out for the other person?

Part of the Sermon ‘The Lord’s Prayer’ – Now for a closing thought.

I had told Val Isenhauer, our permanent Pulpit Supply at LV, that if she could please everybody, she would surely be called. Later I asked her whether she was pleasing everybody. She said, “This congregation needs a lot of love. I do my best to supply that Love.”

This statement reminded me, again, that meeting Emotional needs are a vital part of any congregations’ expectations. This is hard to do from the pulpit. The ideal situation is to have a Pastor who can be in his/her study at least four hours a day, every day, so that those who are hurting, (and there are many more than you might suppose) so that that those who are hurting, or in doubt, or lonely, or just want to discuss a faith problem, can come in and pour their little hearts out to someone who cares. This is a vital part of a pastor’s duties. Not all Pastors can do this – and not all who can do it – can do it well. But some can. And some lay people can. After all, we all are ministers, and we all are called to minister to each other. It might be a part of our ministry to provide formal training on how to do this. At least consider it as a possibility.

May God add his blessings to this message. Amen

Not mentioned here is the person or persons who visit the minister just to kill time – they have no real need, but they can take up his time – time that he does not have to spare.

The Sermon – The Nature of the Holy Spirit

is not clear from today’s readings.  It is only in Romans 8 that Paul clearly explains the Holy Spirit – it is only in Romans that Paul has reached the maturity necessary to understand and describe the Holy Spirit.

Rom 8:2 For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set me free from the law of sin and death.

Paul spends about half of his energies in trying to clarify what the Jewish Law [the Torah] means for Christians.  He never belittles ‘the law’, especially not for Jews, but for Gentiles, he wants to introduce another ‘law’ that will mean as much to them as the Torah does to the Jews.  In this verse, he calls this new ‘law’, ‘the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus.’  It isn’t really a ‘law’ – it is a substitute for the Torah.  Paul wants the Gentile to feel its importance.  In that way he will be encouraged to seek it out, and to treasure it when he finds it.

How important is this ‘law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus’?

Paul says, “It has set me free from the law of sin and death.”  There is no ‘law’ of sin and death – this is just a figure of speech for Paul. He means, “This is my nature.”

What is it, then, that has been given to us, if it isn’t a law?  It is the ability to move from ‘this world’ – the physical world – into the Spiritual world – it is the ability to accept that there is a spiritual world – not just ‘accept’ – but to embrace it as ‘a pearl of great value’.

Jesus was speaking of the Kingdom of God when he said it was like a pearl of great value, but I believe that the Kingdom of God is the spiritual world.  ‘The Kingdom of God is within you.’

A person must put aside this world in so far as possible, and concentrate on entering into and becoming a part of the spiritual world.  If he does not make that effort, then he is likely to find that this world consumes his whole life.

We must focus on spirituality – we must concentrate on stepping into that whole other world.  We know how to do this because it is a part of most people’s experience.

Children put on a Halloween costume and become a vampire.  Actors put on a whole new persona – like a Spiritual Christian, they become a new person altogether.  This is one of Paul’s favorite images – ‘put on Christ’ – ‘put on the new person’ – ‘put on immortality’ – ‘Put on the whole armor of God,’

Is it hard to leave this physical world and move into the spiritual world?  Not at all, IF we will let ourselves do it.

Rom 8:11  “If the Spirit [of God] dwells in you, [God] will give life to your mortal bodies also, through his Spirit which dwells in you.”

Paul is saying or implying that without the indwelling Spirit, we do not have life, or at least that our lives are empty.  If we do have the indwelling Spirit, our lives become vital and full – we feel alive.

To paraphrase Rom 8:5:  “People who live solely in this physical world keep their minds on the things and activities of this world, but those who have access to the spiritual world thru the presence of the Holy Spirit, are able to grasp the importance of the spiritual world and all that is in it.”

To live according to the flesh is to live outside the spiritual world.

‘To set the mind on the flesh is death.’  ‘In what way?’, we ask.  Because soon or late, the body is going to become satiated with physical input – it is going to reach a point where it will ask, “Is this all there is to life?”  Rational Man cannot see any purpose to life – he cannot account for his presence in this physical world.  If death is the end of his life, then he is already dead.

But!  “To set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace.” Not just this life, but eternal life – not just physical satisfaction, but emotional satisfaction – a feeling of oneness with the universe – absolute peace – the peace of God which is beyond human comprehension.

“If, then, you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.  Set your minds on things that are above, not on earthly things.”  (Col 3:1-2)

Do not be conformed to this world.  But be transformed by the Holy Spirit into a new person altogether.

Put off the old nature, with its obsession with worldly things, and put on the new nature in which you have an intimate relationship with the amazing love of God in Christ Jesus.

 

 

The Healing Ministry of the Church – Feb 09

Mk 1.40 – And a leper came to him beseeching him, and kneeling said to him, "If you will, you can make me clean."

[41] Moved with pity, he stretched out his hand and touched him, and said to him, "I will; be clean." [42] And immediately the leprosy left him, and he was made clean. [43] And he sternly charged him, and sent him away at once, [44] and said to him, "See that you say nothing to any one; but go, show yourself to the priest, and offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded, for a proof to the people." [45] But he went out and began to talk freely about it, and to spread the news, so that Jesus could no longer openly enter a town, but was out in the country; and people came to him from every quarter.

The Healing Ministry of the Church – for Feb 09

When I first began to work on this sermon, I thought that the Scripture Rdg for today was Mk 2.1-12, which is the story of the ‘Healing of the Paralytic’. When I found out later that the proper reading was ‘The healing of the Leper’, I realized that these stories had much in common, in fact, they have much in common with the whole of Mark, because Mark stresses the Healing Ministry of the Church, and that is what I want to stress today.

You will not find much of the teachings of Jesus in Mark, just a hint here and there. But the thing is, the healings and the teachings are very closely related. Verse 41: says ‘Moved with pity, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him . . .’

Unless you are not one of us, you will immediately see that the motive for the healing is that Jesus was ‘moved with pity’ – that was why he healed. And this is the basis for his teaching: ‘Have pity’, ‘have compassion’ – feel what the other person feels.

‘If, then, you have been raised with Christ’, and you do feel that pity that he teaches, then you are going to ask. ‘What can we do to alleviate the suffering that we see all around us?’

What did Jesus do? He reached out his hand, and he touched him. Believe it or not, this gesture works even for us. Just reach out your hand and touch the suffering person. It’s not a miracle, but it feels like a miracle. Just caring will make a big difference.

If your fellow person is hungry, it will be nice if you have a sandwich in your hand. We know how easy it is to get discouraged, because as the Presbyterian Hunger program says, there are millions of hungry people out there, but you don’t have to do it all; remember there are millions of Christians out there, too, each doing something.

 

Now suppose the suffering person is a leper. Are you going to reach out and touch him or her? Today’s leprosy is AIDS. Are you going to reach out to that person?

Jesus spent a lot of time and effort on another aspect of healing – he wanted us to become reconciled to God and to our fellow human being – in fact, to all of creation. He said that we should love God with our whole being, and our neighbor as ourselves. It seems a little quirky for us to try to reach out our hands to God, but consider it a figure of speech.

The Las Vegas Church used to call the people to worship with these words, ‘Let us bring our hearts and minds to bear on our morning worship of God’. This is the way we reach out to God – with our hearts and minds. As John says (4.24), “God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth." So also, I think that this must be our approach as we commune with God during our quiet time each day.

Then, Jesus said, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Have we ever stressed that this commandment implies that we are commanded to love ourselves. Low self-esteem is a major emotional-health problem in America today. “I’m no good. I don’t deserve anything. I’m not worth anything.” If you ever feel this way, or know of anyone who feels this way, ask yourself, “How does Jesus feel about me?” If Jesus loves me, how can I be of no value?

This commandment is almost saying, “All of my children are of equal esteem. I want the best for each of them.”

But apparently, what God wants, and what we want are two different things. A certain Gene Fowler, has said, ”Everyone needs a warm personal enemy or two to keep him free from rust in the movable parts of his mind.”

Personally, I don’t think Fowler really means this, and I certainly I don’t think the Christian subscribes to such thinking. Jesus said (Mt 5.25), “Make friends quickly with your accuser”. This is a pretty radical statement. Who wants to make friends with Osama bin Laden? We may not want to do it, but Jesus asks us to do it. Jesus asks us to reach out to him – to listen to him – to take his hand. Jesus’ answer to the warring nations is, “Blessed are the peacemakers.” It is ironic that the big Colt 45 of the West was called the Peacemaker, and the big B 36 Bomber of WWII was called the Peacemaker. This isn’t what Jesus means by Peacemakers.

He means, The Healers, and we know it. And he also knew that friction between nations begins with friction between individuals. It is the nature of individuals to want more and more territory. A man in Lincoln County said of his neighbor, “He doesn’t want all of the land in the world, he only wants that which borders him.” That’s the way people are, because it is in their genes. Look at the situation between India and Pakistan, a real powder-keg with its roots in their border disputes. Even in America, every day in the courts, there are disputes between neighbors over fences.

Some years ago, my neighbor, who had cut down all of the trees on her land, picked up the fallen fence and fastened it to my trees. This action moved the fence back about 3’ onto my land. Needless to say, I didn’t take too kindly to this, and I told her so. She said she had no intention to push the fence back on me, and so she sent her husband over to walk the disputed area with me. We got the fence back where it belonged, with no further wrangling. Today we are all good neighbors, because we were able to work out our differences.

But this neighbor later told my wife that I was really hot under the collar when I called her. I didn’t realize that I had been, but it is certainly not the way a Christian begins to negotiate. Jesus’ way is the gentle way – the loving way – the Healing Way.

Jesus said (Mt 5.23), “So if you are offering your gift at the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift.”

And whom did Jesus consider to be our brother? Everybody!

Now this saying has some connotations that you may not be aware of. I have found, and perhaps you have had the same experience – I have found that if I have something against my brother – I have found that it is difficult to move into the spiritual world. Resentments just kill it.

Anything that Paul mentions in Colossians – will stop me at the gate. (Col 1.12) – ‘Put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassion, kindness, lowliness, humility, and patience, forbearing one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.’

When Paul says ‘put on’, he means like you ‘put on a coat’. If I do not wear these virtues like a garment, it is not likely that I can enter the Kingdom of God. The Christian Way does not come easy for me – I have to work at it – but when it does come, it is worth more to me than that pearl of great value.

Yes! Leave your gift at the altar, and go, first become reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift. The Healing Ministry of the Church!

Jesus said (MT 18.15), “If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his faults, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained a brother.”

And Peter said (I Peter 3.18), “Always be prepared to make a defense to anyone who calls you to account for the hope that is in you, yet do so with courtesy and respect.”

I think that what we are talking about here is ‘negotiating’; and to a lesser extent ‘being persuasive’.

This was another hard lesson for me to learn. Somehow, I always thought that the other person would automatically be aware of how I felt – that I did not have to explain it to him. It took me years to learn that the burden was on me. I had to defend my position. Both Jesus and Peter are telling us that we must ‘negotiate’ – we must dicker – we must bargain. And if we are to be the most effective at it, we must learn to be ‘persuasive’.

At the international level, this is called ‘diplomacy’. And it certainly does not mean what Hillary calls ‘power diplomacy’ – “If you don’t accept our terms, we will ‘nuke’ you.” Dean Rusk used to call this ‘brink of war’ diplomacy’. Out of any negotiated settlement, each side must feel that he got as much as he could. He must feel that the terms are acceptable. He should never feel that the terms are unacceptable, but that he had no real choice.

And what about healing within the family? We have that beautiful parable on Forgiveness, called ‘The Prodigal Son’ (Lk 15.11-32). The father forgives, but the older son harbors resentments. This is almost the whole gospel in one parable. Jesus shows us how Forgiveness works, and to a lesser extent how Resentment works. And all of this is within the family.

Then we have, also in Luke (10.25–37), the parable of the ‘The Good Samaritan’. This is the story of healing between ethnic groups. Healing in general, but especially healing between the Jews and the Samaritans (Israel).

Today we have a similar clash between the Shiites and the Sunnis; two Muslim Groups, so similar that we can hardly see any difference, and yet they are killing each other over these fine points.

The Good Samaritan is known the world over for it’s teaching, even by people who don’t even know where it came from.

Known and recognized for its fundamentally moral teachings. The Healing Ministry of the Church!

Friends, as you re-read the Gospel of Mark, remember that you are not reading something by one of the most gifted writers of the day; Mark is an amateur, no more qualified to write such an earth-shaking article than you are. God doesn’t always seek out the qualified to do his work; he makes those he chooses qualified. Mark is no more than one of us. He does the best he can with what he has. But he has a message. You may see something more in it than I do. Fine! But I see the Healing Ministry of the Church – and I think that is enough.

May God add his blessing to this message.

 

This I believe

Notice the Heading that I have inserted – This I believe! I consider this RDG a Statement of Faith. And it is? The Church, almost from the beginning has had various Creeds or “Yo Creos” that are considered necessary for the Believers to subscribe to, beginning with the Apostles Creed, on down to A Brief Statement of Faith, that the Southern Denomination brought with them when the two Denominations merged.

Nobody knows why this new Creed was a part of the package, but it was. Personally, I think it was because the Southern Denomination, being more conservative than the Northern Denomination, wanted it known that they did not like the Confession of 1967, and that they did not subscribe to it.

 

The Liberal Church does subscribe to it, and considers it one of the great landmarks in Presbyterian History, in fact in the history of the holy catholic Church. It has been called “The Bible Scholars’ Confession”, and in a sense this is true. It is difficult for Lay People to grasp, but not impossible. All it takes is a little diligent study. I for one, subscribe to it 100%.

Here for the first time is a Creed that calls for Action. All the previous Creeds merely state what the Theologians believe, but give us no clue as to what to do with this Faith. Not that the Theologians were ever of one mind. They disagreed violently on almost every point. Every creed has been a compromise after a bitter struggle. Never has the Christian Church, or our Denomination been of one mind on any issue. A study of the history of the Church will show you how serious some of these disagreements were. Perhaps by the time they got the Theology ironed out, they had no strength left to out line what the Faith called us to do.

Perhaps, they felt that Scripture was clear enough in this regard. This little Creed is not the whole Gospel. The whole gospel demands action in this Physical World. Jesus went about Teaching, Preaching, and Healing. And what did he teach? As he said in Mt 25.40, “As you did it to one of the least of these my Brothers, you did it to me.” And in Mk 12.31, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Lk 10.33 “But a Samaritan, when he saw him, had compassion.” And in Lk 16.19, the great parable of The Rich Man and Lazarus.” And in Jn 14.35, “By this, all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” And finally in Jn 21.17, “Feed My Sheep.”

This is the Christian life, called by Jesus, “The Way.” This is what you were called to do! You are called to become a Servant of the Lord. Others first, yourself second. But this is still not the Good News. The Good News is that when anyone is in Christ, he/she becomes a new person altogether. Behold the old person is gone. This is the Good News. As a new person, we rejoice every day – every moment. Jesus is Lord and we are his servants. We put ourselves in his care, and forget everything else. We have no fear in this Life nor in the Life to come. He will take care of us.

 

Setting Priorities

At one time I complained about spending more on a retarded child than we spent on a normal, healthy child.  (I felt at that time resentment, which is not good for me or anyone else.)  I probably felt that money spent on a retarded child was wasted.  (I still don’t know what good it does.  I do know that the parents of a retarded child have tremendous guilts – as though it was their fault – and that sometimes drives them to push for extra investment in those children.)

On the other hand, I do think that we (the taxpayer) should spend more money on the emotionally disturbed child than we do on the normal, healthy child.  I think that if we don’t do this, he will grow up to do us much harm.  We do this for our own protection.

People worry a lot about ‘invasion of privacy’ and ‘Big Brother’ watching us, but for our own peace and security we must learn to spot these potential sources of violence and to at least keep a close watch on them.  If there is anything we can do for them (like therapy) we should do it.

The man who killed our daughter was a known risk – brandishing his gun in public and generally frightening people, but nothing was done to stop him or help him.

Even so, there is always a possibility that a normal, healthy person will succumb to his primal instincts and try to dominate one or more of us, but we do have at least a fighting chance to make peace with him (how do you like that metaphor?) by negotiating.

 

Is that fault-finding?  It is my hope that everything I say comes from my ‘Spiritual Channel’. Well not exactly everything – there is still the Physical World, with its Terrorists, and brutality.  Sometime I want to comment on that situation, especially if I have some ‘constructive criticism’.  It will continue to be a toss-up between the ideal and the practical.

 

Chapter 21 [of The satisfying Life] is called the Epilogue because it seems to be an after thought, appended to the apparently finished gospel. In verse 12 we have that rather cryptic reading, “Now none of the disciples dared ask [of the risen Lord], “Who are you?”

Several times in the Gospel stories, we have the situation where the disciples, and others, didn’t recognize the risen Lord.

In conclusion, let me say that I don’t want to belittle anyone’s Faith, but when he tries to make his Faith a National Religion by force, he has gone too far. I like the system of separation of Church and State. And when he supports a foreign State over his own nation, he has gone too far.

 

Did Paul ever leave his readers feeling down about anything? I don’t think he did. I have just checked out Romans. Will now proceed to I Cor.

I Cor has one nice verse: ICor 16.13 “Be watchful. Stand firm in your faith. Be courageous. Be strong. Let all that you do be done in love.” But in 16.22 he misses the mark: “If anyone has no love for the Lord, let him be accursed.” This is not Christian at all. II Cor13.11 is a nice charge, and of course, verse 14 is the standard Trinitarian Benediction. Gal 5.16- introduces us to the famous ‘Fruit of the Spirit’ statement. The Charge in Ephesians is in 4.31-32. Philippians 4.8-9 contains a nice closing thought. Col 2.20 to 3.17 sums-up the Christian passport to the Spiritual World. I Thes 12-22 is a nice charge. I have nothing in I Thes red-lined. Must re-read it. I have a lot of I Tim red-lined. Also quite a bit of II Tim. I have 3.2 of Titus red-lined. Nothing in Philemon. I have red-lined the charge in Hebrews 13.1-5 – the Benediction in 13.20-21 is also red-lined – otherwise, not much in Hebrews. Quite a few red-lines in James. Quite a bit in I Peter. A few verses in II Peter. Much in I John. Nothing in II or III John. Nothing in Jude. Very little in Rev.

So! Most every book in the NT ends with a benediction, which in itself is usually up-beat. It is now my intention to work toward an up-beat message for every sermon.

 

 

 

Mon before Halloween – 10:00 AM – Macie’s Mound (in the woods)

 

I have been here for about an hour by a small campfire. The sun is shining – the weather is mild – no wind. What I have been doing, without realizing it, was TM, using the Mantra “Whose woods these are I think I know. His home is in the village though…”

tran·scen·dent (trn-sndnt) adj. 1. Surpassing others; preeminent or supreme. 2. Lying beyond the ordinary range of perception: "fails to achieve a transcendent significance in suffering and squalor" National Review. 3. Philosophy a. Transcending the Aristotelian categories. b. In Kant's theory of knowledge, being beyond the limits of experience and hence unknowable. 4. Being above and independent of the material universe. Used of the Deity.

tran·scendence, tran·scenden·cy n.- tran·scendent·ly adv. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition copyright ©2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2003. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

Transcendent – Merriam/Webster – Adj

1 a: exceeding usual limits : surpassing b: extending or lying beyond the limits of ordinary experience c in Kantian philosophy : being beyond the limits of all possible experience and knowledge 2: being beyond comprehension 3: transcending the universe or material existence — compare immanent 24: universally applicable or significant <the antislavery movement…recognized the transcendent importance of liberty — L. H. Tribe> end of definition

I see nothing man-made from here – not even a fence – though evidence of human activity is all about me. The thing is, it is unobtrusive. At least one human thought entered my mind – define ‘transcendent’. It means to me, ‘in the spiritual world’.

Naturally one moves ahead to ask, ‘what is the difference between TM and ‘contemplation’?

2. contemplation – a calm, lengthy, intent consideration

musing, reflection, rumination, thoughtfulness, reflexion

cogitation, study – attentive consideration and meditation; "after much cogitation he rejected the offer"

consideration – the process of giving careful thought to something

meditation, speculation – continuous and profound contemplation or musing on a subject or series of subjects of a deep or abstruse nature; "the habit of meditation is the basis for all real knowledge"

meditation – (religion) contemplation of spiritual matters (usually on religious or philosophical subjects)

introspection, self-contemplation, self-examination – the contemplation of your own thoughts and desires and conduct

retrospect – contemplation of things past; "in retrospect"

immanent – Something existing in the realm of the material universe and/or human consciousness

Contemplation

We define contemplation as focused thinking which explores a particular topic. Examples could include pondering questions such as, “How should I really be spending my free time?” or “What are my moral beliefs?”

What is the difference between contemplation and meditation? The words “contemplation” and “meditation” are not used consistently across religious and spiritual traditions. Here at the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society, we have found it most useful to define contemplation the exploration of a topic or question. We differentiate this from meditation, in which one purposefully avoids following thoughts in order to develop mental discipline and peacefulness without distraction.

Making Contemplation a Contemplative Practice Contemplation can be incorporated into daily life as a regular practice by first paying attention to questions or ideas that arise throughout the day. Carrying a small notebook or voice recorder can be helpful. Then, set aside some time and sit comfortably. Repeat the question or idea to yourself and simply focus on the train of thought that the issue leads you to. If you find that you’ve strayed from your topic too much, repeat the question again. You may find that writing your thoughts down helps to keep you focused, as well as providing a record of your contemplation session for future reference.

Sample Questions

A few ideas to get your juices flowing:

· What can I do to help improve the world?

· What are my talents and how can I put them to the best use?

· What are changes I’d like to make in my life?

Of course, contemplation is also a wonderful way to deeply consider more explicitly religious and spiritual topics.

The main thing is, I am not pushing any of this. I am turning my mind loose. At one moment, Princess Diana entered my mind. All I did was to gaze down at a clump of scrub oak nearby, and these thoughts slowly disappeared from my mind. It was so impressive that I noticed it.

It is part of my nature to see in this setting – in any setting – things that ‘need to be done’ – in this case pruning. This area was burned over a few years ago, and so there a lot of dead, stubby branches on all of the trees that I see as needing to be pruned. They don’t bother Jack, and of course, nothing bothers Brian – only me. Is this fault-finding, and should I try to put it to rest?

There are 10,000 things on this ranch that ‘need to be done’. Am I going to let each of them bug me? I hope not.

I hope that I can accept this faulty world the way it is, and move on into the Spiritual World, where, even though nothing is perfect there, it doesn’t trouble me. [elsewhere I say, ‘everything is perfect in the Spiritual world’.] I must put myself into the whole universe (since Time began), and look at these presently worldly faults in perspective. I can see Time here as the Fourth Dimension. I see the trees, faulty as they are, living out their lives, as happy as a tree can be, and then dying to return their elements to the Cosmic Mass. With this Cosmic View, we see that activities of individual persons is a trivial matter in the big picture. One thousand years from now, what will the present turmoil mean? Isn’t the Christian Faith a Faith for all time?

I can’t believe that what we see is all there is.

Basically the Christian faith is powerless – as God is powerless – Re: Bonhoeffer. “God is weak and powerless in the world, and that is precisely the way, in which he is with us to help us.” From Spong “A New Christianity for a New Age.”

We can’t change the world – never could – never will – all we can change is ourselves. But we can change ourselves. We can set ourselves apart from this faulty world. All this tells me is that we don’t need to radically alter the Faith. All we need to do is to make sure that it is not abandoned.

We also need to make sure that its primary virtues are held firmly. Foremost is, perhaps, humility. None of us should see ourselves as crucial to the Faith. W e have ideas. We want what is best for the Faith, but none of our ideas is crucial.

Each of us is vital – we need all of our saints. So we do not dismiss anything any one of us says. I do not speak for the Faith – I speak as a believer.

Presbytery, as part of the PCUSA, does not speak for the Faith – neither does the PCUSA. Each of us is a part of it – and each of us has a voice in it. Bearing all of this in mind, I offer this sermon as one voice.

 

Contemplation – a sermon

Ps.46.10 "Be still, and know that I am God.”

Ps.51.10 Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me.

So! , The Psalmist says, “Be still and know that I am God.”

Right now, we are still as far as the eye can see, but unfortunately, for at least some of us, our minds are flopping around like a fish out of water. This verse is telling us not only to be physically still, but also to be mentally still. How do we do that?

My suggestion is that we try contemplation. You may have been led to believe that contemplation is only for the Catholic Clergy – not so. People of all faiths and all persuasions contemplate. I contemplate. My way may not work for you, but once you have the principles down, you can develop a system that will work for you.

Is there any commandment that says any thing about being still? Yes there is. That commandment (from Ex 20) is: 8 ‘Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy.’

9 ‘For six days you shall labour and do all your work.

10 But the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work—you, your son, or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns.

11 For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and consecrated it.’

This is the way we understand it, but in fact, according to modern Jewish teaching, the commandment really means ‘you shall cease from doing anything’ – it certainly doesn’t mean ‘to rest’. That’s why the Jewish Sabbath Laws are so complicated. They try to spell out what ‘doing nothing’ means. To them, turning on a light or striking a match is doing something.

Even though doing nothing physically is hard enough, it is even harder to do nothing mentally. But it is vitally important – in fact it is the secrete to contemplation. Why is contemplation so important?

Because it is in contemplation that we are closest to God. Let me tell you my approach.

I find it best for me to be back in the woods – in a park like place – where nothing man-made distracts me. I am such a fault-finder that nothing a faulty human makes is completely acceptable to me. I am a little less critical of what God has made. Fault-finding destroys spirituality for me.

I try to put my mind in neutral – that is, I want it to be ‘doing nothing’. But I do know that as we look back through the stars to the distant galaxies, we are looking back in time. What we see is actually the way it was millions of years ago. I elaborate on this idea as I gaze through the trees. I imagine that I am going back in time to Zero time. Even before the Big Bang – creation. At that time, nothing existed except God. Even so, God is a presence, not something that I can detect with my five senses. All I know is that nothing exists except me and God. When you get here, you know you are there. You know then that everything is alright. I don’t realize it, but I am in the Kingdom of Heaven. I am not in it for long, but I am in it long enough to realize that Jesus was right; it is worth more than a Pearl of Great Value.

Paul Says in II Cor 12.1-9,

”[2] I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven — whether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows. [3] And I know that this man was caught up into Paradise — whether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows — [4] and he heard things that cannot be told, which man may not utter. [5] On behalf of this man I will boast, but on my own behalf I will not boast, except of my weaknesses. [6] Though if I wish to boast, I shall not be a fool, for I shall be speaking the truth. But I refrain from it, so that no one may think more of me than he sees in me or hears from me. [7] And to keep me from being too elated by the abundance of revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan, to harass me, to keep me from being too elated. [8] Three times I besought the Lord about this, that it should leave me; [9] but he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." I will all the more gladly boast of my weaknesses, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. [10] For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities; for when I am weak, then I am strong.

This passage is just cryptic enough to convince us that Paul had had the Mystic Experience fourteen years before. I don’t doubt it. One thing is sure – these experiences cannot be described in words. In verse [4] he says, and he heard things that cannot be told, which man may not utter. This does not mean that man is not permitted to utter – it means that he is not able to utter.

Now, let us look at the second Rdg for today.

Ps.51.10 Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me.

This is vital. For as John says, I Jn 1.8, “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.

[9] [but], If we confess our sins, [God] is faithful and just, and will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

God knows that I do not have a clean heart, and that I do not have a right spirit within me. But I know that if I confess my sin God will forgive me and cleanse me from all unrighteousness. And that is the condition necessary for my spiritual experience. I absolutely must have a clean heart, and a right spirit, else it will never happen.

How clean? One mystic has said, “(1) Be kind towards everybody.

Please remember:

If you are not kind enough with your neighbors, if you are not loving with your fellow men, if you are not thankful to God for all things that he has given to you – then forget about meditation. It has no use for you and no meditation technique will help you.

(2) Thank God for everything you have.

(3) Remind yourself that you are an ordinary, simple person.”

OK! You say, ‘So, now that I have inner peace, where does that get us?’

Don’t forget that this is not ordinary Peace, this is the Peace that Jesus promised us. Not everyone needs or can use Inner Peace, but I know that it was a blessing for me. For years I suffered from ‘Inner turmoil’, and I can guarantee you that that is not a blessed state.

Now! I will caution you that ‘inner peace’ is not necessarily an on-going condition. It is easy to lose and hard to regain. But, it is there for the asking. Jesus said, ‘Knock and the door will be opened.’

Remember that we are workers in the Vineyard of the Lord. A Worker needs three things: Strength, Stamina, and Resolve. If our Strength, Stamina, or Resolve is being vitiated by inner turmoil, then we are not going to be able to do the work that we were called to do. We must take care of our physical health, of our emotional health, and of our spiritual health. In order to do that, we must learn to rest. We must learn how to ‘do nothing’; so that when the time comes for us to ‘do something’ we will be able to do it.

That is to say, we need ‘inner peace’ so that we can do the Lord’s work.

Now in addition, we need ‘inner peace’ so that we can do our own work. If you are the average person, then I am sure that you have work to be done. You need to be strong and vigorous in order to do it.

And finally, you will discover that you feel better without inner turmoil. You rest better, and you are more agreeable to be with. A happy person radiated happiness all around him. Inner peace not only enables you to be happy; it enables those who have to be around you to be happy.

 

May God add his blessings to this message.

El Rito – Aug 5, 07 - The Peace

 

The Gospel reading for today is from the Gospel according to Luke, Chap 12. This Section of Luke deals with Materialism, and should be studied and digested. The fact that I am focusing on the letter of Paul to the Colossians today does not mean that the Gospel RDG is not important – it means that, in my opinion, the Colossians RDG is more important.

As you may know, I write a lot. Naturally, a lot of what I write about is the Christian Faith. I incorporate a lot of this material into a book I call “Commentary on the Christian faith”. As I was plowing my way through the Sermon on the Mount, I got bogged down in my comments on Violence, Divorce, Vengeance, etc. I have always had a problem with fault-finding, and long before I started work on this Commentary, I had found that fault-finding causes me a great deal of emotional distress.

Sure enough, this happened to me again as I was finishing the Sermon on the Mount.

What can you do about fault-finding when it causes such Inner Turmoil?

I had found, years ago, that Transcendental Meditation was calming for me. TM uses a Mantra – a word or phrase that is repeated so that ones mind will stay transcendent (out of this world). I had selected as my Mantra, Col 3.1, “ If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth.” Now, part of this business of setting your minds on things that are not of this earth is to forget all things that are within this Universe – things like ‘above’, and ‘right hand’. And it worked! It is soothing, and one does feel inner peace. But! It doesn’t move one very far forward, eg if one is trying to get something done.

I did not pursue TM for very long. Perhaps I felt that it was a waste of time. For what ever reason, I left it behind. Some years later, as I was studying Thomas Merton, the great Trappist monk, I got interested in ‘Contemplation’. Contemplation is somewhat like TM except that instead of putting your mind in neutral, you project it out as far as it will go. Remembering Einstein’s thesis, ‘Time is the fourth dimension.’, you project your mind back in time to the creation of the Universe – Zero Time. There you marvel at the real miracles that we are a part of. And as part of the package, you get to sense that presence of God, who is the Be All and End All of everything. The Alpha and the Omega. The Beginning and the End. It is a wonderful experience, but it is available only to those willing to put this world aside for a moment.

The Sermon on the Mount is primarily about The Christian Life in this Physical World – about our relationship with other people. And that is a major part of the Christian Faith – But, it isn’t all of it. The Spiritual Life is a very real part of it – and I might add – perhaps the most satisfying part of it.

Inner Peace, called the Peace of the Lord Jesus, is what we share every Sunday morning.

Not that we all have inner peace. I for one, spent most of my life in inner turmoil. So I know what it is, and I know what a blessing it is to get rid of it. We suspect that inner turmoil was Paul’s lot too before he became a Christian. So, he knows what he is talking about.

Jesus said to his disciples in Mk 4.11, “To you has been given the secret of the Kingdom of God”. To us has been given the secret! I have no doubt that Jesus gave the Secret to everybody, but that most people didn’t understand it. All they could see was that he was a miracle-worker, and those miracles were all that they remembered.

In this Colossian Passage, Paul reminds us of the Secret – We don’t have to live with all that inner turmoil – the Peace of the Lord is available to us. This is the Secret.

In every Charge, every Sunday, we are told to “Go out into the World and Bind-up the Broken Hearted”. My experience has been that getting completely involved in this world leaves me stressed out and exhausted. I feel ready to give it all up, and back away defeated.

This Physical World bears down on us all the time. It forces its presence upon us. I have a ranch – it requires lots of attention – fix fences – control erosion – maintain roads. I have a family – they, like the rest of us, are fallible mortals – I lose patience with them. I am part of several communities – they too are fallible – I lose patience with them. This physical world bears down on us. Soon or late, I reach the point where I must escape. The tradition in America has been to escape by means of alcohol or drugs, but over the years our experience has been that these escapes carry too high a price tag.

 

When I get to the stage where I need to escape, it is time for me to refresh my memory. What was that that Paul said?

“If then, you have been raised with Christ, Keep your mind on things that are above, where Christ is, Seated at the Right hand of God.” When I keep my mind on Jesus, all of my worldly problems just fade away.

And I think that this approach will work for you too. Try it. Put this message where you can see it every day, perhaps every hour. Read a line or two from it every time you see it. And especially, when you feel the problems of the Physical World bearing down on you, Back Off! And read the whole passage. I believe that you will find it soothing, relaxing, and reassuring that someone has answers for you.

This is not the Gospel; this is a fringe benefit. This is not what you do for others – this is what you do for yourself. Keep your mind on things that are above, where Christ is. . . It worked for Paul. It has worked for countless others over the generations. It works for me, and I believe that it will work for you.

 

May God add his blessings to this message. Amen

The Gospel Reading

Thinking that my previous sermon was the last one of my career, I had let my Lectionary lapse. Then when I asked permission to present a few more, I had no clue as to what the Lectionary reading was supposed to be for today. So! I looked it up on the Net and one reference said it was Mk 2.1-12 – The Healing of the Paralytic. Not finding anything promising on the Net that built on this story, I continued to Search – eventually finding another Net Page that said the Rdg was Mk 1.50-54 – The Healing of the Leper.

Looking at these two stories – side by side in my notebook – I decided that God was trying to tell me something. Both of these stories are about ‘healing’. Is there anything in the Gospel about healing? Not only is there something – I would like to propose that the whole Gospel is about healing.

What is a Sermon?

 

Mt 4.23 says that Jesus went about Preaching, Teaching, and Healing. So! A sermon is not Teaching – at least that is not its foremost goal.

It has been said that Teaching is directed toward those who want to believe, whereas Preaching is directed toward those who are indifferent, if not openly hostile.

Its purpose is to persuade, convince, enlist. In fact, we are in the business of selling something – just like the obnoxious commercials on TV. It makes you almost sick to see it that way, but that’s where we start.

So! Where do they start? They start almost always with an illustration. They start almost always with an illustration of the ‘good’ life. This ‘good’ life is what you would like to have. Then they tell you how their product will provide that ‘good’ life for you.

Or! They may show you an example of the ‘bad’ life – some condition that you do not want. Then they show you how their product will protect you from the ‘bad’ life. And of course, advertisers repeat this message hour after hour, day after day. They drum it into you. It works because they have spent millions of dollars on research to determine what works – their approach works because it has been tested and re-tested. This is the way to do it. Notice that they don’t waste a second.

They design their hard sell to require only one minute or so. You will have up to twenty minutes. Make it effective – make it pay off. Don’t waste a second.

 

Now! What Are We Selling?

 

Somewhere in the 4-6 Lectionary Readings, there is a message. Focus first of all on the Gospel reading. What is its message? Second, focus on the Epistle reading. What is its message? Finally, focus on the OT readings. What are its messages? Is there any relationship? (I personally never focus on Revelations, because the religious nuts find it such a treasure house of nothing. That is my opinion.)

My personal approach has been to look for the Christian Life – The Way.

Now! Say you have found the Prodigal Son, or The Good Samaritan, These are parables of the Christian Life. To us, it is the ‘Good Life’ – The Way. The Prodigal Son doesn’t have the word ‘forgiveness’ anywhere in it, but that is its message. Suppose that we need a Sermon on The Prodigal Son. Where do we start? We can start either with the rewards of Forgiveness, or we can start with the harm of Un-forgiveness. In my own Sermon on Forgiveness, I started with the story of Capt. Ahab in Moby Dick. I hadn’t read Moby Dick, but I knew the theme. If we are un-clear on what a popular story is all about we have the Net. Let’s enter “Moby Dick” in Google. I have always found Wikipedia a reliable source for general info, so we click on its entry. We get: Moby-Dick^[1] was an 1851 novel by Herman Melville. The story tells the adventures of the wandering sailor Ishmael, and his voyage on the whaling ship Pequod, commanded by Captain Ahab. Ishmael soon learns that Ahab does not mean to use the Pequod and her crew to hunt whales for market trade, as whaling ships generally do. Ahab seeks one specific whale, Moby Dick, a great white whale of tremendous size and ferocity. Comparatively few whaling ships know of Moby-Dick, and fewer yet have knowingly encountered the whale. In a previous encounter, the whale destroyed Ahab's boat; in the process, Ahab lost his leg. Ahab intends to exact revenge on the whale.

There may be other stories that you can refer to. Lets check the possibilities on Google: See The Count of Monte Cristo: from Wikipedia: The story takes place in France, Italy, islands in the Mediterranean and the Levant during the historical events of 1815–1838 (from just before the Hundred Days through the reign of Louis-Philippe of France). The historical setting is a fundamental element of the book. It is primarily concerned with themes of justice, vengeance, mercy, and forgiveness, and is told in the style of an adventure story.

Also from Wikipedia: Forgiveness is the mental, and/or spiritual process of ceasing to feel resentment, indignation or anger against another person for a perceived offense, difference or mistake, or ceasing to demand punishment or restitution^[1]. This definition, however, is subject to much philosophical critique. Forgiveness may be considered simply in terms of the person who forgives, in terms of the person forgiven and/or in terms of the relationship between the forgiver and the person forgiven. In some contexts, it may be granted without any expectation of compensation, and without any response on the part of the offender (for example, one may forgive a person who is dead). In practical terms, it may be necessary for the offender to offer some form of acknowledgment, apology, and/or restitution, or even just ask for forgiveness, in order for the wronged person to believe they are able to forgive.^[1]

Most world religions include teachings on the nature of forgiveness, and many of these teachings provide an underlying basis for many varying modern day traditions and practices of forgiveness. However, throughout the ages, philosophers have studied forgiveness apart from religion. In addition, as in other areas of human inquiry, science is beginning to question religious concepts of forgiveness. Psychology, sociology and medicine are among the scientific disciplines researching forgiveness or aspects of forgiveness. Instances of teachings on forgiveness such as the parable of the Prodigal Son^[2] and Mahatma Gandhi's forgiveness of his assassin as he lay dying, are well known instances of such teachings and practices of forgiveness. Some religious doctrines or philosophies place greater emphasis on the need for humans to find some sort of divine forgiveness for their own shortcomings, others place greater emphasis on the need for humans to practice forgiveness between one another, yet others make little or no distinction between human and/or divine forgiveness.

A classic story from the OT is the Story of Samson, when he prayed to the Lord to let him get Revenge on the Philistines. I personally don’t like that idea. What we should be praying for is the ability to forgive.

My own sermon on forgiveness, ‘Bind-up the Broken-hearted’, was based on the Story of the Cursing of the Fig Tree. In it, I bring out all the examples I could find, as to why we should forgive. Psychologists know how much damage harboring a Resentment can do. So does AA. They say, ‘Resentment is a killer’.

Thus we have a message. I don’t want to go through something I have already done. I would rather tackle a new topic and explain what I am doing as I go along. The Third Sunday in Mar is Mar 18, 07, Palm Sunday, always a challenge for me. Lets look at the Readings: Mt 21.1-11; Ps 118.1-2, 19-29; Isa 50.4-9a; Ps 31, 9-16; Phil 2.5-11; Mt 26.14-27.66; Mt 27.11-54.

Mt 21. There must be snow on the photo voltaic panel. No signal.

Mt 21.4 “This took place to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet, ‘Tell the daughter of Zion, ‘Behold, your king is coming to you, humble, mounted on an ass, and on a colt, the foal of an ass.’”

This is a good verse to pick apart. Can it be used constructively in any way?

I might focus on the word ‘king’ for a moment. The Jews expected the Messiah to be a liberator – a revolutionary – a person of violence. Jesus was none of these things. In fact he had nothing bad to say about the Romans. Instead, he seemed to preach, “Learn to live with them”. Paul had nothing bad to say about the Romans. I have the on-going problem with the Christian position on political reform. The Church has taught in the past that there was a ‘Just War”. (It defines such a war) Now! Lately it has conceded that war is never justified. History has shown us the fallacy of a ‘Just War”. But what about just campaigning? What about preaching political reform from the pulpit?

What does the story of Dives and Lazarus teach? I see nothing about political reform in it. My sermon on Dives and Lazarus is all about political reform, but that is my construction. It is not the Christian message. And yet! I also preach that the Faith calls for action on our part. Even ‘Love your neighbor’ calls for action. The question is, ‘What action does it call for?’

If Information Clearing House has a million readers in America I will be surprised. And yet this is one of the few sources of the truth about the political situation; not only here but worldwide. The people in the pew do not realize this. Is it the preacher’s job to enlighten them?

Let’s move on. Ps 118.1-2; 19-29 “O Give thanks to the Lord for he is good.

His steadfast Love endures forever.”

19. Open to me the gates of righteousness

That I may enter through them

And give thanks to the Lord.

24. This is the day the Lord has made

Let us rejoice and be glad in it.

25. Save us (Hosanna), we beseech thee, O Lord.

O Lord, we beseech thee, Give us success!

29. Repeats verse 1.

My first question is, What is the Hebrew word here translated ‘‘steadfast love’? I think it is ‘Chesed’, which doesn’t mean ‘steadfast love’.

This may be of interest to the nit-picker, but does it support the Faith?

HSR Later: It is my guess that these scripture readings (Now removed) are the Lectionary readings. I usually study them at least superficially, before selecting one for the Sermon theme.

 

Intro – The Satisfying Life

Background

In 1992, I put together the story of my efforts to learn to accept life as it develops – “The Art of Being Satisfied with Life”.

During these last few years, I have become convinced that we don’t have to accept anything less than The Satisfying Life; we might perhaps even attain The Life Abundant.

For one thing, just learning, or trying to learn, to accept life as it comes doesn’t quite work. Somehow, I never did learn to accept life – actually, to tolerate life – I never really felt comfortable with it. The reason was, of course, that I still had many emotional hang-ups.

I had, to a large extent, put fear behind me – put anger behind me – put low self-esteem behind me. I learned to believe that I was acceptable as a member of the several groups I was in. All of this represented tremendous strides in the right direction.

So! What was my problem? Why wasn’t I satisfied with life? In these first few Journal entries, I disclose what my Step-Four Inventory disclosed – I still had a lot of emotional baggage to unload. It seems like it would be simple, but it is not.

One might think that after the Step-Four Inventory, the next Step would be ‘to ask God to remove our shortcomings’ – in fact, this is Step Seven.

Step Five is Confession in the biblical sense. The Twelve-Step Programs use the term ‘admitted’ meaning ‘recognized’, ‘realized’, or ‘became aware of’. This Step accomplishes at least two things: First, it helps you convince yourself that you really and truly do have these short-comings. Second, it forces you to confide in another person – to trust another person – to make yourself vulnerable to being hurt – to take the first step in learning to share with a friend.

Step Six is “We were entirely ready to have God remove all of these defects of character.” Part of the goal here is ‘to recognize’ that these faults are really and truly ‘defects of character’. It is awfully easy to convince ourselves that vices really are virtues. I had always felt that my fault-finding was constructive criticism. If we try hard enough, we can usually rationalize our actions as being just and proper. So here is my book for what it is worth – The Satisfying Life.

Materialism – I Look at the World around Me

Journal – 12/25/96 – New Jersey

Merry Christmas

Here in Morris County, one cannot escape the fact that America is a land of the haves and the have nots. There are probably hundreds of millionaires here, if not thousands. I have met some of them and gotten a glimpse of their life style. Admittedly, it is only a glimpse, but from what I see, a life is a life, and money doesn’t make it significantly better than a life with a modest amount of money.

I hope this isn’t a case of sour grapes. I don’t think it is, but we can fool ourselves.

I think it has been the experience of spiritual people of whatever conviction, that material possessions distract (detract? – almost synonyms) from the spiritual life. And conversely, material possessions do not contribute ‘materially’ to the full life.

I think we are all aware that there are people out there who are well-adjusted to life, and who do seem to be able to live a fuller life when possessions are a part of it. Somehow, I think this is only appearance. I think the truth is that well-adjusted people can be just as contented and get just as much out of life whether they have much or little.

It is my impression that the average person is living proof that ‘Money can’t buy happiness.’. A life is a life, and the major difference between full, fuller, and fullest is attitude.

12/27/96

This is a very difficult thought to put down. I don’t quite know why. Perhaps I am not sure I believe it myself.

Problem 1: How is happiness measured? Can I tell how happy a person is just by looking at him? He gives me some clues, but in the end my impression is just that – an impression.

Problem 2: Is happiness what we want to measure? Is ‘satisfaction’ a better measure of the full life? (I really need to consult with Abraham Mazlow here – This was a problem of interest to him.)

Surely, different people would have different definitions of the ‘full life’. A modest user of alcohol said, ‘No matter what you are doing while you are drinking, you are having fun.’ I recall now my reference to the research monkeys with electrodes in their brains exhibiting the appearance of euphoria.

I think we can safely say that ‘happiness’ is all in the mind. If so, can we also say that the beatific saint or the ecstatic religious person have gotten where they are by some kind of self-induced ecstasy or sublime state. Even if this is true, what harm, if any, is done to escape life’s stress in this manner.

Problem 3: Is escape from life’s stresses a legitimate goal?

Problem 4: What is life’s goal? Personally, I don’t see one.

Problem 5: What is the meaning of life?

[Others ask this same question:

From the Univ of NC at Wilmington

”Spiritual (Values, Purpose, Intuition, Vitality)

The sense that life is meaningful and has a purpose; the ethics, values and morals that guide us and give meaning and direction in life.

Spiritual wellness is the search for purpose and meaning in one's life.  Spiritual wellness is the quest to finding what you believe in and living each day consistent with those beliefs. Spiritual wellness is finding harmony with one's self and others while working to balance inner needs with the rest of the world.” For more information on Spiritual Wellness check out the religious groups on campus: http://www.uncw.edu/stuaff/activities/Student%20Organizations.htm

Re Problem 4: An individual can and should have a goal. I think my essay on Management begins with this assumption.

If a person has a healthy childhood in a functional family, and if he has average intelligence or above, then he will likely attend college, preparing himself for a career. He will also be preparing himself for marriage and a family.

Of course, anywhere along the line he may hear a different drummer and pursue a different course, but he will still have a basic goal. “I enjoy doing this activity (or I believe that I will enjoy it). I believe that my primary interest lies in this direction.” Is the magic word here ‘enjoy’?

I don’t quite think it is. I think we need to look at ‘satisfaction’. I think of the ‘dedicated’ scientist pursuing his dream - endless hours in the laboratory or in the field. Is a life-time thus spent ‘satisfying’? Jane Goodall comes to mind, but there are hundreds more.

‘To satisfy’ implies that there was a basic hunger or ‘need’ there to begin with. (We might get back to Maslow, who listed the humans ‘needs’.

Maslow's hierarchy of needs is a theory in psychology, proposed by Abraham Maslow in his 1943 paper A Theory of Human Motivation, which he subsequently extended to include his observations of humans' innate curiosity. Wikipedia

The sex drive was not primary with Goodall, nor is it with thousands of celibate in ‘satisfying’ lives. Perceptive people may realize that life is a series of trade-offs. Many women have found it difficult if not impossible to be both a career person and a homemaker.

It would be foolish for anyone to talk about the ‘average’ person, or to imply that here was a lifestyle that would ‘satisfy’ him. Yet that is what I seem to want to do. Not so.

What I want to do is to approach the person who is not satisfied - who is not living the full life - who believes that there is more to life than what he is getting out of it. What I propose to him is that he concentrate on becoming a whole, well-rounded person.

[Look into the function of 'Life Coaches' - a profession that I believe has a great future.  In fact, I propose Universal Health care, which includes Emotional Health Care.]

Life-coaches all the rage – By Karen S. Peterson, USA TODAY

Personal growth is hot. Diagnosis is not. That is one reason America has seen a boom in the number of people offering their services as "life coaches." These guides give clients the confidence to get unstuck — to change careers, repair relationships, or simply get their act together. They also raise some eyebrows because they work in a field that is virtually unregulated.

"We are not talking about being incompetent or weak. They are everyday, normal people who have their lives together. They realize the value of having somebody to help them think outside the box." — life coach Laura Berman Fortgang.

As a person ages, he leaves behind most of his basic ‘needs’, and finally settles on the very few that continue with him.

I believe that we have a ‘need’ to learn. Looking back over my life, I see that this need was always with me and always a major part of my life. It is still a part of my life, but the ability has been tempered by my rapidly failing memory.

So also, my ability as a creative person has gradually faded away, because my mind is not as sharp as it once was. What was it that I created?

I created hypotheses. Hypotheses are tentative theories as to what has caused or is causing the observed facts. This is somewhat like being a detective. A detective observes the data (the facts). He then offers a tentative theory (a hypothesis) as to how the known result came about.

Scientific hypotheses are created in much the same way. We observe the facts (gather data), and then try to explain how the facts came to be.

A ‘pure’ scientist is one who is strictly an observer – This is what I see. Many of us are content to simply observe, being well aware that soon or late a ‘theoretical’ scientist will come along and explain our data.

Or it may be that a theory will almost force itself on our attention, in which case we become theoretical scientists in spite of ourselves. In many cases this has happened to me. I observe, and then I try to explain what I have observed.

As a professional scientist, my assignment was to observe. My supervisors were to do all the explaining. I could offer a tentative explanation only as long as it was understood that the supervisors got the ‘credit’.  [Poor me!]

I did not have a satisfying professional career, primarily because of my poor emotional health. There was more to it than that, but people with good emotional health could cope with the faulty system and survive.

My career is past history now, so also my marriage and family. Any residual ‘needs’ found in these categories I must put aside as totally impractical. My financial health is largely outside of my control now. What is left?

What is left? The Spiritual Life. [We will get there eventually.]

I had to get my life in order to be able to see the Big Picture. Certainly, Holistic Health was a part of the therapy, but I only touched on it. I didn’t have the grasp of the Big Picture that I do now.

So, assuming that I have my life in order now, what counsel do I have for other people who want to get their lives in order?

Step One – We admitted that we were powerless over our compulsions. We admitted that we could not manage our own lives. The 12-step Program is for compulsive people – primarily compulsive eaters and drinkers. The average normal healthy person may not have compulsions, but he has primal instincts that he will be powerless over unless he becomes aware of them and makes a conscious effort to resist them.

He will be better able to see these instincts in himself if he will admit that he is an animal with all the primitive traits of any other animal. To this end he should study animal behavior seriously, not simply as entertainment, but as a basic requirement for understanding himself. He will also study human behavior – he needs to know what we do and why we do it.

The Christian Faith is part of my heritage. It has a place in my life, and I am glad that it does. Holistic Health includes Spiritual Health. It need not be Christian, but it seems to me to be properly so, if a person has a Christian background, and has no serious bias against it. I know very little about the other religions, therefore my focus will be on Spiritual Health for the Christian.

The Art of Being Satisfied with Life implies that my goal is to learn to accept life the way it comes. Just barely tolerating it. Accepting life without anger. The new title implies getting all that we can out of life – complete satisfaction.)

The Satisfying Life

People need a knowledge of the bible in order to have a knowledge of the Christian Faith, and people need a knowledge of the Christian Faith in order to become Spiritual Christians.

The Christian Faith also teaches Morals and Ethics. It has a great deal to say about Human Relations, about ‘Peacemaking as the Believer’s Calling’, about Community. Our goal is the Abundant Life. Not only do we want people to be ‘Satisfied with Life’, we want them to have a ‘Life that is Satisfying’.

To this end, we condemn Pride and Greed as appetites that can never be satisfied. Furthermore, they are harmful appetites, doing no one any good.

My goal in preaching is to help one become a better person as an individual; and a better citizen of his community. Is that enough?

The Satisfying Life – Swan Song

Time Marches On

Sam Fleming (our pastor at New Milford) died this year (Monday Morning Magazine).  He was 78.  When you get to be 77, you are living on borrowed time.  [I presume I was 77 at that time.  That would be 1995.]

Some more or less random thoughts

The ranch hasn't been my whole life, but it has been an important part of it.  The most important part was the discovery of, and recovery from, my handicap.

It isn't exactly satisfying to look back over my life and see only the places where I screwed up; this is where I went wrong.

I am glad that I was finally able to see the big picture, and that I was able to describe it.  I hope you can learn from my mistakes.

The whole situation tells me that KH was right:  the human species does have some kind of drive toward 'fulfillment'.  Somehow, we are working together to bring about 'The Kingdom of God'.  (Or as modern theologians like to put it 'The Government of God' or 'The Rule of God'.)  (Kings do not Dom[inate] any more.)

[It is my theory that ‘The Kingdom of God’ or ‘The Kingdom of Heaven’ is a state of mind rather than some idealized place whether ‘real’ or ‘spiritual’.  In fact, it is the whole of ‘the Spiritual world’.]

What is the ideal situation?

KH speaks of 'healthy friction'.  It is an important part of the human situation, that we all have different ideas, different goals.  To say that the ideal situation allows these differences to exist is to lose sight of the most magnificent of human achievements:  We are different and the product of these differences will be human advancement.

Human differences are our greatest achievement, so far.

Common sense requires that we encourage every individual to contribute his ideas to the species – that each individual contribute his best offering to the future.

Charismatic Leaders

It is all too easy to delegate our responsibilities to someone else.  No one individual has all the 'secrets'.  To allow ourselves to follow a charismatic leader is to abandon our own 'real selves', and to become automatons.  We should try to find a leader who wants to bring out the best in us.  Our leader should have goals that are compatible with humanity's, as well as with our own.

Will we ever see the end of violence?  Probably not.  The human is violent by nature.  He is physical before he is mental.  So far, Emotional Man Rules Rational Man.  A desirable human goal is to put Rational Man in charge.

Even so, there are people who claim that there are times when Rational Man must resort to violence.  I cannot believe that under The Rule of God, violence will be acceptable.

‘Love’ is the key word in the Faith, in the Church, in our denomination.  Love in contrast to Hate, which is what recent and current TV programming portrays.  Hate is not a natural reaction; the human by nature is indifferent to his fellow human.

A clear and conspicuous part of The Rule of God is that individuals will love, respect, and accept each other as a part of the herd.

Love as we know it is not a part of the emotions of wildlife.  Domestic animals, especially dogs, feel love, so we cannot claim that love is exclusively human.

[I see on the nature channels that there is something among the wild animals that looks suspiciously like ‘love’.]

Emotional Health – JourApr03

I am not acutely aware of it BUT I am back to my old tricks – mainly fault-finding, perhaps also Resentment, and Self-Pity.

So! What is the SOP (Standard Operating Procedure) for getting back to the Spiritual Channel?

Back Off! Listen to yourself! What do you feel?

In the course of working on Courage to Change, a person is naturally going to see the faults his articles see. So also the books Interfaith Dialog and Corporate Greed are focusing on faults. Right now, I am also participating in the Peace Movement. All of this ‘outreach’ results in many flags waving in front of me.

I might think I can ignore them, but the truth is I cannot. I find fault with the Peace Movement for not being aware of the problems we face or the possible solutions. I find fault with the Green Party for not being all that it could be. I am not ‘neutral’ about anything.

Spiritual Christians accept everything with Serenity. They love everybody – friend and foe alike. They love the other person, regardless of his faults. They wish him no harm.

I saw somewhere (Time Mag, I think) that Saddam had pulled together a warring nation (Iraq) and given it a semblance of unity.

Wikipedia - As president, Saddam maintained power during the Iran–Iraq War (1980–1988) and the first Persian Gulf War (1991). During these conflicts, Saddam repressed movements he considered threatening to the stability of Iraq, particularly Shi'a and Kurdish movements seeking to overthrow the government or gain independence, respectively. Whereas some Arabs looked upon him as a hero for his aggressive stance against foreign intervention and for his support for the Palestinians,^[7] many Arabs and western leaders vilified him for his murdering of the Kurish people of the north and his invasion of Kuwait.

The Soviets had attempted to do the same for Afghanistan. A warring nation riven by tribal factions – and we interfere. All that country needed was more guns – and we provided them.

Spiritual Health

A Spiritual Christian has no suggestions. They try to accept the situation the way it is with Serenity.

The world is full of smart people – they will find a way. It is some kind of an ego trip for me to imagine that I am the Savior of the world. To think that, is to put an enormous burden on myself. I don’t have to do it. I probably couldn’t do it even if I were called upon.

A person shouldn’t let himself get emotionally involved in his causes. It isn’t easy, but he can distance himself emotionally from his various causes. A scientist has to do this – otherwise his emotions may affect his ‘data’.

Bertrand Russell

Main Entry: Russell, Bertrand, 1872-1970 – Title: A History of Western Philosophy

[sound recording] Book Number: RC 52158 – Holding Agency: DLC-B NLS/BPH Format: Audio Cassette Book – Annotation: Nobel laureate examines philosophy as “an integral part of social and political life,” from the rise of Greek civilization, through the era of Catholic dominance to the Renaissance, and into the twentieth century and the emergence of modern philosophy. 1945 .

Right now I am listening to Russell on the History of Philosophy. I am only into the third side (of perhaps 15) so it is a little premature to draw conclusions. So far, in his history of the Greeks, I get the impression that the Greeks were not into changing society. The world was what it was and nothing could be done about it. The Christians followed suit.

Political Reform – Jour 4/1/03

My statement that, ‘The Church does not seek to change the world.’ is, I think, in Commentary on the Christian Faith.

In fact both John and Paul seem to see ‘the world’ as our enemy. Jesus too – see Physical World vs

Of course, in those days ‘the people’ were completely powerless. It is only since the idea of a democracy became a real possibility, that the idea that an individual could ‘change the world’ became a real possibility.

In the first half of the 20^th Cent, the ‘militant Jesuits’ did seize control of a sizable portion of the Metropolitan East, especially NY State, where they succeeded in getting laws enacted that favored Catholic doctrine. For better or worse ‘the people’ simply disobeyed these laws or learned to get around them. Unfortunately the poor and the powerless were still the victims of such laws.

Now that Big Money/Big Power has discovered that it can rule a democracy (create a Fascist state), the people’s chances of seizing control are greatly diminished.

So! Where does that leave ‘the Church’? The Masons have a rule that neither Religion nor Politics can be discussed in Lodge. Sometimes I get the feeling that these subjects are not to be discussed in church either. The Church presents what it believes is ‘right’ as persuasively as possible, but is careful to avoid being ‘dogmatic’. We try not to alienate anyone if we can avoid it. Even so, one of the reasons we have denominations is that people cannot agree on what is ‘right’. The problem is that there are just too many different opinions. The Church cannot be all things to all people. It can lay down general guidelines as to the ground rules, but it cannot support specific reforms, or can it?

Its prime guideline is “Physician, heal thyself.” (Lk 4.23) ie, get your own act together, then you might be able to make suggestions for others. That’s what I need to do, keep the focus on the man inside.

One of the things this physician needs to keep in mind is that he is not 25 yrs old any more, or even 65 – he is 85 – and that means that he has limitations both physical and mental.

Not every Christian has to be a Spiritual Christian, but Spirituality is one of the Blessings of the Faith. If one has emotional problems, then one should seek the Blessing of Spirituality. (But first, it is almost mandatory that Emotional Health be healthy.)

A personal counselor for every American!

Emotional Health problems are amenable!

Jack says that a certain person feels like he wants to kill Bush. The Gentle people, we hope, want to contain him, although we don’t yet know how.

As a person ages, he leaves behind most of his basic ‘needs’, and finally settles on the very few that continue with him.

I believe [with KH] that we have a ‘need’ to learn. Looking back over my life, I see that this need was always with me and always a major part of my life. It is still a part of my life, but the ability has been tempered by my rapidly failing memory. [Thanks to Gingko Biloba that problem also is behind me.]

So also, my ability as a creative person has gradually faded away, because my mind is not as sharp as it once was. What was it that I created?

I created hypotheses. Hypotheses are tentative theories as to what has caused or is causing the observed facts. This is somewhat like being a detective. A detective observes the data (the facts). He then offers a tentative theory (a hypothesis) as to how the known result came about.

Scientific hypotheses are created in much the same way. We observe the facts (gather data), and then try to explain how the facts came to be.

A ‘pure’ scientist is one who is strictly an observer – This is what I see. Many of us are content to simply observe, being well aware that soon or late a ‘theoretical’ scientist will come along and explain our data.

Or it may be that a theory will almost force itself on our attention, in which case we become theoretical scientists in spite of ourselves. In many cases this has happened to me. I observe, and then I try to explain what I have observed.

[Fault-finding] As a professional scientist, my assignment was to observe. My supervisors were to do all the explaining. I could offer a tentative explanation only as long as it was understood that the supervisors got the ‘credit’.  [Poor me!]

I did not have a satisfying professional career, primarily because of my poor emotional health. There was more to it than that, but people with good emotional health could cope with the faulty system and survive.

My career is past history now, so also my marriage and family. [I consider myself a well-adjusted person now – one who can cope with life – solve problems and move on.] Any residual ‘needs’ found in these categories I must put aside as totally impractical. My financial health is largely outside of my control now. What is left?

What is left? The Spiritual Life. [We will get there eventually.]

The Spiritual Life 1/3/97

I had to get my life in order to be able to see the Big Picture. Certainly, Holistic Health was a part of the therapy, but I only touched on it. I didn’t have the grasp of the Big Picture that I do now.

So, assuming that I have my life in order now, what counsel do I have for other people who want to get their lives in order?

The Christian Faith is part of my heritage. It has a place in my life, and I am glad that it does. Holistic Health includes Spiritual Health. It need not be Christian, but it seems to me to be properly so, if a person has a Christian background, and has no serious bias against it. I know very little about the other religions, therefore my focus will be on Spiritual Health for the Christian.

 

The Art of Being Satisfied with Life implies that my goal is to learn to accept life the way it comes – Just barely tolerating it – Accepting life without anger. The new title implies getting all that we can out of life – complete satisfaction.

The Satisfying Life

People need a knowledge of the bible in order to have a knowledge of the Christian Faith, and people need a knowledge of the Christian Faith in order to become Spiritual Christians.

The Christian Faith also teaches Morals and Ethics. It has a great deal to say about Human Relations, about Peacemaking as the ‘Believer’s Calling’, about Community. Our goal is the Abundant Life. Not only do we want people to be ‘Satisfied with Life’, we want them to have a ‘Life that is Satisfying’.

To this end, we condemn Pride and Greed as appetites that can never be satisfied. Furthermore, they are harmful appetites, doing no one any good.

My goal in preaching is to help one become a better person as an individual, and a better citizen of his community. Is that enough?

Some more or less random thoughts.]

The ranch hasn't been my whole life, but it has been an important part of it.  The most important part was the discovery of, and recovery from, my handicap. I couldn’t have done it in the city.

It isn't exactly satisfying to look back over one’s life and see only the places where he screwed up; this is where he went wrong.

I am glad that I was finally able to see the big picture, and that I was able to describe it.  I hope you can learn from my mistakes.

Karen Horney's best book is Neurosis and Human Growth (1950).  It is the best book on neurosis ever, in my humble opinion. She wrote more "pop" versions called The Neurotic Personality of our Time (1937) and Our Inner Conflicts (1945). Her thoughts on therapy can be found in New Ways in Psychoanalysis (1939). For an early insight into feminist psychology, read Feminine Psychology (1967).  And to read about self-analysis read Self-Analysis (1942).

The whole situation tells me that KH was right:  the human species does have some kind of drive toward 'fulfillment'.  Somehow, we are working together to bring about 'The Kingdom of God'.  (Or as modern theologians like to put it 'The Government of God' or 'The Rule of God'.)  (Kings do not Dom[inate] any more.)

[Today it is my hypothesis that ‘The Kingdom of God’ or ‘The Kingdom of Heaven’ is a state of mind rather than some idealized place whether ‘real’ or ‘spiritual’.  In fact, it is the whole of ‘the Spiritual world’.]

What is the ideal situation?

KH speaks of 'healthy friction'.  It is an important part of the human situation, that we all have different ideas, different goals.  To say that the ideal situation allows these differences to exist is to lose sight of the most magnificent of human achievements:  We are different and the product of these differences will be human advancement.

Human differences are our greatest achievement, so far.

Common sense requires that we encourage every individual to contribute his ideas to the species – that each individual contribute his best offering to the future.

Charismatic Leaders

It is all too easy to delegate our responsibilities to someone else.  No one individual has all the 'secrets'.  To allow ourselves to follow a charismatic leader is to abandon our own 'real selves', and to become automatons.  We should try to find a leader who wants to bring out the best in us.  Our leader should have goals that are compatible with humanity's, as well as with our own.

Will we ever see the end of violence?  Probably not.  The human is violent by nature.  He is physical before he is mental.  So far, Emotional Man Rules Rational Man.  A desirable human goal is to put Rational Man in charge.

Even so, there are people who claim that there are times when Rational Man must resort to violence.  I cannot believe that under The Rule of God, violence will ever be acceptable.

Love is the key word in the Faith, in the Church, in our denomination.  Love in contrast to Hate, which is what recent and current TV programming portrays.  Hate is not a natural reaction; the human by nature is indifferent to his fellow human.

A clear and conspicuous part of The Rule of God is that individuals will love, respect, and accept each other as a part of the herd.

Love as we know it is not a part of the emotions of wildlife.  Domestic animals, especially dogs, feel love, so we cannot claim that love is exclusively human.

[I see on the nature channels that there is something among the wild animals that looks suspiciously like ‘love’.]

Monuments

9/18/95 - I just had another 'monument ' that I had built, torn down.  It hurt.  But I tried to be accepting of the fact that people are the way they are, and that I must learn to accept it or suffer.

Nobody's ‘monument’ endures for long.

A lifetime is not very long compared to a 'monument'.  We have about 50 yrs to build and maintain monuments.  After that, the next guy takes over.  He may maintain it; he may tear it down, or he may let time tear it down.  Whatever happens, it is not your monument now.  It is his.

Pap [my father-in-law] never built monuments.  He said, 'There won't be anything left when I die.'

There was a monumental mess that I organized.  Now it’s gone.

[A large part of my in-law’s property consisted of ‘junk’ that my father-in-law had accumulated in his spare time. In PA the custom was to have ‘sales’ every Saturday, with a professional auctioneer doing the ‘selling’. One tactic they used, was to throw everything remaining, as the sale was drawing to a close, into a single lot, and ask for bids on the lot. My father-in-law (Pap) always bid on, and often was the high bidder on these ‘remainders’. It was this junk that was my heritage, and that I wanted to, but couldn’t, keep.]

Jack had said that I didn’t need this stuff. Jack was probably right.  He said, “How can you want anything more when you already have so much?”

2/20/93

I am in the process of reading "The Last Cathedral" by Ty Harrington, Prentise Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1979, ISBN 0-13-523878-1

Which brings me to this essay:

I believe that I have talent.  My talent lies in the ability to create and describe new and novel ideas.  There are not a lot of people in the world who are able to do this.

There are many people who are able to write, who have no worth-while subject, and many others who have brilliant ideas, but who are more or less inarticulate; they cannot express themselves.

Unfortunately, I also have a psychological problem.  I do not have faith in myself.  I continue to doubt that my ideas are worth while, and that my writing is clear.  I am also a compulsive pro­crastinator, a product of all this self-doubt.  Conse­quently, it does not take much of a set-back to stop me completely.

Some of the principal figures at the Nat’l Cathedral continued to work on it until they were 80 or close to it.  They had a single-mindedness of purpose that I do not have.  In fact, I doubt that we experience all of life by being so single-minded.

Each person has a right to mark his niche.  Whatever that means.

How do we do a Fourth-step Inventory?

It seems logical to start with The Big Book – AA.

"Resentment is the No 1 offender. It destroys more alcoholics than anything else. From it stems all forms of spiritual disease, for we have been not only mentally and physically ill, we have been spiritually sick. When the spiritual malady is overcome, we straighten out mentally and physically. In dealing with resentments, we set them on paper [we write them down]. We listed people, institutions, or principles with whom we were angry. We asked ourselves why we were angry."

AA then gives a step-by-step procedure for searching out these resentments – always asking ‘why?’ "We went back through our lives." AA says, "This was our course: We realized that the people who wronged us were perhaps spiritually sick…When a person offended [us] we said to ourselves, 'This is a sick man. How can I be helpful to him? God save me from being angry." "We reviewed our fears thoroughly. We put them down on paper… We asked ourselves why we had them."

My whole Commentary on Ecclesiastes is a exploration of some of the resentments I have. I am sure they are still there. I don't think AA stresses 'Forgiveness' enough – if it mentions it at all. It does, but not directly. We are to "take a kindly and tolerant view of each and every one."

 

Fearless Moral Inventory Cont'd – Jnl – 8/20/98

Step Six – I am sitting above the Stone Rd (From Bill Stone) near one of the first sites we developed.

As I look over the area – primarily just enjoying it – I see several items that ‘need’ my attention:  a dead stalk that ‘needs’ to be pulled (it will soon fall down on its own) – a low branch that ‘needs’ to be bow-sawed – a rock that ‘needs’ to be picked up.

Perhaps it is a sign of growth on my part (or perhaps it is just old age) but I find myself being just a little more accepting of these ‘situations’ – situations that I could do something about (Petition 2).  [God grant me the courage to correct the things I can.]

If that is growth, then perhaps I will be able to accept some of those things that I cannot change (Petition 1).

It is my intention to focus on Step Six right now.  I have found in Step Four that I am:  Hostile, Vindictive, Resentful, Critical, Judgmental, Chauvinistic, Racist, Sexist, Accusatory.  These are ‘Character Defects’ that I want to get rid of.

I have done Step Five – confession – at my OA meetings.

Step Six requires that I be ‘ready and willing’ to give them up.  The ‘Book’ says that I am not ready and willing.  Why not?

Fact – I do want to be in control.

Fact – I do want the world and the people in it to be better than they are.

Fact – I do believe that I know what should be done – I know what is best for the world.

Fact – I am not in control.  Therefore, there is nothing I can do about the world’s ‘faulty people’.

Fact – for my own serenity, I must begin to accept the world’s ‘faulty people’ as they are.  If I can do that, then God will ‘take away my character defects.’

Is this adequate for ‘How I Was’?

Now the crucial part – What Happened?

The Book says that we need to take each character defect back to Step One, thus:  I admitted that I am powerless over my Resentments.

Step Two – I came to believe that my HP could restore me to sanity.

Step Three – I made a decision to turn my will and my life over to the care of God . . .

AA – P66 "It is plain that a life that includes deep resentment leads only to futility and unhappiness."

P70 “If we have been thorough about our personal inventory, we have written down a lot.  We have listed and analyzed our resentments.  We have begun to comprehend their futility and their fatality.  We have commenced to see their terrible destructiveness.  We have begun to learn tolerance, patience and good will toward all men, even our enemies, for we look on them as sick people.”

Even though AA doesn’t use the word ‘forgiveness’ they imply it.

To forgive is hard – always has been – always will be.  This is a pus pocket that I need to open.

Commentary on:  “Forgiveness” – How To Make Peace With Your Past And Get On With Your Life.  Sidney B Simon, Ed D, And Suzanne Simon -1990 Warner Books, NYC

Sidney is Prof of Psychological Education at Univ of Mass, Amherst, MA – he is a workshop leader on a variety of subjects esp ‘Forgiveness’. He says:

P18 What Forgiveness Is

Forgiveness is a by-product of an on-going healing process.

Forgiveness is an internal process.

Forgiveness is a sign of positive self-esteem.

Forgiveness is letting go of the intense emotions attached to incidents from our past.

Forgiveness is recognizing that we no longer need our grudges and resentments, our hatred and self-pity.

Forgiveness is no longer wanting to punish the people who hurt us.

Forgiveness is accepting that nothing we do to punish them will heal us.

Forgiveness is freeing-up and putting to better use the energy once consumed by holding grudges, harboring resentments, and nursing unhealed wounds.

Forgiveness is moving on.

P19 “[a client] and the people you will read about in this book were able to forgive because they made a concerted, on-going effort to examine and heal their wounds, to clean up the unfinished business in their lives, to let go and to move on.  They changed their attitudes and behaviors, pushed through their fears, and gave up their grievances and condemning judgments.  And you can do those things, too – not as a favor to the people who hurt you, or because someone once told you that forgiving was the good and right thing to do – but for yourself, for your own health, happiness, and emotional well-being.

Forgiveness is Something You Do for You." End of quote.

Jnl – Wed, Sept 16, 1998 – Priority:  Abstinence  is #1

Step Six – Became willing to let go

A Sermon – one that speaks to the ‘broken-hearted’.

A commentary on “Forgiveness”  by Simon.

Believe it or not, all this is related.

I finished the Sermon ‘Bind-up the Broken-hearted’.

Spirituality – Journal – 2/28/99 – The Idea of Spirituality

Step Twelve: “Having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these Steps, we tried to carry this message to compulsive overeaters and to practice these principles in all our affairs.”

In Step 12, OA and AA, we are moving from self-centered to other-centered – to service to others, as a means of recovery.

At the Homesite – It is mild – almost 70 deg – no wind – sunny.  I have a fire, as I usually have in the woods.  There is always slash to burn, and sometimes it is cold and we need a fire.

My intention for this morning was to contemplate the spiritual world.  Instead, I find myself always busy with the fire.  As usual, I am burning slash, though I have only a small (2’ dia) fire.

If one lets himself get involved with the fire – eg watching it – his mind is occupied with it – he cannot meditate or contemplate.  We need to get our minds on something immovable – like the landscape.  The landscape here is especially useful, because every part of the rocks and soil were affected by the glaciers – I presume 10,000 yrs ago.  Before recorded history.  My brief life is hardly significant in this period.  This consideration enables me to contemplate eternity.

The authors of Ecclesiastes and of Jonah were still alive when this land was given its present shape.

For some reason, I feel related to these writers, and to David, and to the Canaanites.  Their lives are a part of my life.  Perhaps, if I will accept it, I feel related to Adam and Eve – to Noah (properly pronounced Noh-ach)- to Mosheh [Hebrew for Moses].  Perhaps all this gives my Big Ego that sense of importance that it wants me to have.  The physical world alone will not do that for a full-awareness person.  [I am not sure I follow that, but 'full-awareness' means 'feeling the pain of the world'. .]

How ‘real’ is history?  Is ‘Pharaoh’ (a title) any more ‘real’ than ‘Joseph’ (a name)?  [This statement doesn’t make sense to the Rational Mind; we hope that this is evidence that the Spiritual Mind is taking over.]

Soon or late, we must conclude that our spiritual lives are just as ‘real’ as our physical lives, and a lot more durable.

Now!  The message of the bible is that God loves us, each and every one, just as we are, and wants the best for us.

God is a ‘person’, albeit a very special kind of ‘person’, and as such, we can think of this ‘person’ as a ‘him’, if it helps us relate to God – and that God wants us to do.

The First Commandment (God’s wish) is that we ‘love’ God with our whole being.  Now! ‘Love’ is a term we use to describe a relationship with another human being.  Surely ‘love’ is not an appropriate term to describe our relationship with God.

Well!  Perhaps it is.  In fact, this usage may help define – at least clarify – what we mean by ‘love’.  How should you feel toward the ‘person’ who created you?  From atoms and molecules and atomic energy – literally from nothing you were created.  Do you feel gratitude for that?  And into this lifeless form – with no potential whatsoever – God breathed the spark of life – that miracle that we cannot yet grasp.  I cannot even grasp the miracle of the spark that keeps that fire going.

How do you feel toward this ‘person’?  Is ‘love’ an appropriate term?  This ‘person’ provided you with a Garden of Eden’; with everything you could want for a full and happy life.

This ‘person’ provided you with a mate, and the means of reproduction that you enjoy so much.  If you truly ‘love’ that mate, do you not see in that feeling at least a little of the feeling of ‘love’ for God?

Sure, there are other feelings that would be appropriate for God: Certainly, Awe – Respect – Reverence – Humility – perhaps fear, but a God who loved us and put us on this earth, and encourages us to prosper, is probably not going to hurt us.  A wrathful father might hurt us, but our Heavenly Father is perfect, therefore ‘he’ does not become ‘wrathful’ – ‘he’ is always serene.  He deals with us with ‘courtesy and respect’ – the way he has taught us to deal with others.

I don’t have any trouble with making this spiritual world a part of my life.  I want to, and do, encourage Rational Man to direct my life (this is in contrast to Emotional Man – who has gotten me into trouble in the past).

Therefore, Rational Man rejects those bible stories that could not have happened – this is the ‘liberal’ position.  This may be a trauma for you, but don’t throw out the baby with the bath water.  I think it helps to consider the mindset of those early people.  They didn’t know what we know today.  What they wrote seemed rational to them.

Today, we come to these stories with a different mindset.  Even the basic doctrines of the Church, eg the Atonement, do not conform to rational thinking today.  What we, the liberals, have done is to ‘rationalize’ these ancient doctrines so that they do not alienate Rational Man.

The spiritual world is definitely a different world – the rules are different – the feelings are different.

Here is an entry from a private ‘coaching’ organization:

Wellness Unlimited, LLC

“Optimum Function of the Human Spirit

What is spiritual wellness?  When we put the wholeness of life together, there is a part of us that seeks meaning, purpose, and connection with the rest of the universe. This is the human spirit.

Resting on our beliefs, values, and intuitive wisdom, our spiritual side provides the answers to the larger questions of where we fit in the cosmos – where we find significance in the scheme of life in the universe.  And this fuels the rest of life."

Spiritual wellness is a major frontier of wellness education today.

The Search for Spirituality

Journal – 01/04/00 6:35 PM

Two items come to the front: First, it is difficult, if not impossible, for a neurotic to become a spiritual person. Second, it is difficult, if not impossible for a scientist to become a spiritual person.

I explore the connection in this book.

I think the latter problem is more exciting – more interesting – more fruitful, therefore I want to call this book something like Spirituality and the Scientist. I toyed with a few alternative titles, but I think I will go with this one. [This idea was later abandoned.]

So! The first question to be explored is: Why does the scientist have a problem with becoming a spiritual person? The answer is that a scientist is concerned, to the exclusion of all else, with the physical world. There is no other world for him. There are a lot of other people who are concerned solely with the physical world, but the scientist is concerned in a certain specific way – he wants to find an answer to all of the questions that comes up in his scientific life. How is it? How did it get that way? Why is it that way? How can it be changed?

Spirituality is concerned with the spiritual world. The human has two brains (at least) – a rational brain, and a feeling brain. Spirituality resides in the Feeling Brain. In fact, all emotions reside there. Science tries to remove itself from the emotions as far as possible. Emotions and science don’t mix – at least not very well. Also, somehow, spirituality is connected to religion, and religion just doesn’t mesh well with science – it is not rational.

There is another problem: I am not a scientist any more – All I can say is that I used to be, but that may not be the same as being an active scientist. Nor am I a spiritual person – at least not what I would like to be.

It will become plain early on, that there is no single thrust to the book; I wander from problem to problem, but I seem to come back to this science-problem repeatedly. Also I comment on the emotional problem now and then.

So! Here we go with the problem: How can a neurotic scientist become a spiritual person? Why should he?

I am well into translating ‘The Creation Story’ in Genesis, as well as ‘The Gospel according Mark’. I think both contribute something to this theme, but I also think the book would be too long if they were included. (I have to remember that the book will be printed on both sides of the paper, and will thus be half as thick as the manuscript, which is printed on one side.)

As I have said, the main reason for doing the translations is to keep my logical brain functioning. We all need to exercise our thinking brains, and this is my way of doing just that. Even so, I never get very far into a translation before I have a comment of some sort.

As with the previous book – this book is not well organized, but it is what it is. I think it has elements that are worthwhile – that will be helpful to any person seeking ‘The Peace of God which is beyond human comprehension’.

Journal – 01/14/00 5:47 PM – Re: Fault-finding – Clovis

Here for Grover’s funeral.

Found myself finding fault with Steed’s [the funeral home]. Go to Kmart, find fault there. I catch myself justifying my doing this, on the grounds that I am being observant – that I am evaluating management. Only when I ask myself, “Do these observations do any good?” am I able to come to my senses. Of course, they don’t do any good – they only keep me out of the serenity channel. So! What can we do about it? Recognize it! I learned to say to myself, “That’s anger!” or “That’s impatience!” So also, I can learn to say, “That’s fault-finding!”

I must begin to say, “Serenity is the most important thing in my life – absolutely. I am eating compulsively lately – I am almost positive that fault-finding and compulsive eating are related.

The Satisfying Life – The Indwelling Spirit

Rom 8:9 – But! Paul says to the Romans, “You are not in the flesh, you are in the Spirit, if in fact, the Spirit of God dwells in you.”

(I leave out the second half, because it is not helpful.)

This verse is not clear, but spiritual things are often not clear. We see that one thing is needful: the Spirit of God must dwell within you. This is a seeming contradiction – you must be in the Spirit and the Spirit must be in you. How can that be? we ask. The answer must be that two become one.

In his high-priestly prayer in Jn 14:11 Jesus says, “Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father [is] in me.”

In Jn 14:10b he says, “The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own authority; but the Father who dwells in me does his works [instructs me]. He who has seen me has seen the Father.” These verses come close to the Doctrine of the Trinity, but the point for us right now is that in the spiritual world, two can become one. In fact our poor little insignificant selves can become one with the universe.

Paul reassures the Romans saying in effect “I know that you people (it is not yet a church that I know of) are not in the flesh. I know that the Spirit of God dwells in you.” This is the phenomenon referred to as ‘the in-dwelling Spirit.

8:9b “Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ (the Holy Spirit) does not belong to him.” ‘Belong’ as ‘to belong to a church’, or ‘to an organization’.

Rom 8:10 – But if Christ is in you, although your bodies are dead because of sin; your spirits are alive because of righteousness.

Again: ‘If Christ is in you’ – means ‘if you are one with Christ’. One version I have uses the term ‘to be in union with Christ’.

8:10 – “But if Christ is in you, although your bodies are dead because of sin, your spirits are alive because of righteousness.” ‘Christ is in you’ – you are one with Christ – the same as ‘being in Christ.’ The result is the same – you are one with Christ.

“Your bodies are dead”. To be in the physical world only, is to be already dead. Think of an animal’s life – say a mouse. Is he any closer to life everlasting than a microbe? Not much, in my opinion. The human has made that giant step forward – he knows that he is alive – that he will die – that he came from somewhere – that he was created. The human is the only species that has the ability to grasp the eternal – the holy. God knows when the least of the creatures dies – but the creature doesn’t know it. God knows it – and we know it – if we have the sensitivity to grasp it.

As soon as we come to realize that we are mortal creatures; we know that we will die. As soon as we know that we will die – we are already as good as dead.

8:10 cont’d ‘because of sin’. Because you are mortal – because of your animal nature – because of your animal instincts. You do not need to have done anything sinful – just being a mortal condemns you to lead a sinful life – a life directed by your instincts.

But! You are not condemned! “Your spirits are alive because of righteousness,” Perhaps “You are not dead – you are alive because you are righteous.”

Rom 8:11 “If the Spirit [of God] dwells in you, [God] will give life to your mortal bodies also, through his Spirit which dwells in you.” My comma.

Paul is saying or implying that without the indwelling Spirit, we do not have life, or at least that our lives are empty. If we do have the indwelling Spirit, our lives become vital and full – we feel alive.

I read somewhere that one of the main reasons Christianity caught on so easily was that the average person could relate to the suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus. The average person knew personally about suffering and death – these experiences were very real to him – I guess they would enable him to grasp the concept of the resurrection.

How do we stay in the spiritual channel?

A person must put aside this world in so far as possible, and concentrate on entering into and becoming a part of the spiritual world. If he does not do that then he is likely to find that this world consumes his whole life.

If he sees the bible as a history of the religious experiences of generations long gone, then he is likely to question everything. Bible scholarship asks, “Who wrote this? When? Why? What was the ‘sitz im leben?’” A scientist might ask, What worldly conditions could account for the apparent miracle?” Eg, ‘The Burning Bush’ – he might speculate that there was a bush in fall colors with the sun reflecting off of it, perhaps flickering in the wind. A spiritual person, or a person who wants to be a spiritual person absolutely must put such considerations aside.

We must be aware that religious experiences are a product of the right brain – the Feeling Brain – where logic and language are strangers.

We must focus on spirituality – on stepping into that whole other world. We know how to do this because it is a part of most people’s experience. We can read and enjoy Sci-Fi stories where the laws of physics are set aside – we can read poetry where language is not what it is in prose – we can watch fantasies where unreal beings interact with real beings. We can fall in love – and find logic being illogical, and language being inadequate. The Feeling Brain is a vital part of our lives – life would be dull indeed without it!

Is it hard to leave this physical world and move into the spiritual world? Not at all, IF you will let yourself do it.

8:12 “We are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh, . . .” We are under obligation – when I was a boy, we used to say, “We are obliged. . .” We don’t owe the flesh anything – we don’t have to give in to the primitive instincts that urge us to satisfy the flesh – those urges are our animal nature.

Rom 8:13 – “If you live according to the flesh, you will die.” Meaning “If you live in the physical world only, you will die.” A scientific fact.

If you allow yourselves to be seduced by these primitive urges, you might as well consider yourselves as simply animals, and as such, you are mortal creatures.

“But if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body – you will live.”

But if you will use the power of the Spirit to overcome the urges of the body, you will become an immortal spiritual person.

Rom 8:14 – For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God -

are entitled to and encouraged to, experience ‘Abba Father’ – the intimate, ultimate personal relationship – really of oneness.

Rom 8:15 – For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the spirit of sonship. When we cry, "Abba! Father!" Visualize an abusive father who treats his son as a slave, and for whom the son feels fear. In contrast, visualize a loving, supportive father for whom the son feels only love, gratitude, and respect.

8:16 “When we cry, ‘Abba, Father.’ [Oh! My dear Father.] it is the Spirit himself [itself]^[1] bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God.” When we feel this closeness with our Heavenly Father, it is because the Spirit itself has convinced us that we truly are children of God.

“And if children, then heirs, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, providing we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.”

“It is the Spirit himself [itself] testifying that our spirits are correct when they perceive that we are children of God.”

From 8:15 – we have been made one with God, so that we are able to address God as, ‘Oh! My dear Father.’ It is the action of the Holy Spirit that draws us into that intimate relationship.

This closeness is so far removed from the OT concept that Paul has to repeat himself and use more than one example to drive home that point. There is nothing quite like this closeness in the OT. The OT God is remote, awesome, frightening, angry, vengeful. Nobody would want to get close to such a God. (Recall Ecclesiastes’ advice.) The Holy Spirit has revealed to Paul that God in Christ Jesus isn’t that way at all. God in Christ Jesus is the Father of us all, and as his children, we are enjoined to believe that we have inherited (or will inherit) something of great value . . .

“. . .provided we suffer with him . . .”

Remember that Paul had suffered much physical abuse in his ministry. He probably expected that other Christians would have to suffer as much as he had. Today, all we have to do is to make the sacrifice of giving up the glitter and gloss of this world.

“ . . . in order that we may also be glorified with him.” I don’t know what this means, and I certainly don’t know what it meant to Paul. Perhaps it means ‘to go to heaven’. Who knows? ‘to become immortal’. ‘Glory’ is a vague term.

8:18 “I consider the sufferings of this present time as not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed to us.” This tells me that Paul doesn’t yet know what ‘glory’ means either. It will be revealed to us sometime in the future.

9:19 “For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God . . .” What does he mean by ‘creation’?

Rom 8:18-25 – is a complete mystery to me..”

8.23 – and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.

Rom 8:26 - “Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness, for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit himself [itself] intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words

“ . . . the Spirit helps us . . . “ - in what way?

“ . . . in our weakness . . .” - we cannot help ourselves.

“ . . . for we do not know how to pray as we ought. . . “ – What’s wrong with the 150 Psalms? Have we been praying wrong? How should we have been praying?

Well! This is the way the Spirit prays, “With sighs too deep for words.” Ah! Ha! The Feeling Brain. How does one pray with the Feeling Brain? See:

“The Cloud of Unknowing is a practical spiritual guidebook thought to have been written in the latter half of the 14th century by an anonymous English monk, possibly a Carthusian, who counsels a young student to seek God not through knowledge but through what he speaks of as a "naked intent" and a "blind love." “ Wikipedia

The satisfying Life – The Mind of the Spirit

 

Now here is a problem: 8:27 - “And he who searches the hearts of men knows what is in the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.”

And what does this verse say?

“And he who searches the hearts of man . . .” ie, God

“ . . . knows what is in the mind of the Spirit . . .” - And what is that?

“ . . . because the Spirit intercedes . . .” In what way?

“ . . . for the saints . . .” For the Christians.

“ . . . according to the will of God.” Because God wants it that way.

8:27 ABS – The Good News Bible - “And God, who sees into our hearts knows what the thought of the Spirit is, because the Spirit pleads with God on behalf of his people and in accordance with his will.”

Here we have the concept that God and the Spirit are different persons. The Doctrine of the Trinity says that they are the same person.

The key-word in this verse is ‘phroneymah’ translated by most as ‘mind’. Well, perhaps in many places, that is what it means, but not in this case. Gingrich says that in this verse, and in Rom 8.6f, it means ‘aim, aspiration, striving’. I would translate it ‘goal’. Thus: “And he who searches the hearts of men knows what the goal of the Spirit is, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.”

Or perhaps, ‘the intention of the Spirit . . .’

Shorter Lexicon of the Greek New Testament by F. Wilbur Gingrich (Editor), Frederick William Danker (Editor)

“This one-volume digest provides easy access to reliable and brief definitions, interpretations of most variants, and many of the conjugational and declensional forms that frustrate readers of the New Testament. Danker's revision demonstrates his concern for the needs of students as well as those of ministers and scholars.”

Entering ‘what is in the mind of the Spirit’ in Google gives us 5000 hits. This doesn’t tell us how others have translated this passage, but it does tell us that many people still read it this way.

Perhaps we can say, “The Spirit is on our side. It is our defense attorney.” It is and continues to be an emotional defense – an appeal – a thanksgiving.

Think of a child who is not yet articulate or even fully comprehending of what its parents have done, and are doing, for it. Imagine also that this child looks up to its parents with awe and reverence, and a tremendous amount of gratitude for the love, protection, and support they have provided and will continue to provide for as long as the child has need of these gifts.

This child realizes sub-consciously what it has received, and will continue to receive, but it cannot express in words, its tremendous emotional gratitude and devotion to its parents for what they have done and are doing. All it can say is, “Oh! My dear father and mother, I love you so much!” and that with sighs too deep for words.

Paul is telling us this about ourselves.

The Spirit enables us to form an emotional bond with God – an attachment that draws us so close to God in Christ Jesus that we become as one. When we are this close, we can’t help but believe that words can never express our feelings – gratitude, respect, honor, awe, and reverence.

[22] We know that the whole creation has been groaning in travail together until now;

Paul has seen hardship and suffering – those were brutal times, as history shows.

Rom 8:23 – and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.

Paul has suffered much in his ministry. “But what anyone dares to boast of (I am speaking in foolishness) I also dare. Are they Hebrews? So am I. Are they Israelites? So am I. Are they descendants of Abraham? So am I. Are they ministers of Christ? (I am talking like an insane person.) I am still more, with far greater labors, far more imprisonments, far worse beatings, and numerous brushes with death. Five times at the hands of the Jews I received forty lashes minus one. Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was stoned, three times I was shipwrecked, I passed a night and a day on the deep; on frequent journeys, in dangers from rivers, dangers from robbers, dangers from my own race, dangers from Gentiles, dangers in the city, dangers in the wilderness, dangers at sea, dangers among false brothers; in toil and hardship, through many sleepless nights, through hunger and thirst, through frequent fastings, through cold and exposure. And apart from these things, there is the daily pressure upon me of my anxiety for all the churches. Who is weak, and I am not weak? Who is led to sin, and I am not indignant? If I must boast, I will boast of the things that show my weakness. The God and Father of the Lord Jesus knows, he who is blessed forever, that I do not lie.” (2 Cor 11:21b-31)

Let us go back to Rom 6.6

Rom 6:6 – RSV – “We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the sinful body might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin.”

Rom 7:14 “We know that the law is spiritual; but that I am carnal, sold under sin.”

That is: I am a slave to sin.

Rom 7.16 – Do you not know that if you yield yourselves to any one as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness?

Rom7.17 - So then it is no longer I that do it, but sin which dwells within me. [18] For I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. [19] For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. [20] Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin which dwells within me. [21] So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand.

20 “It is no longer I that do it [evil] but sin which dwells within me. [It is] sin which dwells within me.”

Thus, Paul introduces us to inner urges over which we have virtually no control. These are the urges that I call ‘instincts’: survival, first and foremost, followed by the urge to reproduce. Compulsive people who feel their inner urges as commands, can say along with Paul, “I know that it is not me that wants to do this or that thing – it is something that is within me, over which I have no control.” Paul is also aware that this urge is not something that comes and goes – it is something that stays there inside of us – it lives in there – it dwells in there. Therefore, he reasons, if we are ever to get rid of this undesirable resident, we are going to have to invite a stronger resident to move in and take his place.

Rom 7:1 “. . . the law is binding on a person only during his life [while he is still alive].” 4 [but] “you have died to the law through the body of Christ.” 5 “While we were living in the flesh, our sinful persons, aroused by the law [the Torah], were at work in our members [in the things that we did] to bear fruit for death. 6 But now we are discharged from the law [the Torah] , dead to that which held us captive, so that we serve not under the old written code [the Torah] but in the new life of the Spirit."

Paul is saying, “We did not know what sin was until it was prohibited by the law [the Torah].” Strictly speaking, ‘Law’ here should be in Caps. It is a title.

M&M – “It not only makes one conscious of sin, but also incites to sin.”

They may be clarifying what Paul is saying. In my opinion, all of the antisocial instincts have been in us since we became a species. In fact, even before that. But! Only in the human has simple survival developed into hatred, vengeance, viciousness, cruelty, etc. These are strictly human traits.

We know that Paul’s logic was far from perfect, but we can see in this section how he struggles with his theology. He understands the ‘law’ – the Torah, and the faith that is built on it. That background becomes one of the major premises from which he develops his theology.

He is a very observant man, in fact he tends to be critical of others – what I call today ‘fault-finding’. Nearly everybody has these faults; therefore, this must be characteristic of the human. So! How did the human get to be this way?

The Church calls the driving force that causes people to have these faults ‘sin’. Paul concludes that people are sinful by nature. Why is that?

They inherited their sinful nature from their ancient parents. (This is, of course, the way we get our instincts.) So! We are sinful by nature. What are the consequences? Paul, describing his personal experience, says, “Sin causes me to do the things I don’t want to do, and prevents me from doing the things I should do.”

Rom 7:21 - “So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand.” [Paul does not mean Law in this case, nor has not defined ‘evil’] Here Paul does not refer to the Torah, he means, “This is the way I am.” – like we would say, ‘this is my nature.’ 22 “For I delight in the law of God [the Torah] . . . But I see in my members [in the things that I do] another law [of nature] at war with the law of my mind [the Torah] and making me captive to the law of sin [my nature] which dwells in my members [which causes me to do the things that I do].”

God, the Father vs the Holy Spirit

The difference is this: God, the Father, surrounds us with his love, which is the greatest of all possible blessings. The Holy Spirit enters into our very being and resides there, enabling us to feel the presence of God the Father and the amazing love of God in Christ Jesus.

GWH Lampe, (a theologian and bible scholar) – “[For John] as for Paul, the indwelling of the spirit is the basic principle of life ‘in Christ’.”

“GWH Lampe – In the literature of Israel the Spirit of God is generally conceived of as an impersonal but divine force, deriving from its primary significance of `breath' or `wind' its two principal connotations of life-force and power.”

“It is through the Spirit that Christ will be known . . .”

John introduces the Greek term that means ‘one who stands beside’. It is rendered ‘counselor’ or ‘Advocate’; (it has also been rendered ‘Paraclete’, the Gr word) but John says that it is the Holy Spirit (14:26). One might get the impression from John that the Holy Spirit did not exist before Christ, but it doesn’t say that.

I haven’t gone very far into John – perhaps after I understand Paul.

Rom 12:2 – “Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewal of your mind [by means of a complete mental turn- around], so that you may demonstrate with your whole life what is the Will of God – what is good, and acceptable, and perfect.”

Rom 10:4 “For Christ is the end of the law [the Torah], [so] that everyone who has faith may be justified.” (To be ‘justified’ is to be ‘righteous’ – to be acceptable to God.)

Rom 10:8 “The word is near you, on your lips and in your heart (that is, the word of faith which we preach); 9 because if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. 10 For man believes with his heart and so is justified, and confesses with his lips and so is saved.”

Regarding ‘the word’ – ‘logos’ can mean more than a single word. It can mean a phrase, or even a sentence. It can mean a thought or an idea. In this case ‘the word’ is explained in the next verse.

Crucial here is the teaching of Paul: If you believe it, it is true. If you believe you are saved – you are.

Regarding ‘to confess’ – this does not mean ‘to confess’ in the modern sense. It means ‘to acknowledge’, ‘to recognize’, even ‘to believe’.

Rom 13:12 “Let us cast off the works of darkness, and put on the armor of light; let us conduct ourselves becomingly as in the day, not in reveling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and jealousy. 14 But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.”

Rom 9:18 “So then [God] has mercy upon whomever he wills, and he hardens the heart of whomever he wills. 19 You will say to me then, ‘Why does he still find fault? For who can resist his will?’”

God can ‘find-fault’ with impunity because he doesn’t get emotionally involved with what he sees. [In a movie I saw last night, the detective’s guru said “Do not let yourself become emotionally involved with the case – it you do the case will rule you.”

10 – Bible Study - 11-99 - Journal

I have down-loaded Romans 8 in Greek from the Net. We are taught in seminary to work closely with the Greek as we study the NT.

Romans 8

My Jehovah’s Witnesses Interlinear Translation has proven very valuable for quick references.  Eg:  They say for the opening words of 8:11 – “If but the Spirit of the one . .’

We read it, “But if the Spirit (Spirit is not capitalized in the Greek.)

“is dwelling in you”  – Literally ‘in-dwelling  in you’.  The word for ‘house’ or ‘home’ is ‘oikos’ so the Greek for ‘to live in’ becomes ‘enkoinos’. The above Greek is in Graphics form – single words cannot be copied from it.

Now the Greek has ‘also’ (kai) in brackets.  We have to go to Metzger’s Commentary to see why they do that.

Metzger, Bruce M., A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament (2nd Edition), Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1994.

“This work is a companion volume to the fourth edition of the United Bible Societies' Greek New Testament (UBS4), published by the German Bible Society on behalf of the United Bible Societies early in 1993. It also makes a great companion to the Stuttgart Electronic Study Bible, which contains the critical apparatus of the NA27 Novum Testamentum Graece, and to Comfort & Barrett's Text of the Earliest New Testament Greek Manuscripts.”

The Commentary makes no comment, but the UBS bible shows considerable variation on the readings of verse 11.  Nothing crucial but some differences.

Who Wrote the Gospels? – Randel McCraw Helms

ISBN 10: 0965504727 / 0-9655047-2-7 - ISBN 13: 9780965504720 Publisher: Millennium Pr – Publication Date: 1997 It is Helm’s theory that John, hereafter called John I, working with an early Gospel of Signs, incorporated in it what I would call a ‘Spiritual Gospel” (in contrast to a ‘Signs Gospel’).

It is the premise of the Signs Gospel that miracles prove that Jesus was the Messiah.  Then in contrast, John I tries to show that religion has nothing to do with the physical world.

Helms p 134  “[John I] had a totally different understanding not only of ‘signs’ but also of eschatology, and this is part of what lies behind his revision of the ‘Signs Gospel’.  John [I] believed that ‘future eschatology’ – the hope that someday soon Jesus would return and complete his task – failed to grasp Jesus’ greatness and accomplishment.”

“John [I] is attempting a very radical revision of the kind of eschatology [that] first-century Christians had previously held. . .   For John [I] resurrection, judgment, and assignment to eternal life are not a matter for the future, because death (now a mere metaphor) has become a matter of the past:  ‘no one who is alive and has faith shall ever die.’  (Jn 11:26)

p 140 – “The Beloved Disciple is Alexandrian Jewish Christians, graciously accepting and helping the gentile Christianity of Mark.”

P 142   “Haenchen is quite right in saying that the mind of John [I] is most clearly revealed in Jesus Discourses . . . “  Chaps 14-17.

P 144       “. . . John [I] has placed his gospel on a trajectory that leads away from institutional orthodox Christianity and toward a religion of inwardness in which the person in whom ‘I and the Father’ dwell is sometimes identical with the Father. .   “In a developed form, this kind of religion is called Christian Gnosticism.”

Here are some references that Helms gives to illustrate his point:

Jn 14:16  “And I will pray [to] the Father and he will give you another Counselor, to be with you forever, 17 even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him; you know him because he dwells with you and will be in you.”

M&M ‘Counselor’ = ‘Holy Spirit’.

The same word is translated ‘advocate’ in 1 Jn 2:1

Jn 20:22  “Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. . . “ 22 And when he had said this, he breathed on them, and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit.”

It would be the opinion of Helms that v 23 is from John II, the Redactor.

I think I can see that too.

Jn 6:63   “It is the spirit that gives life, the flesh is of no avail; the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.”

I don’t know why ‘spirit’ isn’t Holy Spirit, but the translators use a lc ‘s’.

Jn 11:25   “Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. . . 26 and whoever lives and believes in me shall never die.”

This is more or less what Paul is saying in Romans 8, and what I say in my sermon, ‘Life in the Spirit’.

Jn 8:51   “Truly, truly, I say to you, “If anyone keeps my word, he will never see death.”

Jn 5:24   “. . . he who hears my word and believes him who sent me, has eternal life; he does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.”

Jn 3:6  Jesus – “That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.”

Helms is convincing in his argument.  I have ordered some of the references he sited to see how others see it.

Another point he makes is that the sacraments are not important to John [I].  Also, he accounts for the ‘rude’ response of Jesus when his mother told him, “They have no wine.”  John [I] does not mention the name of Jesus’ mother.

John [II] is the redactor who made this gospel acceptable to the church.  Also I need to look into Gnosticism – what is it, and what does it teach?

Journal – Vanity Fair – Dec 99 – Diamonds Aren’t Forever by Mark Seal

More Mansions of Limbo

The life of Carolyn Skelly, heir to the Skelly Oil fortune, used people for her personal benefit.  She spent all of her money, millions, on herself, wasting most of it.  In this article there is no hint that she ever did anything helpful for another person.

You’re probably saying, “I know already, why beat it to death?”

Of passing interest is the fact that she became ‘horribly disfigured’ somewhere in mid life, but that she managed to continue (or resume) her parasitic life style in spite of it.  There is no clear statement as to what her ailment was, but it sounds a little like cancer.  Whatever it was she treated it herself most of the time.

In this issue there is an article on some of the Microsoft stock-holders who cashed-in, and are now living lives of leisure.  These are young people.  Should I look into what they are doing?  Perhaps, if we want to continue to explore this theme.

Of interest to me is why this magazine, which caters to the sin of personal appearance and personal acquisition, includes these ‘Limbo’ articles.

Where is their head at?

Same Issue – Cashing Out Young by James Atlas

“. . . there are close to 60,000 households in the Puget Sound area with a net worth of $1 million or more. . .”

Atlas’ point seems to be that there is a new breed of millionaire – where a modest life-style is the norm and philanthropy the rule rather than the exception.

At least some of the millionaires he interviews are young, retired and are living within their means – they are not trying to make more money.  Most of them are self-made, mostly in the computer field (Microsoft).  They were not raised as rich kids.

When in NYC, Atlas says, he longed for the woody landscape of Seattle, the lakes and islands.  “Maybe when life is so much about the outdoors, people get in touch with neglected parts of themselves, dream up other things to do with their lives than make money.”

Journal – The Interpreter’s Bible – Vol 3

I & II Chronicles – Intro by WAL Elmslie – “The book of Chronicles asks to be weighed as a portrayal of profound principles which enable us to deal with life’s vicissitudes and choices.  In reading Chronicles do not say, ‘This cannot possibly have happened as related.’  That would be a frame of mind that which misconceives the intention of the Chronicler, and fails to see the strength he is teaching.”

M&M “The two books of Chronicles are now considered to have been part of a larger work which included the books of Ezra and Nehemiah.”  Perhaps 350-300 BC.

Nehemiah – properly pronounced N’ chem yah (the first e is a shewah)

Journal

Last night they had on TV – 100 Greatest Accomplishments Of The 20^th Century - none of which was the Awareness of Anne Morrow Lindberg

I commented on it in my book, The Satisfying Life, but perhaps I didn’t stress its importance.  Many of the ‘Accomplishments’ listed in the above program depended on a heightened sense of awareness – eg civil rights, segregation, apartheid, colonialism, war, women’s lib, integration in sports.  All of these and many more came about only because of the heightened sense of awareness that Anne observed.

The Satisfying Life – Serenity vs Spirituality

Saw a movie just now The Boost with James Woods – about cocaine. I recommend it if you have not had direct experience with cocaine. [Also saw recently Salvador with James Woods – tells it like it is.]

Journal – 6/1/99 – The first day of June and the first day of the rest of my life. I am reading and enjoying The Whole Shebang – A State-of the-Universe Report – by Timothy Ferris – 1997 Simon and Schuster - NYC

I am also working on the Creation story in Genesis.

Cosmologists call their Creation Story ‘The Big Bang’. This past week they said in the papers that they have a new value for the Hubble Constant - which value makes the universe 13.5 Billion Yrs old. And it started with The Big Bang – Well! Just what was that? What happened 13.5 Billion yrs ago? Did it happen at zero time?

Was there a time when there was zero mass and zero energy?

What is mass? What is energy?

Where did the stuff that banged come from? Was there a time when space didn’t exist? Is space nothing? Can energy exist without mass? What is the maximum density of matter?

Was there a beginning? Was there a ‘time’ when there had not been a beginning? Has time always existed? If so, how?

What does ‘to exist’ mean? Do I exist? Is ‘I think, therefore I am.’ an answer? I certainly do not exist for long. 100 yrs is as nothing in the cosmos. Even the 100,000 yrs that the human has existed is as nothing. What do we do with this knowledge? Or lack of knowledge? I suspect that it tells us that we are better off in the spiritual world.

The universe is isotropic. We may not be the center of the Solar System – or of the Milky Way Galaxy, but ‘apparently’ we are the center of the cosmos. The fact that every place is the center doesn’t alter our place.

Entropy - A confusing term – something to do with order vs disorder. I explore this term in some depth, because I feel it has to do with my worldly concerns, which in turn affect my spirituality.

6/5/99 - Happy Anniversary to us!

I am looking at a Norman Vincent Peale Guidepost Book, which brings to my mind the question of the fundamentalists – what does their faith do for them? I do believe that they can move from Rational Man to Spiritual Man much easier than the Liberals can (speaking as a liberal). Quite often, they are fairly intelligent people – able to do business and professional work with a functioning thinking brain. But that brain is put aside completely as they move into their Spiritual Lives.

The Feeling Brain – the seat of the Spiritual Life – does not require, nor use, logic.

My professional training had been strictly scientific – no Feeling Brain experience – in fact, scientists try to subdue any feelings that might affect their scientific judgment. This is easier said than done.

Many scientists cannot avoid the ‘subjective’ – they let their feelings color their conclusions. To be completely ‘objective’ is partly the result of training, and partly the result of psychologically ‘subdued’ feelings. It is what it is.

So! Looking at the other side of the coin – this tells me that some other people might be able, either by training or by psychological make-up, or both, to subdue their Rational Brain’s functioning, and encourage their Feeling Brain’s functioning.

Vickie Kraft – Facing Your Feelings: Moving From Emotional Bondage to Spiritual Freedom – 1996 – Word, Dallas – has discovered what I reported elsewhere: We cannot be spiritually mature without being emotionally mature.

We cannot put Rational Man (or Woman) in charge until we get Emotional Man under control. Specifically – Anger, unforgiveness, rejection (whatever that means), bitterness, envy. Emotional Man will control our lives if we will let him.

6/6/99 – There is an expression ‘to look at the world through rose-colored glasses’ meaning ‘to be extremely optimistic’. I have a pair of sun-glasses called ‘BluBlockers’ which, I presume, block out much of the blue light, perhaps in order to block out the UV.

When you first put these sun-glasses on, the world suddenly becomes a different place. Just as a new snowfall creates a ‘winter wonderland’, these sun-glasses create a wonderland of enhanced color (excluding blues). The effect is especially wonderful when the red Indian Paint Brushes are in bloom.

A change in attitude can change your life. A change in attitude can change the way you see things – your outlook on life – your appreciation of it. Attitude has a lot to do with our ability to enter the spiritual world.

Entropy – 6/16/99

Entropy – This concept is central to a law of physics that says, in effect, ‘everything runs downhill.’

The author of 2^nd Law.com, [A Net Article] being a chemist by inclination and training, stresses chemical reactions. And in his examples stresses Activation Energy – The energy required to get a reaction started. EG, mix O₂ and H₂ at RT (room temperature) and nothing happens. But touch them off with a spark or a flame, and boom! They react, ‘liberating’ much energy.

Recall that I said that I didn’t understand the spark that kept the fire going. I am not sure that I do yet, but it is related to Activation Energy (AE). Frank L Lambert, the author of this Page [of info from the net], says that AE saves us from the instant destruction that is inherent in all of life.

A forest fire got started because someone of something (eg, lightening) provided the AE. How much AE is required to start a fire? A whole lot on a wet day like today. Very little on a hot, dry Aug day.

There is also the factor of the rate at which oxidation occurs. At RT iron rusts very slowly (comparatively), but at a higher temp, say 1000C, it will oxidize almost explosively (if powdered).

So! Everything goes downhill, figuratively speaking. It will if we let it. And, it will go uphill if we force it to.

Where does that disclosure get us?

Evidently, I felt it was worth discussing in my commentary on Ecclesiastes. My feelings then were negative – almost “Ain’t it awful?”, and of course “Poor me!”

I think that then, my concern with ‘monuments’ was obstructing my view. The Big Ego was controlling my life.

What is the situation today? I am not yet out of the woods, but I am making progress. I am moving forward. To what goal?

In OA that goal was serenity.

In life, the goal must include improvement, both of myself and of the environment. I have found that if I can return to the Serenity Channel for 30 sec; that is enough for me to ‘get my head together’.^[1]

To be in the Serenity Channel means to be out of this world and its troubles, and to be in a world that is perfect (this isn’t the place to elaborate on that thought).

Closely related is the attitude of gratitude – be thankful for your blessings – for all that is right and good and pleasant.

After that brief respite, I can get back to the world’s problems – (I don’t have any of my own.)

W…. used to say, “I make the big decisions in this household. My wife makes the little decisions, including deciding which are the big decisions.”

I think I have done all on ‘entropy’ that I am going to do. I will read A Brief History Of Time, by Hawkin; I will finish The whole Shebang.

The other books (which will go back today) do not improve my perspective of the Art of Living. I will keep tabs on this field, but I need to move on – to where is not clear.

Literature – Journal – 5/21/99

 

Bibliography

The Greek New Testament – Edited by Kurt Aland, Matthew Black, Carlo M Martini, Bruce M Metzger, and Allen Wikgren, in cooperation with the Institute for New Testament Textual Research – Second Edition – United Bible Societies – 1966, 1968

A Textual Commentary on The Greek New Testament – A Companion Volume to the above by Bruce M Metzger on behalf of the above editors – UBS – 1971

Shorter Lexicon of the Greek New Testament by F Wilbur Gingrich – 1957, 1965 – Univ of Chicago Press, Chicago

The New Oxford Annotated Bible – The Holy Bible – RSV – Edited by Herbert G May and Bruce M Metzger – 1962 – Oxford Univ Press – NYC

Chaos or Creation: Spirituality in Mid-life by L Patrick Carroll, SJ and Katherine Marie Dyckman, SNJM – 1986 – Paulist Press, Mahwah NJ

I am not in the Serenity Channel – and do not seem to be able to get into it.

I have five books from the Bookmobile – most on the conduct of life. Even The Whole Shebang by Timothy Ferris is about the conduct of life. It is sub-titled: A State-of-the-Universe Report, and that it is. The state of the universe says a lot about the conduct of life. One statement he makes early on is, “Matter is frozen energy.” This might be what E=mc² says – I don’t know.

What this says to me is what I said in ‘Where Christ Is’ – ‘The physical world is no more ‘real’ than the spiritual world.’

The evidence that I see that tells me that I am not in the Serenity Channel because I am still fault-finding – I am still restless – not the normal, healthy restless that we understand and expect. I still want to eat or drink or both – and I still want to find fault.

The books I got are not perfect – the writers are not perfect – Presbytery is not perfect – my family is not perfect.

I put the ‘blinders’ on to find serenity, but I am also trying to read these books. I can’t do that with ‘blinders’ on. Somehow or other I must evaluate what I have read.

The ideal situation is that a person must be able to be in the ‘real’ world, but not be a part of it. I need practice in observing, but not judging. As a scientist I would say, ‘I need to collect data, not to create hypotheses’.

But, as I said, ‘A hypothesis will almost force itself into our minds.’

One advantage of the Latin Square (a way of doing research) is that this cannot happen. Only after all of the data is in and the scientist sets down at his desk or computer, and begins to analyze his data can any hypothesis begin to emerge.

“A Latin square is an n × n table filled with n different symbols in such a way that each symbol occurs exactly once in each row and exactly once in each column. Here is an example:

Latin squares occur as the multiplication tables (Cayley tables) of quasigroups. They have applications in the design of experiments and in error correcting codes.

The name Latin square originates from Leonhard Euler, who used Latin characters as symbols.” Wikipedia

Well! I don’t have a Latin Square. All I have is the data that presents itself. By combining this data with a lot of pre-conceived notions (prejudices), and jumping to conclusions – I begin to see faults, or what I think are faults.

This is a convoluted analysis of the situation, and as sometimes happens, I lose the ‘thread’ – the unifying concept – the idea – what I was trying to do or say.

The problem is: How do you analyze a new situation without becoming emotionally involved in it? How do you stay emotionally detached?

One thing is sure: It is more important to stay in or close to the Serenity Channel than it is to investigate new situations.

Conversations with God – Book 2 – An Uncommon Dialogue by Neale Donald Walsch – 1997 – Hampton Rds – Charlottesville VA

There is no hint that Neale has any education. He might be a high-school drop-out for all we know.

From the Dedication, “You have gifted me far more than I have gifted you.” This tells me that this man does not know how to express himself in English.

From Acknowledgments: “[My] parents, through whom God’s sourcing of life itself . . .” This, and the example above, tell me that he will probably make any noun into a verb as he sees fit. He says that his dying mother rec’d final rites from the RC Church. He was probably raised in this faith. He thanks in particular Ken Keyes, Jr – the California-type Guru. He uses the term ‘to elevate ones consciousness’ – a Ken Keyes term.

From In Closing: “ . . . how my life has changed . . . I feel like a new person . . . I have forgiven myself for my past . . . “ I suspect that that past included a lot of mescaline and LSD.

I consider this analysis to be evaluating and not fault-finding. [It is Fault-finding!]

Real Moments by Barbara DeAngelis, Ph D – 1994 – Delacorte Press – NYC

ISBN Topics 1. Conduct Life. 2. Attention (Psychology)

Barbara leaves no doubt about her education. Apparently her degree is in Psychology.

From the cover: “BDE,PH D is an internationally recognized expert on human relations.”

Also from the cover: “This book is about the real moments that make life matter, and how to have more of them. It is about experiencing fulfillment and meaning in your life now, not after you have more money, or find the right partner, or achieve your perfect weight, but in this and every moment.”

“Real Moments” examines the spiritual and emotional crisis in America, and shows how decades of substituting quantity for quality, and stimulation for substance have created a nation of [persons] who do not know how to experience.

I think ‘to experience’ is a transitive verb – it must have an object.

Barbara refers to ‘my rabbi’ so that tells us something of her religious convictions.

Making Choices: The Joy of a Courageous Life by Alexandra Stoddard – 1994 – Morrow – NYC – ISBN Topics 1. Conduct of Life. 2. Stoddard.

From the Preface: “Once I turned fifty, I began, as many of us do, to reflect on my life . . .”

“Over the years I have been privileged to find warm and extraordinarily articulate readers (she is a professional writer).” She calls herself ‘Sandie’.

Sandie is now taking stock of her life, and what has brought her thus far. I sensed immediately a profound sense of humility – of respect for her readers – that I find refreshing.

Apparently, Sandie has never had any serious emotional problems, although she recognizes that they exist. “Recognizing the role emotions play when we are faced with a serious choice, how can we always be sure to act intelligently and in our own best interest?”

The Sky’s the Limit by Dr Wayne Dyer – 1980 – Simon and Shuster – NYC

ISBN Topics 1. Self-actualization

I suspect that Dyer is a PhD in psychology. [Actually, he has a Doctors degree in ED.] The book is dedicated to Abraham Mazlow, and the expression ‘self-actualization’ is Mazlow’s.

From the Intro – “[This book] presents the how and the why for total human development . . .” He describes himself as a ‘humanist’. This seems to be a California-type book – How to live your life.

I have seen his lecture on Living on TV – very impressive – check it out! He has a zillion videos on the Net. Here is one comment: Re: Wayne Dyer

“I recorded that PBS show that he did, it helps me a lot–I was surprised. As far as the Tao goes, I also read 'The Tao of Emerson' (or something like that) and Thomas Merton's, 'Way of Chuang Tzu.' I have a little bit of trouble with Merton, only because his 'Seeds of Contemplation' rubs me the wrong way. (He gets very religious…but he was a Catholic monk, so it's expected.) But, I've found that the Tao has helped me a lot! I for sure would have quit my job by now if I didn't have the readings or if I didn't have my Taoist meditations for that matter. (I am learning the Water Method of Taoist meditation.) Transcendentalism and the Tao were huge discoveries in my life, wish I'd found them when I was younger.”

Don’t dismiss Dyer too quickly.

Bible Scholarship – Journal – Apr 00

From: The Interpreters Bible Vol I “History of the Interpretation of the Bible III – Modern Period”

Von Harnack – “The kingdom of God comes by coming to the individual, by entering into his soul and laying hold of it. True, the kingdom of God is the rule of God; but it is the rule of the holy God in the hearts of individuals; it is God himself in his power. From this point of view everything that is dramatic in the external and historical has since vanished, and gone are the external hopes for the future . . . of God and the soul, the soul and its God.” Adolph von Harnack – quoted by Samuel Terrien.

Von Harnack was a liberal. I discuss his position in some depth in Courage to Change.

Schweitzer, “Historical knowledge can no doubt introduce greater clearness into an existing spiritual life, but it cannot call spiritual life into existence. . .” Albert Schweitzer – quoted by Terrien

Wilhelm de Wette called the story of the 7^th Century creation and discovery of Deuteronomy a ‘pious fraud’.

That the ‘Priestly Code’ was post-exilic was established prior to Wellhausen.

It was Wellhausen’s conclusion that the 8^th and 7^th Century prophets pulled the Jewish religion together – not something earlier.

Alfred Loisy, on the origins of the faith: “The scheme of Messianic salvation, of which the Galilean prophet thought himself the destined head, became a myth of universal salvation.” Of course, this quote is out of context, and may be misunderstood, but it is my impression that Jesus did not consider himself the head of anything – all of these ideas came from the early church.

Loisy continues: “[Jesus] was a savior-god . . . like Adonis, Osiris, and Attis he had died a violent death, and like them he had returned to life; like them he had prefigured in his lot that of the human beings who should take part in his worship, and commemorate his mystic enterprise; like them, he had predetermined, prepared and assured the salvation of those who became partners in his passion.” Loisy says that this info came from James Frazer, The Golden Bough – Parts III and IV. (We used this book as a text in Anthropology 101 at UNM.) (I have a copy of Loisy but I haven’t studied it.)

I think that Loisy is saying that the elements of the Christian faith were being developed slowly over the generations by combining ideas from Greek, Egyptian, and other sources. If one wants to pursue this further he will have to study these histories.

There is evidence that Jesus was familiar with the ancient Greek writers. There is also evidence that the ancient Greeks were able to experience the Spiritual world even though the may not have called it that.

My quote from Geo Buttrick (re ‘salvation’) is from the article ‘The Study of the Bible’ in The Interpreter’s Bible – Vol I.

The Satisfying Life – Almost There – Journal – July 1999

Struggling right now with my sermon, ‘To See Jesus’, I am wondering whether I have lost all ability to write a connected sermon, or whether I ever was able to. If one has no ability to visualize how it should flow, then he will not be able to tell whether it flows or not.

It seems like I was satisfied with the sermons as I was transcribing them, but I could have been fooling myself. Certainly, when I first selected ‘To See Jesus’, I thought it was a winner, but I have revised it several times since I selected it. I am still not satisfied with it.

Over the years, I produced stream-of-consciousness writings, mainly because that is the way my mind worked. Since then, I have learned that there is a better way.

Somehow, one must state in a sentence or two what he wants to say – what he wants to show – where he is going to go. He needs to have a goal.

Without a goal, one is going to drift, and I drifted in ‘To See Jesus’. I had a goal in the beginning, but I lost sight of it about halfway through. I think this has happened to me more than once. (Note that somehow I didn’t do it – ‘it happened to me’.)

Journal – Fri 13

I am sitting here by the barn looking over the backyard. Nobody is here except me and Ginger [my dog]. My first thought was to say, “Nothing is happening.” Then on second thought I realized that a great deal is happening. It doesn’t catch my eye, but even so, much is happening.

All the greenery I see is using chlorophyll to convert CO₂ and H₂O into C₆H₁₂O₆ (simple sugars). Enzymes in the plants are converting simple sugars into carbohydrates and finally cellulose. Wood is being created. Then on a macro scale, I realize that the sun is using atomic energy to produce the light rays that are doing all this, including providing for me a pleasant temperature as well as light to see by.

Other suns have burnt themselves out to become black-holes or some other mysterious component of the universe. A lot is happening that I don’t see. Furthermore, I didn’t realize all this until I sat down with a glass of wine to take a break. The routine of the day can absorb ones whole life.

[The ability to ‘reach out’ – to ‘experience’ the whole of creation is a useful ticket into the Spiritual world.]

I have a problem or two here: I try to keep busy in order to put aside food and alcohol. Unfortunately, keeping busy keeps me from taking time ‘to smell the flowers’. (I think that means taking time to appreciate this ‘Garden of Eden’.)

It is August – has been very hot all over – a record heat-wave. Most people go to the mountains or to the shore to get away from the heat. We don’t have to. [We are already in the mountains.] It is not very hot here. It rained nearly every day during the past month, but that is what makes it lush. People say, “You have a beautiful place here.”

It is hard for me to focus on one theme. I don’t want to fret about it – in fact why not take advantage of it? I have said since I began writing, “That’s the way my mind works.”

I think that what I wanted to say when I began to write [just now] was that I was feeling in the Spiritual Channel. Can a person say, “I was feeling spiritual.”? That expression seems a little awkward to me.

Anyway, one question is, “What does it feel like?”

Well! My body is definitely in this world. I see, feel, hear – everything. I am not in pain – nothing distracts me. My rational brain is in this world. (Perhaps that is what I wanted to show when I began to discuss rational things.)

My Feeling Brain seems to be elsewhere. (This is the brain that I assume to be the seat of the spiritual life.) Where is it? It is away from here.^[1] Is it someplace? ^[2] Now people are here – I am not alone. So much for the Spiritual Channel.

Where is the Feeling Brain of a cosmologist? Where is the Feeling Brain of a spiritual fundamentalist? I keep saying that I think I know.

I see on TV the continuing struggle between ‘Creationism’ and ‘Evolution’. So also, the Pro-lifers vs the Pro-choice. The fundamentalists are still a factor to be reckoned with.

Fundamental issues are being decided by fundamentalists. I suppose I am saying that things are still in 300 BC. That may be, but where am I? I keep saying that I am in another world. This means another cosmos.

They are far from sure as to the nature of this one.

Journal – Sat Aug 14, 1999

Well! Here I am again in almost the same position as I was in yesterday – except that the sun has moved – or was it the earth?

I have not finished any of the three good books that I have on cosmology. The concepts are just too much for a senior brain.

What I have learned is that nothing ‘real’ is what we think it is. By extension, we might say that nothing in the spiritual world is what we think it is. What do we know?

Fact 1. A spiritual experience is an emotional experience.

From this ‘fact’, we draw some inferences: It seems that good emotional health is necessary for a good spiritual experience. During the time my emotional brain was numb (which was most of my life), I never had a spiritual experience.^[3]

So! Now that my emotional brain is OK (shall we say normal?), I am able to experience spiritual things. Not always, I hasten to add. Somehow a person must be ‘tuned in’ to the spiritual wave-lengths. How do we do that?

I guess the magic word is ‘ambiance’. At the time I was finishing The Satisfying Life, I was reading almost exclusively ‘spiritual’ books. This enabled my mind to stay in that area of interest.

Now I am reading scientific books that engage the rational brain (or what is left of it). Somehow, this tells me that the two brains are not on speaking terms. This may be why much of the scholarly bible research is not spiritual, while the spiritual research is not scholarly. It is a rare person who can combine the two.

Perhaps the reason I have been able to become more spiritual these last few years is that my rational brain is rapidly losing its acuity.

I just saw a reference to a man who had switched his allegiance from ‘evolutionism’ to ‘creationism’. We can see now how this could happen.

Now, I personally don’t believe that we need to renounce scientific facts in order to become spiritual, but I do see that a spiritual person need not dwell on scientific facts. He needs to know enough not to light a match to see how much gas is left, but he need not be always thinking about the nature of combustion, etc.

I think this is one reason America is behind in its quest for the full life. We focus too much on the one facet, and neglect (even reject) the other facets.

I guess we can be thankful for this single-mindedness when it comes to science. Many of the great scientific minds have been occupied with science to the exclusion of all else.

Even so, I have just read an article that said that Einstein’s brain is not normal, but rather it shows major deviations from the normal. They also said that he learned to read much later than is normal, and that his head was ‘misshapen’. This finding suggests that the really great contributions are the result of mutations, not dedication by the otherwise normal individual.

What we see here is that if your career of choice is in science or Math, you will very likely have a very shallow spiritual life. But if your career of choice is in some other field, and I hate to name names here,^[4] you have a fighting chance to become a spiritual person.

I am not a mathematician even though I majored in Math (but Chemistry was my major major), but as I recall Math calls for a slightly different ‘logic’ than science. I wouldn’t think that a mathematician would have a lot of trouble with spirituality.

Somehow Alfred North Whitehead made that jump. Considered a mathematical genius – he introduced us to the concept of Process Theology.

The Satisfying Life – Literature – Journal – Mar 99.doc

C H Lewis, in Mere Christianity, (1960 – Macmillan – NYC) has a good point. He says, “When Freud is talking about how to cure neurotics he is speaking as a specialist on his own subject, but when he goes on to talk general philosophy he is speaking as an amateur. It is therefore quite sensible to attend to him with respect in the one case and not in the other – and that is what I do. I am all the readier to do it because I have found that when he is talking off his own subject and on a subject I do know something about (namely, languages) he is very ignorant.”

Let’s make sure that every entry bears on the prime subject. Does the above? [I guess that it shows that Lewis’ Rational Brain was functioning.]

C S Lewis:

p71 ”Morality then seems to be concerned with three things. Firstly with fair play and harmony between individuals, secondly, with what might be called tidying-up or harmonizing the things inside each individual. Thirdly with the general purpose of human life: What man was made for . . .”

He means by the second point, ‘morality inside the individual’. Most sociologists realize that many, if not most, evil people are not that way by choice – we can usually find some cruel force in their formative years – eg child abusers were abused children.

Until such emotional traumas are cleared up, that person is not going to be a moral person – in fact, he cannot be a moral person.

By extension of this idea, we can probably say that it will be almost impossible for such a person to become a well-balanced spiritual person. I think that spirituality will continue to elude us until we get the inner-person straightened out. The neurotic almost must be a self-centered, egotistical person.

Even though I had very low self-esteem, my Big Ego was still in there with its continual pressure to “Be important.” I believe that it prods all neurotics in the same way. The difference is in what we do, that makes us feel important. I just cannot visualize a neurotic being a spiritual person.

Of course, there is the lunatic fringe – Heaven’s Gate, etc – but I cannot believe that their ‘spirituality’ is what other people would seek.

My spirituality is so near to the Serenity Channel that it is hard to tell one from the other. When I knew that I was in the Spiritual Channel, LOVE was all-pervasive. One cannot be alone in the Spiritual Channel – one is drawn to other people – especially to members on one’s own congregation, and one feels that LOVE for them that God has ‘poured into our hearts’.

When one is in the Spiritual Channel, one becomes a part of the Universe – a part of the whole – the whole family of God – a part of every tree and shrub – of every ant and gopher – all is a part of the whole – and we are a part of it. We are a part of the Fellowship of the Holy Spirit – of all the saints who have departed this life to dwell eternally with God.

Not only am I a part of departed family and friends, but even of those whom I knew only vicariously – like C S Lewis, George Arthur Buttrick, and Will Rogers. Of course, I am a part of all humanity – even a part of its arch villains. Evil is a part of our experience – it must be a part of our spirituality. That is, spirituality relates me to the non-material universe.

I have heard several people say lately, “I am terribly ashamed of my past.” Guilts – if we are perceptive – are a part of our spirituality. In OA we plan to ‘make amends’ to the people we have harmed. Not all of us recall those things that we have done to offend others – some of us have blotted them out of our minds (but not out of our psyches).

Be thankful if you can recall the evil things you did years ago – now you have a chance to rectify that situation. Of course, the offended person may be long gone, but we can communicate with that person in our spiritual world and ask for forgiveness.

And in that same spiritual world, we can forgive that person, who also may be long gone, who offended us. Be thankful if we can recall those old grudges – be thankful that we are now able to say directly to that person, “I forgive you.” This is the spiritual world – learn to feel at home in it.

Thus we have: LOVE, Forgiveness, and reconciliation – with each other and with God. I read stories from OA people who became alienated from God because of hell-fire preaching or something similar. It is a long slow path to get to know the God of LOVE - the God of the NT – but they usually get there and are grateful that they made the effort.

The Serenity Channel is strictly the material world – the material things in it – and us – the individual. We put aside all thoughts of others – it is just us and our personal lives.

3/8/99

How easy it is to fall back into fault finding – how hard it is to put fault-finding aside, and begin to accept the world as it is.

This past week I read and reviewed some books from Presbytery’s Resource Room on Spirituality. Somehow I must have thought that that service somehow put me in charge. And if I am in charge, then I have the right and responsibility to criticize people or situations that do not meet my expectations – I have the right to find fault. Of course, this was my Waterloo.

On the bright side, I now know where the pitfalls are – I can watch myself a little more closely. There is no reason why I cannot still be of service – but there are many reasons why I cannot let it lead me into fault-finding.

In OA we say, “Abstinence is the most important thing in my life.” If I am bingeing on food, I have no life.

So also I must begin to think, “Acceptance with Serenity is the most important thing in my life.” Without Serenity, I have no life.

So! What to do when fault-finding strikes? So far, I have put my hands beside my eyes, like blinders on a horse. I am figuratively trying to put blinders on myself so that I do not see faults. I think it is working – so stick with it until something better presents itself.

Also, I have noticed that when I am finding-fault with someone, it is difficult to love them. So now we have two reasons to cease fault-finding: First, it is not good for our serenity, secondly, it is not good for our spirituality. “Being a loving person is the most important thing in my spiritual life.”

The above is of major consequence

Here are the books from Presbytery. I almost think they will detract from the vital observations above, but here they are as examples of the pitfalls that confront us.

Servants of the Mist by Gary Brewer – 1998 – Bridge – Louisville KY

Lib. of Cong. Summary: Thirteen-year-old Gurion feels drawn to a mysterious island where through a series of fantastical experiences he comes to understand his purpose in life. ISBN Topics 1. Conduct of life – Fiction.

Is it nit-picking to point out that Gurion was fourteen years old? Or does this help us judge the thoroughness of the writer of the summary?

Biog Data: Brewer “rec’d his theological training at SF Theo Sem.” It doesn’t say how much training, or what degrees he rec’d, if any. Is that fault-finding, or does it help us understand Brewer’s qualifications?

Regarding the story: Presbytery has classed this book as ‘Spirituality’. There is a lot of mysticism in it, but I am not sure that it has to do with spirituality. [The literature says that mysticism is a form of spirituality.] It does have to do with ‘purpose in life’, and morality. Gurion hears a compelling voice . . .

p 177 “It was if he were seeing for the first time. Everything was changed. He saw beauty in the world as he had never seen it before. And wonder. All the things he had taken for granted jumped out at him with a new added dimension.”

P 180 The Voice is speaking. “Every life is interwoven into the fabric of all creation. If you accept the gift of life, you accept a certain measure of responsibility for the world. Life is something we share – we all share together.” We?

I suppose each of us experiences something different about what the Spiritual Life is. We find what we find; however, I too have felt somewhat like these quotes from Brewer.

How much came from within ourselves, and how much did we assimilate from other people’s experience? “O Lord my God, when I in awesome wonder consider all the worlds thy hands have made . . .”

There are two physical worlds: The Natural World that God has created, and the physical world that Humanity has created. It is this latter world that Scripture cautions us about.

Just off hand, I don’t recall that Scripture says much about the Natural World. It seems that everybody takes it for granted. There are a few isolated verses that I found useful in preparing sermons on conservation of natural resources, and general respect for the earth.

I agree with Ann Lindberg – that the greatest growth in this generation has been in Awareness. This has been a mixed blessing for some of us, however. People in the Full-awareness Channel suffer vicariously for all the needless suffering in the world. If this is the only channel we have, then our consciousness causes us mostly pain.

Another price we pay is that we become ‘Aware’ that needless pain is usually caused by evil people. Therefore we point the finger at those people. We feel hatred – we seek punishment, if not vengeance. People who feel this way, find it difficult, if not impossible, to “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

We may be able to forgive a person who is contrite, but it is difficult, if not impossible, to forgive one who has no regrets, but continues his evil ways.

Spirituality – Journal – Nov 24, 2001

Here is an interesting analogy: When I shut down my computer after having been on the Net, I move again into the real world.

Neither my family nor my friends know where I have been – they didn’t even know I was gone. But I was – I was in another world. This is a strange sensation – a strange feeling but it is similar in a way to being in the spiritual world.

Nobody misses you – nobody knows you were gone. But you were gone.

I hope my days of alcoholic binges are behind me – but I still remember them. Sometimes – not always of course – when I sobered up, I had the feeling that I had been gone on trip – in another world.

Thus I could relate to the hippie expression ‘to be on an LSD trip’.

Lovers of literature say that they can be ‘transported’ by a good book.

When I say that the ‘Spiritual World’ is ‘another world’, I mean to convey the impression that it is altogether different from the ‘real world’ – the Physical World - certainly as different as Yosemite is from down-town LA.

Several theologians in the NT and several of the early fathers say that the Physical World is a sinful place and that we should make every effort to avoid its entanglements. We know that the physical world of that time was indeed a brutal place to be in. Even though America today is about as gentle as it can be, we can still grasp what Paul and the others were getting at. We can understand how this world is a place where we can get bogged-down in ’getting and spending’ – in storing-up riches that can vaporize in a flash. (Enron is in the news tonight.) This is a world where sex and physical attractiveness can consume our whole lives.

While we are on the Net these alternatives present themselves clearly. A major category in the Web Directories is ‘Adult’. Since most of us are ‘adult’ one might think that this is a category to investigate. Not so! This is the Category for the sex- and filth-oriented to investigate. I have no objection to sex and filth as such; what I fear is that, like the god ‘Success’, these concerns will absorb our whole lives.

What I propose is that we pause a moment in our mad pursuit of whatever it is we are pursuing and take stock of our lives. What do we want? Is there something else worth pursuing? Does the other person count?

What is the goal of the human race? What should it be? Are you concerned about that goal? I think the Net is important. I was a little late in seeing that – but I see it now. I am on the Net now along with millions of other people who also see it’s value.

My circle of friends, perhaps 500, is rather limited. We are the Senior Citizen Set – playing cards and knitting; we are not into ‘what’s happening’.

But! On the Net

- age doesn’t count – unless you want it to. You can be in contact with many people with interests and concerns similar to yours. I would like to be a part of that.

In contrast to the public library, or even an institutional library, the Net seems to be a lot more personal.

Not that librarians are impersonal but that they can seldom relate to you or your subject. On most Net Pages there is a hyperlink to the creator of the page. You can communicate with him or her if you so desire.

Attitude – Jour Jan 99

Change Your Mind – Change Your Life:

Concepts in Attitudinal Healing

by Gerald G Jampolsky, MD and Diane V Cirincione

Bantam Books – NYC – 1993

Based on ‘A Course in Miracles’

 

Preface – “Most of us want to be at peace in our lives. But it seems as if circumstances are always intruding to make that impossible. If you are like us, even opening up the newspaper in the morning and reading about war and bloodshed taking place throughout the world can make any peace of mind you thought you had quickly disappear.”

“Wherever you go and whatever you do, there always seems to be the temptation to judge or condemn others and to find others to blame for what we are feeling. Furthermore, we have all had past experiences that seem ‘to prove’ to us that we must be careful about whom we trust. We find ourselves filled with doubts and fearful that others will take advantage of us”.

A Different Path

Is there another way of looking at the world? Are there ways for communicating with each other? Is it possible to change the belief that [in order] to survive in the world and not be a victim we must constantly be ready to defend and attack? Can we be clearer about the purpose of life and the purpose of our relationships? Is it possible to heal our attitudes about ourselves and each other? Can we learn to live with integrity and honesty, without self-deception of any kind?”

“In a very real way this book is about that deep inner yearning, a yearning for spiritual fulfillment in all our lives.”

“This book is about the practicality of love and forgiveness, two of the most powerful forces in our lives.”

“A Course in Miracles

In 1975 {he was 50 years old] during a period when I was destroying myself with alcohol – I felt that I was beyond any help. I was a militant atheist and not the least bit interested in anything spiritual.

It was then that a miracle happened to me. My friend Judith Skutch Whitson gave me a copy of an unpublished manuscript entitled ‘A Course in Miracles”. The course is about the power of love and forgiveness and how these offer us everything we could possibly want.”

Comment – 1/30/99 – Another California ‘How to Change Your Life’ book. I didn’t read it all – it seems to repeat what I already know – but I have no doubt that it will be a useful book. The ‘Course in Miracles’ continues to crop up in my reading, I have never seen it, that I remember, but it might be worthwhile to look it up.

Journal – 1/30/99

Gerald (he calls himself Jerry) mentions how hard it is to stay in the Serenity Channel (my concept). I can stay serene, at least for a while, if I do not see things that upset me. If I keep my eyes shut while I am in the parking lot, there is a possibility I can stay serene. Yesterday, Jack and I were talking about the Trial of the President, when I recalled a judge who was about to be convicted of some heinous crime; to save his ass he retired with a pension that would have enabled Emelda Marcos to live in style. Ain’t it awful?

9/19/04 – This seems to be a good place for some comments on fault-finding. Do I have a goal in fault-finding? The world is full of faulty products and faulty people. Do we accept the situation, or do we try to change it? Remember the Serenity Prayer. I suspect that Contemplation is a means to at least put aside our awareness of those faulty products and faulty people.

1/26/99 4:54 PM

I am now in the Serenity Channel. I have been working off and on all morning on Spirituality. Strangely enough, all I feel is Serenity.

I was reading Benny Hinn^[1] – not greatly impressed with it, but when I closed it up I had finished a bowl of pretzels. So I just remained seated, looking out the window – no desire for more pretzels – no urge to watch TV, read another book, or write – no gum. I just felt Serene – unusual for me. Is it all coming together?

What does it feel like? Not the same as meditation. Perhaps similar. The main thing is – nothing is prodding me. I feel content. No video tapes. No guilts. No embarrassments. No fault-finding.

For comments on two related books:

Contemplation

I have something like 19 pages of The Meaning of the Contemplative Life According to Thomas Merton by Fr James Conner. My printout is dated 6/29/00, so I have been working on it off and on since that time.  The trouble with it is that it is too Christian/Catholic/bible oriented for me.

Once I began to get into the idea of Spirituality, I began to see that all efforts to make Spirituality 'Logical' were doomed by its very nature.  Consequently, I am not going to include any part of this paper in this book, or comment on it.

John Caddock, Winchester OR, quoted Karl Rahner http://www.krs.stjohnsem.edu/ as saying, "The Christian of the future will be a mystic or he will not exist at all."  Is this true?

It is my impression that the unstated goal of Contemplation is to enable the practitioner to become a mystic.

As I understand it, a mystic is in the Spiritual World full time, or nearly so.  I would not want to be a mystic if that were true.  I would rather spend most of my time in the Material World doing missionary work, and just enough time in the Spiritual World to be able to tolerate the time spent in the Material World.

A major factor in tolerating the ‘Material World’, is that I must continually remind myself that as a missionary, my mission is: preaching, teaching, and healing.  I have dwelt on 'my life' as much as I have to illustrate that there are many obstacles to being a missionary, chief of which is that I was a compulsive fault-finder.  Jesus was a fault-finder, but I am not Jesus.  Even so, I, as in the Hymn, 'I wanna be like Jesus in my heart.'

My readers can easily see where I have strayed from the path.  I hope that they can also see where I was on the mark.

[I see now that there are two facets to Christianity:  Jesus Life and Teachings, and the teachings of the early church - Biblical Theology.  There is a third facet also, the newly created theology of the Evangelicals.  (Arianna Huffington said today that the fact that these people believe that that there is no future for this world, is a major factor in the administration's blatant disregard for the future of the world.)  My whole focus is on Jesus' Life and teachings; I discuss Theology in my book ‘Theology with the Feeling brain.”]

Chaos or Creation

Chaos or Creation:  Spirituality in Mid-life by L Patrick Carroll, SJ and Katherine Marie Dyckman, SNJM – 1986 – Paulist Press, Mahwah NJ

ISBN Topics:  1. Middle age – Religious Life, 2 Spiritual Life – Catholic Authors

I like the title and the sub-title.

Fault-finding: They use the faulty Jerusalem Bible.  My principal bible is:

The New Oxford Annotated Bible – The Holy Bible – RSV – Edited by Herbert G May and Bruce M Metzger – 1962 – Oxford Univ Press – NYC

It has been called 'The Bible Scholar's Bible'.

M&M Note on The Priestly Story of Creation (Gn 1:1-2:4a)  ‘Out of original chaos God created an orderly world in which he assigned a preeminent place to man. . . The ancients believed the world originated from and was founded upon a watery chaos (the deep). .

Incorporated in this essay is my original analysis of the Creation story.  Incorporated in it are some of my negative thoughts.  What I want to show in this essay is that these negative thoughts, while they may (or may not) be absolutely valid, interfere with ones attaining a spiritual state.

Back to Chaos or Creation – From the back cover, “The spirituality of mid-life involves being led by another, a surrendering, a following, a giving-up, and beyond imaging – a receiving.”

They open the Intro with Jn 21:18-19 but from the Jerusalem Bible (JBV).[1] My paraphrase is:  “While you are young, you dress yourself and go where you want to go, but when you are old, someone else will dress you and take you where you do not want to go.”

V19  “he said this to show by what death he was to glorify God.”

In my opinion, his death did not glorify anybody.  The bible writers grasp at straws to explain what they don’t understand.  V19 does not explain why he said this, but it does tell us that others have asked themselves, “Why did he say this? It’s true, but why bring it up?”

“And after this he said to him, ‘Follow me’.”

C&D say that “this simple text . . . outlines the contents of this book.”

They say that the purpose of this saying is to point out that there is a solution to the ‘mid-life crisis’ – “Follow me!”

The closing chapter:  Sharing our Brokenness:  Jesus and the Cross

opens with the thought, ‘All Christian Spirituality is a spirituality of the cross and resurrection of Jesus.’

Assuming that this is true, there is a road sign in it for me.  My journey has been marred by the terrible injustice of the cross and the sinfulness of man which perpetrated it.  These are faults that I find as I survey life, and like Eccl, I seem to see only the faults.  It would be wonderful if my worrying about them would help, but of course it does not!

So! My solution has been to try to escape from the fault-finding channel and to tune-in to the Spiritual Channel.

I will now try to read this chapter without finding fault.  Uh-Oh! Line one!  A Quote from Paul, (again the JBV).  This is not the way I read this line.

Literally:  This you pl think in you the and (or also) in Christ Jesus.

Paraphrased:  Cultivate the same attitude that Jesus had – that attitude being selflessness.

C&D see the story as a metaphor – death, like being born-again, is something that happens again and again in mid-life:

1.  Death to youth

2.  to youthful idealism

3.  to the ego

4. to privatism

5. to an excessive sense of community

6. to an image of myself as simply ‘man’ or ‘woman’.

7.  to every image and definition of God

In addition to these ‘deaths’, we also experience suffering, and in many cases we have a choice as to which suffering we will experience.

C&D say that our prime commitment is to be a Christian.

Basically this is a good book.  I am a little overly critical of it, but it would have been better if they had used the RSV instead of the faulty JB.

[Note: There is a new version of the Jerusalem Bible which is highly praised.]

Conclusions – July 13, 2003

Staying in the Spiritual World

I have just edited this book, and am forcibly reminded that This World – the world of wars and power struggles – can completely remove us from the Spiritual Channel.  I am in the middle of the Peace and Justice Movement, and that is in this World.  Even our church is in this world.

I don’t know what to do about these situations, but if I am involved in this World, it seems impossible for me to regain Spirituality.  It is difficult but not impossible.

The primary rule is: Don't let yourself get emotionally involved in these worldly situations.  As soon as I let myself get emotionally involved, I find myself getting angry, and this is a spiritual no-no.

Both my sister Jenny, and my daughter Montajean, seem to be in the Serenity Channel all of the time, yet they are not spiritual people as far as I know.

Look around you – who are the people who seem to be living the Satisfying life? What is their attitude? Are they critical of the existing situation? Does it seem to make any difference whether or not they are spiritual persons? I don’t think it does. But in my own case, Spirituality was the only course for me.

Emotional Health is a prerequisite for both Serenity and Spirituality.

Emotional Health is a prerequisite for Physical Health.

Emotional health is a prerequisite for the Satisfying Life.