How many times have I asked this question or heard others ask it? Can't count them all. We tend to think that we are living in the most interesting of times, that our problems are unique. Not so. Are our problems greater than those of pre-war America, are our decisions more daunting than those which had to be made about what to do in Europe? How about the 1500's in England when no one could keep up with whether their country was Catholic or Protestant this week, and supporting either would not just bring ridicule, but could cost you your head? At any time in history the record is laced with turmoil, threats from the powerful, fear, disease, all of the same things that plague this planet now. Want to talk about deforestation? I grew up in a place in this country that was "clear cut" by a Chicago timber company around the beginning of the 20th Century, where not much of anything was left standing. Truly, nothing is new under the sun.
Even my own present situation is not unique. There are so many people in the same situation I am in right now. Many more will experience it. The key is to not allow fear to win the day, to not allow myself to make decisions I will soon and definitely regret. I have been there before too, because I chose out of panic or sentiment, not relying on what the Holy Spirit was insisting I hear, but relying on my own judgement as a broken man.
There has been cause to reach out to God time and time again. As the psalmist wrote:
Deliver me, my God, from the hand of the wicked,
from the clutches of the oppressor.
In you, O lord, I have taken refuge.
You have showed me great troubles and adversities,
but you will restore my life and bring me
up again from the deep places of the earth.
I shall always wait in patience and shall praise you more and more.
Comforting words, indeed. But these words, written centuries ago, are also great reminders that there are always things to overcome. God doesn't fix, he gives me the ability to do the job. The trick is that I have to listen, trust and surrender all that I hold onto with my fearful self. I must take refuge, and I will be brought up. Trusting in the power of God never fails, as long as I understand what I am trusting in.
Friday, November 18, 2016
Wednesday, November 16, 2016
Forgive, even when it seems ridiculous.
I recently lost my job. In losing it, I also lost a lot more. The feeling of security that comes from knowing that there will be another paycheck in two weeks. The various types of insurance, the contribution to the 401k plan, and the time I put into the system toward retirement- I lost that too, as I was only two weeks away from being fully vested. I lost it all. And the most remarkable thing is that I still don't know why exactly. I know what they said, but I don't understand it. I broke no laws, no rules, nothing was taken, no one was injured, I hurt no one, etc, etc.- they didn't think I fit there, and I was shown the parking lot.
If anyone ever had a reason to be mad, hurt, humiliated and down right vengeful, I would think it would be me. What have I ever done to anyone, I ask God, I've tried to be a light to everyone I meet, I've tried to do my job, I've never been a problem to others, so why was this done to me? I could smolder into a state of hatred for those who made this decision, seeing them as elitist, false judges of character. I could do all of that and worse, and feel justified in all of it. At times I have been on the verge, call the lawyers! my inner man shouts.
Then, this morning God speaks directly to me again and reminds me that I must get back on the path. This is life, he says through the pen of St. Paul, these things will happen because you are alive. You will be humiliated. You will be hurt. You will be judged falsely and you will feel like you have suffered for no reason other than you exist. But, you have a new life in Jesus and you know what that means.
Time and time again I am reassured that because of faith, there is hope. Time and time again I am reminded not to worry about the things of this life, but focus on the life that comes from God. Now, I am not of the mind that God will call up Marietta Electric and take care of the electric bill this month, but know it will be taken care of. I know that with faith and with the attitude that comes from trusting in God in my life that I will be able to make it happen. But only if I let all of that dark matter go. That only slows me down. I know that those people have their own issues to deal with and that has nothing to do with me. I must forgive them, even though it seems ridiculous to do so. Not doing so only prevents me from living my life and that is what Jesus wants me to do. He said as much.
So, thank you Holy Angels for prompting me to open today's meditation from Oswald Chambers, and thank you for piquing my curiosity to read Colossians chapter 3 once again and thank you God for speaking to me. We will move forward, and I will return to the path.
If anyone ever had a reason to be mad, hurt, humiliated and down right vengeful, I would think it would be me. What have I ever done to anyone, I ask God, I've tried to be a light to everyone I meet, I've tried to do my job, I've never been a problem to others, so why was this done to me? I could smolder into a state of hatred for those who made this decision, seeing them as elitist, false judges of character. I could do all of that and worse, and feel justified in all of it. At times I have been on the verge, call the lawyers! my inner man shouts.
Then, this morning God speaks directly to me again and reminds me that I must get back on the path. This is life, he says through the pen of St. Paul, these things will happen because you are alive. You will be humiliated. You will be hurt. You will be judged falsely and you will feel like you have suffered for no reason other than you exist. But, you have a new life in Jesus and you know what that means.
Time and time again I am reassured that because of faith, there is hope. Time and time again I am reminded not to worry about the things of this life, but focus on the life that comes from God. Now, I am not of the mind that God will call up Marietta Electric and take care of the electric bill this month, but know it will be taken care of. I know that with faith and with the attitude that comes from trusting in God in my life that I will be able to make it happen. But only if I let all of that dark matter go. That only slows me down. I know that those people have their own issues to deal with and that has nothing to do with me. I must forgive them, even though it seems ridiculous to do so. Not doing so only prevents me from living my life and that is what Jesus wants me to do. He said as much.
So, thank you Holy Angels for prompting me to open today's meditation from Oswald Chambers, and thank you for piquing my curiosity to read Colossians chapter 3 once again and thank you God for speaking to me. We will move forward, and I will return to the path.
Sunday, October 4, 2015
It has been along time since I have been here. I don't think I am alone in noticing that spirituality is cyclical, it strengthens and wanes, just like everything else in nature. One who claims to be in a constant state of spiritual bliss is either telling a fib or has reached a supernatural state of nirvana that not many have lived to see. I find that when I am in the low part of the cycle, when I need to meditate and pray and find that special closeness to God, is the time when its the most difficult to do. I am happy to say, however, that persistence pays off! One of those happened today in fact.
This morning I was reading the selection in the Anglican Cycle for daily prayer, or the Daily Office. It was the story from the the book of Acts (Ch.12) where Herod has Peter imprisoned, presumably to behead him as he had just done with James, the brother of John. In the night, the Angel of the Lord comes to Peter and frees him by causing his shackles to fall from his wrists, then leads him past the outer guards and through the gate "which opened for them of itself". Peter was free. Just prior to this action we are told that the entire church was praying for him.
I am faced once again in this reading with a remarkable story of miraculous deeds attributed to prayer and the appearance of the Angel of the Lord. My 21st Century brain has to attempt to process all of this in light of what I know, or at least, what I have been taught and what I have taught myself about how things work in the universe. And, it is precisely at places like this where many will exit the bus of religion, because they think it is trying to take them to some type of land of Oz. I used to blindly accept the magic of these stories and think to myself, who am I to be so arrogant as to challenge the reality of the power of God?
But there is another way, a way that takes me to the core of my being and that leaves the Godly miracle completely intact. By seeing what this scripture is saying, rather than by looking for the proof of the written action, these stories take on a powerful dimension that enables me to see straight to what the Holy Spirit is all about. Perhaps the people of year zero needed to have a miraculous story to believe in the God of Jesus, or maybe, they just needed a story, period. They were all about stories after all. And they were far more clever about understanding the meaning and function of stories than we are today.
Here is what this is for me. I am imprisoned on an almost daily basis by something. Usually something very worldly- money, self doubt, what other people think my favorite football team- stuff that in the long run doesn't really matter. It is not the literal chain and shackle of imprisonment, but these things can take on the character of the real thing, stopping me dead in my tracks and making me go in directions much darker than I would like. But here is the point, the point of most religion, really. The Angel of the Lord is always here, always ready to remove those shackles, often miraculously, and to have the gate of the prison open of its own accord allowing me to walk right out to freedom. Like waking from a nightmare and being so relieved to realize that I was just dreaming.
This is what God does. For me at least. God is the miracle worker, the angel who removes the chains and provides the light for me to able to walk out of the darkness. It is a long walk more often than not, and it is strewn with heartache and fear, but there is always freedom beyond the gate. The writer of Acts knew that. I know that.
This morning I was reading the selection in the Anglican Cycle for daily prayer, or the Daily Office. It was the story from the the book of Acts (Ch.12) where Herod has Peter imprisoned, presumably to behead him as he had just done with James, the brother of John. In the night, the Angel of the Lord comes to Peter and frees him by causing his shackles to fall from his wrists, then leads him past the outer guards and through the gate "which opened for them of itself". Peter was free. Just prior to this action we are told that the entire church was praying for him.
I am faced once again in this reading with a remarkable story of miraculous deeds attributed to prayer and the appearance of the Angel of the Lord. My 21st Century brain has to attempt to process all of this in light of what I know, or at least, what I have been taught and what I have taught myself about how things work in the universe. And, it is precisely at places like this where many will exit the bus of religion, because they think it is trying to take them to some type of land of Oz. I used to blindly accept the magic of these stories and think to myself, who am I to be so arrogant as to challenge the reality of the power of God?
But there is another way, a way that takes me to the core of my being and that leaves the Godly miracle completely intact. By seeing what this scripture is saying, rather than by looking for the proof of the written action, these stories take on a powerful dimension that enables me to see straight to what the Holy Spirit is all about. Perhaps the people of year zero needed to have a miraculous story to believe in the God of Jesus, or maybe, they just needed a story, period. They were all about stories after all. And they were far more clever about understanding the meaning and function of stories than we are today.
Here is what this is for me. I am imprisoned on an almost daily basis by something. Usually something very worldly- money, self doubt, what other people think my favorite football team- stuff that in the long run doesn't really matter. It is not the literal chain and shackle of imprisonment, but these things can take on the character of the real thing, stopping me dead in my tracks and making me go in directions much darker than I would like. But here is the point, the point of most religion, really. The Angel of the Lord is always here, always ready to remove those shackles, often miraculously, and to have the gate of the prison open of its own accord allowing me to walk right out to freedom. Like waking from a nightmare and being so relieved to realize that I was just dreaming.
This is what God does. For me at least. God is the miracle worker, the angel who removes the chains and provides the light for me to able to walk out of the darkness. It is a long walk more often than not, and it is strewn with heartache and fear, but there is always freedom beyond the gate. The writer of Acts knew that. I know that.
Sunday, January 11, 2015
God is.....
My wife and I enjoy reading the meditations of the late Rev. Oswald Chambers in his book My Utmost for His Highest each morning. (At least on the mornings when no alarm is set and we don't oversleep.) The reading for January 9th turned out to be one of those thought provoking entries, in that it deals with the ubiquitous Holy Spirit and how it preserves us through the trials of life. The key for us this morning was Rev. Oswald's instruction to read Psalm 139 in connection with his commentary. We did.
Psalm 139 is labeled in the The Harper Collins Study Bible, NRSV, as"The Inescapable God". The first 18 verses describe God as the all knowing, all seeing and all encompassing spirit. "Where can I go from your spirit?", he asks, "..where can I flee from your presence?" The psalmist makes the famous assertion that it was God who formed him and knit him together in his mother's womb, that it is God who laid out the plan of his days as written "In your book". And finally comes the plea to "Search me, O God and know my heart; test me and know my thoughts."
There must have been something in the coffee this morning, because after this we picked up Day by Day from the Forward Movement, and read in the meditation on Acts 19:2, "I much prefer the word Spirit to God. The latter has been anthropomorhphized from an unseen but undeniable force into male qualities: the white-haired old man and the blue-eyed suffereing son. God is boxed into a certain form we think we can know and understand."
I believe that the Psalmist and the authors of today's meditations are all saying the same thing, and it is a thing I have felt to be true in my soul since the occurrence of the transforming moment of enlightenment I had as a youth- We can never know or understand God on our terms, we can not put God in a box and claim to know who or what he really is. God has made life as God is, and has made our understanding as it is- infinite and mysterious. One knows there is God, but there is no way to define God with anything other than descriptions that are limitied by the number of nouns and adjectives we have in a our vocabulary. A mystical experience, a sacremental moment, communion with the Holy Spirit, are things felt and experienced, but always inadeqately described.
The psalmist makes clear that God transcends anything we can know or think. That God is part of everything, living and dead, animate, inanimate. God is the air, the rocks and the sea; God is our thoughts, our happiness and our sadness. God is the dark space between the stars and the planets. We are all a part of the fabric of God and God is a part of all that is, both seen and unseen. God knows us so well because we are all fundamentally the same, we are driven by the same inteligence, the same madness.
Can anyone ever prove God? Why is there a need to when God simply is? Trying to make a literal being out of such an ephemeral concept is foolishness, and the results of such foolishness are always in our face, every day. Look no further than the newspaper or the evening news.
God is. I pray that we can allow him to be that. Only then can we be like him.
Psalm 139 is labeled in the The Harper Collins Study Bible, NRSV, as"The Inescapable God". The first 18 verses describe God as the all knowing, all seeing and all encompassing spirit. "Where can I go from your spirit?", he asks, "..where can I flee from your presence?" The psalmist makes the famous assertion that it was God who formed him and knit him together in his mother's womb, that it is God who laid out the plan of his days as written "In your book". And finally comes the plea to "Search me, O God and know my heart; test me and know my thoughts."
There must have been something in the coffee this morning, because after this we picked up Day by Day from the Forward Movement, and read in the meditation on Acts 19:2, "I much prefer the word Spirit to God. The latter has been anthropomorhphized from an unseen but undeniable force into male qualities: the white-haired old man and the blue-eyed suffereing son. God is boxed into a certain form we think we can know and understand."
I believe that the Psalmist and the authors of today's meditations are all saying the same thing, and it is a thing I have felt to be true in my soul since the occurrence of the transforming moment of enlightenment I had as a youth- We can never know or understand God on our terms, we can not put God in a box and claim to know who or what he really is. God has made life as God is, and has made our understanding as it is- infinite and mysterious. One knows there is God, but there is no way to define God with anything other than descriptions that are limitied by the number of nouns and adjectives we have in a our vocabulary. A mystical experience, a sacremental moment, communion with the Holy Spirit, are things felt and experienced, but always inadeqately described.
The psalmist makes clear that God transcends anything we can know or think. That God is part of everything, living and dead, animate, inanimate. God is the air, the rocks and the sea; God is our thoughts, our happiness and our sadness. God is the dark space between the stars and the planets. We are all a part of the fabric of God and God is a part of all that is, both seen and unseen. God knows us so well because we are all fundamentally the same, we are driven by the same inteligence, the same madness.
Can anyone ever prove God? Why is there a need to when God simply is? Trying to make a literal being out of such an ephemeral concept is foolishness, and the results of such foolishness are always in our face, every day. Look no further than the newspaper or the evening news.
God is. I pray that we can allow him to be that. Only then can we be like him.
Wednesday, December 31, 2014
The Power of Light
In this season of Christmas, as in every Christmas season, we hear a great deal about light. I never thought much about it until this season, I usually hear the words and let them go by as the days wind down to the Feast of the Nativity and then fade into the New Year. This year it meant more, and I think it meant more because I heard someone speaking about it on the radio in a way that I had not thought about it before.
I am not certain who it was, the person speaking about light, so I won't try to quote them and give credit because I may credit the wrong person. But it went like this: The darkness that exists in the world is far reaching, in fact, darkness is everywhere that light is not, by definition. But as prevalent as it may seem, darkness is never powerful enough to overcome light. Light always wins the struggle, effortlessly it appears- darkness simply cannot withstand the presence of light.
This little metaphor is so powerful in its application. If one accepts the definition of God as the pure light, the source of light, the creator of light, then darkness is the absence of God. What happens when there is no God? I have seen the answer to this in my own life, in the times when I attempted to replace God with other sources of energy- money, people, intoxicants- those times were like living in a dark closet, feeling my way around in a very small world cut off from my self and from all that I knew to be good. Darkness is a place where only those who hate the light are bound to live, preying on the light of others for their sustanence.
As I listened to the man on the radio, I realized that light does not happen on its own- physical or spiritual. Light only happens as the result of the expenditure of energy. Substances or particles are involved in a reaction, often violently, and the result is energy released as light. (I am no physicist, but I think I am on the right track here). The light in our homes is the result of electrons being pushed around in wires by huge generators forcing them to find a point of release. And so on. Coming out of the darkness also involves a violent reaction of some kind, a realization, a letting go, something that the ego and the id do not want to have happen. At the end of that struggle is light.
It is the same with me. Light only comes into my life when I take positive action to open up my heart and mind to the power being pushed around the universe by God, the mystical generator. I have to accept it and consciously keep the circuit open to keep it flowing within me. Jesus, the light of God who became flesh and walked among us, is God's light in this world. That other energy, the self indulgent energy so powerful at first, burns dimly and bathes one's mind and soul in the amber glow of what pleases in the moment. Jesus is for all time.
For 2015, I am resolving to keep that light burning bright, to open myself to the flow of energy from Jesus that is love in its purest form. It is source of clean, renewable energy, and it is abundant.
I am not certain who it was, the person speaking about light, so I won't try to quote them and give credit because I may credit the wrong person. But it went like this: The darkness that exists in the world is far reaching, in fact, darkness is everywhere that light is not, by definition. But as prevalent as it may seem, darkness is never powerful enough to overcome light. Light always wins the struggle, effortlessly it appears- darkness simply cannot withstand the presence of light.
This little metaphor is so powerful in its application. If one accepts the definition of God as the pure light, the source of light, the creator of light, then darkness is the absence of God. What happens when there is no God? I have seen the answer to this in my own life, in the times when I attempted to replace God with other sources of energy- money, people, intoxicants- those times were like living in a dark closet, feeling my way around in a very small world cut off from my self and from all that I knew to be good. Darkness is a place where only those who hate the light are bound to live, preying on the light of others for their sustanence.
As I listened to the man on the radio, I realized that light does not happen on its own- physical or spiritual. Light only happens as the result of the expenditure of energy. Substances or particles are involved in a reaction, often violently, and the result is energy released as light. (I am no physicist, but I think I am on the right track here). The light in our homes is the result of electrons being pushed around in wires by huge generators forcing them to find a point of release. And so on. Coming out of the darkness also involves a violent reaction of some kind, a realization, a letting go, something that the ego and the id do not want to have happen. At the end of that struggle is light.
It is the same with me. Light only comes into my life when I take positive action to open up my heart and mind to the power being pushed around the universe by God, the mystical generator. I have to accept it and consciously keep the circuit open to keep it flowing within me. Jesus, the light of God who became flesh and walked among us, is God's light in this world. That other energy, the self indulgent energy so powerful at first, burns dimly and bathes one's mind and soul in the amber glow of what pleases in the moment. Jesus is for all time.
For 2015, I am resolving to keep that light burning bright, to open myself to the flow of energy from Jesus that is love in its purest form. It is source of clean, renewable energy, and it is abundant.
Sunday, February 2, 2014
The key to a healthy spiritual life is in seeking rather than knowing. Simply stated, with knowing comes familiarity, and familiarity (as we are taught in the fable) breeds contempt. When something is known it ceases to have meaning beyond its definition, it may be categorized, cataloged, and filed away. It is no longer sought out except as trivia.
We are told in this age of hyper enlightenment, that most everything is known. Those things that still evade us, such as the edge of the universe, the content of dark matter, solutions to certain mathematical theorems, the cure for the common cold, are all soon to be discovered and then we will indeed know everything. This brings me to a point of embarkation which must necessarily be avoided, although the desire to veer from the present topic is strong.
Those among us who study day and night to prove things, have spent a great deal of time looking into religion and concluded that all is known here as well and that it is no longer relevant. It has been shown by science that God, whatever that is, does not exist. For these individuals, Marx has proven to be correct in that religion is the opiate of the masses, and that s all. The curtain has been pulled away from the universe and there is no gray haired man back there turning knobs and pulling levers. Lets move on to the next mystery.
If religion and God have become irrelevant, then I say that art, literature, drama, music, and poetry must be dismissed as well. But wait, Mr. Kendrick, are you equating these things with God? No, it is much more clear than that, I am saying that these things are God. And that is what I am going to seek to do here in this spot, develop support for that statement, knowing that I will never be able to know if I have supported it or not. And that too, is God.
We are told in this age of hyper enlightenment, that most everything is known. Those things that still evade us, such as the edge of the universe, the content of dark matter, solutions to certain mathematical theorems, the cure for the common cold, are all soon to be discovered and then we will indeed know everything. This brings me to a point of embarkation which must necessarily be avoided, although the desire to veer from the present topic is strong.
Those among us who study day and night to prove things, have spent a great deal of time looking into religion and concluded that all is known here as well and that it is no longer relevant. It has been shown by science that God, whatever that is, does not exist. For these individuals, Marx has proven to be correct in that religion is the opiate of the masses, and that s all. The curtain has been pulled away from the universe and there is no gray haired man back there turning knobs and pulling levers. Lets move on to the next mystery.
If religion and God have become irrelevant, then I say that art, literature, drama, music, and poetry must be dismissed as well. But wait, Mr. Kendrick, are you equating these things with God? No, it is much more clear than that, I am saying that these things are God. And that is what I am going to seek to do here in this spot, develop support for that statement, knowing that I will never be able to know if I have supported it or not. And that too, is God.
Saturday, June 8, 2013
God's gifts to each of us are enormous, if we simply look for them. The greatest of all that I have found is the gift of opportunity. Opportunity is a word that conveys the feeling of progress, advancement, and as the American Heritage Dictionary reads, "A favorable or advantageous combination of circumstances".
In my life in God, I am presented daily with favorable circumstances, opportunities to make choices between living spiritually or being purely human. In the past, most of my choices were driven by the overwhelming power of human nature, rooted in habits that developed out of instinct and from years of looking for ways to satisfy the hunger that arose from an unquenchable feeling of loneliness. Such things drive a soul to darkness in a way that chips one apart, a little piece at a time, while looking for that fulfillment that will surely be just around the next corner or behind the next bottle. All trailing opportunities missed.
An ancient psalmist writes, "He reached down from on high and grasped me; he drew me out of great waters... He brought me out into an open place; he rescued me because he delighted in me". I have felt the joy and relief behind these words in my own life, the day that I finally seized an opportunity to chose, and realized that I in order to live, I must surrender all of the things in my life that are driven by anything other than love. Every door was opened and the light of goodness filled each corner and the rushing breeze of the Spirit removed the dust and darkness. I set myself free from myself, and prayed to God that He would be my mind and my heart.
Another psalm, "remember not the sins of my youth and my transgressions; remember me according to your love..." and another, "the Lord is my strength and my shield; my heart trusts in him, and I have been helped". These are words of comfort, the words that convey the situation of life today. So, do I feel that I have I been made perfect or better than anyone? Of course not, and I never shall be. But by realizing and seeing that one thing, that each day is an opportune gift from God to restore life in goodness and hope, I know that I can live.
Live a life today, live as if you are who God created you to be. Living away from your self is not a fearful place, it is not a lonely place. It is where we all belong in order to be who we are. The opportunity is always present, it is a gift waiting to be accepted.
In my life in God, I am presented daily with favorable circumstances, opportunities to make choices between living spiritually or being purely human. In the past, most of my choices were driven by the overwhelming power of human nature, rooted in habits that developed out of instinct and from years of looking for ways to satisfy the hunger that arose from an unquenchable feeling of loneliness. Such things drive a soul to darkness in a way that chips one apart, a little piece at a time, while looking for that fulfillment that will surely be just around the next corner or behind the next bottle. All trailing opportunities missed.
An ancient psalmist writes, "He reached down from on high and grasped me; he drew me out of great waters... He brought me out into an open place; he rescued me because he delighted in me". I have felt the joy and relief behind these words in my own life, the day that I finally seized an opportunity to chose, and realized that I in order to live, I must surrender all of the things in my life that are driven by anything other than love. Every door was opened and the light of goodness filled each corner and the rushing breeze of the Spirit removed the dust and darkness. I set myself free from myself, and prayed to God that He would be my mind and my heart.
Another psalm, "remember not the sins of my youth and my transgressions; remember me according to your love..." and another, "the Lord is my strength and my shield; my heart trusts in him, and I have been helped". These are words of comfort, the words that convey the situation of life today. So, do I feel that I have I been made perfect or better than anyone? Of course not, and I never shall be. But by realizing and seeing that one thing, that each day is an opportune gift from God to restore life in goodness and hope, I know that I can live.
Live a life today, live as if you are who God created you to be. Living away from your self is not a fearful place, it is not a lonely place. It is where we all belong in order to be who we are. The opportunity is always present, it is a gift waiting to be accepted.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)