Shifting Gears

Mary’s encouraging comments on yesterday’s post remind me that I really am not finished with the Jesus thing. What I need to do is regroup, meditate, and seek guidance for how best to proceed with a message that I believe is critically important to our time. In the meantime, I’m choosing to share some of my personal journal entries to provide some insight into what goes on in the old man’s head when he’s not at lunch.

07.01.05
It might be difficult for the reader to understand just what a profoundly sad and disturbing personal process began for me when I realized that I no longer wished to be identified as a Christian. It is an identity that I feel—with no little resentment—has been co-opted by a fundamentalist Right that has finagled its way into the popular perception as what the faith represents. I have carefully and purposefully chosen the words corrupted and perverted to describe what I believe has happened to the teachings of Jesus in the name of “official”, “evangelical”, and “bible-based” Christianity.

So it is then with great joy and excitement that I report a Gestalt! I am a child of the Christ! This designation acknowledges the Judeo-Christian roots of my worldview while at the same time placing me squarely in the reality of the present moment. I need not be ashamed of my childish imperfections so long as I intentionally strive to mature toward the perfection revealed to human consciousness by the Christ in its various forms and incarnations. Yes, I am saying that the cosmic Christ is universal and is therefore knowable in an infinite number of ways.

I am pleasantly struck by how inclusive this understanding is as compared to the exclusivity of the “I am the only way” misinterpretation embraced by literalists. When the Christ is understood as all things that strengthen the connection between the Creator and the created it can then be legitimately thought of as the Way, but not as an exclusive claim to one particular dogma that fails to accommodate the comprehensiveness of universality. I am not alone a child of the Christ but am instead one of many children included in the whole family of God who celebrate our kinship through connectedness.

07.01.27
Canned Heat’s On the Road Again is playing in the background, while C-SPAN’s fare today has been coverage of the peace rally in D.C. and the commencement of Hillary’s campaign in Iowa. The three most important people in my life are socially, politically, and morally conscious activists, and the concentric “rings” spreading from this source include many, many more who, while they may not fall into the “three most important” category, are nonetheless critical elements of the construct I perceive as reality.

I am beginning to think that our government is growing fearful of its constituency, of its people. I think that this —if it is in fact what’s happening—is not a good thing. Jesus of Nazareth, who is proclaimed Prince of Peace by countless millions, repeatedly counseled his followers to not be afraid. Therefore, regardless of what they call themselves or think themselves to be, anyone who encourages violence by percolating fear throughout the public mind is truly antithetical to the Christ.

To find any truth or meaning in the teachings of the Christ requires clarity of theology that naturally becomes increasingly important for each succeeding generation; for it is true that the transmission is always but one generation from extinction. We must hope and pray that the transmission has not already been lost.

07.04.21
I am becoming numb to the killing. The Virginia Tech massacre crossed the threshold. Killing is reported via the local, national and global news on a scale that is truly incomprehensible even when presented in the horrifyingly intimate now. The perceived value of life is plummeting even as the Supreme Court superficially attempts to restore it. No partial birth abortions, baby, but the carnage wrought by sinful Evil still escalates exponentially by the day. As a people we are guilty of criminal negligence on a more widespread basis than ever before (yes, there is a correlation between the increasing population and the decreasing reverence for all life of which Albert Schweitzer spoke) but this is okay as long as it somehow falls under the pro-life banner. How hypocritical can we be to feign concern for the unborn while systematically killing the already born? The incredibly apocalyptic eye-for-an-eye insanity which is being promoted by the Christian Right is neither.

07.05.05
Mary and I have just viewed The Frontline/American Experience production of The Mormons on PBS and found it powerfully moving. I had been taught that the Methodist church in all its developmental variations closely paralleled the evolving United States of America government in its political structure and conduct. The Mormons, however, makes a strong case for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints being a uniquely American faith tradition that borrows heavily from traditional Christianity and then presumes to take it to the next level of contemporary revelation. The irony here, perhaps, is that while the Mormon’s expectation of others to accept an incredible and miraculous prophecy as true, it seems unlikely that the LDS would not be highly skeptical of such an expectation aimed toward them requiring acceptance and practice of a hypothetically even more recent claim of prophetic revelation. There is a great (and curious) spiritual hunger emerging globally and The Mormons does an excellent job of showing how this particular culture is satisfying that quest for a growing number of people. Now if we can just figure out the part about letting our selves be drawn to the dynamically powerful I AM without succumbing to the static but equally powerful temptation of organizing and institutionalizing it.

07.05.06
The hour is come for me to proclaim that the gospel revealed through Jesus of Nazareth as the Christ is bad news for the Church. If self-actualization is defined as independently entering into harmonious relationship with the Whole, then organized attempts to assume the role of mediator become antithetical to the desired outcome. In this sense, the correct objective of any organized effort should be to facilitate rather than dictate. Failure to distinguish between theology and religion devolves into a profound misunderstanding which in turn enables those who seek to inhibit complete personal autonomy/atonement to their own advantage to label such thinking as heretical. Jesus as the Christ proclaims the extant organization illicit and in so doing defies the establishment which proselytizes for its own betterment. The Christ was, is, and will always be a threat to those who wish to seize the Power rather than share it. The good news is that the Power can never be absolutely co-opted.

07.05.11
Pssst!
Over here!
Where am I?
Who are you?
Can you please just tell me where I am?
I can’t until I know who you are.
What difference does it make who I am when all I want to know is where I am? Isn’t everyone else here with me regardless of where they’ve come from?
I don’t know them either, but they are not asking me where this is. Either they already know, or they don’t care. (10:44)

07.06.14
Just as there are different kinds of presents, there are different kinds of presence. Presence is that which we intuitively feel—perceive; comprehend—in the context of the time and space that we occupy. It is sometimes said that someone brings a presence into a room, that some people have charisma. But there is also the holy, sacred experience of being in God’s presence.

This requires an aside: I have intentionally used the word “God”. This is the word I have associated with concepts such as eternal, transcendent, supranatural…even omnipresent! When we stand still with the intention of prayerfully communing in Its presence we experience the sacred, the holy, the One.

07.07.07
I need to know the question before I can answer.

07.08.24
When one understands that all others are children of God, conditions cannot but disappear.

Did not Jesus challenge claims to know the mind of God? I cannot find that he ever claimed to know such a thing himself. In the beautifully poetic style of Hebrew literature, Jesus could at best come up with analogies and comparisons to attempt a glimpse at the true nature of God’s reign/kingdom/heaven. Paramount in his teachings, however, is that such revelation and relationship is unconditionally available to Creation. Being human, we generate distortion and interference which makes such authentic communion with God difficult. This is why we have need of the Christ. In sacred remembrance we are invited to receive the Christ’s good news that it is possible—indeed, necessary—to become one with our Creator, and in so doing to become one with ourselves. God is love!

07.08.31
Praise be to God from whom all blessings flow.
My cup runneth over.

07.09.03
It is with understandable trepidation that I entrust my Labor Day thoughts to the laptop. I am not sure that my current form of employment constitutes labor, but I have been a laborer in my earlier life. I just heard Barak Obama speak to a gathering in Manchester, and I am once again inspired and encouraged by the way he speaks so sincerely of hope and change. All we who labor one way or another have in this man, I think, a champion. I’m sorry to do this to you, Mr. Obama, but I have decided that you are the one I would hope to see as the next President of the United States (my readers know that this has been the kiss of death to previous presidential aspirants, and hence the apology).

“We the people” does not address the Corporation which continues to assume greater and greater constitutional privileges and rights in the government of which they own an increasingly large share. “We the people” were not consulted on the horrific Iraqi mess that is funneling inestimable amounts of taxpayers’ money into the coffers of the military industrial complex, although we are expected to shed the precious blood of our citizens on foreign soil—and natives on their own soil—as the price that we are to supposedly pay in order to demonstrate patriotic support of immoral corporate greed.

07.09.07
Esoteric truth is an illusion because Truth is knowable to all. While it is true that knowing is subject to individual degrees of openness and receptivity, there is no aspect of Truth that is hidden from anyone and everyone. Truth is not exclusive. Truth is inclusive.

07.09.08
Is this what is meant by bipolar? On one hand I am filled with awe, wonder, and gratitude as I am overwhelmed by the countless blessings that are mine. On the other, I can tell that I am increasingly sad. The sadness seems to come from my perception that far too much of humankind cannot or fails to comprehend the miraculous thing we all possess in common: life! Our species has evolved to an awareness that this miracle does not continue in its present form forever, thereby making it something to revere and cherish each and every moment that we experience it. And yet, we profane life by demeaning, desecrating, and ultimately destroying that very thing which wisdom calls us to hold sacred and holy.

If not now, when?
Stop
Stop now
I mean it
Stop

God is love
God is
God
Love God
Love is God