An imagined assurance ...

Imagine God saying ...
"In case you ever wondered, I did love you.  
I have always loved you.  I will always do my best to help you, whether or not you ask.  (It is easier when you ask, and especially when you listen for the answer, which is often quiet and surprising.)  
"But the best I've done is to give you the power to think, to grow and to take care of yourself."

Answers, free and without limit

I often ask, "what of God can I bring to this moment?"  I trust the answers I get - including "let it go."
I see now that I have been thinking small:  I often stop listening after the first answer (or the first answer I perceive).  
Another way to phrase the question is, "what of God is available to me in this moment?"  To that question - and to all questions to God (or, if one prefers, to Life or Grace or Love) - there will always be at least one answer - whether or not one recognizes it or likes it.  The wisdom, guidance and comfort of the Holy Spirit - including of course that Spirit within each person - are always and generously available.  They are not like gumballs - only one per coin and turn of the knob.  They are free and without limit, if we just keep asking.

Trusting and relaxing

If I really got, consistently, that God is in control, including by a well-founded entrustment to me, I could relax more than I do.

Wants and needs

When is “I need this” really “I want this – and I want to justify wanting this”?

For me – sigh - most of the time.

To sleep, perchance to dream

When I dream I hardly ever see my face, such as in a mirror, let alone my body.

“To die, to sleep. To sleep, perchance to dream ....”  What if Shakespeare's idea about what may happen after death is right?  What if each and every dream during life foretells the array of experiences – some ghastly, with emotional distress but no physical harm; many pleasant; some fabulously funny; some blissful; all interesting – the soul has after death of the body?

One perspective on dream interpretation, one theory, is that everything in a dream represents the dreamer.  What if each dream shows the dreamer his or her connection to – being a part of – all things?  And, if we are all connected, each of us a leaf on the tree of life, why should we expect all of whatever post-death experiences we have to be idyllic, any more than we expect all of our dreams to be so?

My definition of heaven is the experience, however fleeting, that everything is all right just the way it is.  If there is a life of the spirit after bodily death, perhaps the shedding of bodily limitations permits a view of Life, including all earthly lives and the earthly environment, that is of such a grand scale that acceptance of what we left behind will be easier than now seems possible.  However, I would rather experience a heaven of perfect compassion, including for lives left behind, than a heaven of perfect but ignorant and compassionless bliss.  So I expect, for me, there will be sadness in heaven, just as in this life.  But, as there is now, there will be love and grace to console me.

July 12, 2015

A key part of the foundation of Quakerism is the notion — the experience, once it sets — that there is that of God in every person.  How does that really hold up?  Though no human can control the laws of physics or the power of nature, today three ways God is in each person come to mind.
First, to God is attributed the power to create.  People create, too: relationships, works of art, physical things — and the whole of our lives and legacies.

Second, to God is left final judgment. “Judge not, that ye be not judged.  For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged.” [Matthew 7:1-2.*]  Yet we judge all the time, in ways large and small.  The best we can do seems to be to strive always to judge with love.   

Third is the power to give or withhold grace. 

Every day, we have many opportunities to choose whether or not to bring grace to the situations in which we find ourselves.  When we earnestly ask ourselves, “What of God can I bring to this moment?”, we usually get a useful answer.

* The above is amended because, I am embarrassed to admit, I misquoted the Bible.  What I actually said in Meeting this day was, “Judgment is mine, saith the Lord.”  That statement is not found in the Bible, as far as I have found.  The verse I mis-remembered is this: “Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.”  [Romans 12-19; see also Hebrews 10-30 and Deuteronomy 32:35.]  Today, I only meant to talk about judgment, not vengeance.

Contribution and selfishness

I suppose taking care of oneself can be said to be unselfish: by doing so, one preserves and enhances one's ability to contribute to others.
But doesn't that come back around to self-interest?  Isn't contributing to others selfish?  Isn't it in contributing to others that we experience true self-worth?  Isn't it in contributing to others that love has its purest expression?

Aspiring to be ordinary

I aspire to be ordinary: to be no more - and no less - than those who do their best for its own sake, not to appear better than others.

Life, choices and responsibility

Of all the places I could be, of all the things I could be doing, and of all the people I could be with, Life - grace or, when I don't see grace, fate - and the choices I have made have brought me here. I am responsible. I will enjoy - or at least accept - what is, or I will change it.