this morning I was born again

I read a book - "The Secret Life of the Soul" by Keith Miller. In it he shares how he learned to pray daily, listening to God and writing down whatever thoughts come to him during that time.
I thought I'd try that. I did this morning and here's the results:

Don't be trite with me
Breathing is good
Hear your breath
Long black veil
(Hearing drum patterns in rain on roof)
I can hear my neck bones turn
I hear emptiness
A man who doesn't control his breath, doesn't control any part of himself
I've never heard the sound of a pen writing on paper before (you gotta listen carefully)
There is a sound to silence, but I can't tell if it’s just in my head or my eardrums, kinda like the sound you hear in a shell
I think part of it is the little hum coming out of the refrigerator
I'm gonna start praying for people

I don't believe in you anymore
That's too bad
What am I to do?
You tell me
Give up

The silence - I can't turn it off
I wonder if that's what the grave is like
Ahhhh... the refrigerator fan kicked on
It's nice to hear something
I wonder if people would just rather hear something over nothing?
Sure they would
False belief is still belief
A tongue licking in the air (dog)
You sense nothing, so you start licking yourself (dog again)

This morning I was born again (song lyric from Ray Wylie Hubbard)

My sheep hear my voice
I'm listening with my heart
And I hear nothing

I hear some things - my breathing and a hum in the air
So hearing is just a metaphor
I'll try and taste for God
My tongue is numb
I taste coffee
I bet I look pretty stupid with my mouth open and my tongue out
"Taste and see that the Lord is good"
Stomach growls.. bird outside.. roof creaks ... stomach growls

Ok see if I can see Him
Arms are cold

Smell Him; see if I can smell Him
Smells like air

Well, I've run out of senses
One more: The seeing-hearing-feeling-tasting-smelling
Do it longer than just hearing my own voice

I poured myself another cup of coffee, turned off the bed lamp and watched the light of early dawn fade into being
Hoping to see hear feel taste or smell God still

I went back to sleep and dreamed that I could float. I was in church and was amazed that others weren’t amazed. I can float. It is an amazing, beautiful, glorious feeling. It feels like flying. I love the feeling of it. Joy fills my soul.

And I now others watch me, but they are not impressed much. Still I show them. I fly - float - suspend myself. I laugh and enjoy the experience as I slowly drift to the floor with the ability to push off again and hold myself in mid air for long moments.

I wake up.

I've had these dreams often lately. And each time is seems like I am better and better at pushing off into the air and staying adrift for longer and longer periods. I don't know if its good but it sure feels good.

Says It All

This was my Christmas present from Adena this year - a rock - with a quote on it. I've placed it at the entrance to where I live - in a log cabin on several acres in the middle of the Texas Hill country - right on the beautiful Blanco river - right in the middle of nowhere, I am finally somewhere.

Pretty much says it all for me.

God's Plan, Hand and Friendship

Three dogmas of my inherited Christianity I must analyze:

1. Hand of God
2. Friendship of God
3. Plan of God

The "Hand of God" idea is that behind all the events that occur in my life, some almighty being is watching and manipulating things for my good.

Implications of this are enormous! Where do I begin?
(fill in later)

The "Friendship" dogma is expressed in the "personal relationship" aspect of Jesus/God. This is that person I've been talking to all these years. This is also part of that "God is reaching out to you continually" set of sermons. ("If you are not close to God, who moved? You or Him?" - duh...)

This is also part of that "God/Jesus/Holy Spirit lives in your heart now thus you've been 'born again', and can behave and act and love like God and will be raised from the dead and get eternal life, etc. etc."

The "Plan of God" idea is that what every born again Christian has heard repeatedly - "God has a plan for your life." What this means is that the infinite master planner of the universe who personally knows and cares about me (Friendship idea) and who causes things to happen in my life (Hand idea) has thought out some wonderful fulfilling plan for my meager existence on earth that I can assume involves things like:

• who I marry,
• where I work,
• where I live,
• who I meet and
• what I achieve.

This is primary 101 evangelical Christianity of America's 20th century.

My new word for this brand of Christianity will henceforth be - "billy-graham-gelism".

If I am to give up my present ideas of/about God - these are some of the primary assumptions in life (that I have thus far built my life upon) that I must work around.

Rant:

You think it's easy giving up on God? Damn you simple minded shallow-headed
atheists! Giving up on God isn't just giving up a silly supposition about the theoretical origins of textbook species. Its about my everyday confidence of how to live, walk, think, breath and expect life to proceed!

In billy-graham-gelism terms this dogma is pretty much summed up in the meaning of the cryptic words of "knowing Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior" which is the same as "having a personal relationship with God" and this is the payoff from when you "acknowledge the need for Christ in your life."

Hmmmmmm..... sounds like the first step in understanding billy-graham-gelism is to decipher these basic euphemisms and to be able to condense about a zillion Christian sermons.

...and I have both these qualifications ....more to come :)

Motto for the year - "LIVE DELIBERATELY"

New year's Resolutions

• Don't sit thru any more commercials on TV
• Unravel the God knot
• Don't get flustered

Don't sit thru any more commercials on TV

Broadcast TV has gotten beyond endurable. This year everything I watch will be

1. quick flipping thru channels to see if anything is on, then STOPPING! - Off button!
2. recorded on my DVR
3. played from a disk

Unravel the God knot

I don't mean "solve the mystery of God", I mean figure out a world view that I can live with that consolidates my Christian heritage with honesty and practical life


Don't get flustered

I freeze up and don't think properly when people jump frenziedly and ask me some technical question that happens to be nowhere near where my mind is at in the moment - or when I'm spaced out in a meeting and all eyes turn to me expectantly - or when the boss jumps in front of me and again asks some question that my mind doesn't immediately wrap around.

The flawed assumption is of course that the boss has been thinking about it for awhile and since you're the technical expert, the matter can be flung into your face and you can bounce back - kind of like punching your dad in the face with your fist since he was a boxer and it shouldn't hurt - which I actually did once as a little kid. (My Dad's smile soured immediately as he set me down to the floor and walked away.)

From now on - Stop. Breath. Count two seconds. Look the person into the face. Study their face. Be silent. Try and figure what they really want. Pause. Proceed deliberately.

My motto for the year is to "LIVE DELIBERATELY"

My wife bought me a rock for Christmas with Thoreau's first part of a great quote carved into it.
It says, "I went into the woods, because I wanted to live deliberately"

I've posted it just inside my front gate at my little cabin in the woods.

Faith

What do I have faith in?

... what do i trust to make things better?

if I have to finish the sentence, "if we had more _____, things would get better." how would I fill in the blank?

Technology?
Love?
Democracy?
Kindness?
Knowledge?
Money?
Freedom?
Science?
Education?
God?
Honesty?
Hard work?
Friendships?
Determination?
Good manners?

Phrased another way: "What things have a tendency to promote life?"

What is faith?

Faith is to believe in the good in something. Faith is being convinced that adding more of that something or another will make things good - improve the situation.

By improving the situation we mean to enhance and develop and tend towards Life. By "Life" we mean the sustenance of self... the sustenance of me... the sustenance of what belongs to me... the continuance of my bodily form, my mind, my world, my consciousness.

And by "continuance" we mean, the tendency to also improve the circumstances so that life itself will continue - even possibly thrive.

Life - continuance and the hope of further continuance.

What do I trust in, believe in, have faith in that ultimately promotes Life?

If God is the embodiment of that total Good within the universe that all of life strives for and the rule of God is the reigning of those things that promote life then God can reign both in our hearts and in this world.

This God is easy to love but not easy to have faith in.

I am not convinced ultimately that life and good prevails in the end.

This is my battle between dispair and faith.

This is my wrestling for a faith in God.

So in your mind, are things getting better? or are things getting worse?

Do you have faith?

Providence ?

In an article entitled What the New Atheists Don’t See the author puts the various pop-Atheists into their proper context in the modern on-going search for meaning made by all of us. Ironically enough, the author himself is an atheist.

He nails the fundamental problem and point that I've been considering about the sovereignty of God with the concept of Providence itself and how all of us invariably require it:

I think Dennett’s use of the language of evaluation and purpose is evidence of a deep-seated metaphysical belief (however caused) that Providence exists in the universe, a belief that few people, confronted by the mystery of beauty and of existence itself, escape entirely.

I think maybe you could just replace all statements about God with simply the word "Good."

"So I hoping that 'Good' will watch over my safety on this trip."
"I pray to 'Good' that I can find a descent job."
"Thank 'Good(ness)' I've found a job and made it safely!"

I could live with that. Maybe.

Of course we've watered God down into some vague universal conceptual power of the "Tendency towards Life" that somehow runs through the ecological blood of nature itself.

(Which is kind of what everyone now a days really thinks what God is anyway.)

And maybe that is what we sense and feel and mean and maybe even project into a personal image of ourselves when we pray/talk about/sense "God."

I could live with that. At least it means that man is still created by God. (I think.)

Only one thing is left - the "Father" that Jesus talked about, understood, and explained.

Does he exist as an entity that I can personally know and trust? Is He more the face of this entity/concept of this universal "Tendency towards Life" that attracts and enthralls us all? Is he both? Do the limits of my mind require that I can sense this universal "pull" to Life and Good but can only think of it in terms of a personality.

So maybe God does and doesn't exist.

So I'm back to propositional nonsense and relative everythingness.

That sucks!

Who will free me from this non-sensible whimsical yet torturous merry-go-round ?

God. Do you hear me?

What I Give Up When I Give Up God

What I lose when I lose God

• Someone to appeal to for help
• Someone to be grateful to
• Knowing a sovereign power of good is watching over me
  

Someone to appeal to for help
Prayer.

Its nice when I am despondent or desperate to go to someone in prayer - intimate, meditative conversation - whom I can have confidence in - that He is beyond me, that He cares, that I can appeal to Him to reach beyond my circumstances and make some magical hand entry into my world and change things just enough so I can pull out of my dilemmas and survive one more time.

Without God, I have no one to go to for help. No one I can place my hope in.

Someone to be grateful to
Thankfulness.

Gratitude for the good things in life is an important, powerful, and some would say necessary emotion for happiness. I AM grateful. I want to be happy with what I have and for all the good that has come to me. I could just as easily been a slave girl dying of poverty in a third world country. I'm not. I am free. I eat everyday. I am healthy. I even have a certain amount of wealth that most men in the world today would be envious of. I am grateful for that. I need to feel and have this emotion - for my own happiness.

Without God, I really have no one to worship, to be to grateful to, to thank for all my blessings.


Knowing a sovereign power is watching over me
Faith.

I like to think that someone or something with the power to make good cares about me. I like to think that that person, as mysterious and as invisible as He is, is watching over me, is cheering me on, is hoping for my best, cares, loves, has power - is willing to use it. Is in fact using His power in ways that I am unaware of, to control, guide and direct little and big accidents in my life - so that things work out for me ultimately.

Without God, I am on my own.


I don't know if I can live with all of that.
I don't know if I can live without God.... whether He is real or not.