December 15, 2023

01

Each day has its own rhythm. 
It's own beat.
It's own flow.
Carrying us where it wants us to go.
We only have to wake up
and hand ourselves over to the day,
doing what needs us to do it,
when, where and how it needs to be done,
from that point on.

It will be interesting to note
how you respond to the day's deliveries.
How resistant you are to what comes
and what doesn't
throughout the day.
To see how pliable you are,
how open,
how present and ready for what's now
and what's next.
How often you curse what's happening
and how often you laugh.
How often you realize the day 
is not yours to command,
and smile,
and step forth
anyway, nevertheless, even so,
to meet what is there
and to do right by it
as though it were your idea all along.

02

Religion is theology/explanation/doctrine/dogma/creed.
Spirituality is experience.
Religion is belief.
Spirituality is knowing.
Religion is words.
Spirituality is awe/tears/laughter. 

The Christian religion is grouned
in belief/opinion,
particularly regarding sin and redemption,
which are completely made up
and exist only in the imagination
of those who make it up
in elaborate,
ridiculously absurd, ways.

Jesus was a guy who saw things differently,
acted out what he knew to be so
by turning over the tables of the money-changers
in the Temple,
and was executed for it.

The idea of a God who needed to be appeased
by the death of his son
was fabricated to justify 
the existence of the Church
as the "mediator of God's grace."

If God isn't angry with us,
and if we all have equal access to God,
who needs the Church?

The Celts and Shintos
and Native Americans
and Taoists 
didn't have churches,
and get along just fine.

03

Jacob Bronowski said,
"We don't find the truth
the way we find the checkbook
or an umbrella.
In order to find the truth,
we have to live in certain ways!"

He meant that we have to live truthfully,
that we have to live truthful lives.

The same can be said for "finding God."
In order to find God, we have to live in certain ways.
We have to live godly lives.

Neither the truth nor God are to be found "out there,"
but "in here."

We are the truth we seek.
We are the God we seek.
In living truthfully,
in living godlike,
in being what we seek,
we discover what has always been the case.
And "know it for the first time."

04

The word, "God," implies for me
the God of the Bible,
and the God of the Bible 
is the God of the doctrines, 
the dogmas,
the creeds, 
the Westminster Confession of Faith, etc.

The God that demands my death
because of something called "original sin."
The God that accepts the death of Jesus 
who somehow, this part is not clear at all,
avoided original sin by being born of a virgin
without a human father,
but a virgin that did not pass her original sinfulness
along to her son
by some manner of hocus-pocus 
that defies explanation.

Anyway, God accepts Jesus' death as a sacrifice
for all of the human beings who ever will be
if they believe it does.

Now this is another sticky point. 
Is it Jesus' death that is efficacious,
or is it my belief in Jesus' death
that gets me off the hook?

It is all hoo-doo-voo-doo to me.
and the word "God" contains 
all of this hoo-doo-voo-doo nonsense for me,
and I don't use it.

In its place, I use the term, "the Mystery."
It has no baggage. 
It is innocent and alive with possibility,
and speaks to me of my experience
with things I cannot explain or comprehend,
like the flow of life
and the grace of being alive,
and the wonder of living...

The Mystery, the Numinous, the Numen,
the Ineffable, the Transcendent, Kami, Tao ...
are all interchangeable words for 
"that which cannot be said."
And I am comfortable using them in that way.

05

"The Bible says... the Bible says... "

Well, who says that what the Bible says is so?

The bit about the Garden of Eden, perhaps,
that has no historical/geographical validity or existence,
who says that is so?

And all of the rest of what the Bible says--
who says it is so?

Only those who benefit from it being so!

Which disqualifies them from consideration.

06

All things in their own time!

We cannot hear what we are not ready to hear.
Or see what we are not ready to see.
Or know what we are not ready to know.
But.
All things have to be available to us at all times!

We cannot read and benefit from books
we are not ready to read,
but.
We must be reading all the time,
an allow "one book to open another" all that time.

We must be exposed to things worth knowing
before we are ready to know of them.

Asked questions about the questions we are asking
before we are asking any questions.

Preparation precedes readiness.
Just as practice precedes execution.