The Meaningless Crisis

The old saying - if you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything - came to mind this morning. We humans seem to be in the agony of a meaninglessness crisis.

The old mores and values for many have been thrown on the scrapheap. The new anything goes culture leads to emptiness. The empty try to fill or numb themselves with outer things - consumerism, drugs, alcohol, random sex, hysterical and illogical demonstrations for things that are opposite of even self interest, or lose themselves in technology screens. They are overwhelmed by input, unable to discern what is and what is not accurate or helpful. They fall for the facism of wokeness - agree with me or be cancelled, fired from your job, excluded.

Spirit is divorced from the physical, no longer known to interpenetrate it and be part of everyday experience. Delusion of being able to control the manifest brings on a frenzy of bad ideas. Marxism, fell with the wall and the realization it was terrible inside the Ieon Curtain, but was kept alive by some so-called intellectuals. It  entered the colleges and universities and then the high schools and elementary schools. The youth are taught our amazing way of life is bad, and Marxist ideas are great. 

If God is no longer part of everything, calling us to higher ground, and is even said to not exist, nothing has meaning. One can do to their bodies and to the bodies of others and to  Mother Earth whatever enters their minds. Nothing is sacred. God is said to not be there, as creation is some sort of random accident.

I suggest it is time to offer experiential Christianity. A Christianity that moves people deeply, to feel and know the sacredness of everything - of our own bodies, the bodies of every living thing, of the earth and the cosmos. To be able to have metanoia experiences where we personally come to know the things taught by the great Avatars, personally come to know things written and known by the great mystics.

It is time to awaken our spiritual senses, to go beyond theological arguments, to have moments of entering the Great Mystery. Not entertainment pseudo-church, rock bands, and loudness. Contemplation, meditation, deep prayer, transporting music, journaling, contact with nature, readings from the enlightened, and so forth. I have had a vision of this. I hope and pray someone feels this call, or many someones. If I were not about to turn 85 in a few days, I would go for it. I may go for it in a small way. I also know the following generation can step up and turn this meaningless crisis around. I ask you, do you feel the call?

The Wonder ofIt All

 I was watching on YouTube some of the 2025 ARC (Alliance for Responsible Citizenship) meeting. The speakers are stimulating. On a panel I heard Rod Dremer speak about our loss of enchantment in the West, as we have gone to the left sides of our brains almost entirely in the past 200+ years, blocking out mystery. That is right up my alley, so I downloaded his latest book.

If the cosmos is constructed the way the ancient church taught, then heaven and earth interpenetrate each other, participate in each other’s life. The sacred is not inserted from outside, like aninjection from the wells of paradise; it is already here, waiting to be revealed. --- "Living in Wonder" Rod Dreher

Absolutely!  We live and move and have our being in the Divine More. Some of us are blessed to have moments when the veil thins or pulls apart. In those precious moments, we know and know that we know, penetrated to our core with direct filling of More. We SEE, HEAR, FEEL, KNOW, TASTE what had once seemed unknowable, even fantasy. It is because of this, that I write and speak.

I endeavor to lead others into the great and grand Mystery that I know to be true. There is way, way, way more than our physical senses focused on the third dimension on earth can ever touch. There is  a Divine Presence that we can come to know. Everything, everyone, every moment is sacred, including ourselves.

God calls from our core - awaken, listen, come to me all you who are tired and heavy laden. Open to the Mystery of More.

Rufus Jones

 One of my favorite mystics, Rufus Jones, was a modern Quaker who was filled with the Spirit. I reread his writings periodically. His"Inner Life"is overflowing with wonderfully powerful ideas in every sentence.

This morning, I've been contemplating his ideas about Pharisees and the Sermon on the Mount. He says the Pharisees' focus was on following the 600+ laws in the Torah, and doing that was their goal and their reward. It was an outward practice, do this and do that, don't do this or that. They did it because they thought they had to. They did what was required of them. There was no spontaneity, no passion.

The Sermon on the Mount, however was aspirational, inspirational, and an inner shift. Jesus tells us that we are salt, bringing savor, uplifting, all we touch. We are to pour goodness into all the channels of the world. We are to become lights of the Lord. When we are on fire with God, we draw others to us, and the fire of love ignites their souls too. We are contagious. Lighting the world with God's Love changes everything. 

It's not about following laws, about being uptight and judgemental. It's about becoming a new person so filled with God that we participate in bringing about a Godly kingdom here and now, not in some distant future. We are part of the plan. We need to awaken, rise up, and be God's unconditional Love.

I urge you to read Matthew 5, 6 & 7 with different eyes and a different heart. Realize it is not plain prose. It is Near Eastern imagery, paradox, and is rife with layers of inner meanings.

Enter the spirit of 2,000 years ago. Hear with ancient ears. See with ancient eyes. Listen intuitively. 

If you do, something wonderful will happen.

Opposite Christianity

 There are those who try to follow Christ, who are loving, forgiving, generous, endeavoring to live as instructed in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5-7.

There are those, who call themselves Christian, that are the opposite. They attack those who see Christianity as above. They are anti Catholics, anti Jews, anti homosexuals, anti other Christians, and anyone who isn't part of them. They have a paranoid belief in evil, demons, devils, invisible enemies, and they promote dark superstition. They teach outmoded beliefs, fantastically created stories about invisible things, and use scare tactics. They repeatedly predict the end of the world. They misread and misinterpret the Bible. Yet they are a growing phenomenon.

I know some people who are in Opposite Christianity.  I don't understand how they can go there. Are they highly suggestible? Are they hypnotized? Have they not learned critical thinking skills? What?

I recently heard Dr. Collins on YouTube speaking on the Hebrew scriptures. I looked up his books, and I found one called  "Weaponized Religion." I downloaded it, and found the history of what I'd been calling Opposite Christianity. (I also discovered this Collins is not the Dr. Collins I heard. But this book does make some valid points, even though it is quite disorderly and needs organization) It is fascinating, however difficult to read, as he jumps all over the place. If you are interested in this topic, I think its worth the effort in order to be informed.

I also think that when connection to the original inspiration of anything is lost, from a civilization to a religion, there is collapse. History is strewn with rubble of civilizations long gone, religions scrapped, arts, music, sciences no longer practiced. Some questions might be important to ask ourselves would be something like - is the genius of Jesus' teaching something worth reconnecting to? Is it okay to let Opposite Christianity replace it? What are we going to do about it?

the end

 There have been people predicting the end of he world for thousands of years. In Jesus' time there were apocalyptic cults with lots of followers. In scholarly circles, Jesus is often thought of as an apocalytic teacher. He put in a caveat - no one will know  when it will happen.

There have been many "teachers" over history who said they knew the time, and who gathered followers together to get ready. Often they took the wealth of the followers and disappeared. It is said that New Year's Eve, December 31, 999 C.E. people slept fearfully in churches, for they were told the world would end that night. In my lifetime, I am aware of a number of times people said the end would be such and such a date. But we are still here.

This morning I awoke with the song, "Waltzing Mathilda" singing in my mind. It always takes me to the movie, 'On the Beach." a movie about the nuclear end of humanity. It has haunted me all these many years.

Then I thought my world IS about to end. My husband has stage 4 peritoneal and appendix cancer. Yesterday the doctors drained 6.5 litersof fluid from his abdomen, and they told us to put him in pallitive care or hospice. My world, the world of us, is about to end.

Then I thought of all of the worlds that have ended for me. My childood ended. My parents died and I became a sort of orphan, although I was very much an adult. Changes, monumental changes kept happening, the world shifted, the way of my life was no longer one way and was thrust to another, endings and beginnings over and over. Some gentle shifts from one world to another, some violent. But endings never cease, along with the promise of new beginnings.

So maybe the fear-mongering shout of "the world is coming to an end", is more personal than tomorrow there will be no actual world. Of course, those in power, with hubris in their hearts, could blow humanity off the planet, but baring that, we will see our personal worlds end, over and over again. 

The questions we could ask ourselves -What will I do with this new beginning opportunity? Will I whine and complain on and on about the ending? Or will I look with fresh eyes and bravely walk into the gift of a new beginning? 

P. S. To Yesterday

 I was thinking about the various laws I mentioned yesterday. You might say "They are just Physical laws of how things work. It's science." But from where did they originate? Why are they there? How does it happen? If it all started from the Big Bang 13.8 billion years ago, where did the organizing principle come from?

Explosions don't create order. They create disaster. How is the original explosion different?

I like the old saying - to think the universe accidentally came together with all of its intricacy, is to imagine an explosion in a type factory would result in all the works of William Shakespeare in order and exact.

The way I see it, there is something More, something Divine in it all, in short, God.

Finding God

 God is always ready, but we are very unready. God is near us, but we are far from Him. God is within, and we are without. God is friendly; we are estranged. --- Meister Eckhart

How can this be true? you might ask. I'll share how it speaks to me.

•  Unready. Do we spend time in prayer, meditation, contemplation daily preparing ourselves? Do we work on ourselves to remove resentments, fears, unkindness, anger and work on living those things Paul calls the fruits of the spirit?
• Near yet far. The creative energy of God is at the heart of every whirling atom, in all of the ways the universe and nature work, as it all follows the laws set down (gravity, inertia, electromagnetism, photosynthesis, etc.) Everywhere present, omnipresent, if we have eyes to see. Spend time with a flower, learn its secrets. Really see the rolling waves, the majestic mountains. Listen to the birds celebrate and scold and sing. Move out of the asphalt and concrete world, and commune with the natural for awhile. 
• Within but without. Yes,within our souls is a constant spark of God. It resides in us. It will never leave us. Where are we? Busy mostly with nonsense. YouTube, TikTok, television, addictions, upsets, pontificating, racing here and there, busy, busy, busy, too busy for God. Or we are satisfied with someone else telling us their ideas about God once a week, even though we're pretty sure they are only mouthing something they don't know personally.
• Friendly. The only definition of God in the Bible is that God is unconditional Love. How much more friendly can one be? But we are often preoccupied, and so estranged. God is relegated to the scrap heap of ancient superstition, or is at the bottom of our priority list.
• But, we can get ready. We can see again and hear again. We can find the Spark within. We can accept the most important Friendship of all.  I know because I follow in the footsteps of those who have gone before me to a successful spiritual quest. Just set your foot on the path and begin.