Spirit Gives Birth To Spirit

In my experience, it is the little, almost imperceptible choices and events that change us. Choices and events that lead us in our journey to becoming truly actualized spiritual beings.  Small choices in the present moments of life that bring us closer to who we were meant to be.  Who God created us to be.      Someone explained it to me once like this.  Addictions and habits and ways of being that we want to be free of are like those huge boulders sitting on tall rock pedestals in the Southwestern desert.  You cannot, by force of will, move the boulder off its perch.  It is too massive.  But what you can do is widdle away at the pedestal.  Digging it out one rock at a time.  And before you know it (though it may take some time), the pedestal thins and the boulder falls.  You conquer it.  But in the Christian way of thinking, we do not do this alone.  God provides the moments and the small amount of strength required just for the moment.  Strength to make a different choice.  In 12

     Original sin sounds like such a draconian phrase.  The concept was introduced by Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyons, and later expanded upon by Augustine. But what is it?  It is simply self-will. Choosing our own way over God's way. Our own will instead of God's. It is a spiritual concept that is plain to see in the world. We are all born into it - as babies we are born utterly selfish.  We have no thought for needs outside our own.  But life, with God, is the process of dying to the false self and learning to embrace the will of God - the care for others, the care for creation, the care for the world outside of ourselves.  As we grow out of our childhood, we grow out of our false selves: the self that only knows to attend to its own desires.      But this does not mean we hate ourselves.  In fact, quite the opposite.  The commandment Jesus gave that summed up and fulfilled all the scripture (the law) up to that point was "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and wi