Spirit Gives Birth To Spirit

Why do we pray for people who are experiencing pain?  And why do people experience pain in this world if God is such a wonderful God?  Isn't it better for God to save people from pain without the experience of it?  Here is my attempt to answer those questions from the Christian perspective.  We will start, "in the beginning..." In Genesis, scripture says that God did originally design existence without pain and evil, but like the Matrix, man would not "accept the program" as the agent says in the movie.  The story of Adam and Eve is that story. Man  eats from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  "Whole batches," they say in the matrix, "were LOST."  Lost to an existence that was unaware of spiritual life.   The "revised" rules of the universe were set up in collaboration with man. Man did not want utopia. So God set the rules up that way, out of respect for man's wishes and with the input of man's relationsh

I wanted to say a little about the God I know - my God as I know him.  I know him from personal experience, reading scripture and studying at seminary.  I know him, at least in part, because I believe I have been communing with him for 20 years and from following Jesus, the great revealer of God, for many of those years. I had my first encounter with God reading Native American literature.  And now that I know God better, I see a lot of him in the accounts of the Native Americans deep respectful relationship with the Great Father Spirit.  Their love for nature and life culminated in a love for the creator and protector of it all. He was the creator of all the beauty and bounty available for us small humans living in a world of wonders.  I am sure this ruffles some feathers, but I think God meets people where they are. The boundaries of religion are man made - I don't think God need respect human constructs.  But if you are wondering, I identify as a Jesus follower, because I hav

I want to vent some personal revelations: You see, I have realized that my relationship with God is a lie. I only worship him when I am not worshiping cigarettes. He is a secondary God. He is a god that I am only aware of when I am not praying to the god of nicotine. I have realized that I don't trust God because I didn' t  trust my father.  This is because I thought that he was never there to warrant that trust. But no human father is capable of absolute trust.  Inevitably, they will all let us down.. our expectations of them can be anywhere from low to superhuman, and no man can live up to them. And I haven't spent time trusting God, allowing him to work - to come through, like the "just in time" God that he is. It's hard when you've been a Christian for 20 years and you figure out you have been worshiping another god: a drug.      I pray to this God upon waking in the morning, several times during the day, at meals, and to put me to bed at night.

No longer a worm, I stretch out incandescent wings And take to the breeze. Undulating on the currents Of life and loss, Love and labor. In a sky So deep and blue and vast  It stretches to the heavens - In and around and inbetween Their glowing gates. So those great, strong doors come One soul closer To present on this earth - Here In the muck and the mire With the wandering and tender Lost in the fields of bright wild wonder.

What is faith?  For me, Faith is trust that God is who he says he is.  That God is true to his word: specifically that He is a god of love who has my best interest at heart, like the perfect parent. So I do not need to have a great deal of faith.  In fact, Jesus said (since I believe that he knew more about God than I do) that "if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this tree, 'be uprooted and planted in the sea,' and it will obey you." What does that mean?  Does that mean if I have faith I can go around doing the impossible: uprooting trees and sending them into the sea?  If I metaphorically uproot no trees in my life, did I not have enough faith? This thinking is based on a bad assumption.  It assumes that faith is in one's power - and having enough faith WE can do the supernatural. This assumes that God is a genie.  That if we possess enough of something we can muster ourselves, that God will do our bidding.  It is backwards.

The sum total of the countless uncanny coincidences solidifies into belief when I first open myself up to the possibility that there is someone or something that could orchestrate them. Honest searching begins with an open mind. I had no belief until I let myself honestly contemplate the possibility. When I did that over time, just a simple step led to a walk of faith. And faith matured into trust when applied to circumstances over which I had no control. And for me, giving up control, in trust, leads to sweet serenity.  The more I fall into this, the more I rely on an external source for my well being and find things work out for me, the more my trust increases and so does my serenity.  The two feed each other. The "invisible" bridge I liken this journey into trust with a scene in the movie Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade.  Having almost reached his prize, the hero comes to an impossible chasm.  But his research into the scriptures and ancient writings tel

Late afternoon and the sun Breaks through the clouds Ending the drone of a day long rain, Coaxing me to stir from the warm Enveloping depression and Spiking electric pain of anxious worry And out to the warm sun with my dog. Headed for the bare brown woods Where, hemmed in on all sides By the sweet deafening crescendo Of the early spring frogs And the peace of the warm spring breeze Stoking my cheek Crawling things stir to life Among the breeze-blown leaves at my feet. Here along the banks to the sweet, earthy pool I bid bad choices to go And drop them in the murky water With hope to never to see them again. But somewhere between there And the way back I take them up again As I settle in for a smoke Between my rotting teeth Near the garbage cans and blowing papers On the hard concrete Of the nearby gas station. Still all this time, Sitting in the quiet, close, sun-bleached room And the soft enveloping peace of the sp