Faith is Like a Baby

Faith is like a baby

Who already knows all it needs to know

To live in the warmth and care of its mother

And yet cries and cries

If only to feel her touch again and again.
-

http://love-villa.blogspot.com/2011/04/sad-baby-girl.html

grace in the face

For those who say you are going to Hell

But God loves you

Make no mistake

They have been trained to condemn you in their hearts

To fill the gaps where God still eludes them

Yet have compassion with them, they know not what they say

Alas, their kind of judgment is common to us all

And who knows, you may yet dispel their hell with grace in their face.

Stitching the Bible of our Hearts

IN God

IN Christ

IN our Hearts

The Bible bleeds
A living story of spiritual struggle

Filled with ancient tales told by people just like you and me

Struggling to see ourselves IN God

Struggling to live our lives IN Christ

Then struggling once again
       to meld our sacred stories

       with our daring deeds

              all in the crucible of our Hearts

Yet to literalize these Bible stories
To make them either trivial or truer than our own trodding toes
Is to break trust with the hearts and voices of our ancestors
And lose the stories' soul as much as our own

Objectifying God

Mystifying Christ

And jading our Hearts

Into thinking that stories on ink and paper are somehow more exacting

       than the double sided pages of our own lives of faith and flesh

For in myth we boldly stand IN God

Yet in deed we make our move IN Christ

Thus in both we stitch the bravest and best binding of our Hearts.

Troubling

It seems troubling to me

That a Cosmic Creator would expect

A level of personal responsibility from his creatures

That He does not clearly exemplify Himself

For I do not let my children play in the street

I do not discipline my children by destroying their home

And I do not write them out of my will if they do not accept my gifts

And yet a fatal fruit tree is fair test from God?

And a planet-wide curse is training from His tender hands?

And eternal hell for not believing is the best bequest Providence can bring?

God! What level of shame must we feel about ourselves

To believe that a God who should love us so much

Has to be a hair-triggered tyrant?

It's fear

Our shameful fear of life

For to face a life so frightening

We must have a God more fearful still

More ferocious than our enemies

More fascist that our kings

We as humans are troubling enough

But that there should be a person-God from whom we pick our pattern

Seems catastrophic!

Alas, God is not a maker Agent who sets our morals marching

God is the matchless Absolute which simply holds all matter and meaning

And I believe this is exactly what Jesus meant

When he implored us dearly to his marvelous Papa

Now what's so troubling about that?

Story IN God

Is God a character in his own story?

Or is a story a story

And God, God?

God is not the star of a story, God is the sky in which all stories are told!

Yet if God be in a story

It is only by the story being

Already

IN God.

Existence Itself

http://www.sergiupobereznic.com/depiction-of-christ-inside-the-big-bang/

God is not a prime Mover beside the universe

God is the prime Existence of the universe
IN which we've traced an astounding prime movement, the Big Bang
OF which we've sensed a primordial consciousness, the Word 'Logos'
By which we yet squint to site a sacred arrow flying across the heavens

For with science we have broken down what has come to pass
Yet in bare faith we dare to declare it all still blazing
In one unified
Existence

Blasts of matter feeling their forces as they forge the elements
Bits of mind baking in the batter and rising into brains
Nature's metered medley blending in unison
Stoked and nurtured in the great oven of Existence

From Jacob to Jesus, from Copernicus to Carl Sagan
Holy Spirit is ultimately what we sense of the Cosmos
For to deny our basic love and awe of Existence
Is to deny any purpose to science or religion altogether

Thus, God is not some Mover beside our universe
God is the very Existence of this universe we brave
For a house divided against itself cannot stand
But a strong man bound up with it can be taken of its worth indeed!

For a miracle told is a miracle tried
And sometimes even despised as much
But in Christ we embrace the miracle which gives them all
The sublime spirit of Existence Itself.

- Matthew 12 : 22 – 37

Noel

Omnipresence:

God is all-present

All things which have being

Are only presently present by being IN something greater

Omnipotence:

God is all-powerful

All forces and energies in the universe

Are ultimately never created nor destroyed IN what they are doing

Omniscience:

God is all-knowing

All conscious minds and meanings

Are but bits and wrinkles of a deeper consciousness IN the world we see

God is all

IN all

And there is but a Word which has shone this out

So be well.  Do well.  Noel.  You and every sparrow and lily are ever and always IN God.

When Lips Speak Love

You have heard that it is written

‘If you confess with your mouth Jesus is Lord

And believe in your heart God raised him from the dead

Then you will be saved’  Romans 10:9

But I’m telling you

There are those who believe too much with their mouths

And reveal that in their hearts

Jesus is just voodoo to them

Please

Salvation in Jesus

Is not about special confessions and certainties

Just to shed our shame and get into a good afterlife

Its about what we say and do for life and goodness right here and now

To say “Jesus is Lord” is not a deal for your soul

It’s a promise to share Christ-like love with others

To believe Jesus was raised is not about afterlife

It’s about here-life, it’s about Jesus being raised in you today!

Who will ascend to heaven?  Indeed!

For indeed

It is by our hearts that we must justify our best beliefs

And with our mouths that we now must save these sacred words we confess

O Christian

Christ becomes your center

Not by some liturgical allegiance

But simply when lips speak love from hearts raised to Life itself.

Go!

Proclaim!

Hear!

Believe!

Call on Christ!

Just don’t bring Christ up to bring Christ down to a salvation by syllables.

A Grown-up God

Isn’t it time our concept of God grew up

And sat at the grown-up table

With science, reason, art, literature

And the rest of Western enlightenment?

Surely theology has developed much better manners

Since when God allowed murder to show His love.

speculating by inference

Is there really some Great Guy

Operating from a hidden Realm

Pulling strings in ours?

Or is there just a Great Universe

Filled with mysteries of matter and mind

Operating by natural laws?

Obviously we can never know for sure

But what can common sense tell us?

Can we infer a best explanation?

For we ask in light of other questions such as

What of causality?

What of consciousness?

What of the notion of ‘God’ itself?

Hence, inquiring minds need to know

Is there a supernatural Prime Mover?

Or is there simply an ultra-natural Permeating Consciousness?

To explain to us a universe of ever expanding meaning

Obviously both are legitimate hypotheses at face value

But are those faces equally attractive?

First of all, shouldn’t we automatically gravitate to the explanation

Which doesn’t always need an extra realm beyond what is given?

And secondly, shouldn’t we be quite suspicious of an explanation

Which gives a Being that just so happens to have an ego-framed mind like ours?

So ultimately, which seems more reasonable?

That once upon a time God said, “Hmm, I think I’ll create the universe.”

And then got stuck managing a little blue planet of mixed blessings

Or

That God has simply never stopped manifesting the possibilities

Of what it means for a self-consistent universe to be.

Oh Hell

There is no hell to go to

Hell is simply a state of mind

In which people in that state

Make up a place by that name

And hope their God sends you there

On their behalf

There is a very long history of this, mind you

Such people always find their forebearers

And quote them all the way to hell

Alas, the remedy for hell

Is a very real place

And the love which can happen here.

Born Again

There have been three basic spiritual births in human history

The first birth can be found in the story of Adam and Eve

Hiding in the garden with their knowledge of good and evil

This is a story of us opening our eyes to the universe
With us peering out at its stark duality of life and death

This is the birth of our moral nature in the face of our frail and humble nakedness

The second birth can be found in the story of Moses

Hiding in a crevice to glimpse the bright ‘I AM’

This is a story of us opening our eyes to the universe
With it shining in on the duality of our sullen yet searching souls

This is the birth of our utter guilt in the face of our grasp of holiness

The third birth can be found in the story of Jesus

Openly pouring out the spirit of Christ upon the Earth

This is us opening our eyes to the universe once again
But this time with a love clear enough to spite any faltering flesh or sifted soul

This is the birth of our redemption in the face of a crescendo of humble and holy sacrifice

These three births we share

These three births each we find, one by one

Each our moral selves, each our holy guilt, and each our redeeming in spite of ourselves

We who are born of man and woman, be we born again

And yet again!

Look out!

http://www.chloebriggsartworks.com/#!portfolio

Close your eyes

Now open them

Look out!

God is looking IN.

Taste and See (condensed)

When we say that everything is IN God

What we mean is

IN God is cosmic INterdependence

Rather than Creation referencing a supernatural God out there somewhere

We find Creation interdependent with God in an ultra-natural way at hand

For God is where we find our selves looking from

And God is how we sort out everything we see

Simply put

If we can see the universe

And appreciate it

Then we have seen Love

And felt God

It’s as simple as that

Taste and see!

Everything is IN God.

feeling mind

Close your eyes for just a moment

Feel your own mind

Now open your eyes again and feel yourself aware of what’s around you

Now do it once more

Close your eyes;  (mind)

Open your eyes;  (everything else)

Do it a couple more times

Then stop

And consider this:

The experience of the mind

Is not so much the experience of looking out to the universe

As it is the experience of the universe looking in to us

For even when our eyes are closed

Something

Is still peeking in

We simply witness this experience first hand

So our first instinct

Is to get it backward

But stop and think about it, try to feel what I am talking about

Your awareness is not so much you looking out

As it is everything around you looking in

Shocking isn’t it!

You may even feel a bit violated

But now you know how the universe feels :)

Still not buying it?  Just ask yourself

Is it you

Who have set your own mind into its basic looking mode?

Or is it something else?

Which rubbed your mind

Awake?

Alas, once we can understand and feel the true reality of mind

We suddenly realize it is not God that is the mystery to be figured out

We are

Thus to find ourselves already IN God with God gazing into us

Rather than UNDER God with God gaping over us

Is the first spiritual step

To conscious Life.

http://www.earthrites.org/turfing/?p=10876

Taste and See (essay)

When we say that everything is IN God

Some may think we are merely speaking spatially

Like God is ‘the-box’ and we are ‘Jack-in’

But of course that alone is a pretty open and uncertain box, right?

Others may think we are merely speaking symbolically

Like God is the page and we are writing a poem

But of course that by itself is a pretty blank and ambiguous page, right?

      Rather, what we are saying is that

      God is the box

      In which there is a page

      On which a poem is being written

      By Jack

      Who has discovered himself and the page

      Both in the box

      As such without which he cannot write

      About anything he finds

      Of himself or around him

      In short, IN God is cosmic INterdependence

      Example #1 of real world interdependence:

      We know there is an interdependence

      Between the position of a subatomic particle

      And the observation of it by something else

In the same way ‘IN God’ means interdependence both spatially and symbolically

‘IN God’ means interdependence between space-time and consciousness

For we find an amazing and strict interdependence between

What Jack finds himself IN, and what Jack is able to know OF

Thus rather than Creation referencing a supernatural God out there somewhere

We find Creation interdependent with God in an ultra-natural way at hand

That is, there is nothing more needed to live and know the divine

If we are willing to face up to it and do the work, that is

For we may know the substance of God at least via the objective lens of science

And we may live the qualities of God at least via the subjective lights of religion

      Example #2 of real world interdependence:

      We know there is an interdependence between the mind and the brain

      If the brain is altered (like in an injury), then the mind is altered too

      And when we experience something in the mind

      Then we can see distinct changes in the brain as well

Now this is our most intimate evidence we have

Of the great INterdependence which we call ‘IN God’
For God is where we find our selves looking from

As well as how we mentally sort out everything our minds see

In other words rather than us looking wantonly out into a meaningless universe

Or, rather than us looking wantingly for a God beyond a cursed universe

Instead we find

We are already looking from the universe in to ourselves

And by coming to know our human condition in this dual context (IN God)

We then look out to more and more discern morality toward our world

Simply put

If we can see the universe

And appreciate it

Then we have seen Love

And felt God

It’s as simple as that

Taste and see!

Everything is IN God.

show and tell

Do science

And glimpse the holy face.

Embrace the future

And touch the nail scarred hands.

Raise your voice for human rights

And speak with tongues of fire.

Design a global dream

And behold a new heaven and earth.

Live your faith

And the story will tell itself.