Saturday, July 31, 2010

Blessed is the Way of the Lord

Thank you Lord for this day and this sunshine. Thank you for the rest from work. Thank you for Gilbert and Laura. Thank you for Dad. Thank you for my nephews, brother, sister in law, cousins, aunts and uncles. I like the refrain of First Nations, "All my relations". Thank you for "all my relations". Thank you for the atom and chemistry and physics.

The Way of the Lord is Blessed the psalms say. Just as the laws of gravity became clear in Science so in the way of living there are clear laws that are good for individuals and community. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Don't do unto others what you would not have them do unto you.

In psalms the "mockers" are criticized. Mocking is belittling, demeaning, negating and judging poorly. In medicine this is a "nocebo". "You're going to die." "You won't succeed". "People never get better with this condition". Rather than you're having a bad day, you've a personality disorder and are psychotic and will be for life. Erring on the side of the medico legal cover your ass beaurocratically correct safe and most lucrative politically correct.

Walk in the ways of the Lord. The Bible and indeed most of the writing of the religious texts of all nations are a compilational of what works in the human sphere. I know that iodine is good for killing bacteria and fungus and helping wounds to heal but praying and meditating helps my life as iodine helps my limb.

Am I a spiritual person in a material sojourn or a material person in a spiritual sojourn. The world as we know it is in constant motion. My senses are correcting
the picture and giving me approximation feedbacks that fit my own conceptual bias. It's fact that there is immense space between electrons and nucleus and that my body is mostly water. Yet somehow my education has taught me that I'm 'solid' and "material" rather than I'm mostly 'forces' weak and strong and full of space. I have a lightness of being. My cells are in constant motion. I'm self healing. Yet my mind is a tomb of dead ideas and ancient history. Each day I wake to the ignorance I carry along with the fears and resentments and products of old trauma.

The Bible says God is Good. Trust in the Lord. Jesus is my savour. All shall be well in fact. Don't be afraid. Over and over again Jesus said don't be afraid. He walked to his death and faced his judgement. He trusted in his Father, even to crucifixion. Probably because this world and this experience of life is just a chapter in the soul. I liked that Dr. Scot Peck called the earth experience 'kindergarden'. My ego can be so huge as to think this is really the end all and be all.

Yet there are billions of planets and immense spaces and endless ideas. My native friend believes her ancestors are walking around here in Vancouver where her people greeted the first white men to sail in wood ships to these shores. I always liked that Mark's Twain's ships Captain got to heaven and finally got the pig farm he desired. The Tibetan Book of the Dead says that we make up the script for our lives with friends in the bardot and then this is the theatre of our dreams. Early Christians believed in reincarnation. I've experienced people 'leaving their body'. I know that there are those who would say this is psychosis. They're the 'mockers'. They said that men couldn't fly to the moon too and that girls couldn't do calculus. It's so easy to listen to the mockers and believe the limits they place on everyone else because they're so afraid and angry themselves.

This world is sacred. It's God's thought. It's the Idea of God and we're living in the mind and genius of the creator. It's also possible to have a relationship with this all powerful ever present and loving God. Jesus is that message.

But so many people have heard the language of church through the ears of children and angry have left religion as they left the children's jails that some schools were. But Christianity is too important and the church literally has too much power and money to leave to idiots. The same is true of politics. The politicians and many in the church work to keep the 'game' their own and keep everyone out. They say they want others to play but their behaviour tells the truth. People don't even bother to vote half the time because the "parties" are 'exclusive' and only a very few, usually rich powerful money men and lawyers benefit from politics. The grass roots simply need to walk in and take over the powerful rich political apparatus. When people say it 'can't be done' they're usually just 'mockers'.

The same is true for the church. The big churches of yesterday are dying. Catholics, anglicans, lutheran, Baptist congregations are depleting. Yet community churches are springing up all over and the number of people who call themselves "spiritual' is perhaps greater than all other times.

I remember when schools were classrooms and people were leaving them. Now you can do it on line. The West Coast Biker Church met on Wednesday night so we could ride on Sunday. The catholics moved their times to adjust their masses to peoples schedules. The same needs to be true of the political structure and the organization. The school is being done 'on line'. There are night schools. There are classes relevant to the world today. And the same is happening in the community churches and people who are 'spiritual' need to remember that community is where things really happen. "Where two or more are gathered together, there too am I", said Jesus. Not in isolation but in community we know God.

There was this 60's drug notion of the lone 'spiritual person' meditating and getting in touch with him or herself. A lot of this later turned out to be simply 'spiritual masturbation'. The early 'Desert Fathers' were a community of holy men as Thomas Merton showed that the Buddhist monks were a community. Psychosis is distinguished from spiritual experience in that the former isolates and separates a person where as the latter brings people together. With paranoia I'm afraid of all my fellow men and women and with religious enlightenment I know all men and women to be just others of God's kids in the playground.

Even my bones are mostly water. I'm in constant movement. The earth is rotating and moving through the galaxy and I'm such a stick in the mud.

Today I'll try to remember to 'trust in the way of the Lord' and walk in the way of the Lord. 'Blessed is the way of the Lord."

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

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