Seaside Baptist Church, Bombay Beach, California

When I first attended St. James Anglican Church, I asked Father John, if my dog was welcome.  “Of course he’s welcome, I’m just not sure about you,” he laughed. He had two big dogs and we made this our church for several years.  At another church I told the worship leader I was a Christian psychiatrist and he responded, “Isn’t that an oxymoron.’  

Here, outdoors, on the iconic Bombay Beach, Jack the minister simply asked my name and introduced himself. 

 I’d ridden my Vespa with Madigan , my cockapoo riding along in his box. There was some large dune buggy and off road motorcycle event with a large gathering of RV’s and campers boon docking in the sand amidst the steam punk art installations.  I’d surprisingly become stuck a foot off the hard road. Two of the guys from that camp came to my rescue. “We’ve been doing this all weekend, “ they said ,” We’re getting good at it.”   Free of the sand and back on the road a little dog ran in front of me so I swereved and was stuck again. This time a fellow from the outdoor church helped me out. 

 Jesus comes as the anonymous stranger who rescues.  Already Jesus had already helped me thrice. It could also t reflect the the devil laying traps for the Christian returning to the fold. 

Jack the minister played Christian music as we congregated.  There must have been as many dogs as humans there. I loved this.  I’m ever asking if my dog is welcome at whatever  church I attend.    

Before the actual service the dogs had packed and run all over the beach exploring and peeing.  Madigan was in his glory sniffing and peeing and running with the dogs. . I loved watching.  A young dog was disruptive but leashed and as the service began the dogs all settled at the feet of their masters. Peace.   . 

Jack spoke of Peter the Fisherman and Jesus inviting him to walk on water with him. Peter succeeded for a few steps then sank.  He was  rescued by Jesus who said “Ye of little faith”. I felt that.  Ye of little faith. I am forever playing hide and seek with Jesus, seeing his handprints everywhere only to think the next moment I’m alone.    

Jack said “I’m a spiritual being in a human body.”  I loved his reading passages from the gospel of John, the disciple Jesus loved.   the resurrected Jesus and his time with the disciples after his crucifixion.   There were sounds of motorcycles and quads and a gentle breeze blowing in from the Salton Sea.  The scripture was of disciples and Jesus gathered by the sea.  I truly felt blessed,  grateful thankful to be here listening to Jack read from the Holy Bible.  

 Around me were the most interesting  people, wisdom and experience in their presence. .  The women were beautiful.  The men a real mix, young and old, bearded clean shaven. . I imagined some must be artists.  Some dressed in shorts and t shirts and others more clothed .  Jack wore  red t shirt,  blue pants and  high  red sneakers with a  bandana about his head.  In his sermon he referenced movies . The Last Temptation. This was Southern California.  LA and Hollywood only a 150 miles west.  The greatest story ever told had had many movies made of parts of it in part or whole.  Jack said the joyful scene of resurrected Jesus being seen by the disciples by the sea and joining him.  ‘That would be a great movie scene.’  

“Hope is what we have here”, he said.  Hope and faith.  “The Holy Spirit is with us and in us and around us.”  

When the ervice was over,  we were all invited to have coffee and cookies on the beach.  The dogs began to roam, pissing and sniffing again after the interlude.  I helped him into his box in the Vespa. 

 A  beautiful girl wore a t shirt with phrase ‘skull pony’.  I drove away thinking  about death and the ride and Christ. . I didn’t get my Vespa stuck on the way out.  I rode here to the Community Cafe to sit under the Da Vinci Fish art installation swimming over head.. Cafe latte and a muffin.  A young man on drums and a girl playing violin.     God is good. 

  

Christianity

I can sense the presence of a higher power. I know I didn’t create this world I wake to.  This morning I am in an elaborate set and ongoing story. If I created this then it’s higher power within me, like the French philosopher’s Overself.  The very idea of a creator whether within or transcendent isn’t an issue. I don’t feel alone. I am here with my dog but there’s also a sense of something more with awareness as I have awareness.

I have a story of the Bible that I wake each day with.  Jesus Christ.  Son of God.  I have this idea that God, the creator, gave his son to the world.  I imagine a factory owner sending family in to check out the project. I have no trouble with that.

Even the virgin birth doesn’t cause me concern.  Miracles abound even though much later we may retrospectively ‘explain’ them with science as yet unknown, a miracle in its self.  The world is unfolding like a story.  So I believe the Bible thus far.  

I’m not sure of St. Paul.  He carries some blood sacrifice ideas and seems to have Jesus as a fatted calf.  I don’t follow that. There was the Old Testament story of the rejection of child murder for God so the ‘explanation’ that God would ‘sacrifice’ his son.  I don’t know.  I have no difficulty with Jesus as Rainbow. His death is like a cosmic event following the flood. I see the symbolic significance.  Perhaps that’s the death of children event. Jesus loved little ones.  

I don’t like that there are no dogs and cats in the story.

I have no difficulty that man, the government and church and foolish men in groups, would crucify the emissary of God.  I had a vision of the solar system having a beware sign for teens joy riding space mobiles. “Don’t go there they kill God.”

So I believe that the message is that we need to be less murderous yet still the world revolves around killing and weaponry rather than healing and growing.  Governments waste all resources to build more guns and ammunitions.  Barbarians.  I like the Tibetan monks and the Christian monks and Merton and St. Francis. All these people are ‘peaceful’ .  I believe that’s the message of Jesus, love and peace.

C.S. Lewis’s describes well the message of ‘love’.  The Trinity is that two, Father , son and Holy Spirit as opposed to just ‘one’ god, the personhoods of god and the family of god and love.  It’s definitely more together .

Today I strive to serve God. I am a cog in the wheel, diagnosing and providing medications for the various concerns, a modern day shaman.  Collectively we are more successful than ever before with more people living longer and the number who encounter starvation still a mere fraction of what it used to be.  There is such reason for hope despite the rhetoric.  The ‘Cold War’ did not lead to mutual annihilation.  The world ending prophecized by the climate change cult hasn’t occurred despite claims for decades and decades.  

We’re muddling along and more are gaining enlightenment with meditation and prayer. I meditate and I pray to know Gods will for me and have the power to carry that out. Now I’ll walk the dog.

The Zoroastrian’s had dogs.  The dog is the oldest companion of man.  But I like the donkey. I wish I could have a donkey like Jesus did. My dog would like the donkey companion but we have a motorcycle.  AI doesn’t have ‘presence’ .  Everything is God. We are in God and all is God.  It’s just easier to know God in the living flowers rather than the rock.  God is present in all.  The friend God is Jesus. Jesus Christ mans God within and God will come again. I seem to be play hide and seek with Jesus and also ping pong with love and fear.  This too will pass.  Life and death.  The contrasts create the meaning.  

Magnolias at Anil’s 

He told me how he planted them some 15 years ago.

What wonder!

Cherry blossom streets in Vancouver.

 

Christmas morning, 2022

I woke up from a wonderful dream. I have them a lot, These numinous dreams of a sacred place where my sailboat, truck and dog and friends are.  I pray when I wake. I don’t know the time.  I just pray then Madigan somehow knows I’m awake and rests his head on the back of my neck. I’m loved.

The front toilet is still plugged but the back toilet works.

I pray some more sitting on the chair. I’ve avoided exercise. My back hurts. It’s 645 am.  

I remember as a child with mom and Dad and Ron in the front room, the yard full of snow, presents under the tree, childhood.  I didnt know Rockwell but he must have been there for so much of it.

This week I’ve been remembering the sledding and tobogganing on the slope to the Red River.  The adults walking us down to there. The dog knowing joy.  Later I loved the turkey dinners with Aunt Sally.  

Now I’m alone with Madigan.   My wrist vibrates with another Signal notice from the Nephews and Adell.  Last night’s storm has stopped and Graeme’s picture of Hay Bay is idyllic.  They’ve sent a beef and Edam cheese basket from Hickory farms.  The beef sausage came with the best mustard. I’m really enjoying it sharing it with Madigan. Last night I watched Violent Night, the Andrew suggestion,. It really was funny. I ate the last of the box of Lindz chocolate I was gifted,

I spent two days working on getting the frozen water line fixed and the frozen sewage dump line emptied.  I succeeded in all but getting the front toilet unplugged and think I’ll try a fishing pole later. I learned that I have to turn the water off to work on the toilet after it almost overflowed with my first foray.

Jesus was born in Bethlehem. I was there.  We all were. I walked across the blood stained path from the previous nights fighting. I felt guns of Israelis and Palestinians targeting me while I walked through No Man’s land.  In Bethlehem there was hardly anyone.  Someone began singing oh little town of Bethlehem as we waited to pass the sacred place where Jesus was born, where once there’d only been manger. We sang together in a half dozens languages as we moved slowly through, stopping for private prayer in that place of holy synchronicity. 

I remembered as a pre teen and early teen I organzed a half dozen friends to go house to house Carole singing in the winter, an excuse to get together and have fun, a charity an afterthought.  Later I’d do the same in the children’s hospital with medical students.  Even later there was cross country skiing and snow shoeing.  Even later there was winter sailing. I remembered having Christmas alone at sea the time I sailed solo through winter hurricane’s to Hawaii. I was past the half way mark, enjoying watching episodes of Friends late at night.  I was 25 days alone at sea and sad.  The older I became the sadder Christmas was.  The booze was gone decades ago.

With the death of Jesus by crucifixion by the authorities, State and Church, Herod, Rome and the Sanhedrin, the Holy Spirit permeated this day’s existence.  The servant god came into being and the human sacrifices of paganism and tribal religion, even the Druids ended with the sacrifice of God himself.  

Mother Mary.Joseph, Wisemen.  The story that created western civilization as we know it.  

Hallelujah. Thank you Jesus. 

Fear of Death/Love of Life

Fear of death has been thought the greatest fear.  Many variations of the theme exist like fear of dying, fear of pain, fear of powerlessness, fear of loss of control, humility, and much more.  

The classic psychiatric text was Denial of Death by Ernest Becker.  Denial is the most primitive of coping mechanism and used primarily when overwhelmed or perhaps negatively surprised.

The historic and traditional, microcosmic and microcosmic, approach to death is reproduction.  Children have been humans ,individually and collectively, response to fear of death and mortality.  Art and empire and monuments are all other ways of attempting to reach beyond the apparent limit of life.  Religion and all manner of thought systems further attempt to extend this life.  Not only is this the forward thinking approach but the study of history and archeology further advance the idea that life isn’t brief and perhaps sordid but rather long and noble.  

Love of life and imnortality go hand in hand. 

Vanity.

Children and family and genetically related individuals and groups are the building block of society.  

Yet coitus interruptis, the ‘withdrawal method’ was mentioned in Genesis.  L’Chaim , to life, but not if it’s to one’s dead’s brother’s progeny which was the requirement of Hebrew Law. If your brother died without an heir, you were required to i pregnate his wife.  Onan, much maligned for Onanism, or masturbation, rather failed to impregnate his dead brother’s wife and give her and him an heir. Instead he wanted to keep the land for himself and his progeny.

Land and land ownership and all that ties to that was of course part of the need for the construct of permanence and denial of death and change and fear of course of change and death.

The reformer is the enemy of anyone who benefits from the status quo but as change is frightening.

Faced with fear we ‘freeze’, ‘fight’ or ‘fight’.

“Freezing’ is very popular.  However what happens to an ostrich who puts its head in the sand. “It doesn’t know who kicks it”.

Birth and death.

We only have other’s word about our birth and the Big Bang theory, and we can’t tell anyone about our death.  Just one more of the great paradoxes of life.

The Book of Mormon was a sublime comedy and satire of all philosophies and religions.  The play was a challenge to all ‘people of the book’.  The major books are Bible, Bhagadvagita, Koran, Talmud, the Tripitaka, the Tao, Communist Manifesto, and the list goes on.  Each book has a protagonist,  Moses, Mohammed, Jesus, Paul, Buddha, Confuscious, Marx, etc.  There are a variety of these emotionally carthaced individuals with a mythology that surrounded their venerable lives.

The notion of God is ideas coming down from God, Intelligence and ideas going up to God , competing elevator ideas.

The oldest law of the world is the Chinese Law of the Fish, there are Big Fish and Little Fish, and little fish must be fast and numerous.

Having children made people bigger.  We protestants didn’t like to fight the catholics because we had a couple of brothers and sisters in general and the catholics had a lot.  Throughout history empires were made on children who provided the armies and the equivalent of slave labour.  Today children are pets. Then they were tools.

Feminist is a great myth. Women’s individualism was a product of contraception and the myth of overpopulation and the Industrial Age.

The Machine,

The Dark ages aren’t as dark as intellectuals would have you believe The advances in engineering are mind boggling.  Just the idea of the lever and the pyramids and stone henge are more monumental than space flight. 

The dark ages and Middle Ages were a time of physical advancement and not just paintings.  The renaissance was a recovery and advance of science.  

Science joins two with the ‘neutral term’ ‘associated with’.  Marxism and it’s little sister feminism joins two ‘events’ with the value laden term ‘oppresses’. Hence the hysteria of victimship and legal equivalent of side taking, and blame and shame.  Politicians advance with divide and conquer and ganging up. 

Individualism was never desired.  In face of threat humans congregated.  Being alone was for the lunatic and the religious.  Even monks were a community as Thomas Merton showed in his study of Buddhist and we knew of the Dessert father.

War is us against them.  It’s all fear based and paranoia.  Steal a little and they put you in jail , steal a lot and they make you king. The winner writes history.  Women are equally guilty.  Eva Brawn and Hitler’s Mother created Adolf.

Women have been second class only because of their unwillingness to accept accountability.  No praise without blame.  Today the various victim cults want license not freedom. The language is changed to validate whatever ideology suits , such as murder and abortion or Medically Assisted Suicide,

I turned 70. I am an individual.  I realized 28 days alone at see with only a dog and a cat.  

The only day we have is today. Carpe Diem. ODAAT. One day at a tine,  We live from sleep to sleep. 

Life is a manifestation of memory desire and today.  Buddha did say desire is the root of all suffering.  Kierkegaard said life is suffering unto death.

Freud said Eros and Thanatos.  Life wish and death wish.

Politicians promote their children today and say vote for me “I”m a parent’.

The division is ‘parents and single’s, ‘families versus individuals’,  With the machine we don’t need many more. A dog and a cat perhaps, a God, a friend.  

Sex was first for pleasure.   Later it was connected to child making.  Later it was known that the largest armies one.  

Gender is a product of the past.  

Humans are heard animals. Raising children or even monkeys alone created insaniety, death wish dominant.  Raising biologically disconnected children, adopted, kibbutz etc worked.  

Science takes groups and compares them and finds general trends and directions which can guide but don’t predict the future of the individuals.

Individuals and individualism is associated by farmiles and countries.  The paranoid sees the individual as oppressed by the group.  Certainly the Communist Committee Gangstrism continues to oppress individuals.

Others see all relationships as mutual ,versus parasitic,

I like my dog,  Dog and human have been a long history of mutuality.  

I remember family and being born but my father’s generation was born into the celebration of the ‘family unit’.  The Asian family unit vernerates the old.  Children are a mother’s old age pensio.  Mother’s collectively are cared for by children in old age while the world is full of disregarded old men.  Men die 10 years younger than women because they are uncared for .  The lie of feminism was that women were tougher, but when put in the same jobs they died as young. Feminists haven’t been creative but have raised children for themselves .  Today women have sons on leash. Men have dogs on leash.  

Men are becoming women and women are becoming men,  God doesn’t make mistakes.  The whole idea of that is fate versus choice.  I chose to dress as a woman and because of that I can be deemed wrong, bad, mad.  But the other who says God made a mistake. Is the latest in the victim motif.  I love the advances of science and women getting big breasts and women getting little breasts is called cosmetic surgery. I’d like breasts as a man for the sake of cosmetic surgery.  Not because of fate or free will.

However the great industry of law and psychology is to ‘advocate’ for the outside.  Today one of the wealthier groups is the new ‘drug pusher’ who is the ‘advocate’ of the ‘drug addict’ who can’t abstain but must have safe source.  The natives did the land claims game with native getting 1 million dollars while two lawyer groups got 10 million dollars each to gabfest.  The safe source debate is little different,

The same debate occurred with Sangster and birth control and abortion.  The pregnant girl could abstain or the rape could have been compensated as in tribal society superior and more sophisticated than today which is a lewd and obscene society.  Neither better or worse. Difference.

The idea of the Christian’s refusing to take the plank out of their own eyes while attacking on mass the mote in their neighbours.  The Christian who is obese slanders the Christian who murders.

Hierarchy of hate and shame and inside out sider is perpetuated in the law of the fittest.  Are we reducing the gene pools but helping the wounded

I don’t have children. I like wearing dresses. But I liked wearing cammo. I liked wearing the military imitation officer suits popular with lawyers and politicians. I liked wearing yachting gear and dancing wear and clinical lab coasts and college cordoroy.  Gender is not who I am.  

Yahweh - I am who I am.  

Namastes - the God in me salutes the god in you.

Alone I am never alone,   I am a Christian.  The Christian god is loving and always loving and not judgemental ,  Incluseive , not exclusive.  But then God is loving and judgemental and inclusive or exclusive.  God is all or nothing and All and nothing.

I loved the 60 tv show Prisoner.  A totalitarian dystopia whereas I’ve a libertarian dystopia.

As a Christian I’m top of the class as married man with good kids today.  As a politicians, the same.  Historically the Christians were individuals and disciples and groups and some were alone and some some were married.  We don’t hear much of the children of the disciples.

Cherry pickin Christians have rejected Paul on women and slaves but also cherry picked Jesus ‘. Thoughts on enmity and money.  

I loved the 60’s books, Be Here Now (a take off from Brother Lawrence, Pracrticing the Presence of God’ and Elkhart Toole, Power of Now.,  I also like the couple who wrote ‘what to do till the messiah comes’.  A Jewish couple who did’t believe Jesus was the messiah,  I heard an Anglican Priest say he didh’t believe the Bible.  Another Protestant Canadian female minister didn’t believe in God or Jesus but wanted the job and pension.  

The government doctor told me “Act like a doctor’, and he had the arrogance to think he did To me he was just another ‘suit’.  

My life as a community psychiatrist was always “attraction’.  The world of ‘prevention’ is even more attraction.  The ‘police doctor’ the ‘licensing doctors remind me of the time when I was in charge of the asylum. If you wanted out you needed to do as I say.  There’s a world of coercion in medical politics,

In the healing profession the person is dying and you can delay the process and relief suffering.

All medicine is palliative care in face death,

I and my family go to heaven. You and your family go to hell. Your mother wears army boots.  Amazing what we can’t learn from what children discern. You’re in or out.  King Lear at the end speaking to his daughter.  Shakespeare calls it ‘court things’.

90% of cross dressing men are heterosexual .  The whole feminist movement of today is the woman wearing pants. Chanel to Hillary Clinton. The argument that post modernism is just a pretty name for the Super rationalism that denies the feminine and denounce the mother, the holy mother, the sacred mother.  Women in communism the religion of aetheism were denied children. Abortion and hysterectomy . Vasectomy is not a communist thing,  The primitive tribal woman says we count a man by the number of his children.  

The number of children and number of wives

Anthropologists define the west as ‘serial monogamy’. In my childhood 50 year marriages were normal with divorce rare and families in tact to some degree mostly. Today the urban divorce rate is 50 % and 5 year marriages are the norm.  Based on individualism and science perhaps the 50 % marriages that persist are the bad marriage.

My friend who left high school and became a millionaire called me a slow learner because I spent another 12 years in institutional learning and even went not to teach at a couple of universities.

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.  Women act more like men than their mothers,  Marx and Engles wanted to destroy families as a threat to the almighty god of the State.  Communists call mothers ‘Breeders’.  

It’s fun getting to know women more.  I also see gays and other minority groups in a non child centered fear of death way.  

An early female Judge found 320 consecutive family cases against the man.  

The woman registrar at the College of Physicians and Surgeons said “Women don’t lie about sex”.  I have to date never been compensated for all the sexual harassment I have experienced in the work place, the rape, the caning in school, being hit in the head by a teacher’s wooden mallet, the individual list of ‘wrong’s’ and manure of self pity that power the ‘pay me’.  The story of the fisherman and the beggar is lost to history.   

I don’t like being among strangers.  I have worked in the jails and the asylums and I have been in government offices.   I am good at my work.  I’m like a motor parts guy, a spiritual fixit.  I know the products available and have a lot of answers to all manner of questions most of which people are afraid to share with others.  

Live and let live.

Jesus taught Love God and Love thy neighbour as yourself.  If any passage in the Bible veers from this then that’s what needs to be discussed not whether a trucker wears diapers.  

To thine own self be true.

God is all and I am a part of God.  

My identity is not my self’.  C.S.Lewis’s said thoughts are ‘creatures’.  St. John of the Cross, Nada.  The spiritual path.  The long dark night of the soul.  

I am a lone but not alone,. 

 

Forgiveness

I find it so hard to be forgiving.  The Lord’s prayer says ‘forgive me as I forgive”.

‘there is a saying, love your friends and hate your enemies. But I say: Love your enemies. Pray for these who persecute you. In that way you will be acting as true sons of your father in heaven. For he gives his sunlight to both the evil and the good, and sends rain on the just and unjust too. If you love only those who love you, what good is that? Even scoundrels do that much.  If you are friendly only to your friends how are you different from anyone else.  Even the heathens do that.  But you are to be perfect even as your Father in heaven is perfect.”

I find this the hardest passage in the Bible to follow. It’s where the Jews and Christians parted ways.  This is the Essence of ‘being born again’.  Those who said ‘spiritual progress not perfection’ balked at this Christian calling.  I’m not a very good Christian. I know this intellectually and can be loving in theory but personally I’m still slouching towards Bethelehem.  

Thankfully Jesus said also “Love God and Love your neighbour as yourself.”  Self defence is self love.  It was warriors and men of the trades and fathers who came to Jesus not the effete and cowardly.  Thy will be done. Not my will.  David was a warrior and defended himself and his people.  I loved C.S. Lewis “Mere Christianity’ the summary of the thoughts he shared on BBC for the WWII mainly Christian troops.  I admire the Quakers and Mennonites. I appreciate the non violence of Gandhi and the exacting teachings by Buddha of doing no harm.  But I’m a doctor too and know that excision can save a life. Jesus was not kind to demons and cast them out to save lives.  He threw out the moneylenders from the temple.  

I need to be more forgiving.  Thank you. I want to walk in the path of the Lord.  Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil for thou art with me. Thank you Jesus 

Seen and Unseen God

I believe in a seen and unseen God.

God is omniscient, omnipotent, omnipotential

God is love.

God is all.  

I am in God.

God is imminent.

God is transcendent

God is alpha and omega.

God is the Higher Power.

There is but one god, God of Gods.

I know this to be true not because my senses tell me

But because I intuit it to be true.

The evidence for God and God’s existence is overwhelming to me.

I believe that there is a conscious connection between myself and God.

I believe that while I call my self ‘the self’, God is the over self, Self of Selfs.

I believe God is wanting to communicate with me more fully.

I believe that the Holy Bible is the text of God but not the only text.

I believe Jesus Christ was the son of God

He was born, he died and he rose again.

I believe in God the father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit.

I believe the Holy Spirit is the feminine aspect of God, God the mother

I believe that this Family of God is the relational world, trinity and triangle.

I believe that God is seeking closer contact with me as I with him.

I believe there is a sacred hide and seek and that finding God is joy itself.

I believe that I can see God in creation if I have eyes to see, ears to hear.

I believe that God is Grace and that I must have Faith to know God.

If I close my mind to God I shall miss the very finest of life

I believe there are higher and lower qualities and that I can meet God where I am

I believe that God is lifting me up and bringing me home as a mother holds a baby.

I believe I am Born again in innocence while my cleverness is growing to wisdom.

I believe that prayer brings me closer to God as does meditation.

I believe that doing the right thing brings me closer to God as well

I find it difficult to do the right thing because I have the power of choice

I can choose God or simply speaking the GOOD or I can choose something less than or other.

I struggle to know the God because God is awesome and I may simply fear the novelty of God

I don’t want to choose the safety of the known and be a spiritual coward

To know God more fully I must go beyond my present comfort zone and live freely

I find it hard to trust. I am often afraid. Please God. Hear my prayer. Help me know you.

Help me grow in love and wisdom.

Thank you God.

Thank you for Gilbert and George, for my family, and friends, for my home, for this city and country. 

Thank you for this world. Thank you for the air and soil. Thank you for the sky and rain. Thank you for the sun.

Thank you for the Moon. Thank you for this body and these senses. Thank you for this adventure, thriller, romance of Life.

Thank you for the stories. Thank you for the mystery. Thank you for the treasure hunts and thank you for the naughty bits.

Thank you for Love in all it’s myriad forms.  Thank you lace and panties. Thank you for roses and thorns. 

Thank you for old people and young people and especially thank you for the babies and the women who bear them.

Thank you for the children.  Thank you for the laughter. Thank you for the giggles.

Thank you for this day. Help me use it most fully and help me to know you more deeply.

Thank you Lord for creation and hopefully one day I will know what it means, the why and the wherefore.

For now help me to know you more, to sense you in all I do. Help me to live in the sacred. Help me to live in the divine.

Hallelujah!

GOD IS LOVE

I loved the mystical medieval text “The Cloud of Unknowning”.  It speaks to the humility of wisdom.
Jesus taught, “Unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”
Children are curious.
I am curious about God.
Martin Buber the great Jewish philosopher in his book, I and Thou, discussed the centrality of the question, what is the ‘Other”.  If I accept that I am not alone and that reality is not a ‘figment of my imagination’ then I ask, what or who is the Other.
We know that children developmentally first consider themselves one with their mother.  The umbilical chord is cut and psychologically and sociologically they separate in time to being individuals separate from their mother. They move along to separating from their families, their communities, and ultimately humanity. This is the process called ‘individuation’.  While they are in ‘relation’ with all others, they are also separate and apart,  increasingly ‘alien’.  Individuation and alienation go hand in hand.  The natives describe themselves ‘in relation’.  This is fundamentally the universal social development of  ‘tribal’ consciousness.
 The  Modern Age beginning circa 1850 in the West introduced the Industrial era and what today is fast becoming the era of technology.  The age of Rationality and intellectualism later with the individuation of gender because the age of Emotion and Emotionalism  which continues today. Ironically cognitive behavioural therapy teaches we ‘feel what we think’ and the post modernists believe this age of ‘emotionalism’ and ‘subjectivity’ somehow different continue in the past ‘age of rationalism’ albeit by a different name. More advanced  theorists posit “postmodernism”  simply ‘ultra rationalism.”  The age of rationalism was what gave rise to the ‘war to end all war’ and the failure of the ‘intellectualism” as it created the aetheist killing machine of communism and the world wars of Europe. The age of emotionalism has simply extended this era with the growth  of the United Nations.  Big Daddy is replaced by Big Mommy or Big Brother by Big Sister. Alienation and entropy grew.
Intellectually Kaffka wrote the Metamorphosis ,the classic novel of ‘alienation’, a culmination in intellectualization and individuation of abject navel gazing.  Man as insect.
Psychopaths were seen by McLean as having ‘lizard brains’ and not developing further to the more advanced animal and human brains of the “Triune Brain”.
The corporation,  as this has also been called the age of corporation, the new political entity that replaced the medieval baronies and duke ships, family and tribal based entities of the past  , is considered by modern law as a ‘legal individual’.  Star Trek compared  the Corporation as the “Borg”, the image of Corporate or Communist or Socialist conquer.  Assimilation in the Era of Technology.
Dr. Robert Hare , foremost authority on psychopathy, discussed the lizard developmental level of sociopath and compared this to the present nature of the Corporate legal model, in the documentary “Corporations.” The world today is a ‘legal’ judicial construct based on 15th century  model of social reality without the individual ‘relationships’ of that earlier age, wholly a construct of the failed ‘age of rationalism’ ultra modernist emotional and political, masquerading under the fancy name ‘post modern’. It is merely a construct of alienation.
By contrast the original hypothesis of relation begins with:
God and I.
I and Thou.
I and the Other
Am I alone?
Does the butterfly think the philosopher? Or does the philosopher think the butterfly?
I am born in blood and piss and shit and die in blood and piss and shit. Ashes to ashes. But is my soul solely this body.
Neuroscientist   Mario de Beuregaard elegantly ,with PET Scan and Carmelite Nuns meditating showed that we are more than ‘brain’ of materialism.  His book “The Spiritual Brain, A Neuroscientists Case for the Existence of the Soul” suggest much more than the reductionist aetheist materialist position of “Brain in Petrie dish” as  self.  The brain is but a tool of Self or Soul.
Genesis 1:26 states “God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness.”
Modern quantum physics and string theory posit a matrix of energy that we are apart of, no one disconnected in reality, but rather interconnected, not the fear and superstition based ‘tribal’ relations of old described so well by Jared Diamond in The World Until Yesterday, What Can We Learn from Traditional Societies .but rather in the love based matrix of the intuitive, beyond reason and emotion.
Grace is the idea of God as actively divine.  The Hound of Heaven poem by Francis Thompson described well the Modern Age of Intellectualism and Rationality and Emotionalism of the Post Modern Ultra Modern era.
“I fled Him, down the nights and the day. I fled Him down the arches of the years. I fled him, down the labyrinthine ways of my own mind......I hid from Him, and under running laughter up vistaed hopes I sped.....from those strong feet that followed, followed after. But with unhurrying chase, and unperturbed pace , deliberate speed, majestic instance, They beat - and a Voice beat more instant than the feet - “all things betray thee, who betrayed me”.
The greatest image of Man and God is the Old Testament of the Bible book, Solomon’s Song of Songs, “I am my beloved and my beloved is mine”.  It is the story of young love.
1 John: 4.8 in the New Testament of the Holy Bible says ,”Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is Love.”
The sociopath, or psychopath are shallow. Whatever power or influence they have, what ever they appear like, what ever their selfies show, remains to be seen ,simply because only the ‘loving” know God.  To Love is to know God. Like a child playing hide and seek.  Curious about that which is unknown and unknowable. Humble. The arrogant and the all knowing, the judgemental and the superior cannot know God for God is Love.
GOD LOVES AS WE LOVE.
The energy of the universe that binds us is LOVE.
In science, “Entropy is a thermodynamic concept that represents chaos and degradation. It occurs naturally in any physical system and will naturally grow (i.e. become more chaotic) if we don’t do something to arrest it’s growth. Doing something requires the expenditure of energy, so energy is what counters entropy.”
Love is as love does. Love is a verb not an object.
The first law of thermodynamics is the “law of conservation of energy”. The law of conservation of energy states that the total energy of an isolated system is constant, energy can be transformed from one form to another, but can neither be created nor destroyed.”
God is Love and Love never really dies. Love is eternal and infinite whereas fear is by nature, finite.  Love conquers all.
The dance of love is the simply the dance of “I and Love”. Or “I and God”.  “I and One”.
The one becomes many.  That’s the great hide and seek of God and central to the idea of Love Your Enemy. This doesn’t mean let your enemy kill you because Jesus did say, Love God and Love your neighbour as yourself.  Loving oneself doesn't involve letting oneself be killed and thereby turning one’s neighbour into a killer. The disciples of Jesus wore swords. The monks of the east learned martial arts to protect themselves from the unenlightened. We teach children manners and how to play without hurting. Sentimentalism is a caricature of caring.
Only the humble can know God.  God is the first spark in the flame, for even a thought comes a nano second later, as neuroscience teaches so well.
I know and feel and intuit God’s love and endeavour today to love as God loves.

The Cosmic Christ and Jesus

Jesus was the man who was God born incarnate.
The zen master asks, "Does the butterfly think the philosopher or the philosopher think the butterfly?
The relationship between God and man is a covenanted one.  Grace is the action of God.  God freely gives of his love and we receive.  God is the prime doer.
But the God of Biblical proportion is Omnisicient, Omnipotent, and Omnipotential and absolute,  alpha and omega. So that means that there is divine reality.  God created the heavens and earth. God is the heaven's and earth. All is God stuff. God is imminent and emimnent and all such words and transcendent and elsewhere and present, all and beyond.  It's God.  God is.
Life is matter and energy and as we mature spiritually we move from seeing the solids to the energy and the web of light that is life. We experience the Godness of stuff and existence and ourselves and our love.
The question of existence is 'do we exist?" What is reality? Are we imagining this or dreaming this? Are we the dreamer or the dream?
The Jesus story. Jesus is the baby then Jesus is the man. Jesus lives.
 It's the most incredible idea that God came down. A key story in the Bible is Jesus washing the feet of the disciples. On earth prior to Jesus ,leadership was only top down.
In the normal conventional earth social reality, shit falls down on the little people and the littlest gets the greatest shit. It was the reality of the Christian world before Jesus.  It's military rule.  It's Herod and Caesar and the Chinese Emperor.
By contrast in the Jesus story God humbles himself to be a baby.
In all the other God is either separate or if man becomes God he raises himself to be a God and transcends this world.
But Jesus said the Good News was with his death ,reality, which had been rather and sordid, became immensely different. The death of Jesus was the enlightenment of creation.  There was darkness then there was light. The light is in all creation now. A switch was thrown and never thrown back.
The death of Jesus, the sacrifice of Jesus, was the God becoming God moment of light throughout the universe.  The experience of Christ Consciousness is like Samadhi or Nirvana or mystical rejuvenation or enlightenment or rapture or transcendent bliss. It's pure Joy. It's in effable . Christians have collectively described this with all manner of miraculous experiences  and real behaviours with extraordinary otherworldly gifts. Not only is it something personally experienced, it's also been well documented and evidenced so much so that it's just another everyday event to anyone but the rulers of this world.  There is love and fear.  The rulers of this world are so afraid, so terrified, so inhuman that they killed god and to this day continue to kill God in denial of God, love and light. Straw men.
There's fear and love.  Jesus is love. Fear is absence of love and absence of Jesus.  A dark hole.
Jesus and his followers are in a spiritual war on earth individually and collectively. Evil and Good.  Right and Left.  Wrong and Right.  Up and down. Odd and even.  It's an intrinsic dilemna for the individual, a moral and ethical dilemna and a community and world spiritual war..
Choose Jesus or don't choose Jesus.  Choose God or don't choose God.
Interesting.
That said Christ Consciousness is like a state one comes and goes with, that second sense of feeling alone and not alone.   I can reach for God but God must reach down to me.  It's a dance. It's a love match.  I hug God . God hugs me.  It's the song of song.
In the Sistine chapel God and Adam touch.   Christ is the light in between. Jesus Christ is the Word.  
The Holy Spirit is the interface.
When Jesus was baptized by John,  the Holy Spirit descended like a dove upon him. Jesus said, 'the advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and remind you of everything"   The Name of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ the Word.
The spiritual is the lightness of being.
There's a 'gravity' here, a 'graveness', we are weighted down in this world by the deathness of this place  But "Yea though I walk through the valley of the Shadow of Death, thou aren't with me."  
 Jesus said "I am the way and the truth and the life."
We are reborn in Jesus. As Christians we become intimately aware of our immortality. Reborn we  do not die at death.  We pass through death to new life.  That is the God news of Jesus Christ.
Hallelujah!

Why is the Bible Important to Christians?

It’s Sunday morning. I woke with a sore back. That’s better than yesterday. Yesterday I woke at 4 am with a sore mind.  My sore back is from lifting good stuff and doing good work.  I guess my sore mind comes from that too.  No good deed goes unpunished by this government. My job is to focus on the blessings not the curses.  Only my back hurt this morning.  All my other body parts were in good working order.  I slept in till 830 am and Gilbert let me.  and what a blessing that was.
Now I’ve not been to church in weeks. I say I’m a winter Christian because summer and fall I’m usually at sea sailing,  or camping in the woods.  This year I was on my lawn chair out back lot enjoying the sun and  reading a lot.  I read the Holy Bible most days.  I talk with Christian friends and do Christian service.  I’m praying all the time and meditating some.
The Holy Bible is a source of comfort and wisdom for me.  I began reading it as a child and studied it seriously in various theological institutes and courses. It’s a part of all church services no matter how “liberal”.  I learned in theology that one should not ‘cherry pick’ the Bible for phrases to support one’s own position but rather see it as a gestalt.
There’s an ‘old testament’. It includes the Torah or Jewish Bible and prophets.  Jesus was Jewish. His first disciples were Jewish. The writers of the Bible were Jewish.  The translators, not necessarily.  Neither were the interpreters.  Christianity is a ‘universal religion’.  It’s open to all. It’s inclusive and not exclusive.  According to the Pew Report, as of 2010 Christianity was by far the world’s largest religion, with an estimated 2.2 billion adherents, nearly a third (31 percent) of all 6.9 billion people on earth.”
Once a ‘word of mouth’ religion with many writings over time the Holy Bible became the collection of writings of the church. The Bible was a collection of the ‘books’ or ‘writings’ of the Christian church with some ‘books’ such as St. Thomas being considered questionable as the orthodox Christian religions have rejected the ‘gnostic gospels’ as being ‘outside’ the mainstream that continues till today.  The Councils of the Church through the years have addressed these ideas and come to a consensus of truth, or orthodoxy.
Jesus said, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.” Mathew 5:17.
To me that means that the Torah and the writings of the prophets are still important.  I love the Psalms which are the Songs of David and quoted by Jesus. The Holy Bible of Christians is divided into an Old and a New Testament.  Testament simply means ’tale’ or ’telling’.  The Old Testament comes before Jesus and the New Testament comes after Jesus. It begins with the four Gospels: Mathew, Mark, Luke and John.  These give witness to the life and death and teaching of Jesus.  The latter parts of the New Testament are the stories of the Apostles, the leaders Jesus surrounded himself with  while he was alive, and the writings of St. Paul, the Rabbi who converted to Christianity and along with the apostles started the first churches. Paul, as well as being a Jew, was a Roman citizen and a tent maker. Only the rich could afford tents and travel so Paul was part of the then ‘tent-setter’ group and travelled all around the Mediterranean of the Roman Empire of the day.
The Old Testament is preempted by the teaching of Jesus.  It is  an older version of the truth.
Jesus said, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”  John 14. 6.
I loved the matter of fact way a Theologian said, “The Jews were wrong then and they remain wrong today.”  What he was referring to was the fundamental rift between the Old Testament and New Testament. Christians see Jesus as the Messiah or God/Man  which the Old Testament speaks of but the Jewish authorities rejected him and with the Romans, the ruling world empire of the day, killed ‘Son of God.’  Today the Jews continue to believe that Jesus was a prophet and his teachings were summarized in the ‘teachings of Q’, a source of wisdom sayings which appear to overlap with the words attributed to Jesus in the Gospels, especially Mark.
The fact is, much of what Jesus said, is common sense and spiritually un original, except in it’s godliness.  Prophets and religious leaders including Zarathustra and Moses and others have said similar things. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”, the law of divine retribution or karma, is in one of it’s various form central to all great religions.   Ecumenicalism is about finding the ‘similarities’ in various religions and focusing on these rather than the differences, yet the differences count, since to name a thing one must scientifically speaking have ‘sensitivity’ and ‘selectivity’.  Fraud is best maintained in generalities.  In the 60’s it was called ‘drug talk’ or ‘tarot talk’ because as long as anyone didn’t refer to money, drugs, sex or action everyone could be ‘free and love’.  As long as someone else is paying the bills, it’s easy to ‘love one another’.  This is the difference between adolescence and adulthood and was for a long time the difference between men and women as until recently the female and children of society were cared for and protected by the men. The Devil is said to be ‘in the detail.’
So each division in the history of religion and specifically in the church revolve around one key factor.  Jewish men were ‘circumcised’ as children. a tribal genital mutilation of boys.  St. Peter and St. Paul in the early days of the church when Christianity was seen not as a new ‘religion’ but as the ‘new’ Judaism, a ‘universal’ religion versus the ‘local’ Old Testament, tribal Judaism, debated circumcism.  The decision was that Christians did not need to have their male genitalia tampered with to be spiritual.  Jews to this day believe otherwise.
Muslims like Jews believed that Jesus was a prophet,  Muslims, Islam, believe in the genital mutilation of men, called ‘Khitan” or circumcision.  It is not mentioned in the Qur’an but in the Hadith. The Muslims in contrast to Jews and Christians also believe and practice genital mutilation or circumcision of female children.  However it is less widely held as a requirement of Islam than male circumcision.
Catholics and Christians don’t disagree on children genitalia but Catholics insist the Pope is the direct descendant of St. Peter.  When Emperor Constantine of the Roman Empire made Christianity the State Religion he became the head of the church as well.  Later the role of Spiritual Emperor for the World Catholics remained even though the Pope’s earthly territory had been shrunk to only the tiny state of the Vatican by various wars and invasions.  In Anglicanism or the Church of England the Queen is the head of the Church since King Henry VIII rejected the authority of the Pope and made himself head of the Anglican world Church.
The Catholic Church has the most centralized contro,l even more so than the Orthodox church.  When Constantine moved his seat of power to Constantinopolis, today’s Istanbul, the first major political division of the Church took place, with Roman Catholicism headed by the Pope in the Vatican. The Eastern Orthodox Church is headed by a Holy Synod.  It is the second largest Christian church. Both the Catholic and Orthodox Churches have Bishops as leaders but whereas leading Bishops are chosen to ’select’ the Pope in the Catholic church,  in the Orthodox church government is by the Holy Synod (council) and each Bishop is considered equal though a head bishop or patriarch is somewhat equivalent to the ‘arch bishops’ of the regional Catholic churches.  This first ‘East West” split of Christianity occurred in 1054 ad.
In the Anglican or Church of England begun by King Henry VIII there is a Synod but the Archbishop of Canterbury, is representative of the Queen and akin to the patriarchs.
The first division of the Christian churches in the West or Roman Catholicism were political and territorial with Germany separating from Papist Vatican rule.  Martin Luther began the Protestant Reformation of the church given rise to the division today called ‘Christian’ and ‘Catholic’ , the first principle of reformation being ’the proper source of authority in the church.’  Protestantism rejected the notion of Papal Supremacy.
Protestantism is now one of the three major divisions of Christendom after Roman Catholicism and Othodox.  They do not have a central human authority or structural unity. The Holy Bible and the local Church tend to have primacy in Protestantism which accounts for 900 million adherents and nearly 40 % of Christians worldwide.  Since the initial ‘territorial or political separations’ from Rome, the subsequent Protestant divisions have been more to do with biblical interpretation and theological divisions.
A major division between Martin Luther and the Pope in his day was the belief in ’transubstantiation’.  These divisions are really deep and superficially they look like any family argument to an outsider  over time.  Organizations and religions and countries and all human endeavour beginning with family and divorces contains the humanity of emotions and especially anxiety.  Jesus said over and over again. “Do not be afraid”.  Yet obviously even the leaders of the churches had their share of humanity.  It’s been said that Anxiety is ‘measure of your distance from God but equally a measure of your humanity’.
Transubstantiation refers to the ‘conversion of the substance of the Eucharistic elements into the body and blood of Christ.”  Eucharist is the central rite or ritual of Christianity.
“While they were eating, Jesus took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to his disciples, saying, “Take and eat, this is my body.”  Matthew 26:26
This occurred a couple of thousand years before quantum physicis and modern interpretations of ‘reality’. Dualism, the idea of the separation of matter and spirit was central to Plato and much philosophy and thought prior to Jesus.  Even today ‘blood’ is powerful and in medical science divisions like ‘genetics’ compete with the influence behaviour or of ‘environmentalism’.
The questions comes down to the crux of whether one believes we are ‘material beings living in a spiritual realm’ or ‘spiritual beings living in a material realm.’
The power of the priest and Pope was central to the ‘transubstantiation’ process given that the ‘bread’ became the body of Jesus with his touching and saying so but later Christians felt that there did not need to be an intermediary between Jesus and oneself.  Hindus have little difficulty with the notion of transubstantiation because of their and subsequent Buddhist concepts of the nature of creation are fundamentally different from the west philosophically.  They perceived reality as dualistic, but not so much as matter and energy or matter and spirit, but as ‘true or false’.  Moksha is the ‘false reality’.
When Jesus was asked what is the greatest commandment in the Law, he said.
“'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment.  And the second is like it: “Love your neighbour as yourself’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” Matthew 22:36-40.
Another area of debate in the church has been surrounding the idea of the ‘prime mover’.  This is expressed in the ‘faith’ and ‘work’s and ‘grace’ debate.  If God is first and first mover then ‘GRACE” the love of God saves us. Salvation in Christianity is the saving of the soul from sin and death.  Sin was the description of the world as not perfect.  St. Paul said in this life, “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.”
Today’s ideas of ‘addiction’ and ‘habits, good and bad’ all focus on this central premise of ‘imperfection’.  The word to ‘sin’ came from archery where the archer wanted to hit the bullseye every time but simply didn’t for a variety of reasons.   Newton and other physicists and ultimately Quantum Physics looked at these relationships just as Einstein and St. Augustine both considered ‘time’. With Grace we are saved because of God’s love whereas with ‘works’ we are saved because of human’s work.
The disciples asked Jesus “‘ Who then can be saved?” Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”  Matthew 19:25-26.
Since Luther in the 16th century Protestantism has grown and divided while maintaining a lose association under the heading of “Christian".  Some are local or community churches while others are world wide. Some of the main Protestant Christian churches are Lutheran, Presbyterian, Baptist, Pentecostal, Methodist, Mennonite, Adventist, Reformed, Evangelical, Non denominational and more. All Christian churches refer to the Holy Bible, most importantly the 4 Gospels, or ‘good news’, the stories of Jesus, by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
An area of debate in the church and religion in general is the ‘divinity of Christ’.  The Christian God is said to be a Trinity, ‘three in one’ God, best taught to my mind by St. Patrick.  It’s not specifically a teaching of Jesus in the Bible though it’s implied as he says “I and the Father are one” and promises the “Holy Spirit”.
Jesus says, “If you love me, keep my commands. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever - the Spirit of Truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you.”
Dr. James Houston of Regent College talked of this as the Personhood of God, three persons in one.  My friend Bernie while alive loved to pray, “Holy Spirit Come”.
To become a Christian as with all religions, one can be born in a Christian family or raised Christian. Christians baptise or christen their babies with sprinkling of water or immersion in water as John the Baptist first Baptised Jesus.  Once christened or baptized a Christian remains a Christian for life unless they renounce their relationship. It’s a bit like being a member of a Country.  Unless you renounce your ‘citizenship’ you can always return. It is not uncommon in all religions for the youth to leave the family and family religion only to return to the religion with having their own family or matuation.
For a person who has not been born and christened or baptized as a child the way to become a Christian is to walk into a church and observe. I call this being a ‘church tourist’.  Christians invite others to attend their church like they do inviting people to go to the movies with them. Christianity is not a ’secret society’ but a welcoming religion.  Christian services are great entertainment and everyone is welcome to attend and observe. They are the source of the greatest music with the likes of Bach and Elvis and countless others getting their first experience of music in the church.  The ’sermons’ are often great lectures, like those of Dr. Peter Elliott  or Dr. Carl Ridd when he was alive or Dr. James Houston.    The key to understanding a sermon is that you don’t have to agree with it but rather it, like any ‘lecture’ forms the basis of discussion and is by nature ‘thought provoking’.
I often tell people to explore churches and other religious organizations much as you would when picking a cafe or night club. For young men I say ‘hang out’ at the church with the highest density of beautiful women. For young women I say choose to return to the church with the highest density of handsome young men. For those with small children perhaps return to a church with lots of small children.  These people are principally neighbours and it’s a spiritual club no different than the local gym is a ‘physical club’.  Spirituality is however much more comprehensive than a mere gym. It’s also relatively ‘free’ at first, as everyone is invited to attend and the old church adage was to ‘put a buck ‘ or even 25 cents or a penny in the basket when it was passed around. Ultimately when one chooses and becomes a member of a church they voluntarily contribute and are encouraged to by the board who pay the rent at the church and physical taxes and tuitions and salaries. Some churches remain small and poor while other churches become ‘mega church’ major corporations of great wealth.  Neither is ‘better’ in a spiritual sense anymore than a martial art sensie with a few students is less than a major dojo with many franchises.  Such discussions of size refer more to quantity than quality. Personally I’ve liked little and large churches.
To participate more specifically in churches there are classes and ultimately baptism or formal joining with the church membership in some ceremony.  Historically this often meant simply saying “I believe in Jesus Christ” as the name of Jesus Christ which is derived from the words “God within and God Will Come Again” is itself considered holy and transformative. Yahveh the name of the Jewish , God the Father, meant “I am, that is who I am”.  Hence, the beingness of God, the creator.  The third person is the Holy Spirit.
Various councils over the 2000 years of Church history and the individual churches have come up with a legalistic formulation much like the ‘articles of faith’ which one signs whenever one gets new software from Apple or Microsoft.  I don’t read the whole agreement and sign ‘i agree’ without consulting a lawyer. There is the possibility that Apple or Microsoft have slipped in a line ‘you will give your left kidney and testicle if you agree’. I have faith at this time and joining a church have considered overall the ‘details’ but even while I’ve not ‘agreed fully’ with some details I’ve ‘agreed in principle’ as I do with Microsoft and Apple, a couple of human companies not even known for their holiness.
When I join a church or any club or even accept software I am today making such decisions.  But ‘joining’ comes after being a ‘tourist’ and people join churches because they like the people. Churches are the ‘people’ especially the more local, community and independent churches which are commonly formed today around someone with a Bible who says let’s get together and talk about this Holy Book.  Then because they want a place to meet as they grow in numbers they get into renting then owning spaces and developing schools and more. Ultimately in the past groups of Christians created hospitals, universities and whole nationstate and even continued world empire. Some might say we’re seeing the third Christian empire today.
Being a Christian then comes with study and association. It’s about community and consideration.
“I believe.”  It’s a joy for me to say this today.
Thank you Jesus Christ. Thank you Lord God. Holy Spirit Come!

Holy Week 2017

I attended Palm Sunday Service at Cariboo Community Church with Laura, Kevin, Anna and the God Kids.  They were a thorough entertainment. They walk on chairs and crawl on the floors just like Gilbert does.  And the aisles of the church, wide open freeways for fast running children’s feet.  Anna took them out during the sermon.  A serious affair about Passover,  Jews being saved from judgement because of their personal relationship with God and their obedience to God. Sabbath and the Last Supper.  Purification with Hyssop.  Hyssop figures in the psalm of recovery 51.  Hyssop is on the vinegar given to Jesus as he dies on the cross.

Now this is Holy Week.  Palm Sunday was the celebration of Jesus entering triumphant into Jerusalem riding a donkey. I’ve forever loved the donkey.  Perhaps because it figured in the first childhood Sunday School stories.  

We’d go to church with my parents and go downstairs during the service to have a class room of Christian teaching with colouring books of Christian stories.  Later we’d rejoin the parents after the sermon.  Not long away with strangers. I remember well the Sunday School at Trinity Baptist, Fort Rouge, Winnipeg. Later I’d teach Sunday School for a couple of years at Fort Garry United.  Looking back I realize I’ve been of service. I’ve participated.  There’s still too much time watching tv.  Not enough of it watching the Ben Hur’s of today.  Uplifting inspiring tales of Biblical proportion but spins off instead like Star Wars and Star Trek.  I loved studying Joseph Campbell and the role of myth in society.

As a psychiatrist we say if you don’t agree to a collective insanity then you’re doomed to having a personal one.  My favourite collective insanity is the legal agreements we all sign ‘in faith’ with computer companies where on the next to final page we have agreed to give our soul and our kidneys to Microsoft or Apple.

WWIII is heating up.  A competing channel.  I don’t think anything will come of it.  Russia, Syria, Jordan, Iran, Israel and the US all raising the stakes on this Easter week.  Meanwhile the American navy is steaming towards North Korea when the kid, another one, like our own Pretty Boy Prime Minister Trudeau, has blasted off midrange missiles. Sarin in the Middle East and Tomohawk Missiles and the threat of nuclear missiles in the east.  

Jesus, we say was son of God. In the Hindu tradition a man evolves from slug to God. But in this Christian twist on an old story, God descends into Man then resurrects.  The Sufis, despite their Muslim warlord masters believe in the revolutions of the spiritual.  The Christian Jacobs Ladder mysticism is the rising and falling.  The descent and resurrection.  It’s a feeling thing to a mystic.  Meanwhile the Kundalini is another bi-directional thing.  Our minister today at Cariboo Community Church talked of the blood.  

Blood is the circular pumping flow.  The greath is in and out but the blood goes round and round.  It’s all movement. Our minds are the only part that’s stuck.

And Jesus was ever obedient to the prophecy and to the call.

He didn’t have to return to Jerusalem. It’s like New York and the girl from Kentucky.  She didn’t have to go to New York or LA even. If you stay at home you’re safe.  Avoid the big city.  Jesus was from Galilee. He could have stayed safe there but the real egos of the world are always in the government towns.  For us in Canada it’s Ottawa. Her in BC it’s Victoria. For Americans its Washington. For Russians Moscow.  If Jesus was in France today he’d have to go to Paris to be crucified. In China he’d be crucified in Bei Jing.  The Ego of the dictators, republicans, kings and queens and committee leaders and czars and prime ministers demand that Jesus be upstage.

Every day in my moment to moment life there’s God’s will and my will. I say ‘Thy Will Be Done’.  I want to do the right thing but mostly I avoid pain.  Jesus could have avoided pain. He asked that this cup be taken from him.  But he was betrayed and the Government of the day Crucified him.  

To the Christian this world isn’t the big deal it is to the Herod’s of the day and the beheaders of today and yesterday.  Herod wanted to sleep with his daughter so beheaded John the Baptist on a whim.  Beheading wasn’t just an ISIS or French thing. It’s biblical.  So much is. But the education today doesn’t teach history and kids are easily impressed by the plagiarism of television.  All the old myths and stories of Biblical proportion made into cartoons for wealth and profit.

Not that wealth and profit aren’t a concern. The disciples of Jesus carried Swords. Swords don’t come cheap. I was looking at Glocks and a good one puts you back a thousand.  All the men and women around the presidents and prime ministers and Kings of Saudi and Syria are carrying a thousand dollars of hard ware on their hips or under their arm pits.

Jesus said “My Kingdom is not of this world”.  

Way before physicists rediscovered alternative worlds Jesus was speaking of heaven.  Position is important. Heaven is in here not out there.  The Yogi sings “I am the bubble make me the sea”.  My perception to the psychologist today is like the tip of an iceberg. So much more goes on within.  All the linear journeys of the Bible , from Egypt to the promised land, from Eden to outside Eden, from Bethlehem to Jerusalem are metaphorical.  They’re true just was the Temple of the Jews in Jerusulam is historic and true.  

Alpha is a series of dinners and discussions which goes on in church for anyone who wishes to become a Christian or learn what Christians believe.  There’s the various Creeds and Third Day sings the Creed best of them all but practically it’s just an old fashioned Community Hall.  The Cariboo Community Church had that pentecostal feel. The Hillsong movie catches that Spirit filled grace of the pentecostals. Lots of song and celebration with education in sermons.  Everyone is welcome.

We all says ‘Come to the Table.   Father Matthew at my church helps the homeless old men and then goes to the opera with his lovely wife.  He’s in the guts and gore of creation uplifted by the word of God and music of the ages.  He says, “just think of it as your mothers dinner.”  Mom was always glad to have her kids come for dinner.  

The Prodigal Son, one of my all time favourite Biblical stories, and the masterpiece of painting in the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg is about a father inviting his son home after his son has been eating with pigs.  They killed the fatted calf in celebration.

The Last Supper of the Holy Week is Jesus’s gathering with his closest.  It’s the basis of communion.  We celebrate the breaking of bread and the drinking of wine.  The bread is the body and the wine is the blood. It’s a sacrificial symbolic cannibalistic rite. Robert Graves in Golden Bough followed the myth of the sacrifice of the king for the tribe throughout history.

Jesus, the pure, is the sacrifice of man.  

It makes the world go round.

The sun comes up.

We get to live on.

The Pharisees,cynical and arrogant get to judge. The Sanhedrin pompous and vacuous with fear as Sanhedrins always are releases the real rebel because the rebels of the world are nothing compared to the saints.  The saints had a bad lot, killed off by Nero and finally that entertainment stopped only by Constantine because Christians were the only ones truthful in the days of pagans.  

We are slouching towards Bethlehem.

We are nearer Jerusalem. 

There’s death and laughter.  This is just a dream like every day and every night and we awake and it’s all been a play.  We may go again or that may be it.  And for some who want nothing of immortality they might well get the peace of eternity.  But I’m in for the journey.

I’m following Jesus.  A follower of Jesus believes in God and heaven and doing unto others as you would have them do unto you.  These were once Canadian values.  Kellie Leitch is trying to get agreement on what is Canadian because Justin Trudeau hating Christians and Catholics and English and most things Canadians has started another Muslim jihad with his encouragement of Bill M-103.  Islamaphobia is to be outlawed by the Christophobe Justin Trudeau.

What will President Trump do.  I don’t think WWIII but maybe it’s about ratings.  As we’re gathering for the ascension of Jesus we may be all taken back to the passover.  I expect buying Hyssop would be in order.  I will trust in the blood of the lamb rather than going around to butcher shops looking for lamb.  Hyssop will have to do.  

Jesus Christ means literally “God within, god will come again.”  So all my life I’ve played hide and seek with God.  They dark times have only been when I was hiding and forgot I was hiding and thought the game was over and no one had come to find me.  All I had to do then was come out and play.  Just like I come when Mamma calls for supper.  Turning and twisting and circling and rising on eagles wings.  

Fundamental Theological Beliefs

I believe I am not alone. I believe in a God which has been given many names over the years by many people. I believe the differences are not in the God but in the development and perspective of the people referring to this 'other' as God.

The following names are the ones I prefer to call this God. Yahweh, Creator, Lord, Father, Mother, Higher Power, Jesus.

I believe the Bible is the story of the man's relationship with this God first as the representative tribal experience of the Jews until the birth of the Son of God, Jesus Christ. Jesus taught that he was the son of God and that we were the children of God. I believe this fundamental familial relationship exists though it is hard for me to maintain this belief when I am afraid or angry. Jesus said "Do not be afraid". I consider fear as often as not my enemy. Sometimes fear is a friend. Anger is mostly an enemy.

I believe that God is loving. I believe in the Trinity, Father, Child and Mother Holy Spirit. I believe the Holy Bible is the sacred text. I believe other sacred texts exist and have become sacred as both a gift of grace and by the study of spiritual followers. I believe St. Paul spoke truly when he said that now 'we see as through a glass darkly". This existence has a 'cloud of unknowing'. Truth lies in 'insights' and in the human heart. Outer reality is not so deep as the 'collective unconscious' or what can be called the 'soul' that which connects us to God who relates to us individually as we relate to Him.

I believe that all roads lead home and that death is a rebirth to another dimension, life or heaven, hell or purgatory. I believe that hell is not 'eternal' but rather at most for a 'long time'. I believe that a loving God will wait for all his children to come home. Hell is a 'choice' and a 'state of mind' and a 'place' but that place is solely one's 'turning one's back on God' and preferring one's own shadow to the light of God. Humility is acceptance of divinity in the duality and that that divinity is not 'me' but 'Thou'.

I believe all that we can know, feel and experience is God 'stuff' as God has made this all from God self. We are all created in the imagination of God and that all is God.

I pray and meditate to know God more fully. Each day I ask that God guide me in my actions and help me. 'Thy Will not My Will be done."

I believe in the Golden Rule, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." I believe Jesus' command, "Love God and Love your neighbour as yourself." This is also called 'divine retribution' and 'karma'. I believe there is 'temporary evil' and 'everlasting god'.

There is much more that I believe, especially scientifically, but it all begins with God and my relationship with God. I believe in the importance of fellowship in knowing God and this world.

Thank you Jesus for this day. Hallelujah.



- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Easter Thoughts 2012

Easter is the time that Christ died on the cross and was resurrected into heaven after appearing to his friends and disciples on earth. He is said to have rejoined God.  He said he was the son of God.

According to reincarnation thoughts an individual can aspire in time to return to God but Jesus apparently didn't do this journey of his own desire but rather was sent by God.  Some say as a sacrifice. That's certainly the way St. Paul saw it.  It was a basic tenet of the Christian faith too. That Jesus died for our sins. That the death of Jesus corrected the sin of Adam.

I say God came to check out his creation and the authorities whacked him .  His death though didn't stop him.  The idea of him was like good radiation. It spread through creation at all levels.  The authorities brand was 'fear' and the Jesus brand was 'love' and 'hope'.

E=MC2 tells me that matter is slow energy.  I am made in the image or imagination of God.  I'm a spiritual being in a spiritual existence.  I am more than Darwinian Evolution. I am more miraculous than anything I can imagine. I am a sacred being in a wondrous sacred dream.

And I have a friend. I have talked to Jesus as a friend since I was a child. My mother introduced me to Jesus kneeling beside my bed as a child.  My mother said that there was an unseen friend in the darkness.

Sailing solo through storms in the north Pacific I loved listening in the long lonely nights to the Christian rock band Third Day's song ,'there's a light at the end of the tunnel.'  Dr. Moody, the psychiatrist who studied people who had near death experiences, said they described meeting a being of shining light at the end of a long tunnel.

Prior to Jesus Gods had been like the warriors who mastered the world and ruled the world.  In contrast Jesus was a 'servant king'. He washed the feet of his disciples.  He preceded the Magna Carta by about 1200 years.  To hear the politicians talk they're always original.  Jesus made democracy possible though.  Some might say the world is unfolding as it should and Jesus' death on the cross was what set in motion the emacipation of the individual.

When I have been locked up I have prayed to Jesus.  I have been comforted by the thought that there is good and that God is good and that God with his infinite power can have a direct connection to every aspect of creation even me when I have been most down.  Indeed at such times Christ has come to me and I have been lifted 'as on Eagle's wings'.

The authorities from my perspective often get things wrong. Like killing God.  This was done by the leader of  Roman Empire, the priests and scribes.  When the people were given a choice they chose Barnabbus over Jesus. I've often made mistakes like that in my life. This is the inexact sinful muddling nature of existence.

So Easter I cry.  There's a song that says 'were you there when they crucifided my lord.'  When I was younger I thought of myself in Christs shoes, getting beat up by the Judges, Lawyers, Authorities, Administrators, Principals, Police, Priests, parents and anyone who was a bully or had the power to be.  Then decades back I realized that I was the one killing Jesus with my worry. Everytime I was afraid and worried I was disobeying Jesus' command "Do Not Be Afraid".  In not trusting in Jesus or the Lord I thought I knew better. I second guessed Jesus and daily was in a way rejecting him and his teachings, turning my back on him as Petter did till the cock crowed.

Christianity is a trinitarian religion with three gods in one and the mystery of how this is.  God the creator, Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirt are one, each an aspect of the whole. Jesus is my advocate, my personal savior, the great physician.

I have been a healer like Jesus. I have followed in his life and wondered all along at my failing to raise the dead yet refused to believe the dead were raised as miracles when they were.

I am at my best when I remember I have only this day and that I must live in the present. Practicing the presence of the lord.  I am at my best too when I think this is just a chapter in a book of life in which I don't know the ending but it goes on long after death.
I am at my best when I'm reading the Bible and studying scripture.  I am at my best when I'm studying the teachings of holy men and women and great physicians and healers.  I am at my best when I am listening for the wee small voice for guidance. I don't do enough of this.  It takes Easter to wake me up to the basics of existence. Too often I'm caught up in the business of life and not focussing my attention on what is utterly important, my relationship with God, my relationships with his son Jesus.

I think about Jesus more in the days of Easter week reading the Bible more, meditating more and praying that this time this year I'll get it right and be right with the Lord.  I want to be serving my Lord Jesus.  I want to be walking in a righteous path rather than scurrying to catch up or lagging behind. There's a special place where I'm right with the Lord and I've been there often and want to be there always.

I've actually tried to give up God but it was like giving up breathing.  I lived without reading my Bible much and life wasn't as good. I spent time with people who were utterly materialistic and life became minimalist like talking kitchen English or speaking to demented people.  There was just so much more one couldn't talk to because it's too disturbing to them.  I don't talk about Jesus as much as  I want to becuase some people don't like to hear about my thoughts on that.  Also I don't have to talk about Jesus when I'm asking someone to pass the butter. There's a time and place for everything.

Most people just want to get something from me. I like my generosity. But they don't know that that's St. Francis. He asked that he be made a channel and I feel all power comes from God so knowledge, money, energy, strength and healing all come from God and I am just a conduit for that so God wants me to give as the sun gives daily and freely.  I take naturally. I find that I am replenished however by God and when I remember that I'm like C.S. Lewis says, talking to the architect rather than talking to the wall.

Jesus gave his life for mankind. It's no big deal for me to give some money at church. Just for the pageant that's a weekly event with the theatre and the song and the Ted's Talks and the participation ritual for an hour or an hour and a half I"d pay $50 to a few hundred dollars if it was just 'theatre'.  If we use the 'entertainment' analogy, Christianity is great entertainment and so I don't mind paying.  What I like is that I've been welcomed into the church when I had no money too.  So the money isn't about what makes the whole thing go round. Yet it's important for people to understand that money is spiritual energy and charity is something the church does. My church does a lot of charity. I give money to my church knowing that my church gives to the poor what the poor need most in turns of material and spiritual gifts. I'm surprised to learn that some people who have been to some obscure likely to be forgot play or concert have never been in a church at easter. These same people will fly to other countries to watch bull runs or religious parades or ethnic celebrations but have never taken the time to participate in the Christian Easter Pageant.  Then on the other hand I regret this if I don't get to church early because there are so many tourists or Christmas and Easter Christians out at Easter and it's sometimes hard to get a seat.  My evangelica nature is often at loggerheads with my self centredness. I Martha and Mary daily.

The secular are forever taking credit for everything. To hear aetheists speak they are God but mostly our civilization as I know it was developed by theists and God loving people.  I believe that God loving people are more human than those who don't know God.  I call my "higher power" Jesus but accept that others use different names. Ultimately  Jesus Christ means 'god within, god will come again.'  It's an exclusive brand though everyone is welcome.

Easter is the time God died on the cross in utter despair. This is the way I feel when I am sick or am being cursed by the authorities and judged by the scribes. I am rarely 'blameless' like Jesus but I share the feelings. When I'm persecuted I relate to Jesus.  I cry out "MY God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me.'  That's what Jesus said too.

It's like night coming down. The world went black from noon till three in the afternoon during the crucifixion when Jesus then cried out and died on the cross. It was a cosmic event.

The resurrection is like morning after the darkness. Jesus is resurrectied, and ascends into heaven.  A marvellous metaphor.  In the 24 our cycle of life where I realize that yesterday is but a memory and tomorrow still a dream I am faced with life as Jesus did. And Jesus prayed and talked with his father and obeyed his father.

I am thinking about Easter. I am looking forward to being part of the celebration of life that occurs in church. I am thankful to have been a participant in Palm Sunday.  I look forward to Good Friday and Easter Sunday.

Thank you Jesus for another Easter week.  Watch over my loved ones,  my minister, his family, the clergy,  and the church this time this year.