Flesh and Spirit, St. Paul

Romans 8, Holy Bible, NIV
5. Those who live according to the flesh have their minds set on what the flesh desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires.
6. The mind governed by the flesh is death, but the mind governed by the Spirit is life and peace.
14. For those who are lead by the Spirit of God are the children of God.
15. The Spirit you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again; rather the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by him we cry, “Abba, Father."
22. We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.
31. What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?
35. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or danger or sword?
38-39. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

I like St. Paul at times. Thanks to him Christianity, which began in a tribal religion, became a universal religion.  He was however , before miraculous conversion, a conventional traditionalist struggling himself with order in chaos.  He is criticized for his words to women and slaves about maintaining the hierarchal order of society.  Jesus had been asked about taxes and had responded ‘give unto Caesar Caesars due’.  It was a joke in a sense because of the money of the day had the face of caesar engraved on it.  Christianity is not an external revolution but an internal revolution.
The spiritual path is an inner journey.
When people came to psychoanalysts they were told to not leave their wives or businesses until they’d been at least 6 months in therapy and discussed changes thoroughly with their analyst.
When patients come to me with addiction we say stop drinking and stop drugging.  Bill Wilson felt strongly that one had to do this change within their community as there was no ‘safe place’ from booze.  We have detox and treatment centres and recovery houses all as a means of helping people avoid ‘slippery people, places and time’.  It’s a bit like the medical approach to broken limbs. We have people begin their journey of recovery in physiotherapy gyms before going to regular gyms without trainers and finally to the open field where they play soccer again with others.  It’s a transitional approach which may or may not work that well because ‘easier softer ways’ had not been shown to be superior to the ‘tough love’  approach with it’s confrontation that has shown the success to date which gives us all hope of cure.  It comes down to really having a band aid pull off. Some like it slowly , some like it quickly.
A general I knew said if he had all the time in the world he could teach men to be soldiers softly and tenderly in the politically correct manner but if the enemy was at the gate there was no better way than the old fashioned way of kicking marine ass.  The latter was cheaper too and for thousands of years had worked. "But this is a peace time army so we don’t want to upset anyone but shouting at them to get out of bed at 6 am. Instead we play music in the barracks."
St. Paul believed that one had time when one submitted to God.  When one prays, the power of God gives one strength greater than what one alone has. The Holy Spirit is a power or force or intangible light or greatest love that lifts one up. It’s called Grace too.  We simply turn to the light.  If we want light we get more light. If we want darkness we get more darkness. It’s the fundamental law of attraction.  Our thoughts and behaviours define to a large extent what our world is. Of course a whole lot depends on our honesty with ourselves and others. We live in a time of deceit and even believe our own lies for long periods of time.
Our expectations can be hopes or pre formed resentments.  With a positive attitude, however,  I simply stop pulling up the plant to check the roots to see if they’re growing. Instead I trust and have faith that all shall be well. I head towards the light and increasingly am not distracted by the circus of darkness around me.
If I have God on my side who shall be against me?  Why settle for less.
I believe St. Paul knew well the love of god and knew that Christ, the god of love, Agape, Holy Spirit Come, was, is and always shall be,with him and us, and even me.  For this I am forever grateful Thank you.
Holy Spirit Come.

Prayer

I believe.  It is good to pray.  Prayer connects me somehow with the depth. “I am the bubble make the me sea.” is a Sanskrit chant taught by Yoganda.  Dr. Carl Jung described the ‘collective unconscious’.  I’m remembering St. Theresa’s Inner Castle.  This is life is the “Dark Night of the Soul’.  As Dr. Scott Peck said, “I am in God’s kindergarten’.  Now older I realize I’m more and more in the waiting room of heaven.

“I believe in an afterlife, “ she said. “I’m just concerned about heaven and hell”.  We were talking about of loved parents who had gone before us.  I told her about “Proof of Heaven” by the Neurosurgeon, Dr. Eben Alexander. Later I described the work of Dr. Moody with people who had had Near Death Experiences.  So many people saw a light or a being of light and met with people who were family or friends who had gone before them.  I like Rainbow Bridge myself. That’s the field where our pets are waiting for us to cross over with us into the real promised land.  

I am travelling from Old Jerusalem to New Jerusalem.

There can be no death as I know only life and rebirth.  If one day the world changed and I did not wake from sleep how much wiser would I be.  The moment of death is just another passing.  I know no true permanence except in consciousness.

In prayer i ask that God be forever with me. I am impermanent but God is permanent. I am changing but God is both changing and unchanging. There are the centre of the centre of the centre is this.  I love the psalm “Be still and know that I am God”.  It’s every word and phrase has the deepest meaning. 

Be still and know that I am God

Be still and know that I am

Be still and know that I

Be still and know that

Be still and know 

Be still and 

Be still

Be

Be still

Be still and

Be still and know

Be still and know that

Be still and know that I 

Be still and know that I am

Be still and know that I am God.

Jesus taught “Do not be afraid.”  My friend, Willi says, “That wasn’t a suggestion, that was a command."

Late night in a meeting of doctors who had learned spirituality the hard way, going to hell and coming back, an old internist in his 80’s who’d started out to be a priest but loved women too much, sat with his daughter, a young woman and mother herself, and shared, “Anxiety is a measure of your distance from God and equally a measure of your humanity”.

 

I’ve dabbled in politics of late.  There’s so much squabble and struggle.  As the Buffalo Springfield of old said, “People carrying signs, mostly say Hoorah for Our Side!”  Of course it’s all rigged and George Carlin is right to be negative.  Even Leonard Cohen wrote, "Everyone knows that the dice are loaded”.

Yet we do the next right thing. Hitchhiking in the 60’s we said to each other, silly thinking of hikers and free loaders saying this but we did, “Keep on Trucking”.  

Life is a journey is a metaphor.  I must learn to love the walking and the process rather than be addicted to destination.  

God is in the now.  As a wonderful grand military man with shoulders the size of two men and arms like thighs said to me so often when he heard me talking, “Bill, you’ve got one foot in the future and one foot in the past, you’re pissing and shitting on your day. Get your head in the same room as your ass is!"

Be here now, the Babba Ram Dass book.

Be still.

Pray.  Dr. James Houston’s book on Prayer is so helpful.

Jesus was the servant God.  He was God incarnate.  The baby God. The inside God.  Not the top down God of Neitze’s Superman.  Not the great Zeus or the Egyptian God’s or Today’s Gaia and all those glorious grand others of greatness and power but rather this meek man who said,  the Kingdom of God is other.  

In prayer I seek the Kingdom of God as Jesus taught.  He said don’t be loud and proud but rather be humble.  Even he went away from his disciples to pray.  Alone. But not alone.

In prayer Jesus Christ taught, pray like this,

“Our father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done , on earth as it is in heaven.  Give us this day, our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory, forever and ever. Amen”.

I pray when I wake in the morning and before I go to sleep at night. I pray many times a day , some days more.  Martin Luther King would say, It’s going to be a hard day so I must spend more time on my knees. St. Paul taught us to pray unceasingly.  

Prayer is comforting.  It’s like a warm blanket in a storm. It’s like a cool drink in a desert.  We are not alone.  Martin Buber said there is I and Thou, that the sense is of I and it but the greatest journey is from I and it to I and Thou. Somewhere we leave off I and I to make the leap of faith to I and Thou.  

I am that is who I am was God’s response to the question of who he was at the burning bush.  YHVH.  Jehovah.  Adonai.  Elohim. All names of God.  The many facetted jewel.  

In the east they tell the story of the blind folded wise men introduced to an object and each of them touching this creature from different positions.  They argue later , some saying it was a wall, others a pillar, others still a snake and then the blindfolds are removed and they see the elephant as it is.

St. Paul said, “Now we see through a glass darkly.”  I am aware of Plato’s story of the cave and the shadows and the neoplatonism that runs through religion. There’s this idea of perfection and imperction.  There is this sense of substance and depth.  Einstein’s formula E=MC2 really ties energy and mass together, saying mass is but slow energy. There was once the Atomic theory. I liked that the At-OM was such a word and chanted “OM’ liking that this ‘AMEN” sound reminded me of comfort words like “MOM” and “HOME”.  Then the physicists dug deeper and deeper into more and more parts like the day I first looked at pond water in my microscope, the gift of my parents because they saw my fascination with things tiny.  Like God as the Baby Jesus. I later lay with my brother and my father and looked at the stars with my father high powered binoculars.  That divided the pins of light to multiply the already vast galaxy.  Now there is every more outward and inward.

I like my dreams often. The nightmares are less frequent these days.  Instead I dream of family and friends and this strange house and peninsula and water and boats and sometimes a tea party and old ladies and gatherings and dogs and cats.  It’s a Sunday picnic in the afterlife.  I wake feeling better as if I’ve had a visitation in my sleep. 

It’s all explainable in the language of arrogance but I like the sacred. I feel comforted in the arms of my creator. I feel in prayer I am talking to my mother and father and now my brother.  They’re dead but not forever.  I will go to meet them again one day. And that first friend of mine who died and I cried at his funeral aware of the loss. Today I will learn of more who have died. I’ve worked in the Valley of the Shadow of Death all my adult life.  

Always I have tried to comfort. I have to the best of my ability helped people in this world.  Like Victor Frankl I’ve tried to help them find meaning. I’ve found them wandering in disease and poverty and turned them around from the direction of death to life for a while longer, like the babies I helped turn in the womb so they’d find it easier to make their way out.

Now I’m just another on the journey.  I ask Jesus to be my Lord and leader. I am a follower of the child king, the servant king, the man who washed the feet of his students.  I am a lover of a man who died on the cross crucified by mistake or intent, betrayed, a God who came to earth and was killed because we can’t tolerate love. I am a killer of Jesus. I was there when they crucified my Lord. I am forever a part of that epic scene. I can be the potted plant on the stage. I can be any of the characters but when it comes to myth or theatre or story there is no greater story than this Good News. It says that Christ was born, Christ died and Christ will come again.  This is life, awakening, dying and awakening. No permanence except in God.  

And in prayer I seek the One.  

Be still and know that I am God.  

Be still

Be

Thank you Lord Jesus Christ for your love and life.  Thank you for your sacrifice.  Help me ever to remember and be with you.

Christ before me. Christ beside me. Christ above me, Christ in front of me. Christ behind me. Protect me and heal me and love me as I love thee.  

I would know your Grace because I know my love for such a limited selfish sense. I would love you as my dog loves me.  I would learn to love with faith and courage and strength.  I would be nearer to thee. I would be with you always.

Thank you Jesus.  In prayer and thanksgiving I come to you.  Thou anointed my head with oil. Thou prepares a table for me in the presence of my enemies. My cup overflowest.

Thank you.

 

Chora Museum, Istanbul

Along with Hagia Sophia, the Chora Museum was a highlight of my trip to Istanbul. Much of this was thanks to my guide, Mehmet Tetik (www.turkishguides.org\tetik). The whole story of the Bible is told on the ceiling of this Church of the Holy Saviour in Chora, a byzantine masterpiece.It was originally built outside the walls as part of a monastery complex. The original church was built in early 5th century outside Constantines 4th century walls but was incorporated within the walls when Theodosius built his walls in the5th century.The church was rebuilt by Maria Dukaina mother in law of Alexis I Comnenus in the late 11th century. Part of the church collapsed in the 12th century and was rebuilt Isaac Comnenus, Alexus’ son. The powerful Byzantine statesman Metochites endowed the church with many of it’s mosaics and frescoes. Fifty years after the conquest by the Ottoman’s the church was converted into a mosque by plastering over the mosaics. Restoration began in 1948 and in 1958 the church was reopened as a museum.
Mehmet described and pointed out the story of first Mary’s birth in one room to the birth of Jesus and the life of Jesus through another room.  Having it described and pointed out made it more like it would have been experienced by the illiterate in ancient times, as a picture book depiction. It was a remarkable experience.

Christ as “The Land of the Living"



St. Peter holding the keys.

St. Paul                                                                                 Mary and Jesus

The story of the rods and how Joseph’s rod sprouted leaves so Mary was given to him.


Donkey looking in the manger. Mary’s feet bound to show virgin birth.


Herod’s men killing children under two.

Journey to Bethlehem.

Miracle of water into wine.

Anastasis - Jesus who has broken down the gates of hell is pulling Adam and Eve out of their tombs.

Virgin Mother and Child in dome