Ambitionless

OK. So I've lacked ambition and inspiration for this blog for many moons. If this blog is going to continue it is going to take pure will power and habit.

Must look into understanding the will more.

What is the sign of your father in you?

Jesus said, "If they say to you, 'Where did you come from?', say to them, 'We came from the light, the place where the light came into being on its own accord and established itself and became manifest through their image.' If they say to you, 'Is it you?', say, 'We are its children, we are the elect of the living father.' If they ask you, 'What is the sign of your father in you?', say to them, 'It is movement and repose.'"

Gospel of Thomas - 50

I was wrong

Last September 21 I said some silliness regarding having nothing useful to say for awhile. I was confused and I was wrong.

I think everyone has something useful to say at any time, and yes, sometimes things can be said with silence too.

The key is to accept responsibility for what one says and to be quick to apologize if any harm comes of it. That's all.

My time before you - with you - and always

From the beginning I sought you
Somehow my heart knowing you were there
Our breathes mingling
A thousand kisses
All before I saw your face

dear love

Your heart was in me
And mine in yours
You've been with me all along

And now
a thousand moments we share:

Sophie's smile
Jonah's puppy eyes
Our first baby - that life changing moment
Sitting together worried by Lexie's side at the hospital

Happy moments
Stupid moments

And if I'm ever gone from this place
And in tears of longing to rent asunder what cannot be

Know this one thing honey
I've never left you
Where could I go?

I'm in your tears too
in your longing
and in your sighs

I'm still here ...
Here in your heart
Having been there all along

Acrostic Gnostic

It makes sense when one has been raised in the belief in ole' papa grump pants and then rejected him for atheism or agnosticism. That's what I did anyway.

The challenge with this scenario for many is that the baby was never recognized in the bathwater until much later if at all. I'm still trying to figure out how much baby is actually in the bathwater of my birth religion. That the term 'God' can even point to something meaningful has become apparent to me in the last few years. Beyond that, God, the universe, consciousness and what it all has to do with my little life presents a big puzzle to me.

The problem in even having a conversation about God, I believe, has a lot to do with semantics. I believe a lot of atheists and agnostics have some understanding of God except that they're just not calling it that. The difficulty is in pointing it out because it can be so insanely difficult if not impossible to point to.

Divinity as I understand it is more likely to be found in the quiet still places and unexpected places too. It has more to do with the mysteries of life pointed to through the metaphors of myth, ritual and poetry. Curiosity and the continual awe and wonder of life can draw one nearer to this transcendental reality than a set of obedience tricks we're supposed to turn for ole papa grump pants

It is said that everything rests within divinity and divinity is within everything and divinity is everything.

It is in a teacup
a sneeze
a child's grin
a clock radio
and smelly arm pits too.

If you haven't noticed this, that's OK. Perhaps someday you will. In the meantime...

Atheism and agnosticism are not really problems at all if they are not adopted rigidly as exclusive lenses by which to view the world; but instead as potentially temporary way-stations which allow for the changes of one's views when and if new data or experiences are realized.

I think the crux of the matter comes down to 'description' versus 'prescription' of a world view. If one describes themselves as agnostic, objectivist or whatever, this is just an honest assessment of where one is at in their understanding at that moment in time.

Things become non-useful when this way of seeing things is then prescribed for others as the "correct" view. It assumes that no-one else could possibly be working from a different set of experiences or reasoning that would nullify the "correct" worldview or turn it on it's head.

How many "correct" views have been held in the past with a high degree of certainty only to be found wrong? How many more times will this have to happen before we realize just how puzzling things really are. The universe is a mystery in all of its aspects.

My brother-in-law, Randy, posted this George Carlin quote on facebook the other day.

"I'm not an atheist and I'm not an agnostic. I'm an acrostic. The whole thing puzzles me."

Yeah. I get that. Totally.

BTW - A wonderful post on this subject by Father Stratford+ can be found here.

Saint Julian of Norwich

From Saint Andrew's

For here we are so blind and foolish that we never seek God until he, of his goodness, shows himself to us. It is when we do see something of him by his grace that we are stirred by that same grace to seek him, and with earnest longing to see still more of his blessedness. So I saw him and sought him; I had him and wanted him. It seems to me that this is and should be an experience common to us all.

-Julian of Norwich

The Word of the Silence

A bare impersonal hush is now my mind,
A world of sight clear and inimitable,
A volume of silence by a Godhead signed,
A greatness pure, virgin of will.

Once on its pages Ignorance could write
In a scribble of intellect the blind guess of Time
And cast gleam-messages of ephemeral light,
A food for souls that wander on Nature's rim.

But now I listen to a greater Word
Born from the mute unseen omniscient Ray:
The Voice that only Silence' ear has heard
Leaps missioned from an eternal glory of Day.

All turns from a wideness and unbroken peace
To a tumult of joy in a sea of wide release.

-Sri Aurobindo

Why on Earth?

"But why on earth," you may ask, "should it be necessary for man to achieve, by hook or by crook, a higher level of consciousness?" This is truly the crucial question, and I do not find the answer easy. Instead of a real answer I can only make a confession of faith: 1 believe that, after thousands and millions of years, someone had to realize that this wonderful world of mountains and oceans, suns and moons, galaxies and nebulae, plants and animals, exists. From a low hill in the Athi plains of East Africa I once watched the vast herds of wild animals grazing in soundless stillness, as they had done from time immemorial, touched only by the breath of a primeval world. I felt then as if I were the first man, the first creature, to know that all this is. The entire world round me was still in its primeval state; it did not know that it was. And then, in that one moment in which I came to know, the world sprang into being; without that moment it would never have been. All Nature seeks this goal and finds it fulfilled in man, but only in the most highly developed and most fully conscious man.

CG Jung - "Psychological Aspects of the Mother Archetype" (1939). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 177