Kirk preaches at chapel at the homeless shelter where I stay, the second Wednesday of each month. He appears to have an emotional dependence on the dogma of inerrancy, and often brings up topics related to that, that have no connection to the Christian life.
In September, he said some things I didn’t care for.
When I get turned away from the shelter, here is my preferred place to stay:
Emmet Fox’s “Your Heart’s Desire” begins:
“An old adage says, ‘God has a plan for every man, and He has one for you,’ and this is absolutely correct. Your real problem, therefore, in fact the only problem that you ever have, is to find your true place in life. Find that, and everything else will follow almost automatically. You will be perfectly happy; and upon happiness, health will follow. You will be really prosperous. You will have all the supply that you require to meet your needs, and this means that you will have perfect freedom; for poverty and freedom cannot go together. Until you do find your true place in life, however, you never will be really happy, no matter how much money or distinction you may acquire; and until you are happy, you will be neither healthy nor free.”
This scenario of health, happiness and prosperity is similar enough to the discussion of self-esteem in “Courage to Walk Unarmed” and to previous discussions here of emotional intelligence or wisdom.
Later in Fox’s piece comes what I regard as the premiere text about right and wrong use of the life force:
“There is only one Fundamental Energy in the universe, but this energy may be applied by us either constructively or destructively, because God has given us Free Will. When we use it constructively, we are acting in harmony with the Will of God, and we are improving ourselves and our lives in every possible respect, and we are helping the world in general, too. When we use it destructively, we damage ourselves, retard our progress, and waste an opportunity of helping mankind at large.
“We use our energy destructively whenever we think or talk fear and limitation; whenever we grumble, or give way to self-pity, or indulge in useless regrets, or, in fact, in any form of negative thinking. Most of all do we use our God given energy destructively when we hold thoughts of criticism and condemnation of others. All bitterness, resentment, spiritual pride, and self-righteousness, are peculiarly disastrous methods of misusing the Great Power, and that is why such thinking causes the terrible havoc that it does in people’s lives.
“When we are in a condition of fear, anger, or worry, our Divine Energy, instead of flowing, in some positive, creative work, becomes dammed up within ourselves, like the water in the garden hose, and produces all sorts of trouble in soul and body. Meanwhile, our true work in life is either missed altogether, or, starved of the supply of Life Force which it should receive, it languishes accordingly, and we get mediocrity, poverty, and failure.”
One’s “true work in life” refers to what Fox calls “your heart’s desire:” the unique way you and you alone can “let your light so shine” as to maximize benefit to yourself and others.
Mis-use of the life force creates poverty.
Wealth doesn’t create happiness; happiness creates wealth.
We will explore this more in subsequent posts.
———— ♦ ————
This is the second in a series of five posts:
“Just how bad do you think you’ve got it?” – September 27, 2018
The Life Force: Use and abuse – Today
Co-creators with God – October 11, 2014
The wandering will – October 18, 2014
The path of presence – October 25, 2018
(Originally posted 05/17/14.)
One more failed end times prophecy
I address reincarnation, a potentially important topic, enough here:
I am working on the post, “Other Jesus sayings,” which quite possibly may not appear until December; and learning some things I never would have supposed.
The phrase “weeping and gnashing of teeth” comes up at Matthew 8:12, Matthew 13:42, Matthew 13:50, Matthew 24:51, Matthew 25:30, Luke 13:28. So, it appears to be a particular favorite of Matthew.
The phrase “you of little faith” comes up at Matthew 6:20, 8:26, 14:31, 16:8 and 17:20, and Luke 12:28. So, it appears five times in Matthew, only once in Luke, and not at all in Mark. Thus this also appears to be a favorite of Matthew.
This suggests to what extent each Gospel author was telling his own story.
At the shelter, we’re required to attend chapel for an hour every night. I normally find it just as edifying as a traffic jam.
The group from “Guilford” presents on the fourth Monday every month. About a dozen of them come. Their leader is J_____ R__. Different ones preach in different months. When J_____ R__ preaches, the message is always the same.
“Just how bad do you think you’ve got it?”
Continue reading “Just how bad do you think you’ve got it?”
BK keeps the TV tuned to CNN.
On Sundays, Fareed Zakaria’s GPS comes on when I’m there in the mornings before church, and is rebroadcast when I’m there in the afternoons after church.
His voice makes me feel anxious. Continue reading Fareed Zakaria
July 1, 2018
The evils of organized religion need no rehearsal here.
People rightly question whether it has any right to exist.
To respond, I can begin with an examination of the life of one single man, John Lee Cowell.
Read this:
If that link doesn’t work, click here.
That this was a white-on-black crime led to a spasm of hysteria.(*)
No heaven or hell is of interest to me except the living heaven or living hell folk create in this life, here and now, for themselves and one another. Clearly, Cowell has spent his life creating just such a living hell.
But before he ever did that, there is the living hell he was born into.(**)
No theodicy can justify this apart from belief in reincarnation.
The question is how one got into that situation, and how one may get out.
It may be easy, too easy, to imagine how this individual got himself into that situation: it’s “bad karma” rising from the bad things he’s done in the past. There may be a less judg-mental way to look at it, an alternative to seeing karma as rewards and punishments. Indeed, the God I worship and believe in doesn’t deal in either one.
I’m not good at video games.
One I played a few times involved fighter spacecraft engaged in battle. Again and again, this happened (which is why I gave up on the game): I’d launch an on-target weapons blast that destroyed the enemy craft; but, as the pieces of its wreckage continued on through space along their own paths, I’d ineptly steer my craft into the path of one or more of them, and so be destroyed myself.
Similarly, for better or worse, karma is a matter of one’s meeting the results of one’s own actions. It is composed of spiritual material that is just as — material — in its own world, as any material object is in ours. Like those pieces of wreckage careening through space, or like billiard balls rolling across a pool table, each one — with its own momentum and inertia — will continue on its path unless something happens to redirect it or dissolve it.
I have lived at times in dread of what bad things I have done in previous lives that may come back to create unforseen, inevitable disaster in my future in this life. There is no need to do so; no need to explore one’s presumed past lives in search of such information. For from moment to moment, day to day, one meets one’s karma from this life and the past; as little or much as one can deal with, at the moment.
One who lives as Jesus taught is prone to present one’s best self at all times; the best self one can be at the moment, from moment to moment. In this way, such a person is not only creating the best possible present for oneself and one’s community, but also sending favorable karma into one’s own future.
By the same token, one who lives as Jesus taught is best equipped from moment to moment to deal positively with life’s difficulties as they occur. Those difficulties inevitably include the negative karma from one’s past. Dealing positively with such events expiates that karma, sublimating evil into good, changing darkness into light.
In recent days, I have been assembling a list of Bible verses to examine in the chapter, “Other Jesus sayings.” I puzzled over the significance of these:
The last one seems to me to be about forgiveness also: “loosing” a bond refers to forgiving an offense; “binding” refers to not-forgiving.
is to not-forgive, but rather retaliate. Much of what we see, in the world, is a matter of negativity between persons going back and forth forever, each one alternating in the roles of victim and victimizer, which is why the human state seems so seldom to improve.
All sentient creatures, all creatures that have free will, have the privilege, power and ability to change light into darkness, or darkness into light. This is a feature of God’s image in each one. To forgive is to change darkness into light.
As to the bond that is created when one does not forgive: this is, in effect, a material thing in the spiritual world, like any of the rest of one’s karma, that will careen on its own through space-time potentially forever. Something has to happen to loose or dissolve that bond, an act of will by some sentient creature.
The soul who was Nia Wilson, and the soul who is John Lee Cowell, are destined to meet again; in a future life for her, and the present or a future life for him. When they do, the person she will be is destined to feel a strong, murderous impulse toward him. If she fails or has failed to forgive; or fails to sublimate or redirect that impulse; she will act on it — possibly again, as we cannot rule out the possibility that he killed her his time in retaliation for an attack she, in some previous life, made on him before. Either one could have been of the other sex at that time.
Similar impulses clearly have beset Cowell all his life. I refer to this phenomenon as “The Itch,” an unsought desire for strife or violence or turmoil. Its presence in my own experience is very troubling to me, and I am working to purify myself of it. In other chapters, I set forth “Strategies” and “Tactics”(***) one may use to sublimate or redirect such impulses.
Cowell faces far more work in this regard than you or I. Much as he may strive in it, he is sure to sometimes fail.
A major aspect is that one must be willing to forgive oneself, which may be what Mark 11:25 and Matthew 18:35 are actually about.
Related: A short route to agony
He will never be free until he discerns the image of God within himself, and loves that, loves himself, enough to forgive himself his life of violence and crime.
The evils of organized religion need no rehearsal here. I obviously have profound disagreements with traditional Christianity in almost any form. The fact remains that no other institution in the West, even in the world, presumes to seek to understand what Jesus taught. No other institution in the world even sets forth the proposition of forgiveness.
The church does.
That’s reason enough it should exist.
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(*)Related:
– BART slaying ignites fear among black people — ‘It just feels like they’re coming for us’
– Anne Hathaway calls out white privilege in passionate post about ‘unspeakable’ murder of Nia Wilson
– Critics say the media makes innocent blacks look dangerous. Nia Wilson is their latest example.
(**)One can compare him, in this regard, to Carter Scott, Jamarion Lawhorn or Kendrea Johnson.
(***)These will appear at a later date.
This is an unscheduled post.
The letter copied below from Carolyn Hax’s column for today just blew me away, as pertinent to current posts on the topic of presence. A lifestyle of presence is very much out of synch with contemporary American culture, and is seen by those who don’t understand it as selfish and irresponsible. The letter I’m quoting here epitomizes what’s likely to happen when you “keep the focus on you” and “mind your own business” — and deal with others who have no intention of doing either one.
Continue reading Attack of the needy people
The Homeless Blogger 