CURSE OR BLESS, the hidden choice in all we do

Like who cares? Why think about this Curse/Bless choice that drives our lives? It seems easier to believe that unrecognized choice is no choice at all. Not knowing seems to make us innocent of the consequences of our every living moment. Such “innocent ignorance” seems to make us happy, but it doesn’t. It drives us to the outrageous or soft everyday killing of ourselves, those around us, and those far from us.

To Curse is to believe in evil.  To believe in evil is to give credibility and power to it as Real when it is just illusion spun round and round, pumped up and up constantly like an inflatable character made to look real and giant.  Good Alone is Real, but it is made to look foolish and insignificant next to the inflated giant of evil.  Still, Real is Real and illusion is illusion, no matter how much energy is used up to keep it puffed up.

Believing in Evil, criticizing evil systems, governments or people, condemning and judging evil as a power only adds air to evil’s inflated image in the form of sympathy and money for its proclaimed “righteous” causes.

Good alone is real and we are ALL good people.  How do we remember that for ourselves and ALL others?  How do we forget what we are not–some composite of good and evil sorted out into groups of good and evil people?  How do we remember God called human creation not just Good, but “Very Good” in the ancient Genesis story.  Surely we sin, but only when we forget who we are and why we are.  How do we help each other remember our/their goodness?

Evil will be around us as long as truth can be convoluted and misunderstood. While we ought recognize its destructive force as illusion, we must find a way other than attack and defense to change things. Dare we find ways to bless each other, to believe in each other, to let go of judgments of superiority and inferiority toward each other?  If not,we must continue in the fear that replaces love.

Shall we curse our children with the fear and destruction which evil continually generates?   Or shall we set out on the path recommended by the wisdom of the ages, focusing on the love and caring which will truly make 2012 the beginning of a new era?

It’s up to each of us as we choose to judge or let go judgments against ourselves, others, the moment.  Letting go those judgments opens the way for each moment and each person to reveal its truth and love.  Nothing soft about taking another path, seeing that the same old attack/defend path has only led back again and again to dissension and war and destructive use of essential resources for All humanity.

Start Now, believe in your goodness!  Remember that evil crazedness breaks out only when we forget that goodness or when we doubt it in ourselves or ANY other.  Recognize temptation to judge, criticize, blame another as inferior or superior to yourself, knowing these choices will lead yet again to that self-same path of hellish craziness.  Put at least as much belief and energy into the affirmation of our common goodness as evil puts into the convoluted judgment that we are worthless and expendable for some seemingly righteous idea.

If you like this post, check out God Going Rogue at http://sisterlea.wordpress.com/

You are NOT your story-line! Neither is God

We all have these storylines in our heads. We think the storylines are who we are. “I’m smart/not smart, tall/small, strong/weak, important/worthless, heavy/thin, beautiful/not so. I am doctor/teacher/mother/pastor/nurse/unemployed, etc. The story lines which seem to define us go on and on like the stories of idolatry in the Hebrew Scriptures.

God is about NOT being defined, NOT allowing others to define us, NOT defining ourselves and NOT defining others.  God is about allowing the mystery of us to unfold.  God is about believing in the holy mystery that keeps on revealing itself all around us in everyone and everything…even when we don’t like what we see.  Idolatry is about focusing on the fixed “facts” of who people are and what events mean and who we are.

Let’s give up the storylines we carry in our minds–about ourselves, each other, and G-d.  Imagaine, we can just be and keep on discovering ourselves and life around us.  We don’t have to grow hardened into some storyline unless we want to.  Young is FOREVER if we keep letting go of the images that are supposed to be us/other/Life/God.

Not your Killer God!

God Speaks:  “Kill the enemy? Wipe him out?  Is that what you think I do?  I know parts of your scriptures write me up as a divine avenger. Repent or die? Worse yet, repent or suffer for eternity. Do you think that’s who I am and what I do?

About evil, do you really think anyone can get away with doing evil? For that matter, do you think anyone can just get away with lying, cheating, name-calling, etc.?  Oh, No! I created a universe of connections and consequences. (No, that doesn’t mean that earthquakes and illnesses are consequences for sin.) It’s just that everyone and everything is connected. There are no isolated beings or isolated happenings in this universe–even when they are done in so-called “secret”.   The doing of evil, great and small, has consequences on your brain and body and spirit.  It has consequences on those around you and on your nation and the world.

Learn your connectedness and you will know peace on earth despite the most miserable circumstances you might be in at the moment. Fight your connectedness and you will have the misery and the hell you reserve for the “evil people”.  Know that I am NOT a killer god and you are NOT my killing people.” 

I, the First Giver of All, have shared everythng with you–not so I could be worshipped as Top Banana, but so that you might come to understand who you are and why you are…so that you might come to know your holiness and that of all the universe–even those you don’t like…so that you might have the joy of giving and loving All…so that you may know my joy in loving you.”

The Walking Dead?

Did you ever meet the walking dead? No, not a rock band. Not zombies or fiction.

You might know someone who seems to have no spirit, no inner core. They seem to be alive, but something is missing.   Try as they do to fill that “missing” with talking or buying,  working or partying– the fill just doesn’t last.

It’s easy to become a member of the walking dead.  No one joins on purpose.  It just happens when we forget who we are.  We forget how good we are.   That forgetting becomes a fog that blocks us from seeing the light within ourselves and the light within others.  I forget sometimes and walk in the fog.

Truth is:  There are no walking dead, only we who can, at any moment, choose to remember our goodness–the gift of those who first loved us, the gift we give to others when we believe in them.

Blessings!

Sister Lea

No Life After Death?

Hmm…to the baby being born, birth must feel like death, losing that nice warm place with food whenever you need it, no dirty diapers, never too cold or too hot, a little small space maybe… Then it’s out you go into the grand and not so grand world.

Well, maybe death is like that. Mostly, we want to hang on to whatever life we have here because it’s what we know. Then, like it or not, we get popped into the next life.  Though like the pre-born baby, we don’t have details about the next life, one thing is certain–we take who are in this life onto the next one, even if as some believe, there is no next life.  I, for one, have known too many experiences of loved ones appearing after death to believe that death is the end. 

Is God a Fixer?

That’s a tough one. If anything, God has always been considered a fixer–even though God has left much unfixed.
The Divine Fixer is endowed with power to grant a plea or not. Not to grant a heartbreaking plea like saving dying child–quite a heartless or powerless fixer, this god.

We all know fixers and we don’t like them so much when they try to fix us or fix our situation. “Butt out” is what we fixers often hear behind the polite or not so polite reponse to our fixing “suggestions”.

Fixers always know how to make it better. Only we don’t really know anything much about the moment, the situation and the person. We can’t possiblly know all this. We would be god…or does God even know all this?

Maybe God isn’t a Fixer at all because God doesn’t know it all.  Maybe God is just there with us in the moment like we want a good friend to be. “No fixing allowed! Let me figure it out for myself.”

Even when we break down into “I give up. Help me, help me, help me, please.”…even then, a good friend doesn’t fix things because it’s not theirs to fix.  Could this be the same with God?

God is NOT a Control Freak

What makes us think that God has any desire to control the universe?…to control our lives?  I know–tradition, the stories of old we keep telling about God.

But think about the ancients who first told these stories.  They didn’t know anything about the universe compared to what we know today.  It was a scary place.  What would happen next?   When we are in the scary place, we crave order and security more than anything.  Then we project our craving onto someone or some god to alleviate our anxiety.  The ancients were much like us.

Yet, what if God has no desire to control the universe anymore than a mature parent desires complete control of a child’s life?  What if God desires interaction with–NOT control over us?  What if the universe is OURS to interact with…instead of ours to manipulate and maintain control over.  Which image of God makes sense to you?  Tell me.