God-bubbles bursting!
God-bubbles may burst after reading. Not to worry. God is not a bubble.
No God Up Over Us…Where Then God?
NO GOD UP OVER US?…is that what the prophets were leading up to?…that God has no desire to be on a pedestal for us? …that God would rather be WITH US than OVER US on any given day?
That God has no desire to be UP OVER us?
Do we even think to wonder what God desires in this regard?
…so busy are we guarding and defending those parts of holy scriptures which claim and insist that God has made “His” desires abundantly clear…
…as if God is no longer with us and all we have to go by is his last will and testament.
Our desire for a god-up-there is every bit as strong as the ancients’ belief in idols.
The ancients were not stupid; they knew the world to be an ever-changing place over which they had little control.
Idols were the ancient psychotherapeutic tools to keep…
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Maybe God’s a White Supremacist?
When theology portrays God as a “Supreme Being” in a hierarchical relationship over and above all HIS children…in a Church where clergy expect to be treated as representatives of this image of God…shouldn’t we expect “White Supremacy” to blossom in the Church as if it were God’s Will?
God Going Rogue… https://wordpress.com/posts/sisterlea.wordpress.com
Is God in charge of hurricanes and floods or even good weather?
“God is systematically destroying America,” the Rev. John McTernan, a conservative Christian pastor who runs a ministry called USA Prophecy, said in a post-Sandy blog entry that has since been removed. The reason God was so peeved, he claimed, was “the homosexual agenda.”
via Where are the condemnations of Harvey as God’s punishment? | Religion News Service
Is God Bloodthirsty?
Yes, as you say, Bishop Owensby, Jake…”just maybe, when we’ve changed our minds about God, we will change our minds about each other. ”
We also work and write to change the way we see God so that the world might turn from its “blood thirsty” and vengeful image of humanity because WE each and all of us have come to see God differently.
You and your readers might be interested in WHO GOD IS NOT https://whomegod.wordpress.com and PAINTED PONDERINGS https://theshebee.wordpress.com and a few other blogs like God Going Rogue and Rite Beyond Rome here on WordPress.
We will definitely put a link to your blog on our sites.
Blessings on you and your followers and readers,
Sister Lea and Sister Consilia
Imagine that you are surrounded by people who assume that you have to give acceptable sacrifices to the gods—the gods who control harvests and herds, for instance—to keep the gods on their side.
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He’ll Never Do It Again!
YES, This is WHO GOD IS NOT: “The God…that condones violence against our enemies as part of a divine plan. Women become devout followers of Jesus because they can say of their abusers,’we forgive them, they know not what they do’.”
AND YES, “Abuse, forgiveness, abuse, forgiveness,….that is not how love works,…that is not how peace comes about…that is a cycle that has to end. Divine revelation is incomplete until the silence of God breaks out in a new word….STOP!
With this word God calls the human family to put an end to its violence toward one another.”
Expecting Violence Everywhere
Domestic violence must not be kept hidden. Women and children victims carry hidden scars throughout their entire lives. The experience distorts their understanding of love, since it is executed and excused in a guise of parental/romanic love.
At every level of society silence and shame give great cover for the abusers. Our rape culture, drug and alcohol addiction, are logical offspring of the self doubts and the sense of powerlessness left in the victims of domestic violence. Perhaps the ability to remain silent toward violence in our homes conditions us to tolerate ongoing abuse and violence on an international scale.
Thousands of years of violent histories cause one to question where God stands on the matter of violence. The story of salvation, is riddled with broken promises of peace and demands for forgiveness. The God portrayed in our sacred stories and liturgical dramas, stands idly by, threatens violent punishment for transgressions, and condones violence against our enemies as part of a…
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GOD Has a Right to Kill Human Babies?
What are we to make of the fact that nature is designed by its Creator to abort most zygotes?
Do we really have sound reason, as not a few “pro-lifers” maintain, to declare that anyone who procures the abortion of a just-fertilized zygote is guilty of the heinous crime of murder — when, in the natural course of things as nature itself is designed by the Creator, most zygotes will abort? Naturally so.
DOES GOD HAVE THE RIGHT TO KILL HUMAN BABIES? Being the Divine Creator of the Universe, Divine Hierarch over and above all, then, maybe YES?
What kind of God is this? Or do we need to re-think our ideas of God?
Quote above: via Bilgrimage: When We Already Know That Every Zygote Is a Baby, Why Waste Time Looking at Scientific Evidence? A Footnote
Garden Sin of Origin, Original Sin?
Maybe God sees our Bible Story of Adam and Eve very differently than we think it to be…
Garden Sin of Origin (audio version)
Text:
Before sin, Adam and Eve walked and talked with God, freely and openly—no boundaries. Suddenly God sets limits.
“Don’t eat of this tree.” “This tree is My space.”
Suddenly love defines differently. No longer you = me or me = you in womb-like comfort. Homey oneness get a push away to make room for ego-separateness, for self, for one’s transcendent mystery, for God’s transcendent mystery.
For Adam and Eve, womb-like intimacy gets a jolt and ego is born infantile.
“Poor me, God is not sharing everything with me. God must be holding something back so He can be over me. I am deprived. Let me eat of the tree and I shall be like God.”
Original Sin—Invading God’s Space…Violating Transcendence?
“Do not eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.” Was it a test? Or was God defining…
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Peace Begins Within
Many have said that they want peace at any price. Many have given their lives for peace. But history shows us that even after the supreme sacrifices have been made we are left with unending wars a…
Source: Peace Begins Within
“Laudato Si” – The Encyclical is Released
“Rather than a problem to be solved, the world is a joyful mystery to be contemplated with gladness and praise.”
Currently reading IV
God is NOT about having Control over the universe…as if someone must be in control in order for us to be secure.
SILENT SPRING by Rachel Carson is a book that helps us see our own sacred connection to the earth…Not a connection of domination OVER the earth but one of loving intercourse WITH the earth!
Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will ensure as long as life lasts. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature – the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after winter.
It is also an era dominated by industry, in which the right to make a dollar at whatever cost is seldom challenged.
I am currently reading Silent Spring by Rachel Carson. Published in 1962, it is “widely considered to be the most important environmental book of the 20th century“, as writer Margaret Atwood stated in this article from The Guardian. And as Eliza Griswold wrote on The New York Times on the 50 years anniversary, it was the book that ignited the environmental movement and all the modern research on the massive and widespread effects of toxic chemicals on human health.
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What’s Good About Good Friday?
“Cornrows” watercolor by Consilia Karli
What’s Good About Good Friday? Barbara Ardinger asks this “untidy question” on wordpress blog feminismandreligion. She concludes that there in nothing good about Good Friday and I understand why she and others come to this answer.
Here’s what I think: What’s good about Good Friday is that we are finally getting to the essence of idolatry, the blight on all human religions, including those which claim to be started by God.
Idolatry is the mishmash that connects love and sacrificial offerings for the purpose of appeasing angry god(s) or for the purpose of bribing them to get something.
This idolatrous mishmash has nothing to do with love, yet we offer up ourselves, our children and our families to the gods of sacrifice in hope that we can WIN/EARN positive strokes from the god(s) out there which control the universe and our little world.
Just because idolatry is the blight on all religions doesn’t mean we should throw religion away. Think of religion like cheese with mold on it. We have to keep noticing and scraping away the mold.
Here is my Good Friday story with some mold scraped away.
Jesus was a man of integrity; he could see through the walls of mold that often cover us, especially when we don’t realize our goodness and worth.
Jesus saw through the mold of our leprosy and blindness, our hurt and ignorance to the Goodness that we are.
Jesus spoke to the truth of love in us, the truth of our goodness and power.
He went to his death seeing only the love which we are, regardless of the hurtful things done to him for seeing and speaking to the truth and love within us.
Jesus taught that love never dies, taught that we are not to worry about being Real, Right Here, Right Now.
Good Friday is the triumph of GENUINE LOVE, not the sacrificial idolatry that masquerades as love.
Good Friday is the call to believe in the other who is as beloved and worthy of love as I am, as All are.
When we have faith in self/other to speak truth lovingly, regardless of the consequences;
when we let go of judgments against self/other, against all “facts” and “reasons” to do otherwise;
when we believe in Good, both our own and that of the other, even on days when it is impossible to believe;
Then we know what is Good about Good Friday!
Stark Reality
And she is Not Alone, for we are with her and thereby also, the One Who Hears.
When a Woman Prays
When a woman prays she bears her soul to her deepest self. She hides nothing from herself at that level. She trusts an understanding from the One who hears. She will know what to do and find the courage to do it against all odds. It is for this and only this that she ever prays.
WHO GOD IS NOT IN CARTOON SONG
White Man – Michael Gungor Band from Goodwin Films on Vimeo.
This short video about what God is not…. definitely worth watching!
Wait for God?
“Wait for God” by Consilia Karli
Too much suffering has been left unaddressed in our world, dismissed by “God will take care of it” resignation.
What if God is not the cosmic babysitter?
What if the Great Mystery of the universe simply calls all forth,
calls US forth to get up and leave the dust of suffering called evil behind us…
…like God called Moses and Miriam forth to leave Egypt and lead those slaves out of bondage who would follow. (There will always be those who stay behind.)
What if we are NOT supposed to endure familial or systemic evil as if it were inevitable or inescapable?
What if we are to walk compassionately to the edge of suffering while refusing to be sucked into it…
…even needing to walk away from it when it threatens to bury us…
…with courage and full confidence in a Good that is larger than we are.
What if God…?
What if God doesn’t care about all the stories we pin on “Him”?
What if God is as different from those stories as we are from the office or family gossip about us?
What if our stories are so precious to us that we will not let go of them, even if they are hurting us or killing others?
What if those stories tell us more about ourselves than they do about God?
Who GOD is Not 