Tag Archives: religion

Proof of a Loving God? – #3 Insights Series

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How do I know that a higher power exists, and that he or she or it is good, godlike, and even more impossible, that s/he/it cares about me?

 

No one could ever know the answer to this question through rational thought. Smarter people than I have written heavy tomes offering very thorough rationales both for and against the existence of God. I’ve considered both rationales, and I’ve finally concluded that reason is not sufficient either to explain God, or to explain God away.

 

So I rely on my own personal experience. Here it is:

 

When I ask my higher power for help, I receive it.

 

And when I ask him to heal a situation through me—a relationship, a hurt, an anger, an injustice—God does that too.

 

I can see that he exists in the light in my friend’s eyes, the light of gratitude for what has been powerfully accomplished for him that I could never have accomplished on my own.

 

This amazingly creative higher power has achieved things I could never have dreamed up without him, and has healed things I feared were unhealable. I could never have come up with a blueprint for my uniquely suitable and lovable husband, or my children, or my life for that matter, my work, or any of the amazing twists and turns my life has taken since I turned my life over to “him/her/it.”

 

On my own, I pretty much made a big mess of things—my own life and the lives of others close to me. I have a pretty chaotic history. If anyone looked back at my early life as a journey, at the decisions I’ve made on my own, they would see paths strewn with the detritus of a refugee who carried enormous burdens and scattered them, exhausted, randomly and helplessly as I barely trudged along toward—where, I had no clue.

 

What I know is, before I began asking my higher power for help, my life did not work, and now it does. I have faith now, that as long as I stay (figuratively) on my knees, as long as I stay humble before my higher power, as long as I keep asking for guidance and strength and help, my life works.

 

What I know is, whenever I ask to be an instrument of his love and healing, power and achievement—far beyond my small abilities—flow through me, and I am able to help myself and others….

 

And that’s all the faith I need.

Love and Sacrifice – #2 Insights Series

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I’m giving up on sacrifice. I’m finally seeing all sacrifice as manipulative, as an attack on others, as selfish, harmful, and unkind.

 

What do I mean by sacrifice? I mean all the stuff I’m going to feel bad about later, that I’m going to resent, resist, and in fact, probably would end up not doing anyway, or doing poorly, even if I did believe in sacrifice. That’s the kind of sacrifice I’m giving up.

 

I don’t mean I’m giving up on loving others, or giving up on putting myself out for them. But that’s not sacrifice.

 

I want to be loved as much as anyone else does. Everyone wants the safety and comforts of life. Every human being who ever lived wants people to love and care for them. But people don’t love and care for you because you sacrifice yourself to them.

 

Sacrificing just doesn’t work. Doing things that make you mad later doesn’t work. Setting aside what is most important to you to please another person is in the end, plain and simple, downright mean, manipulative, and rude.

 

Sacrificing isn’t really about being loving at all. It’s about making a tit-for-tat trade—you take care of me and I’ll take care of you. I’ll be nice to you and you be nice to me. Exchanges in kind. I’ll do this if you’ll do that.

 

Sacrifice has nothing at all to do with giving without expectation of return. Sacrifice is a cold tradeoff—a gift given with a clear expectation of return.

 

You know how it works: I give you such-and-such, and now you owe me. I do these things and so now you have to do those things. I sacrifice myself and subjugate myself and do without and do what I’d rather not, and damn it, now you’d by-god-better-do the same for me.

 

So with sacrifice, what relationships come down to is tricks, traps, and snares. Webs of trickery and deceit which we catch others in, and which we find ourselves hopelessly tied up in–caught, entangled, stuck.

 

To complicate things further—and make them worse–sacrifice and guilt go hand in hand. Whenever you sacrifice, you can expect to feel guilty too. Because frankly, I don’t really want to do all that unfair stuff that sacrifice seems to require—and neither does anyone else—certainly no one in my life does. But I have to do it (or so I sometimes think), just so you’ll have to do it back for me.

 

But then we’ll both feel resentful and angry about doing whatever, and we’ll both feel guilty when we don’t do it. We’ll both spend our lives angry with each other for not reciprocating adequately, for not living up to one another’s expectations, or for not handing over (kicking and screaming) equivalent sacrifices.

 

What a mess. Is this what relationships are supposed to be all about? Could this be love? The relationships we’ve heard so much about, spent so much time fantasizing and hoping for and wishing for? Could this be sisterhood and brotherhood? Romance? True love? Is this what being a daughter, or a parent, or a friend or colleague is supposed to be all about?

 

Of course not.

 

Instead, I’m letting go of both sacrifice and guilt, and trading them both in for doing my best to be loving, both to myself and to others, in the present moment, trusting that my best is enough.

 

Who would be crazy enough to stick with me, stand by me, help me and love me, while I wallow in self-sacrifice, guilt, anger and resentment? While I refuse to allow myself to be or become what I know I can be, and instead spend my life sacrificing myself in order to somehow insure that I keep what I imagine I already have?

 

Let’s see, on the one hand, a life of sacrifice, guilt, resentment, and anger … .  Hmmmm. Or, on the other hand, a life of loving and caring and striving…. Which one shall I risk?

 

When I’m trusting my higher power to take care of my life, I can relax and focus in the present moment on chipping away at the details of being my best self and going after my best goals. Surely this best self will be more useful and helpful and attractive and appealing and desirable and loving and giving to anyone I might want to share my life with, than the miserable self-sacrificing, guilty, resentful jerk I could work myself up into becoming if I were running my own show….

 

Sacrifice isn’t really love at all. Sacrifice is a fear of love, the love inside myself, the love of my higher power, the love in others. Sacrifice is what I insert whenever I fear that there’s not enough love to go around, and that I won’t get enough or give enough to sustain and support the relationships and goals I care about.

 

Love doesn’t equal sacrifice and guilt. Love equals nothing but love. Love can’t even co-exist with guilt and sacrifice. Whenever I choose one of these others, I know I’m quite deliberately choosing to let love go.

 

Love is releasing others from guilt and sacrifice (which has the nice added affect of doing the same for me.) Love is accepting myself and others exactly as we are, and loving us all exactly as we are, with no expectations.

 

Love is letting sacrifice and guilt go.

Against Nationalism: A New Revised Standard Version of American Allegiance

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As I pull up the tiny plastic U.S. flag (tagged “Made in China”) which my well-intentioned neighbor leaves on our front lawn every July 4th, I ponder my deep affection for America–her ideals, traditions, and achievements. This land has been home, safety, and opportunity for me and mine. I acknowledge the good will and sacrifice of patriots of every nation. And I do want to be an accepting, supportive neighbor.

 

Which is why it's so very hard to explain why I can no longer countenance nationalism and patriotism in this shiny new century. We Americans could choose to salute the amazing human achievements which have arisen in our unique context of a vast, rich new land teeming with seemingly infinite natural resources. Instead, we too often associate all that is good and proud and fine and brave about our land and history and people with a divisive sort of me-first superiority thing that insists that the people on our side of an arbitrary border are us–the more-deserving good guys in the white hats, with all the best approaches to everything–while those sub-humans on the other side of the borderline, their side, are they, them, the other–fearsome, strange-looking beings, susceptible to all kinds of dangerous differences. It's just exactly this kind of automatic us/them competitive perspective that power-hungry demagogues tap so conveniently when they want to lead aggressions.

 

At least our growing understanding of ecology has finally helped us see that birds and insects and seeds and wind and rain and sun, in fact all of nature–sans humanity of course–have the common sense to be oblivious to imaginary, arbitrary borderlines. I guess that's some progress.

 

The more closely I look at nationalism, the more of our planet’s ills I blame on it. Wars. Terrorism. Unrepresentative politics. Social injustice and gross inequities. Coldness to the plights of non-“us” humans. Environmental disasters. Global epidemics. Unfair trade policies. Prejudice. Intolerance. I could go on. You name it, nationalism hurts it. Stirring emotional associations prettify the concept of nationalism, but ultimately fail to conceal the ugly truth that its most predictable fruits are separation, fear, and hatred, along with their natural corollaries, violence and suffering.

 

Perhaps not so incidental in this so-called Christian nation is the sad reality that there is not a single Christ-like or Christ-advocated thing about nationalism/patriotism. Equally tragic is the fact that nationalism doesn't accomplish anything which couldn't be achieved far less harmfully through unfettered, internet-linked local, regional, and global organizations supporting human endeavors of all kinds, whether social, political, economic, spiritual/religious, artistic…whatever. What positive thing could nationalism possibly accomplish which a consistent allegiance to and respect for human life on this earth could not do better?

 

Nationalism is an empty rhetorical device crammed full with irrational, emotional connotations, a burning nonsense cipher comprising all our breast-swellings, gratefully blown to life by small alienated power-hungry groups capitalizing on it to quickly inflame frightened masses into exploiting, occupying, attacking, retaliating, and avenging. However painfully and slowly, we need to wean ourselves from our knee-jerk heartfelt faith in nationalism, and begin to reconsider its value and its harm to all human beings.

 

I know, I know. Some people still believe in the devil, and think that human sinfulness necessitates all the “us”-es marching furiously off into all corners of the world carrying big sticks, breaking into their houses and changing their ways of life. If someone tried to bust into my home, push around my family, hurt my neighbors and interfere with our ways, I too would fight back. Meanwhile, I’m left to wonder whether nationalism and its spawn are the evils we're so afraid of, the devil incarnate himself.

 

The very concept of “nation” is, historically speaking, a relatively new one, going back only a few centuries. Before our present age of nationalism, local and regional thugs used fear, religion, ideals, and money (as recruiters do today) to attract followers. However, in those days, the accumulation of power was blessedly limited by the mortality of such temporary leaders. Today's nationalism requires citizens to blindly and permanently transfer their loyalties, indeed their lives, over to whichever country they happen to be born into, regardless of incomprehensible and rapid changes to the integrity, responsiveness, principles, and even the intelligibility of leaders, policies, and processes.

 

On this past 4th of July, I sat out under the trees with my family, eating hot dogs and spitting watermelon seeds along with other lucky Americans. With them, I took time to express gratitude for past and present leaders and workers, and for our battered but hopefully still resilient legal, economic, social, and political traditions. And then I added thanks for the uniquely American gift from God–the richest swath of untouched land in the history of mankind–and asked for guidance and humility in using what’s left of that unimaginable wealth more wisely and generously in service to mankind.

 

I prayed that nationalism will soon be just a memory of a sad, crazy passing political phase, albeit one which, during its brief reign on earth, provided a multitude of rationalizations for aggression, greed, and barbarism, always characteristically cloaked in beautiful passionate colors–among them, our own beloved red, white, and blue.

 

This morning, I try to find a dignified way to dispose of this small flag, symbol of my ardent childhood pride, devotion, and innocence, symbol of the anguish endured under patriotic predations everywhere. Of course I want to pay my respects for yesterday’s sacrifices and values. But I am moved also these days to honor the emerging, competing value which more and more Americans and their fellow earthlings are finally recognizing as far higher and purer than nationalism/patriotism. And that is respect and support for–allegiance to–human life everywhere.

 

What I've Learned About God in My Garden

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In this season of spring, renewal and rebirth, I’ve been thinking: what have I learned about myself—and about God—from being a gardener?

 

From studying his work I’ve come to know the workman. I’ve come to better understand his garden, his creation, his creatures.

 

I’ve learned that each of God’s flowers, however imperfect, is perfect to him. God doesn’t make mistakes; he doesn’t make junk. Like every thing in my garden, and like every other creature in God’s garden, I’m perfect as is. I was meant to be as I am, as I have been, as I will be. Through me and through all his creations, God expressed his will, and declared it good. I am his will, and I am good.

 

I’ve learned that God loves diversity, or else why would he have created anew each flower and each snowflake? I’m different from every other creation, and my uniqueness is holy. When asked what he had learned about God from his studies, Darwin replied, “God seems to have had an inordinate fondness for beetles” (the very diverse species which Darwin particularly studied as a young man.)

 

I’ve learned that God doesn’t mow down dandelions because they’ve been bad. I’m not individually judged, targeted, punished, or rewarded. God’s world works the way it works exactly as he meant it to work. Along with every other creature, I’m subject to his inexorable laws of cause and effect, laws he quite deliberately set in motion. Sun shines and rain falls unpredictably and arbitrarily on all of us, and there’s an inexorable and unprejudiced justice in that. God’s not in the business of interfering with cause and effect.

 

I’ve learned that God is in the business of nurturing the processes of life, and of celebrating life’s cycles. Like all his creations in his garden, I was supposed to be born and I’m supposed to die, and—if I’m lucky—I’ll have some time in between to grow.

 

I’ve learned that I’m expected to turn toward the sun and try hard to grow bigger and stronger and smarter, to understand God’s laws and live fully within them. I’m also expected to accept disease, decay, and death as a natural part of life.

 

I’ve learned that I’m loved. God is bounteous, and provides richly for each creature whatever it needs to live the life he expects of it until its time to die. If I ask for something and God doesn’t give it to me, I don’t need it.

 

I’ve learned that I’m not just a unique flower; I’m also the air and the soil and the nutrients, the rain and the light and the whole ecological system supporting me. My identity is dual—I’m both an individual and an integral part of a whole. I’m a unique self and a larger self.

 

I’ve learned that, just as each creature does its part to support all of life, it is supported in return by all of life. I am meant to support all of life just as if it were my self—which it is. I do unto life as I would have it do unto me, I treat others as I would like to be treated. Life blesses me, and I bless life.

 

I’ve learned that although flowers die, life is eternal. When my unique body/identity/self dies, my connected self will spring forth renewed, born again. I’m part of life, part of God, one with God—and life/God/self go on forever.

 

I’ve learned from my garden to let go of my insistence upon fairness and equality in earthly outcomes, and to accept instead whatever God offers. Life abundant and life eternal are God’s precious and generous versions of love and justice. I tend his garden humbly, contributing my own invaluable and unique gifts in appreciation and peace.

 

Happy Easter, happy Purim, happy spring to all! Happy season-of-welcoming-new-life-birth-rebirth-cycles-processes-growth-nurturing-beauty-and-joy! And happy gardening….

An Appreciation of Gardeners….

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Many people take a gardener’s work for granted. They shouldn’t! Here are twelve of the important roles a gardener plays….

 

First, a gardener is a laborer.

 

You work, lift, haul, dig, sow, reap. You eat bugs and dirt and pain and sweat and cold. You love the outdoors, sun, water, and the feel and smell of dirt.

 

You turn to your garden to create, not to consume. You know that work is the one prayer that most deserves to be answered. You feed the hungry. Your work is sensuous and sensual, and you find joy in its direct experience. You are close to the soil and fully connected to the earth. You are here, now. Your work is love made visible.

 

A gardener is a good neighbor.

 

You’re a giver—of bouquets, bulbs, jam and apples, of cucumbers and conversation and kindness, of assistance and advice. You’re a teacher of both the old and the young. You know that a single seed in a paper cup holds a world of science and wonder.

 

You’re prepared to pass on a whole lifetime of gardening traditions—in times of prosperity, or in times of disaster. You decorate your community. You spread beauty and knowledge.

 

A gardener is a horticulturist.

 

You’re a student of plants, a botanist, a collector, a taxonomist, a geneticist, a specialist. In order to care for your plants, you study their whole world. You understand losses and surprises, setbacks and triumphs, persistence and patience.

 

A gardener is a scientist.

 

You enter your garden not to escape reality but to observe it more closely. You compare. You take notes, keep records, write journals. You analyze your failures and improve on your successes. You inquire and experiment and expand your knowledge.

 

A gardener is a naturalist.

 

Your expertise is not only in plants. You know soils, weather, birds, insects, fungi, microorganisms and micronutrients, pathogens, pollution, and pesticides. You recognize your biological reflection, your genetic double, in every garden creature and plant.

 

You celebrate the messiness of evolution and sex and spring and birth and rebirth. You’re an ecologist, a biologist, a zoologist. You know the connectedness of creation and your place in the web of life.

 

A gardener is an activist.

 

Your garden shows that you care—about healthful food, clean air and water, and earth-friendly horticultural practices; about soil conservation, wildlife habitat, about smaller and larger ecosystems, about native plants and species extinction.

 

You understand that the one power you have that will never corrupt you is your power to make something lovely. You’re a bioethicist, a political animal, and a steward of our children’s future.

 

Your garden is a statement of how you relate—to the land, to family, neighbors, community, to the present, past and future, to your country and to other countries, to your planet. You found out, in your garden, who you are and who you want to be, what you stand for.

 

A gardener is a creative artist.

 

You nurture the beauty in each plant. Your garden is an expression of your individual style, your philosophy, personality, your personal rules and directions and themes, your knowledge base, experiences, and interests. Through your garden, you give form to chaos.

 

You paint picturesque garden compositions. You demonstrate that substances obeying their own laws do beautiful things, and you demonstrate that there is no beauty anywhere that is not totally dependent on relationship. You co-create living masterpieces.

 

A gardener is a traveler on a mythic journey.

 

You venture through a beckoning gate into a mysterious world of uncharted paths, on a timeless hero’s journey through secret passages and hidden turnings, to your life’s destinations….You sometimes stop to smell the roses, and maybe slay a dragon(fly) or two.

 

A gardener is a philosopher.

 

A garden is a philosopher’s church, a place to worship Mother Nature and the mysterious workings of the universe. In a garden, you seek, find and create meaning.

 

In your life, as in your garden, your purposes and interests and opportunities change with the seasons. In your life, as in your garden, you live and make choices within a limited framework, with considerable constraints, making the most of what you have, and working what is already there. In your garden, you see reflected your own birth, reproductive urges, decay and death, your battles with disease and disorder, your struggles to grow, to compete, to seek light.

 

Along with your garden plants, you share the tender mercies of rain and sun and nourishment. You dance a ring around your rosies, your pockets full of posies. You come from dust, to dust return. Ashes, ashes, we all fall down.

 

A gardener is an historian and a storyteller.

 

Your garden tells, not only your story, but its own story—how you made it, what your plans and impulses were. Your garden reveals all the things you can’t resist doing and all the things you never got around to.

 

Perhaps your garden tells the history of the land itself—its geology, topography, its last owners and previous uses. Your garden may reflect memories of beloved childhood gardens, as well as gardens you’ve visited in your travels, through art, literature, and in your imagination.

 

Last, a gardener is a mystic.

 

In your garden, you can be a dreamer, a spiritual seeker, maybe even a monk. In a garden, you accept life’s mystery, and attempt to recreate it.

 

You accept God’s grace, and his fierce, unexplainable logic. In a garden, you know God, for by the work, you know the Workman. Your work is your worship, gratitude, communion, and offering. You live in that infinite time, space, and distance that is the present.

 

Your smallest flower contains a universe. You are that flower, and you are the universe. You are the gardener and the garden, the fruit of the vine and the harvest.

 

(Thanks for insights, inspiration and images to: Carol Williams, Bringing a Garden to Life; Michael Pollan, Second Nature; Joe Eck, Elements of Garden Design; Ed Whitney (watercolorist); Henry Mitchell, The Essential Earthman and One Man’s Garden; Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet; The Holy Bible; and Mother Goose.)

A Bunch of Unreallistic Dreamers and Kooks–and Me

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A ragtag bunch of unrealistic dreamers and kooks shared our home while passing through Frederick on their trek from Oak Ridge, Tennessee, headed toward the United Nations in New York City, where they will join a rally for nuclear non-proliferation in early May.

 

Or were they a serious, hard-working, disciplined, organized, committed, and spiritual group of unique individuals taking small peaceful steps toward greater sanity in a nutty world?

 

Arriving after a 20 mile walk from Lucketts, Virginia, the group took a scheduled rest day (once every seven days) in Frederick, welcomed by members of the Frederick Friends (Quakers) and several other local groups, before walking off toward a night hosted by two Thurmont churches.

 

What did I experience? A disparate but remarkably purposeful and caring group of believers and non-believers—Christians, Buddhists, activists of many stripes, the old and the young, walking for a day or a week or a month or for thousands of miles in many countries. They are black, white, Asian, native American, from the U.S., Japan, Australia, and many other countries.

 

As I juggle my own daily logistics, I wonder how the peacewalkers manage to arrange nightly lodging (on the floors of welcoming libraries and churches) how they eat breakfast, lunch, dinner, get medical care, manage personal possessions and sleeping bags…. But all seems smooth and organized. Every day they rise for interfaith prayer, and are walking by 7 a.m. They walk fast, carrying peace banners from many nations, smiling and waving and sharing their energy and positivity, even after walking fifteen miles. They are efficient and tidy, leaving their accommodations spotless.

 

I expected to host exhausted walkers who would collapse until noon in every corner of my home. No, they rose at dawn for prayer. One visitor, a Buddhist nun, magically produced from a small suitcase, a portable office. She spent the morning using her brief “rest” to email and call far-flung colleagues, and to plan a future walk converging in South Dakota. Willing hands produced a light breakfast and a feast for lunch. The young people wanted to explore Frederick’s downtown, while the rest shopped Goodwill, mailed pressed flowers and letters home, and then planned their evening presentations for curious townsfolk–about why they joined the group, why they walk, why they’ve stayed.

 

After everyone had left, I thought about what their work meant to me. I was most struck by how reversed I now felt about who and what is crazy.

 

Although I always have respected the peacewalkers’ cause—nuclear non-proliferation—I admit that I invited them despite a feeling that this was a crazy bunch of people choosing a crazy life and a crazy goal.

 

Now I’m thinking about cutting out sugar and caffeine and alcohol, as many of them do, for more energy–and maybe I’ll start fasting, too. I’m considering rising a little earlier to meditate and pray, and I’m asking myself what example my way of life offers to my children, and to others. I’m thinking again about moving forward on some impossible dreams of my own, thinking about taking the next step and then the next, as the peacewalkers courageously do each day, keeping the faith in humanity and possibility.

 

I’m thinking that maybe the life I see on TV, the commercial life, the fast life of the contemporary west, my life, is perhaps not the best context from which to decide who is crazy or not, nor from which to determine what is a balanced, healthy, useful life. I’m thinking that maybe I’ll try to shake myself free of contemporary culture just long enough to reconsider the possibility that nuclear tragedy isn’t necessarily inevitable, nor that working for change in our government policies isn’t necessarily a waste of time, and that joy and meaning and energy may come more readily from a purposeful, disciplined, giving, hardworking, kind, and open life.

 

I’m thinking I’ll keep an eye on the internet for the next time any peacewalkers come anywhere near my town again. I’ll download their schedule and join them in solidarity and respect, for a few days, or maybe I’ll plan a vacation around them. Maybe others will do the same, and maybe someday, as they hope, huge throngs will crowd around them in appreciation and support as they stride purposefully, idealistically, determinedly through the towns of the world. Yes, it’s true, they’re dreamers. But they’re not the only ones.

What If…?

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What if it’s not important to be right?

What if, instead of deciding who to love, we just love everybody?

What if no one can explain God, but it’s fun to try anyway?

What if the best way to help others is to love them just the way they are now?

What if the world is the way it is because God made it this way on purpose?

What if trying to change people just doesn’t work?

What if talking problems over with God always helps?

What if god doesn’t care whether you capitalize her name or not?

What if you’re perfect (ly human) just the way you are right now, and so is everyone else?

What if there’s no past and no future—only a long line of nows?

What if they gave wars and nobody came?

What if we treated everyone the way we’d like to be treated?

What if everything is possible with God’s help?

What if the differences between people don’t matter?

What if we’re each completely lovable in our own way?

What if everyone helps and no one hurts?

What if religion is about opening hearts and minds? 

What if thoughts and ideas are the most powerful things in the world?

What if we live our own lives and let everyone else live theirs?

What if no one has unfriendly thoughts about anyone (including themselves)?

What if things change only when we change?

What if the world is as we are?

What if what God wants for us and what we want most are the same things?

What if people explain God different ways, while God stays the same?

What if we don’t need to worry about mistakes?

What if life is supposed to be the way it is?

What if we already have everything we need?

What if people who were upset only got smiles and help?

What if the things that separate people aren’t important?

What if there’s nothing to be afraid of?

What if the best way to help the world is to love it the way it is right now?

What if people who suffer injustice never added to it?

What if everyone knows what’s true, but no two explain it the same way?

What if giving up guilt frees us to give and love and be happy again?

What if we decide to see only good?

What if we go on forever?

What if God is love?

What if there are more questions than answers?

What if the questions and the answers change as we change?

What if human minds are smaller than God’s?

What if we’re not meant or expected to understand everything?

What if living in faith means choosing, even though we can’t be sure?

What if it’s OK to talk about all of this?

How I See the World (Today)

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Every person creates his or her own unique “reality.” Reality is not something “out there,” but something “in here,” created (during youth) as each person’s unique brain interacts with its particular environment, attempting to make some kind of systematic and predictable sense out of the relatively narrow set of confusing experiences and nonsense correlations it is confronted with. Thus, each individual arrives at adulthood with a unique belief system and worldview different from any other's. Much of adult learning consists of unlearning what we came to “know” about life in childhood that doesn’t happen to be so.

 

No one’s perspective is complete, or objective, or “right.” No one knows what he doesn’t know. No one ever achieves a complete understanding of anything, nor will anyone ever get anything completely “right” or “perfect”—no goal, no relationship, no choice, no idea—except, of course, that we are all perfect and right in the sense that we are all at every moment just exactly what we were meant to be, i.e., perfectly human.

 

Nature reveals a lot about the way my-unique-view-of-God works. “By the work, ye know the workman.” Nothing in nature or science contradicts anything I think or believe.

 

People are a completely natural part of nature.

 

Every person is born capable of the complete and astonishing range of human behavior, from the depths of depravity to the pinnacles of goodness.

 

It is written in the (very fallible but often wonderful) Bible, that when God “created” man and nature, he declared that both were “good.” I like the wisdom here. Who are we to argue with God, to call ourselves fallen and evil and sinners, when the creation-God of so many cultures has declared us “good,” and the earth good, just exactly as we are, just exactly as it is? We are exactly as God intended us to be—capable of all things, on this best of all possible worlds. We did lose peace, though, when we chose to see ourselves as separate from each other and God/higher power, and thus somehow shameful. (If you don't believe in a higher power, sin and evil and hell and such aren't issues for you….)

 

It’s interesting and fun to try to figure everything out, but only if you approach life as a wonderful surprising adventurous process with no goal at all but what you are doing right now—and not as an impossibly difficult and dangerous maze with a mysterious end  reward or goal. But whatever way you choose to look at life, you’ll still never figure it all out or get it “right.”

 

Since none of us knows what we don’t know, and since we don’t know what part of what we know isn’t so, then with each moment-to-moment choice we make, we act out of a  particular belief system, which is, in a sense, our unique and chosen faith about “how things work.”

 

There are two very general but very different things one can choose to put one’s faith in: fear or love. We all grow up with a mixture of the two faiths.

 

In any given decision moment, we decide to put our faith into either the one or the other–but we can never choose both at the same time, because fear and love can’t coexist in any one mind in the same instant.

 

The word “love” as I use it comprises all the good stuff humans are capable of—caring, hoping, kindness, forgiveness, acceptance, gentleness, giving….

 

The word “fear” as used here comprises all the bad stuff we’re capable of—like defending, attacking, controlling, hurting, hating, anger, greed, pride….

 

All of us have learned a lot of very reasonable, logical, arguable, cultural and personal reasons why we shouldn’t choose to act with faith in love in various situations. However, if we decide we want to, we can learn to recognize and drop each of these barriers to love, one by one, by seeing them as beliefs that don’t serve life very well. We can unlearn them, moment-to-moment.

 

Whichever way we decide to go, both kinds of faith–faith in fear or faith in love–are shots in the dark. In fact, that is what faith is, a shot in the dark. Faith is acting as though you know something to be true, when actually you don’t, at least not unarguably. You never know anything for sure–no matter how strong your faith–but you still have to choose how to act. Faith is choosing to act as if you know something and trust something for sure, when you don’t.

 

You can act, moment-to-moment, as if you know that being loving will out work for the best in the long run for you and for everyone else. Or, you can act as if you know that things will work out for the best if you choose to “fight back,” defending and protecting yourself against all the bad stuff you see in others.

 

All decisions and all actions, large or small, require courage, and all people (even those labeled the most “evil” in history) take only the actions they’ve decided will work best for them, based on what they think they know and don’t know.

 

“Love beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.” Being a loving person means having faith in the good intentions and sincerity of all others, all the time. We need to “believe” what others tell us, even when what they tell us seems completely unbelievable–because in some respect, from their viewpoint, they do believe it.

 

As Jesus was crucified, he said, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” We need to forgive ourselves and each other all our mistakes, small and large, because we are all  just wandering around and acting in the dark, doing the best we can, and you can never know what choices makes sense from another person’s worldview, or why. Besides, you'll never “forgive and forget” your own mistakes until you first learn to forgive and forget the mistakes of others. And the weight of constant self-judgment is exhausting.

 

When you treat all others as you would like all people to treat you, you are acting out of a faith in love. When you make an exception to this universal rule, which is the foundation of all human ethics, morals, and religions everywhere in the world, you are acting out of your faith in fear.

 

When you come from a mental place of being “right,” (“I am right about this”) you automatically make all the people who disagree with you “wrong,” which doesn’t work very well either.

 

Everyone, without exception, is deserving of our respect for their courageous (or timid) efforts to negotiate a life that is often difficult and painful, and always challenging and confusing.

 

“Vengeance is mine saith the Lord” means, “Vengeance isn’t yours.” Things may not seem fair or just from our own narrow perspectives, but God has a different, bigger, better, longer, more just picture, one we usually don’t get. We can ask him to share it with us, though. When confronted with problems, I often ask God to help me “see” things his way. And so he does.

 

God gives us all the good spiritual gifts we ask for—strength, insight, wisdom, help, comfort, understanding, forbearance, patience, and all the others, which can make a huge, even miraculous, difference. If we feel bereft, it’s because we haven’t asked for help. I don't think that God interferes with nature, but rather, works with it.

 

When we act out of fear, we deprive ourselves of the nicest state in the world, feeling harmless and safe and loved and lovable and peaceful.

 

Others generally will treat you the way you treat them. Others generally will see you the way you see them. So if you want others to start seeing you and treating you caringly, you go first. And be really patient—it can take a long time to change old patterns, both yours and theirs.

 

We can decide to look at the world and people lovingly, or we can decide to see the world and others fearfully, moment-to-moment, over and over again. Our lives and choices are not about “what’s out there.” Everything we see and do is always about “what’s in here.”

 

I choose to live as much as possible as if the past and future don’t really exist. This approach has a lot of freeing implications concerning “identity” (i.e., it’s much more fun to think of yourself as nothingness-full-of-possibility than to drag around a heavy burden of past and future.) The present is the only time I can be happy, be creative, can give and receive, can fully experience life; I’ve also found that whenever I notice I’m afraid or mad or sad, I can be sure I’ve been thinking about the past or the future, not the present. So I try to stay in the present….

 

In this world which often seems hopeless and terrifying, and despite having very little knowledge, and often no reliable human hand to hold—my challenge is to take the next step with love.

 

Sometimes the result of putting our faith in love seems unkind or unjust or unfair to ourselves, but it is always nobler to suffer injustice than to add to it. When we put our faith in love, at the worst we will do no harm.

 

God is what comforts me when I ask for comfort; God is what inspires me when I ask for inspiration, what creates through me, what loves through me, the light I see in the eyes of every person, all the beauty of nature, all that thrills me and brings tears of gratitude, all that connects me with everyone and everything that is, all that is profound, awesome, true, good, meaningful, the highest and best in man and nature. God is all the answers and all the questions, all the pain and all the joy, the beginning and the end of everything. That's as close as I can come to defining my personal God, and my personal belief system.

 

I don’t “know” any of this stuff, except through my individual experience and learning; every time I act with love, I feel confirmed in my faith in love, and every time I act in fear or anger or hatred, I am even more miserable. I choose to believe all this because it works for me in my day-to-day life. It’s also interesting and fun/light. What others learn is often different, what works for others may be different, and what others choose to believe is often different. I don’t think I’m right and I don’t think you’re wrong—we just have different realities, as does each person on this planet….

 

These are some of the things I try to remember as I go through life. I don’t ever get them right, though, and that’s OK too. How I see things will continue to change as I keep learning and growing.

Acceptance 6 – Is acceptance Christian? Or is it based on some eastern philosophy or religion?

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Jesus accepted what God gave him to be and to do, accepted the life and death and work that was given him by his father. Jesus's prayer was always, “Thy will be done.” Jesus made acceptance an important part of every prayer. He tried to accept God's will: “Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.”

And what is God's will? Well, look around at what he made. If God is all-powerful and all-good, is it likely that he goofed up in his intentions when he made the world and all the beings in it? Or did he make them just as he wanted them to be, in all their diversity and potential, and then called them “good?” If God made you and the earth and everyone else on the planet, then what he made must be his will. He must have meant to make people who were capable of mistakes and failures and weakness, or he wouldn't have done it. You are God's will, and so is everyone else, and so is the earth, just as it is, along with all of its possibilities.

When someone dies and people say, “It's God's will,” what do they mean? Do they mean that God is mean and wants innocent babies to suffer and die? Or do they mean that God made all things possible on this best of all possible worlds, and called that good, and that we must accept any of those possibilities as part of his vision. God meant for the world and the people in it to be just exactly as it is and as they are. If God had meant for each of us to be perfect, to never mess up or suffer or fail; if God had meant for the world to be without pain or problems, he would have made it that way, would have made us different. We are God's will, and so is his earth.

Look and see: God's will is us, and everything around us. You are God's will, and so am I, and so is everyone else, and so is the world, as it is. Because he made us, because he made it so. And yes, God also made us ambitous for happiness, and for goodness, and for love, and that too seems to be his will.

Adam and Eve rocked along pretty happily in their beautiful garden until they started to find fault with everything in it, including each other; until they began to notice with dismay their own nakedness/sexuality; until they ate of the fruit of the tree of good/evil right/wrong, and started judging everything and everyone along those lines. After that, they were miserable, because they started finding fault with everything that God had made, with each other, with sexuality itself, which, it should be quite evident, is God's will.

God gave us the necessary brains and hearts to live in his beautiful garden helpfully with one another. We can choose to spend our lives picking at and poking at and being angry about everyone and everything and ourselves all the time, labeling everything as good and bad, right and wrong. Or, we can accept ourselves and his world and everyone in it as he made us, as is–and along with him, call it all “good.” Who are we to argue with God? And besides, it's a lot nicer and more fun living acceptingly inside his beautiful garden with him, than wandering around outside it in the wilderness of the desert, wailing in pain and resistant to everything and everyone, resistant even to God, maybe even especially to God.

Life is just too lonely without him, without the world, without each other, without our own selves as our best friends. We've all “done” lonely, and it doesn't work.

Next: If I accept something or someone, does that mean I have to put up with them?

Acceptance 4 – Why should I accept something that's wrong or bad?

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We were all raised by people who had ideas about good and bad ways to act, right and wrong ways to live, etc. Whether or not we still agree with any or all of those ideas now, we still are stuck with the little judgment-machine they created in our heads that is always talking at you, yelling at you, whining, making demands, arguing with you, scolding you or telling you off. Sometimes our little judgment-machines are busy doing all those same things, except this time they're directed toward everyone else in our lives–not to mention all the situations in our lives, and in the whole world. All those stupid little voices won't shut up about what's right/wrong good/bad about ourselves, about others, about the world. They just never shut up, do they?

And have you ever noticed how some people are still listening to these voices even long after they're all grown up? In fact, that's when the voices kick in bigtime: when you leave home–when you leave the real voices (your family, etc.) that started the whole thing, behind you. It's almost like your brain is afraid to leave them behind, afraid you won't be safe without them. so you bring them along with you wherever you go.

It's paradoxical and frustrating and ironic, and still sad-but-true: most people never quite seem to learn how to outgrow the too-loud, irritating, guilt-producing, naggy, nasty parental voices they accumulated during their first eighteen or so years, even when they long ago outgrew their parents, and even when the parents have changed and are now treating them more respectfully and kindly.

If you're still run by your thoughts, your voices, all it means is that you've never quite outgrown reacting to all the stuff in your life from a judgmental, parental right/wrong good/bad basis. It's as if you were five years old again, and your mother or father or some other person from your past was talk talk talking disapprovingly all the time in your ear. And you haven't learned yet to nod, smile, acknowledge what they have to say with no reaction, thank them for sharing, and then go about your business with a quiet mind.

Until you learn acceptance, you'll always be thinking about everything in terms of good/bad right/wrong. No matter what happens in your life, you will always be about finding fault–with yourself, with everyone else, with your life or the world. You will, unfortunately,  waste so much time and energy noticing how wrong everyone else is, or obsessing about every one of your own little mistakes, or talking about how messed up the world is getting to be, along with everybody in it.

Many people have learned acceptance. They're the ones out there who really don't seem to worry much about any of that right/wrong good/bad stuff. Instead, they cheerfully go about their own business getting along with everyone, liking everyone, getting things done, and being pretty happy in their own skins and in their own lives. People who are accepting seem to pretty much like people and life and themselves the way they are.

Which one of these two types of people would you rather be? Which type has the happiest life? The most fun? Which type is probably the most effective, regardless of what it is they choose to do with their life and time and energies?

Both types of people have to live on this same planet, with the same species, with the same opposite sex, with parents, children, neighbors, bosses, relatives, co-workers. Both types are found in all walks of life, in all races and ethnicities and nations, all ages and colors and genders.

But the unaccepting ones always seem to struggle so much. Too often, they find life and everyone in it, and even themselves, distasteful, even dreadful, all-in-all quite unacceptable. And yet others, the accepting ones, somehow manage to muddle through their lives with a certain amount of cheer and fun and flair, despite their own inevitable set of life's troubles and pain.

The differences between accepting and non-accepting personalities are clearly not differences in wealth. It's not about rich or poor (although money can be really very nice and helpful to have, and not even about who is right or wrong, or good or bad, or better or worse, or luckier or unluckier–although good things do tend to happen to accepting people. The biggest difference about accepting and non-accepting people (and this is a matter of learning, of choosing) is how they deal with the bad stuff in their life–whether they accept it, or fight it. If they spend a lot of time reacting to everything around them, listening to all their own little judgmental voices tell them all about how awful they are, and how awful everything and everyone else is…they're going to be both unhappy and ineffective. People who dwell on the “bad” and “wrong” stuff about themselves and the people around them, who spend too much of their time making unhappy judgments about “what is,” and thinking about how other people should act, and what other people should and shouldn't do, and all the mistakes they and other people have made, make themselves crazy.

Instead of all this crazy-making reacting and judging, some people learn to go through life without continually over-reacting, without judging, and instead, just accepting “what is” just the way it is, and other people just as they are, and themselves, and the world, just as we are, and it is.

Unaccepting people notice every little “wrong” thing about themselves, about others, and about the world, and make themselves miserable over it all. Accepting people don't spend much time worrying about all the right/wrong good/bad stuff. Somewhere along the way, they learned to accept things as they are, and not to waste time dwelling on how things aren't or ought to be. Accepting people have learned to focus on “what is” in life, instead of “what ought to be.” They've learned not to waste time worrying about what other people do or don't do or should or shouldn't be.

Accepting people–happy people–go about doing what they do without bothering to name it or anyone good or bad or right or wrong (i.e., judging everything and everyone.) Unaccepting people spend their life being upset about how awful life is, how disusting, how shocking. They spend life being righteously indignant about how wrong other people are, and how unfair, unkind, unjust, uncaring.

Accepting people rarely bother with all that negativity and hostility, which is not to say that they don't work hard for the changes they want in their life and in the world–we all do. Just like everyone else, accepting people have to work hard to make the changes they want to see in themselves and their own lives and in the world. It's just that they don't get all upset about everything and everyone while they're waiting and working and hoping for change. Which is good, because if they did that, nothing would ever change.

Acceptance is about accepting things as they are right now, while working to let go of your angry, resistive stuff about things-as-they-are, working calmly, peacefully, cheerfully, to change the things you want to be better and different.

Next: Isn't it better to change something rather than just accept it?