God is a Survival Kit
that comes under many brand names:
such as Krishna, Yahweh, Christ, Allah.
A survival kit commonly contains a compass,
a map, suggestions on how
to protect yourself from elements,
and how to dig nourishment out of the environment.
No kit is automatic,
but if properly used will aid in survival.
Allah is the magnetic field drawing us all to salvation.
His life is a map by which we avoid being lost.
Yahweh’s presence is the light
that holds off the dark and calms the seas.
Christ’s body is the nourishment, the manna,
that keeps alive the spirit of each person.
Krishna satisfies the needs of a timeless spirit
that currently exists in a time-bound environment.
The one God is the survival kit
no matter what name is used.
***
We must learn
the freedom to learn
is balanced by
the challenge to evaluate.
Wisdom is in the evaluation as well as the facts.
The ego must learn its strengths and needs.
By trial and error we seek
a healthy relationship to the common good.
One’s goal is to do what is best for self
as a part of a happy group.
War disrupts the vision created in a child’s mind.
I must seek what is to be learned in each day.
Each day I move forward
if I will not hang on to the past.
Yahweh sends the Holy Spirit
to my conscience to evaluate what I learn,
to open my mind and heart to
knowledge, understanding, and wisdom,
to turn each experience into a forward thrust.
***
However circumstances ensnare one,
the will is free to respond.
The body may be trapped,
but the spirit need not surrender.
Spirit must choose to continue to believe,
to stay alive in hope and confidence
whatever events take place.
The youthful sense of immortality
is the proper interpretation of the nature of life,
since the spirit must maintain the will to live.
The spirit is designed with the potential for infinite living.
One must look forward to more existence
and make positive choices
to use one’s will to keep on growing.
***
Gratitude is putting God’s gifts to use.
Gratitude is not saying “yes” to the illness.
Gratitude is striving to make the roots strong enough
so you will not be sick again.
Gratitude is searching out the cause of the problem
so that pain will not have to come.
Gratitude is working with neighbors
so that our differences will not separate us.
Saying thank you for the gifts received is not gratitude.
Putting the gifts to use is.
I will spend each gift you give me
to the best of my ability.
Each moment is a gift to be spent.
***
Honesty is to be understood as humility.
The infant honestly surrenders to its dependency.
The terrible-twos are eventually overcome by their reality.
Physical size and the largeness of the tribe,
eventually teach honesty.
It is honesty to know one is truly a part of a multitude.
One learns it is important to contribute
to the good of the multitude.
Still even the weakest, sorriest runt is a vital part of the tribe.
To know one owns nothing,
but one’s own spirit
is to experience honesty.
To share generously whatever has been given
is to be on the way to honest peace.
To humbly accept one’s intuition for living eternally
in a spirit of respectful gratitude,
in harmonious unity with fellow travelers,
will honestly provide a happy journey.
Honesty is the key ingredient for a catechism
when one understands honesty as humility.
***
Turned toward God each dawn,
we see God’s plan in the day-to-day turning,
monthly cycles, the seasonal changes, the yearly spirals.
Each day, each turn of the screw, offers dawn,
a beginning fresh with new energy,
then noon, a middle period of ripe opportunity,
and an evening to grow rich in the harvest of God’s presence.
While each night, in sleep, we quietly die into the next day,
ready for the next morning’s resurrection.
The earth turns us toward the bright light of a new day.
Each day we are turned toward God’s sun,
warming our bodies and souls,
our uniqueness.
***
The spiral pattern is lived comfortably
by the child
and continues to be lived by adults who
have not lost their innocence
or who have regained their innocence.
The backyard of my childhood is always the same,
but always fresh and novel.
When I return at thirty-two, this backyard seems so static.
Tears well up at how foolish I am being
to believe the yard magical, always varying,
for I realize the changing aspect is me.
As each day spirals through me, I welcome the new me.
I feel its newness and I change with God’s plan
to grow as each day stretches me onward.
I must continue to seek to grow each and every day
as I grow closer to infinity.
I must continue a child’s trust of growth,
a child’s trust of life.
***
The doing for one another,
the encouragement,
the recognition and respect for the uniqueness
that marks each person God has made
brings the electrical current of peace into our lives.
We must have respect for what God creates.
He endures the stubborn individuality
that He instills in everyone.
God uses His energy and love to create these individuals,
giving them loving freedom
rather than killing their stubbornness.
He is patient to let us grow perfect,
no matter what it costs Him.
***
Life spirals always onward.
As a matter of fact,
we see that God, the Father, started the survival kit
by giving life a spiral shape.
Our lives spiral in a slow turning
that often seems like the same territory,
but which is always forward.
According to God’s plan,
each turn is always a little bit onward,
moving, however strangely, toward perfection.
Perfection can be frightening,
if we are plunged into it suddenly,
or perfection can be missed, ignored,
if it arrives too quickly without preparation,
without understanding.
Like a child coming upon a pearl in his oyster soup,
one is likely to throw it away.
It is slowly, positively, certainly, that God spirals us
to perfection.
***
So many births,
we spiral through so many births in our lives:
from seed to fetus, from fetus to infant,
from stranger to acceptance into the tribe
with the birth of baptism.
Change after change continues,
from pure instinct to toddler stage
to being a reasoning child,
from structural virginity to puberty,
from being uncommitted to commitment at confirmation,
from being single to being married,
from marriage to parenthood,
from finite life, toward unbounded, unending, timeless life.
***
To be a lover
is to become a part of another,
to unify with another,
to expand one’s participation in fellow humans,
to give of oneself in order to receive from others.
Love is a search for the expansion of the gift of life.
Being a parent expands the role of lover.
To be a parent is to participate in creation.
It is to turn loose a part of self,
set it free to become a new life.
God turns loose a bit of himself
in each human life
and places within each the compass of conscience,
intending His seed of love to be evolved
into an infinite gift.
As a parent I wish my gift of life to each child
to be enjoyed eternally.
***
By the problems I grow.
It is through the problems of each day that I grow:
the wife bored with life today,
the child whose need for material goods is exaggerated,
the neighbor who sees the negative in everything,
the impatience I have with all of them.
You love them all, Allah, and me,
and respect our stubborn individuality.
But I do not have to carry all the weight.
You, Christ, have taken on the heaviest part.
You, Allah, make us stubborn
so we will not lose the precious uniqueness
which Yahweh gives us.
The problems concerning people are the most important.
Problems of dust are not as important as problems of doubt and worry.
It is through the task of each day that you intend us to grow.
Happiness is a problem to solve with your help, Yahweh.
There is no shortage of problems.
***
A miracle is an illogical event.
All the universe obeys the laws of nature.
Only a human can choose to act illogically.
A child’s body houses a will
delirious for life, but unsure what this means.
The will slowly and careful grows,
becoming aware of itself.
Its community needs the child to learn
to give of himself, to share.
But the child’s ego is afraid this means its death.
The truth is, the ego’s path to death lies in self-love.
The “will” that gives, while asking nothing in return,
is what the community invites to come forth,
by practicing this seemingly illogical agape love.
Such love has the potential for delirious infinite life.
When the human grows in its ability to receive, give and share,
one is discovering the regenerative miracle, agape love.
***
Communities have personality,
therefore they have ego, a will of their own.
Where is the conscience
to direct the will of the community?
I’ve tamed my ego by aiming it toward the common good,
and refuse to surrender any part of my conscience
to any community ego
that doesn’t serve the common good.
I find most corporations serve profit,
rather than the common good.
And many religions serve the institutional ego,
rather than the universal common good.
The humanitarian followers of religions
exhibit love of the common good in their actions,
thereby pulling me into their folds.
Humanitarian actions are in harmony with the one God.
***
Listen to the world into which you are planted.
There is an ancient tradition in Hebrew education
that the student should spend
a part of each lesson sitting silently
in the presence of the teacher.
As a parent and a teacher,
I may use this silence in my own instruction.
Experience affirms that God uses silence in his teaching.
My students who listen well, who take home what is taught,
and listen to it again in privacy,
who listen with the experiences of their lives,
rather than with the surface ear,
who listen, like the planted seed listens to the earth,
these are the ones who hear even more than I say.
They hear what God wishes I had said.
The students who listen, develop their gifts and pass me by.
***
God turns loose his children
in an environment tempered with time.
He installs the instincts necessary to survive,
but only conceives new humans
in search of unity with one another.
God makes clear the principle of dependency
with our infancy and childhood,
balanced by a fierce uniqueness that is
blessed with a free will.
A human parent is a surrogate for God,
in care of the spirit that grounds each human to Him.
It is a frightening responsibility which
I cannot do without being grounded in humility.
***
Love comes in three categories.
Ancient Greeks knew these three:
Eros, Filial, and Agape;
sexual passion, brotherly love, and ideal love.
All are included in a happy life.
However, all love matures into agape love,
which is to give of one’s self to others,
asking nothing in return.
My experience is that love develops to maturity
by trial and error.
I do not regret any of my trials caused by my errors
on the way toward the delight of agape love.
Love is the goal that leads to happiness.
My prayer is that my children find agape love.
It would be foolish for me to believe
they could escape trial and error.
I pray their agape love be enriched
by all their experiences.
***
The conscience of every church
resides in the laity.
From the simple hearts of the average believer
comes the compassion that keeps any Church alive.
I feel the support and goodness
of my neighbors every day of my life.
The consciences of people about me are constructive
when they are not influenced by doctrine,
or by men in search of control,
or by the social pressures of a tribe.
I find the simple heart to be full of the spirit of compassion,
a spirit that seems to me holy.
No rule has the power of the heart.
When love of the tribe narrows the heart to self-love,
it also narrows compassion to only members of the tribe.
Fear of the diversity of the universal common good
works to destroy individual conscience.
***
Sound out God’s plan.
In the silence, He will answer you.
He may pluck your heart strings and give you a musical answer.
He may imprint on your muscles a pattern of action
that may not activate itself until much later.
He may send you to someone else
who will give you, unknowingly, God’s message.
He may ask you to surrender even more to Him
so that in an even deeper silence
He may reconstruct your soul with the strength to carry His answer.
He will always increase your ability to learn and love,
that is, to open yourself, to give yourself, to share yourself.
No day can be well chartered without at least two deep silences
centered on God as a part of your communication.
In order to sound out God’s plan for you,
it is vital to tune out your personal chatterbox thoughts!
Let the sound of “Ahh-mmenn” be unconsciously sounded, constantly.
Ahh-mmenn, Ahh-mmenn, Ahh-mmenn, Ahh-mmenn.
***
Peace comes when spinning like a top.
In the midst of all this noisy world, getting noisier,
there is a Divine signal.
Good news is running like sparks among the rubble.
Redemption by loving one another is the harmonious upbeat
found among all the heavy orchestration of frustration.
Repair the interior circuits within yourself that earlier you cut
in order to find peace by shutting out the world.
Instead, with your connections to people restored,
loving one another,
you find the peace that God brings.
Spinning like a top in the doing of God’s work,
putting out a hand to those who hurt you,
sharing all you have,
you find the exciting peace God gives.
Peace is not the absence of war,
but rather the active intercourse of spiritual intimacy
between God’s children.
It is saying “yes” to every need encountered in others.
***
The gift of reflection,
comes in the spiral of life.
Moments of reflection seem a pause
in the forward momentum.
Past, present, and future, for a moment are one.
In the reflection, thoughts, feelings, and experiences
are contemplated to help one make
the next choice in life
based on evidence, rather than impulse.
Reflections are essential
to achieve improved choices.
All Art is a form of reflection.
The artist places his reflection into a form
that permits his reflection to be shared.
In theatre, a team of artists create
a reflective imitation of a segment of life
to celebrate the mysteries of living.
I live in gratitude
for having the gift of reflection.
***
The bottom line: Does it serve?
To perfect a career,
one must work on perfecting one’s spirit.
This is the hardest and loneliest job.
My hope is that the Spirit
who gave me a conscience
constantly supports me.
The most complex tribulations and joy
come from surrounding people,
with their otherness in concepts and goals.
The bottom line of every career
is “does it serve
in some practical and/or spiritual way
to improve and support the common good
in proportion to resources used?”
The profit to be rejoiced in
is the universality of humanity’s growth
in happiness, health, and hope.
***
It is You, God, who orders roses for the world.
To survive, I must want to survive.
It is beauty that leads me to desire to continue infinitely.
The beauty of a rose is exciting in and of itself,
but when a rose is given as an experience of love,
its beauty is irresistible.
It incorporates the beauty of human gratitude
as well as its own beauty.
It is You, God, who orders roses for the world!
They are an expression of Your love.
Realizing this, the beauty of a rose
never fails to spark my heart, set it racing,
awakening my desire for infinite beauty.
The beauty of God Himself flashes forth in each rose.
Yet how many years did I look on roses
before discovering this beauty?
***
Truth, Justice, and God,
are just beyond human comprehension.
Yet we must try to experience them
with all our heart.
They all three exist in our imagination
to stimulate us to strive to know them.
They are the mysteries that artists pursue
in an attempt to capture a brief glimpse,
to enhance each observer’s personal search.
I am grateful for the foretaste
of these mysteries given me by theatre.
Beauty in all its forms
hints at the essence of
Truth, Justice, and God.
***
When the cause fails to be found
or there are several possible causes
with equal resistance to proof,
the scientific searcher may brag
that there is no cause.
The philosophic sage may observe
that out of nothing, comes all.
The Jewish scholar says there is no name.
There is simply, “I am that am.”
“Nothing” is an honest answer,
a humble answer.
Kierkegaard might well use his poetic word, “absurd!”
***
Suffering is inescapable,
because in the spiral that is life,
change is unavoidable.
There will always be growing pains,
and the pains of growing old.
The degree of suffering accompanying all changes,
depends on one’s attitude,
for psychological as well as physical pain is present.
The psychological hurt is the most dangerous,
for it can refuse to heal, may spread to others,
may even fester into suicide.
For Job, the boils were not as painful
as Satan’s belief that physical disasters
could destroy his faith, gratitude and love.
God’s trust in Job, and Job’s trust in God
heal all the pain.
Trust is a pain killer better than Advil.
***
“Spirit”
Definition from the dictionary:
The breath of life, or the life principle, conceived as a kind of vapor
animating the body.
The life principle, viewed as the “breath” or gift of deity; hence,
the agent of vital and conscious functions in man; the soul.
In the abstract, life consciousness viewed as an independent type of existence.
“Spirit”
Synonyms from the thesaurus:
Essence
Will
Mind
Incorporeity
Strength
Courage
Character
Guts
Heart
Mettle
Soul
Inner self
Life-force
***
“Be it done unto me according to thy will”
is a most efficient prayer and the most secure,
for He wants for you joys beyond even your imagination.
“Be it done unto me according to thy will”
should be followed by silence in which one listens,
totally without anticipation of His answer.
God’s answer is commonly surprising.
God wants us to go through the spiral pattern of life
slowly, unhesitatingly, always onward
into infinite happiness.
The spiral is a symbol of eternity,
for it is an unending form.
God wants us to spiral through old age,
focused on the developing spirit,
rather than on the diminishment of the earth suit.
A plant’s final attention is on the seed and its perfection,
so we must focus on the developing spirit.
Our spirits are servant and heir to the all knowing Creator.
***
We can change ourselves.
God communicates
to give us the good news
that we have the power within us
to create peace
by making the right choices.
God tells us to be confident and loving.
Those who tell us to come before God
with a sense of our sinfulness,
to come in sorrow,
would encourage us to feel
we are powerless.
God tells us we have power within us
to change ourselves and the world.
He demands us to confidently
make changes in ourselves.
God will not do it for us.
He gives us the strength to change ourselves.
***
When breath stops, I must depend on God.
I must want to experience His presence.
When a monk is asked what one must do to experience God,
the monk pushes the head of the questioner under water
and holds it under for quite a while.
Then letting the questioner up,
the monk says, “You must want to experience God
just as strongly as you wanted breath a moment ago.”
I want You now and then, dear God,
but I must admit, with nothing like
the necessity and constancy and habitualness
with which I want to breathe.
But You are more vital to me than breath itself,
when breath stops, I must depend on You.
Krishna help me break myself of the “now and then” desire.
***
The soul itches to explore.
God is continually telling us
not to get confused and think that this earth,
this body, is an end in itself.
If the eye would diminish one’s essence,
pluck it out, advises God.
The diminishing body of old age
needs to be accompanied with a full consciousness
that as beautiful as life can be in this womb of earth,
there are greater powers ahead:
the ability to will into existence whatever one desires.
At death, all one’s knowledge and power to love
are gathered together for the transcendence
out of time into infinity.
The soul itches for consciousness of all possibilities.
It itches to be free of aging body and frustrating time,
to be in God’s parallel universe exploring all possibility.
It is the itch of the soul that counters aging.
***
The Kingdom of God does not begin with a church,
nor does it end with a church.
The Kingdom is roofed with the stars.
For the human race the earth is the Kingdom’s altar.
The Kingdom of God is imprinted in every human heart
regardless of the creed professed.
Each conscience is imbued with love of life,
the gospel of the Kingdom of God.
The silence out of which the universe springs,
and the silence brought by death define the Kingdom.
The Kingdom resides in the creative chaos of existence.
The Kingdom is not at home in the institutions of man.
It is the charity of the universe in supporting humanity,
the humanitarian relationships of human to human
that expands the Kingdom of God within my heart.
