Wednesday, July 27, 2022

How I Try To Explain My Vision Of God To Karen Jo, A Christian Fundamentalist-Evangelical

 

Nicholas Kristof On 100,000 Medical Miracles Worked 
By One Nepalese Surgeon: 
Jesus Weighs In

Dear Karen Jo,

It would be wonderful if I heal! 

And I welcome your prayers - and those of your prayer group.

But I also know that some wounds don't heal, and others heal because the wisdom of Universe is embedded in our bodies.

I am grateful for it all... albeit agonizingly at times.

The same laws of physics that make glass shatter and living flesh burn, can be applied differently and suddenly, pharmacists can predict - with certainty - that deadly microbes killing my body will die before I do.

Thanks be to God.

And thanks be to physicists.

And pharmacists.  

And to all the teachers who infuse those young, unformed minds with love of mystery and love of learning, and love of playful exploration, and the determination to figure things out and devise solutions.

We are caught up in a great, unsolvable mystery, Karen - the Magnum Mysterium - one of God's many names, all of them inadequate, all of them lovely efforts.

I know that God exists, for I know that I love your sister, as I love my Maria and Danny, and the friends who have encircled me for a lifetime, and the illiterate, Spanish-only Mexicans some of whom depend on me almost as much as I depend on them.

I also know that God does not heal amputees - ever.

But I know that our fellow humans are working on it -- our brothers and sisters in Christ if you will -- and I am confident they will restore lost limbs.

"Since God Doesn't Heal Amputees, Humankind Will. The Future Of Christian Theology"


Just as I am confident that Jesus wants us to outdo him - to find new ways to restore hope, infuse love and make broken people whole.

And none of it can be done without The Ground in which we are planted.

In John 14, we read:  

10 Don’t you believe that I am united with the Father, and the Father united with me? What I am telling you, I am not saying on my own initiative; the Father living in me is doing his own works. 11 Trust me, that I am united with the Father, and the Father united with me. But if you can’t, then trust because of the works themselves. 12 Yes, indeed! I tell you that whoever trusts in me will also do the works I do! Indeed, he will do greater ones...

But if you can't (trust me,) then "trust because of the works themselves."

Just ponder the works of love and say (whether you believe the "backstory" or not) that I will do the same works because they are loving and beautiful and I want to merge with that love and beauty. 

Just do the work!

And get the job done!

I want to follow that Way, even if Jesus' name is never mentioned.

Just trust in the works themselves, and -- even without quoting chapter and verse - you will find yourself a "doer of good, and an incarnator of Love" --moving along The Way, into the Truth and deepening your life in The Life where Love is the only Way. 

Love your neighbor.

And love your enemy.

It's the Law.

The only law.

Just love.



"Love first. Everything else later."
Rev. James Martin, SJ

I realize that some people -- maybe most people -- need scripture and Christian "assembly." 

Or, at least the assembly of like-minded believers - Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu, Zen, Native American.

I participate in such assemblies.

But there are other people too who receive The Unadorned Gift Of Love, without "scriptural contextualization," without any need to quote chapter and verse, without any need to "get an Amen!"

And those who are so gifted - like sister - know how to "do it" without holy books, without religious assemblies, without the accoutrements of formal religion.

Surely, there is room for both.

"The Gifted" on one hand; and those who are fortified/encouraged by studious assembly; along with those who learn to sing in chorus and don't just erupt in joyful noise because the spirit moves them en route to the mail box!

For both "the gifted" and for those choose - or need - studious assembly, the end -- and the departure point -- is the same. 

God is Love.

And any facet - any manifestation - any apparition - is complete unto itself.... or becomes complete whenever we (whoever we happen to be) make love real.

Whenever we embody love.

Or whenever anyone embodies love.

Whenever we incarnate love, bringing it down from its other-worldly pedestal in order to make love - in the flesh - here and now.

"Would you like some fries with that?"

So please, pray for me.

Ask your Christian community to pray for me.

In prayer - in praising - and in song we feel the spirit rise. 

And in that rising we become the music, the happiness, the satisfaction and the joy that we've known from placenta and breast-sucking onward.

XOXO

Alan


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1 John 4:18

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https://newsfrombarbaria.blogspot.com/2020/07/there-is-neither-nobility-nor-kindness.html

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https://newsfrombarbaria.blogspot.com/2021/01/cruelty-is-point-update-on-donald-trump.html


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