Is Someone Paying Attention?

The confusion and turmoil of [Earth] do not signify that the paradise Rulers lack either interest or ability to manage affairs differently. The Creators are possessed of full power to make [Earth]a veritable paradise, but such an Eden would not contribute to the development of those strong, noble, and experienced characters which the Gods are so surely forging out on your world between the anvils of necessity and the hammers of anguish. Your anxieties and sorrows, your trials and disappointments, are just as much a part of the divine plan on your sphere as are the exquisite perfection and infinite adaptation of all things to their supreme purpose on the worlds of the central and perfect universe. [258:4]

Lacking Wisdom?

I couldn't resist, it's one of my favorite scriptures...

If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all men, generously, without reproach, and it will be given to him. (James 1:5)

Even though I rarely find anything by the particular artist, on the right, that I like, it's eye catching. I'm far more partcial to the charcoal on the left.

Love

This was a little more "religiousy" than I think I'm willing to admit....perhaps I should rethink whether or not I post it. Well, here goes.

"Religious insight possesses the power of turning defeat into higher desires and new determinations. Love is the highest motivation which man may utilize in his universe ascent. But love, divested of truth, beauty, and goodness, is only a sentiment, a philosophic distortion, a psychic illusion, a spiritual deception. Love must always be redefined on successive levels of morontia and spirit progression.
Art results from man's attempt to escape from the lack of beauty in his material environment; it is a gesture toward the morontia level. Science is man's effort to solve the apparent riddles of the material universe. Philosophy is man's attempt at the unification of human experience. Religion is man's supreme gesture, his magnificent reach for final reality, his determination to find God and to be like him.
In the realm of religious experience, spiritual possibility is potential reality. Man's forward spiritual urge is not a psychic illusion. All of man's universe romancing may not be fact, but much, very much, is truth.
Some men's lives are too great and noble to descend to the low level of being merely successful. The animal must adapt itself to the environment, but the religious man transcends his environment and in this way escapes the limitations of the present material world through this insight of divine love. This concept of love generates in the soul of man that superanimal effort to find truth, beauty, and goodness; and when he does find them, he is glorified in their embrace; he is consumed with the desire to live them, to do righteousness.
Be not discouraged; human evolution is still in progress, and the revelation of God to the world, in and through Jesus, shall not fail."

Friendship, Again

Did you ever encounter someone that you wanted to know? Someone who impressed you. Who inspired you. Did you ever have the desire to be friendly with them, yet lack the courage to attempt an interaction?

I did. I wonder, how do you make friends?

Religious Musing

I am, by no stretch of the imagination, a perfect person. This is just a place that I can put my religious thought on "paper".

People are critical of what they don't know, of what seems new or strange to them. And I am certainly not immune to or innocent of criticism. I have my days. Generally when I am frustrated or angry with an idea, a group of people, or a situation. Today, it's an individual.

I have a wonderful neighbor who comes to visit once a month. She brings a companion with her and we chat for an hour or so and then they share their religious thoughts and go home. I am not on the same religious page as they are, but I think that the more important part of my interaction is to find what we have in common.

This month, with the observant Christian holiday, it was Jesus. Apropos. And I can agree with much of what they share. I think we fail to do that where I make my habitat. We spend so much time trying to prove our own point of view, we fail to see what we share. In this case, Jesus. One of my heros.

I enjoyed the visit and I look forward to the next visit. They should feel comfortable sharing with me without the fear of ridicule or sidling. I only wish that it were the same in all similar situations. Arrogance, pretension, disdain and disgust are difficult things to disguise. I've yet to encounter someone who is good at hiding conceit to an others idea or belief when they refuse to find what is common. And it's a terrible, degrading feeling to be benefactor of such behavior.

My religion was recently criticized, albeit wrapped and encircled in articulate and fancy verbiage. Critical none the less. It was unfortunate criticism. Delivered without the least bit of understanding or prior knowledge. It was, criticism at its worst. Given with sting, bite and without solution or reason. It was a judgement without any understanding, without any knowing of my religion. It was a back door indictment, delivered with a smug toss of the nose.
I choose not to be in the company of such individuals. Bitter, doesn't taste good. And you, your religion, your religious beliefs, your situation, your intelligence....are not better than me. We are, all of us, a work in progress. If you can't dig dirt like the rest of us, we don't need your help. Well, I think I feel better.

Religious Musings

This profound experience of the reality of the divine indwelling forever transcends the crude materialistic technique of the physical sciences. You cannot put spiritual joy under a microscope; you cannot weigh love in a balance; you cannot measure moral values; neither can you estimate the quality of spiritual worship.
The Hebrews had a religion of moral sublimity; the Greeks evolved a religion of beauty; Paul and his conferees founded a religion of faith, hope, and charity. Jesus revealed and exemplified a religion of love: security in the Father's love, with joy and satisfaction consequent upon sharing this love in the service of the human brotherhood.
Every time man makes a reflective moral choice, he immediately experiences a new divine invasion of his soul. Moral choosing constitutes religion as the motive of inner response to outer conditions. But such a real religion is not a purely subjective experience. It signifies the whole of the subjectivity of the individual engaged in a meaningful and intelligent response to total objectivity--the universe and its Maker.
The exquisite and transcendent experience of loving and being loved is not just a psychic illusion because it is so purely subjective. The one truly divine and objective reality that is associated with mortal beings, the Thought Adjuster, functions to human observation apparently as an exclusively subjective phenomenon. Man's contact with the highest objective reality, God, is only through the purely subjective experience of knowing him, of worshiping him, of realizing sonship with him.
True religious worship is not a futile monologue of self-deception. Worship is a personal communion with that which is divinely real, with that which is the very source of reality. Man aspires by worship to be better and thereby eventually attains the best.
The idealization and attempted service of truth, beauty, and goodness is not a substitute for genuine religious experience--spiritual reality. Psychology and idealism are not the equivalent of religious reality. The projections of the human intellect may indeed originate false gods--gods in man's image--but the true God-consciousness does not have such an origin. The God-consciousness is resident in the indwelling spirit. Many of the religious systems of man come from the formulations of the human intellect, but the God-consciousness is not necessarily a part of these grotesque systems of religious slavery.
God is not the mere invention of man's idealism; he is the very source of all such superanimal insights and values. God is not a hypothesis formulated to unify the human concepts of truth, beauty,

Fact, Truth, Religion

In close analysis of ancient and modern modes of religion, I often wonder about the bold proclamations of truth. Ancient truths, modern truths, and who really possess it. Or, do they?

"Divine truth is a spirit-discerned and living reality. Truth exists only on high spiritual levels of the realization of divinity and the consciousness of communion with God. You can know the truth, and you can live the truth; you can experience the growth of truth in the soul and enjoy the liberty of its enlightenment in the mind, but you cannot imprison truth in formulas, codes, creeds, or intellectual patterns of human conduct. When you undertake the human formulation of divine truth, it speedily dies. The post-mortem salvage of imprisoned truth, even at best, can eventuate only in the realization of a peculiar form of intellectualized glorified wisdom. Static truth is dead truth, and only dead truth can be held as a theory. Living truth is dynamic and can enjoy only an experiential existence in the human mind."

Perhaps in the perpetual quest to "know" it, truth that is, we find ourselves lost amid the clamor and claim of our religions and deaf to the truth. An insightful friend poignantly illuminated a flaw in the religion that surrounds me. She compared it to the best of theories, they work beautifully on paper, but never in reality. And why is that? Because, we are human, and we are fallible. A wonder compilation of imperfect wonder.

We would all like to believe that our religious choice is THE religious choice. The one true religion on the earth. But, it can't be. Each has something special and unique. But none is so perfect that any and all flock to it. Our resistance to do so leads me to believe that no what the mecca, the history, divine restoration, revelation or the keys one claims to posses, your personal revelation is not my prophetic epiphany. Your religious leader does not hold the divine answer to all that is. Religion is, at the end of the day, a choice. If you choose to believe it is your personal reality. I respect and honor that. I just wonder, why is the respect never returned?