Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Shining Through, The Winged Grail

What am I to do if God just shows up? What if He insists? There are those in the theology game that consider God pregnant like that, that His absence speaks far more about us than about Him. This is the attitude pretty much of the whole New Thought movement, and Eric Butterworth, for one, asserted that God loves to be used. He invited his students to use Him and suggested forms of positive and assertive prayer. My mother, a Unity minister wrote a book called the Handbook of Positive Prayer. It presents tested forms of positive prayer, ways to claim God's support and the granting of His power.

I am not one inclined to be so easy with my own inclinations. I do not trust them. As often is said in AA, my own best thinking got me to the desperate condition that put me in AA. If that is how twisted my own inclinations can be, how can I ever trust my gut to lead me to my best life? That is far better placed more radically in the hands of God. Thus, while I agree with Eric, God loves to be used, I disagree with the positive New Thought position that there are useful ways to get agreement with God at my request. I accept that there may be persons on the planet better qualified than me for that responsibility.

And yet, I am clearly in favor of the kind of spirit power exercised by magicians, by shamans, by musicians and poets...

Shining Through

You'll do anything
To get through to me, even
This torch job, burning
Through the thick cloud bank
I put up, a good smoke screen
I thought, but that's you
Shining through anyway
And I guess next you'll expect
Me to put you up.

January 27, 2009 9:48 AM

***********************************************

Okay, so God won't come to me....I can go on the hunt, right? Here's one outcome.

The Winged Grail

A question arose
Became a life work, seeking
Across the wide world
Into all the dark nooks,
The crannies where they told me
You might be hiding.

The chrysalis shell
Left behind leads me to ask
Who must I flutter
Now that you have flown?
Who will give me the drink now?
I thirst for mercy.

January 27, 2009 2:33 PM

9 comments:

  1. You ever see yourself shine Christopher?

    I do

    x

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  2. Is it god? I read it as something else, Beauty maybe, but that is just me.

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  3. Certainly. But I would have answered the same the other way. :)

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  4. Yeah...and does it even matter what it's called??

    God, beauty, truth....sigh

    xxx

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  5. HA! If you read that first one in terms of people instead of god it's funny. Do we have to be so magnanimous to those that see us? I always feel inclined to be so. Even with god himself, I get a good laugh out of that. Yes, put up.

    "Who must I flutter
    Now that you have flown?"
    This intrigues me. Can we find god in other people? I tend to believe we can, whatever essence god might have.

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  6. What is my role to play? What questions must I ask? I think that everything hinges on the question of whether or not there is a God, and if there is a God then what is our role here? As I was cleaning my home today I thought of a few things that I had read, a piece of writing by another blogger that somehow filled me up, an e-mail from another blogger who has become a good friend. A comment from a blogger who happens to live up the road from me who thinks I am brilliant (yes, yes I know good for the ego). It is just when I reach the bottom and have been calling out in silent pleadings for help that other come in to fill the void and in fact define things in ways that my heart yearns for things to be defined as Michelle often does for me. Yes I see God in other people and I see God in trying to figure out what is good in this world. There are a lot of opinions and a lot of options and not everything is right for people, but I do think there is a truth. Oddly, I feel as though God is aware of me and my situation and that when I seek to find answers, when I strive to understand then he works with that. I think it involves doing the hard things, the things that make sense but you might not want to face because they are hard. You are a seeker Christopher, that is a good thing.

    ~Annie

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  7. physicists have discovered that God built equipment like this to make particles and stuff....... mainly stuff.....

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  8. {{{Michelle}}} I am fairly sure that God pays far less attention to Her names than we do.

    Erin, I am quite aware of the humor in "Shining Through" but I really think like that, I am ashamed to say, so at first blush it stings rather than amuses.

    As for finding God in others, in AA people sincerely telling their own truths help others quite by accident. This so often happens that we have coined this phrase in Oregon City AA. We say, God with skin on. That means something like God hitches a ride on someone's words and zaps some listener quite outside the speaker's intention. In light of that I put forth this, "Wherever two or more gather in His name, there He also is." But I would suggest this thing of names is not necessary. That is one key experience of Alcoholics Anonymous. In there we sort of leave the name of God at the door as an outside issue.

    Annie, thank you for sharing your name. I can't tell you how I changed inside seeing it. I was married, and in some ways still am married to Annie. This is a very long story. So in this "God with skin on" kind of way, it is as if Annie wrote to me. I wish she could have written like that in life. Now she can, eight years after she passed.

    Annie Showed Up

    I am confounded.
    Where did you come from this time?
    In my face again,
    telling me, only
    you can, how I lack all earth
    and float above things,
    not a good thing now
    that I am to choose a way
    to continue, to
    love the world again.

    Ghost Dansing, true to your name chasing the special phantoms at the beginning of things. The Higgs boson. Among things we look for, this one is perhaps the most important. Do you have any idea how expensive looking for the God particle is? I don't mean that we shouldn't look, not at all. It's just that forcing God out of hiding is not even remotely easy.

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  9. I am glad to have cheered your day Christopher. :0)

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The chicken crossed the road. That's poultry in motion.


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