Author: rkcdlitt

We know that we have only one true father. . . God. However, we are also parents, and I don’t mean for our own children. God gives us all the ability to parent others, an extremely remarkable gift. Just as we are called to complete the work of God on Earth, we are called to celebrate the slow, tedious work to bring all of humanity to God’s door and restore goodness to humanity.

The elders of the early church, those who chose to live in the deserts of Iraq and Egypt, formed a community built on the meaning of genuine inner power, genuine Love, exploring the meaning of God’s wish for humanity, all this through the practice of prayer. Jesus, in turn, promised His presence in all we do. As an eternal companion, the Holy Spirit guides us through the difficult times, opening doors beyond human trials which bring us to God’s realm.

Kyrios brings us Love and Wisdom! We are joyful in our communal and singular praise and singing! Through His Love, we have more peace, more Love, and more gentleness than we hold. This grows as we send it to others and as we share prayer together.

God asks that we dig down deep to find the troubles that we must combat; our hands are stained by the filth we have to traverse to aid those in need most; but God does not care about our dirty hands. Each time we parent another, He cleans our hands with His Love and Grace.

I pray that we can fulfill the words of Barbara Glasson and Ale De la Torre as they write, “We are not people who protect our own safety: we are people who protect our neighbors’ safety.” Convert that to parenting and prayer, and we have what God asks.

© Russell Kendall Carter

John 11:35 “Jesus Wept.”

I believe that God loves us forever; but I also believe that God is very sad about how we serve and care for each other. What happened in our humanity to coopt the beautiful message for humankind that Jesus teaches us every day? Too many people are simply turned off by the lack of human kindness for each other. There seems to be too much boredom with false promises.

Our very breath is an invitation from God to share His Love. My meditations  

Center on my breath; I sit in silence and breathe. I listen! I sit in God’s presence, loving mankind. At times I am bored by the messages our political and spiritual leaders expound, but then I realize that they are constrained by us, the people. If they raise their voices too loud, they are cast aside like yesterday’s news.

Fortunately, most of us are disciplined enough to work through the tedium of our leaders’ empty rhetoric and return to what God truly wants. That is Love and peace. Many of our leaders remind us that God’s lovingkindness surrounds us, comforting us as the world seems to deteriorate around us. We endure because we love, and care, and serve.

We are of the world because we are mortal; but we also have eternal life when the roots of our very beings are firmly implanted on God’s lighted path the kindness, righteousness, and love.

Dear God, Savior of all there is, allow the breath of my body to keep the eyes of my heart open to injustice and cruelty. Give me the courage to speak out. Give me the strength to stand up, taking over a position of leadership when others fall, working with our leaders. We are all your children, Lord, we know You are our strength; we know You are our future as You have always been in our past and present days.

© Russell Kendall Carter

We are missing something very important in our lives today, this may very possibly be each other. Our world is at war; you may say it is only in Ukraine, but you are wrong. Our world is at war against cruelty, inhumanity, and Love. I pray for God to come into the madness we call civilization.

God brought us community; several times over the course of recorded history, God has tried to join us together in Love and mutual care. But of course, we ignored Him. Thousands of years ago, humanity created the idea and the institution of church and called it many names. The idea being that in church we pray together and follow the leadership of God. And as often as this was tried, it failed; the result – always war. Our churches are not relevant enough because they are not doing the job necessary to maintain peace.

To quote Ilia Delio, “For centuries the Church has operated like a well-oiled machine, but the oil is running low, and the machine is running down.” St. Francis really did not want ordained priests. I don’t know all of his reasons, but I think the tendency to follow whatever liturgy the church demands is a good guess. Not that the liturgy is bad; it is just outdated. Church is supposed to bring us together; but a church that ignores the horror and the trials or of people’s lives is irrelevant to most reasonable people. We cannot ignore the terror of people subjected to the horrors of the world.

Churches are not bad; the drive they have to assist refugees are God’s work. But he community doing this is tiny compared to what can occur should the church speak out against the terrors of war. There is little protest heard from the pulpit, and face it, once the sermon is over, people leave the church to go on with their lives. I don’t know why clergy is reluctant to condemn war openly; I don’t know why they will not put aside the message of the Bible proscribed for a particular day to relate God’s message to people about the wrongness of war and the wrongness of sin in our everyday lives.

I only know that we need each other, particularly in times of war. This is God’s wish. Our community of Love should raise us to the stars we see in the sky; the joy of heaven is realized when we listen to the needs of others and respond accordingly. My neighbor’s story and suffering is my story and suffering.

What is church all about? I’ve always believed that church is community with shared struggles and blessing; these come from our shared stories and our shared Love. It is these that which bind us together. It is these that when working together and following the path of God bring us eternal blessings.

Dear Father of all, You have brought us into community sharing Your Love in a beautiful way; when our world is full of unrest, misery, and war, come to us as our savior and protector and lead us out of our self-made trials.

© Russell Kendall Carter

How can we carry the light of the world to our fellow man? As we walk in the darkness of our world, we are the lanterns that can bring God’s Truth to our fellow human beings. We are the holders and spreaders of Mother Wisdom’s illumination. We hold Her lantern in our hands.

Mother Wisdom was the first creation of God; She is also the creator God, the feminine side we often reject. She is our nurturer.

Mother Wisdom (Chochma in Hebrew, Sophia in Greek) is ignored or forgotten in male dominant societies; She is not accepted as authority. Those who demand that God is only male are reducing God to an authoritative, selfish God who only cares for man, woman being a servant. Without recognizing the feminine Chochma, we allow Her to slip into eternity and we ignore God’s Truth.

Wisdom orders God’s true creation; She combines all points of our Earth, uniting us in Holy order. As Solomon writes, “She embraces one end of the earth to the other, and She orders all things well (8:1).” She changes nothing but gives us a system of order to organize our lives for Truth. She is God’s light for the world.

When I attended a small church in northern New Jersey, we experienced a wonderful growth event at Easter. Our Holy Saturday service was held in total darkness symbolizing the darkness left with the crucifixion of Jesus. At the conclusion of the service the ushers would pass our small candles and light them as we left the church. Mother Wisdom was walking with us as we brought God’s Truth and Light out of the darkness. Our small candles brought the light of Jesus into Creation.

Presently we are suffering with impending doom in the world. I pray that Mother Wisdom enlightens those who are creating this trial and relocate the light and wisdom so freely given by God.

© Russell Kendall Carter

“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and right-doing,

there is a field. I’ll meet you there.” Rumi

To paraphrase Churchill, God is a belief wrapped in a mystery inside our faith. I am blessed to be born by my faith; I am also blessed to live by faith. God calls me to serve my brothers and sisters; I answer Him and rejoice in His presence. He is always near me in triumph and trial. I am restored to completion as I live by the Holy Spirit within me.

Don’t be shocked, but I truly believe that God needs us!

He sent His Son to bring mankind back to God’s Love and Grace; we killed Him. Before He left us, He told us to continue His good works; we, therefore, are His disciples. We are now the purveyors of Love, moral healing, and gentleness. God’s Wisdom is within us and by living in prayer, we lead others to the energy of God’s creation and Love. We help our fellow man through God’s Grace because we are Love also.

Our mortal bodies are nothing more than temporary manifestations of our human minds, separate, but not equal to our spiritual creation. Our bodies have limited time on Earth before the permanent visage of God’s Spirit bring us back to the perfection He created.

Gracious God, we ask Your forgiveness for any mortal transgressions we have committed; please guide us as we strive to do Your work on Earth, lifting our fellow man from the perils of moral poverty, as we practice the Love Your Son gave us such a short time ago. We humbly await your presence as we trudge through our incomplete world which demands instant gratification. We accept You as our image of gentleness and Love. May we pass these gifts to others in Your name.

 © Russell Kendall Carter

Jesus walked a very difficult path in life. His mission was necessary and holy. His spirituality was without question the greatest ever seen.

I sometimes wonder whether humanity, or anyone in humanity has the faith or even the moral integrity to walk the same path today. Do we have the moral integrity to make similar difficult choices, or are we just hollow men plodding through life avoiding all hardships and accepting any temptation that appears in front of us?

Søren Kierkegaard writes that forgiveness of another is our own forgiveness, and the forgiveness we give is the forgiveness we receive. Although Jesus says it better in Matthew, “Forgive, and you will also be forgiven. (6:14)”

We live in constant mortal reality subjected to all of the discomforts that come with it. For many, we are nothing but bystanders in the drama of our own lives. But this can be and will be different.

Read the Bible, pray. Read a newspaper, pray. Both sources carry man’s obnoxious ability to forget God and His Love for us. How different it could be if we follow what God has offered.

Profound humans, humans who care, give, you can fill what is given us so freely by God. Personally, I want God to believe in me. For this reason, I pray. It is only then that I hear His voice. My prayers and my listening to God’s voice have evolved my spiritual life to one of comfort and grace; the spiritual change I feel is the joining of myself with God.

©Russell Kendall Carter

I have an unsettling reality that at the same time frightens and lifts me to heights I have never before attained. I know that God is with me in Spirit, always; God is also with all others at the same time. This is a most-trusted gift that I realize, and I must share equally. As a human, I am the pure expression of God’s presence within me; this is called my soul, or should I say God’s Pure Possession within me. I am the human projection of Soul, and Soul is the substance of God, of Life, of Wisdom in man both individually and universally.

John (14:12) reminds us that Jesus promised that if we truly believe in Him as the Son of God, we will also do the works that he does. Life, Truth, and Love are the realities of the teachings of Jesus. They grow in Faith and spiritual understanding that God is the eternal healer. Jesus wants us to imitate Him, which is possible by the presence of God all around and all within us. God wants the incarnation to continue, and we through faith are the disciples of Jesus.

I praise and love God, but, and this is very important, I trust God. He gives me inner peace, a lasting peace that is overwhelmingly the best part of me. God’s Love is timeless! As I concentrate on my spiritual direction, as I meditate and pray to and for God, conversation between us ebbs and flows. There are innumerable periods of silence. It is in these interludes that I hear the voice of God, the tiny inner voice that attaches my soul and heart to my desires to serve Humanity, God’s Holy Creation.

I pray for the welfare and healing of my friends; I pray for the welfare and healing of my unknown friends. This is my overwhelming joy. When I am truly feeling distraught, as I pray for others, my own condition brightens. Prayer is the simplest joy of life; it is also the basic joy of life for it brings God’s Love within.

God’s responds with precious gifts when we pray, but only when prayer is shared. Prayer brings me peace within.

© Russell Kendall Carter

The Sermon on the Mount is without a doubt the most interesting and most important sermon ever offered for mankind. The forgiveness that Jesus offers us is stirring! there are no threats to our self-recognition, our weaknesses, or even our positions in society. There is not even a moral lesson to it unless you include the promise of eternal forgiveness.

Add the promises given in the prayer He teaches us, and we find a guiding light for our lives. As long as we live, from childhood to old age, we are comforted and blessed by the promises given us, the promises we make to God, and the promises we make to our fellow humanity. Whomever walks in God’s light walks on a path of service to others. The blessing of this is of course the presence to God within us always.

The beauty of this is that by walking on the lighted path of service, we have the power of God in our hands. Nothing can surpass or deflect our efforts to help others. Nothing is more beautiful than a church of like-minded human beings in service to the less advantaged surrounding us, and there are too many for us, but not too many when we do the work of God.

We call on the power of God to heal us when in poor health of body or mind. We can also call on His power to heal the rifts between peoples to end the eternal struggles that we have between us.

God is all powerful; God is Love; God is Truth; God is omniscient. Life, Truth, and Love are the realities of God; these three both glow and grow in faith and true spiritual Wisdom, true spiritual prayer. In our human state, our relationships and conversations ebb and flow. During the silent spaces between these phases, it is necessary for us to turn towards the Divine and allow the silent times to welcome God into our midst, thus preserving the Love God offers. This is His guiding hand of Truth and Love.

© Russell Kendall Carter

Jesus told His disciples that in three days he would restore the temple; of course, we all know He was speaking of His body.

We are not different! Our bodies, our temples are gifts from and gifts to God.  Our temples store the presence of the Holy Spirit, protecting and guiding us through our mortal life. God’s Wisdom is His temple and is my temple if life. This gift is free and is THE WAY of God, the way of Jesus. Without this gift we cannot find God, we cannot feel the Holy Spirit within. In my waking hours, and I pray in my hours of sleep, I am always present for God’s Wisdom, for the presence is always within me. I know that miscellaneous thoughts and ideas, the trials of my life, come and go, but I also know that God’s Wisdom is always present.

My mortal life is limited, but with God’s Wisdom always within me, any trials I face are not permanent; they do not harm me, they make me stronger, in life, and in faith. A kinder, gentler world is available for me because I know that any assistance needed is always within me supported and protected by the Holy Spirit.

Holy Father, I pray that I will always be faithful to the temple You have built inside me and that I will follow your Truth always.

© Russell Kendall Carter

My eyes always search for the presence of the faithful; they surround me with love and comfort all day and all night long. They are a blessing I enjoy with God’s compassion. The faithful in my presence allow me to dream of the other world that is possible, the world of God, not of man. I know that in this revelation of truth, God lives within us as a nurturing Spirit.

Gracious Father, my soul suffers for Your salvation. I praise You and love You, God, yet I remain fragile; I remain vulnerable; I am completely dependent on Your Grace. My soul is a simple creature, one of Your creations. I am forever climbing Jacob’s ladder to attain a higher salvation from this wicked man-tainted world. I continually search, even though I know where true salvation lies.

I lie awake at night suffering in both physical and mental anguish; I fear for my isolation in this disparate world, awaiting Your curative presence. I turn to the paradox of my very mortal life. I search for the revelation that Jesus brought forth the knowledge that the human and the divine are joined forever; they are not separated by man’s foolishness. My true self dwells with the Divine God of my fathers, of my fellow humans, with my very soul; this is my salvation.

© Russell Kendall Carter