Author: rkcdlitt

We are born from the womb to a bright world of wonder. We are guided by God’s representative, our mother, into a world of promise. Yet the pressures of man’s society force us to make decisions that lead us further away from our prenatal promises of light and life, causing us not to believe in God, or at least not to trust in God.

We are taught to make our own decisions that more often than not causes others to be left behind, when in fact, by biblical rule and Jesus teaching us, we should do the opposite. Unlike an animal that knows its master, we do not know God, and if we did, we would probably ignore him. Few of us follow scripture.

When we are called to make the right decision, or rather, when we make the right decision, according to God’s wishes, we rise from spiritual darkness to the new light of rebirth, greeted by a wonder world. I also know that when we die, we experience the same awe and wonder entering God’s world that we experienced when we entered this, the difference being everything!

When God breathes life into us, the Holy Spirit enters; we are born of water and the Spirit. We feel it in our very core, the thinking heart given by God, that this spirit-enhanced life is to be shared. God invites us to share this goodness (Godness) with all.

© Russell Kendall Carter

Spiritual Unity

I found today’s message from the CAC to be very much in line with my faith in God. I love the passage in Psalms 104: “I will sing to the Lord all my life; I will sing praise to my God as long as I live. May my meditation be pleasing to him, as I rejoice in the Lord.” I consciously make every attempt to live up to what Richard Rohr says of Plotinus, “If we are in unity with the Spirit, we are in unity with each other, and so we are all one.”

We are all connected through our creation and through the Love of God. When Jesus breathed on his disciples giving them the Holy Spirit, He was in effect also breathing this Holy Sprit on us. This is our eternal brother and sisterhood. This is the guarantee that Jesus promises when we love God and love others as ourselves. As long as I live, I will praise God by loving all of His creation.

I also agree with Rohr when he writes that the most terrifying organization in our country composed by very devout Christians. But how they have distorted the teachings of Jesus. It is like they have never studied the Bible. I love reading the Bible; I meditate on it every day with the Love of God in my heart and soul. However, I also understand that the Roman fathers long ago turned the teachings in both testaments into a code of punishment, banishment, and torture to force people into a narrow way of thinking.

This is not what God wants.

I love the idea of community; I also love to write about community. In my daily meditations this morning, I read Proverbs 19:1 – Better is the poor that walketh in his integrity. I am also reminded of the parable about the woman placing her two coins I the synagogue offering. There is nothing closer to God’s truth than living God’s word.

I think of how we in Virginia care for the poor of the world. We don’t! being a student of human history, I am aware that I have many neighbors a who live in a desperate state of need. And, when I think of my human brothers and sisters all around the world who live on a smidgeon more than a dollar a day, I am truly embarrassed to live in a country that seems to put the subjugation of the poor to a lower status than it already is.

I give Five or ten dollars to the poor begging at intersections; I apologize for not giving more; I am not a rich person, although I live on much more than a dollar a day. So, I serve God. My wife and I have for years worked to ease the life of those less fortunate; but now we are older and must leave that for younger people. So, I pray. I know when I pray, I pray for God to give me the strength to write (and He hears me), to write to those in charge to look seriously at the condition of the poor in Virgina, The United States, and the world. I am sickened by our leaders’ allowing multi-billion-dollar corporations the laws allowing them to pay no taxes, which could well go to improve housing, education, and salaries of those oppressed in our world.

I get disheartened when I hear that we are a Christian nation . . . really?

© Russell Kendall Carter

Our lives are a series of events that cause us to reverse course – often; we are remind of this in song by Malvena Reynolds and Harry Belafonte: “Turn around and you’re tiny, turn around and you’re grown;” and from Ecclesiastes and Pete Seeger, “To everything (turn, turn, turn) there is a season (turn, turn, turn) and a time to every purpose under heaven.”

I am inspired by the reminder in the Bible “We hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.” Fr. Richard asks, “What has been unveiled.” This Pentecost morning God reminded me to get my mind out of gear; put it in neutral; be still and listen. I open my heart to discover what it is I am missing. God tells me to turn around; look at those who try to harm me, those who may hate me, and open my heart and love to them, love them, pray for them, because they also are my brothers and sisters.

Jesus is lord over all, and we praise how great thou (Jesus) are; however, I must work at acting that way. On this Pentecost Sunday, God asks that my turn around, see how my enemies, the poor among us, and those suffering in silence need God’s love that I am blessed to bring.

Thus, I turn around and face those whom I may have denied my love and prayers and open my heart as God asks.

I have thought a great deal about the power of love this week. Reading the story of Maximilian Kolbe, I can only praise a true image of God’s love. When I was in the Marines in the 1960s, I knew that to sacrifice one’s life for another Marine was heroic; now, I believe it is what Jesus would have wanted of me. This is because God anoints us with the essence of life, and we must demonstrate His love by giving ourselves to assist others.

I live my life leaving all evil thoughts and actions behind only to offer love to all I meet. This is what God calls me to do daily. It is why I rise daily to experience the love of my wife of 54 years and to hear and see the beauty of God’s creation. I do not separate people into us and them. There is only we because we are one in God’s creation. God anoints us with love to share His grace with all we meet, human or beast.

When we speak words that help others, we share the blessed light of Jesus, glorify God. There is nothing that is more powerful within us than our words; we, therefore, must speak with love in our hearts and voices. When we do this, we create goodness in others and the world. By choosing love in our words, we reveal the presence of God within us and Jesus with us. We are made in His image and this image includes wisdom and when practicing love, we are truly glorifying His name, as Jesus asks in the Gospel of Matthew.

So, walk in God’s light of Love.

© Russell Kendall Carter

Forgiving is something that we humans have difficulty with; sometimes I think we fear forgiving for what it may bring. Jesus teaches that the greatest commandment is to love God, but just as important to love one another as He loves us. Society makes us victims; but I am not a victim; I refuse to be. Society may try to hurt me, but it can never break me, because I am, as you are, a child of God with a soul created to love.

My soul is not perishable; my material body is. God raises my soul in Grace, giving me the opportunity to transform myself from a broken human to a perfect spiritual entity, my spiritual being. I will not call it a body. My spiritual body accepts me for who I am; it accepts you for whom you are. There is only love that brings us together; there can never be anger.

When we accept ourselves for who we truly are, we can forgive. I must add a qualification here. Jesus invites us to love others as ourselves. This means before we can love others, we must love ourselves. Before we can forgive others, we must forgive ourselves. To do this we must give up anger, anger at ourselves. Anger is a form of killing, and if we follow the ten Mosaic commandments, we know that killing is not allowed.

When we stop being angry at ourselves, we becomes closer to that perfect being that God creates; you know, the one who loves.

© Russell Kendall Carter

The word choice comes from the Old English word chis, meaning fastidious, or to me, discriminating. This is an important distinction; we cannot rush through our choices, not if we elect to follow God’s light. We open our hearts to receive the Holy Spirit, allowing God’s heaven to lead our lives; this begins within and shines out for all to benefit.

From Psalm 18: “I love you, Lord, my strength. The Lord is my rock, my fortress and my deliverer; my God is my rock, in whom I take refuge, my shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.” From this stronghold, we learn patience, but a different kind of patience. We learn to endure all that tries to bury us in hatred, racism, and anger. God does not want this for us.

Victor Frankl writes in CAC message today: “The way in which a person accepts their fate and all the suffering it entails, the way in which they take up their cross, gives them ample opportunity—even under the most difficult circumstances—to add a deeper meaning to their life.”

Meditate on what this one sentence means in and for your life. When we yield our passions to God, living a life reflecting the teachings of Jesus, we glorify and honor His name.

© Russell Kendall Carter

We are all confronted by evil; to me, most of this evil comes in the form of trite expectations expected by society. We are pressured by family, friends, political leaders, and our religious leaders to conform to a society that in reality does not exist in God’s world. Each new generation is preparing for a new age that never arrives, except only in its thinking.

There is only one way to live. We must open our hearts, push our education into the back of our minds and think in the present, or as spiritual philosophers say, in the now. When we do this, we realize that our life is meaningless unless we see others as children of God, accepting that they also are created by goodness and reflect the same. This is our one moral duty.

Matthew reports the words of Jesus after His sermon on the mountain that we must live a life that gives honor to God by our good works. Ours is not the glory; glory is only in and with God. We share this glory because of God’s love and faithfulness to us. Both of which we must share with others to realize and live in God’s glorious presence. I think of the purification of the Levites by YHWH. This symbolic action brings the gift of God within us. In effect, the Israelites were sacrificing the worldly pleasures of one sect of their group to bring God’s presence within the entire population. This is what our priests and clergy do preparing for their life of ministry. However, we must do the same in our personal lives.

We must shed all unhealthy desires for worldly riches and accept that God is the only element in our lives that gives us life, invites us to shed all overbearing impulses that invade our consciousness and, helps us understand the reality of death.

I remind myself that for God nothing is impossible. Being 78 years on this planet, I sometimes complain about physical problems and insecurities. It is times such as these that I think of what God did for Zacharias and Elizabeth in their advanced ages. Nothing is impossible in God’s world. This assures me that evil, the banality of evil is ever present in our minds dictating untruths. Therefore, I meditate; therefore, I listen to God when praying.

© Russell Kendall Carter

     I muse a lot about how our soul is so intimate with God. I ask if each individual soul connects, or our combined souls connect, with God. I lean toward our combined souls because we share love and brotherhood. This is what God wants for us.
     If we (our universal soul) are embedded with hate and envy, there is no room for God, His Grace, or His Love. We must sow God’s words throughout our beings to open the door to what God’s kingdom looks like. God placed a heart in our bodies, w heart which contains this universal soul. It is the place where our purpose, our dealings with others, and our strength shows itself.
     We know that the only way to communicate with God is through our prayers; not prayers that ask for things, but prayers for listening, listening to His words for us. I am not very musical, but I know that when I pray, there is great music in my heart. This music gives me strength, gives me love, gives me the compassion to great all whom I meet with the love of God in my heart and in theirs. 
     God ascends through my heart and I shout with joy that His presence is a gift that I must share. It is too grand, too fulfilling, and to expansive to remain within me. I in the Bible that when I trust in God, I rejoice and am glad, glad for the life given to me by a gracious and loving God. We all are created in His image; we are brightly beaming with the infinite beauty given to us on this lighted path of Christ.

© Russell Kendall Carter

God’s intimacy with man

restores life, brings gladness,

relieves grief, suffering,

brightens our hearts.

Glory only in His words;

Wisdom and glory only from God;

His creation is within our souls,

‘tis never complete.

God’s son calls us friend;

His heart is our source

for energy, truth, motivation.

We are raised from the dust

and seek glory in His name.

He is well pleased.

© Russell Kendall Carter