retired literature and writing professor; I write spiritual, meditative, and prayerful blogs. My life is devoted to prayer and healing prayer for all I meet.
I know him as teacher! He came to me one night; I thought I was dreaming, but perhaps I wasn’t. he came to me in a still small voice; I listened; I listened carefully! He asked what I could do to be closer to God. I could not answer! He asked again, how can you intentionally practice being closer to God. I was confused, so my first response was to say that I suppose that I would have to reset my life and start with a new perspective, perhaps looking around me and recognizing that I am not alone, I am a part of nature, and nature is a part of me. I cannot thrive unless nature thrives. This teacher then reminded me that I was first made to tend His garden. . . and listen for His word.
Come with me; step into my spirit of love and imagination for a minute; come with me across the bridge from false beliefs to the land of love, peace and beauty, where a community of true freedom is daily life. This is the place where I am real because we are real. Our eyes are wide open to the Love of God all around us. God see in all of us, all through us, all above and below us; God protects us, walks before and behind us, keeping us safe wherever we go. God gives us a capacity to love as strong as a piece of bamboo, very strong and more pliant than we could ever imagine. May Love find you and may you be humbled in the presence of finches.
I look at the world and wonder, on a daily basis, if only. Then I asked myself if only what? What am I looking for? There is so much out there that could change. Look at the person on the street making a home where I fear to go. And I used the word fear because I’ve never been there. Jesus went there. Unafraid! He lived with the poor. He lived with the sick. He believed that in them. He knew he had to live with those people. Those people. My people. My brothers, my sisters, truly less fortunate than me. Like Jesus, I know who’s out there who needs help. But I fear going there. If only. Two very powerful words. Teo words that dare us. To go where we don’t want to go. If we could shine some light on that passage, we might try; however, it is the darkness of the nights and our ignorance and the madness of those areas that we refer to as “if only” that scare us. Scare us away from working with those that need our help, that we know who we are out there, waiting. . . just waiting for us to turn and see. If only. Russell Kendall Carter, BA. MAT. Dlitt.
Unfortunately, we are trained to be disconnected people. All of our heroes in life are go-it-alone supermen who conquer all the villains that life throws in front of them, who then hop in their vintage cars and drive off into the sunset. Many of our books and most of our movies have the same theme. We have this theme because in reality our life is a series of burdens and uncertainties that disappoint us in our shallow, uninteresting daily lives. At some point, whatever our employment is, the joy and gloss is torn off to reveal the toil and mundane existence of the boring everyday existence of modern life. In our hearts and minds, we gradually deteriorate to a state of nothingness and joylessness that looks for any excitement it can find. Our physical world cannot give us this excitement forever. The light in our hearts must rise out of this mundane state allowing others to share in the will that God has put in the very core of our being that other people can observe and share, seeing the joyful difference, but realizing the similar internal feelings in their own very beings. When it does, this light from our hearts, that we all share, bears the image of God, raising us out of the mundane existence of human drudgery that no longer needs the artificial movie hero we formerly worshipped. We have overcome the enormous of influential disconnection to the message that Jesus taught so long ago and still teaches today, Love, God’s unending Love is always with us and outlasts all of our troubles, connecting us in infinite Love.
Do you see that person standing in the back of the crowd? She’s the one who is always sitting alone, many times hiding her face, too shy to speak her voice. Those few people who know her say that she has a very gentle heart, a very caring heart. When she speaks, she speaks with authority about the plight of the oppressed; she cautions that God wants us to value and respect people of all traditions and cultures equally. She laughs when she says that we should be a part of humane-ity. We should love one another as Jesus says. Could she be called by God to be our leader with her too-gentle heart? She offers God’s Grace fully and often, could her wholeness suffer the cruelty of our harsh world?
Loss hurts! Deep loss hurts forever, deeply! When we turn on our televisions, we hear the local meteorologist tell us that a new storm is coming. But when we suffer a deep loss, the storm is already here. And there is nothing that we can do or say that will lessen that loss, that will lessen the pain of that loss. I come to you with open arms. My hands raised, raised high to our God, wondering what I can give, anything will help; but I know that God is already with you. I see an aura of light around you that you may yet not feel. But with all of your friends gathered around you, lifting you with love, the love of God, bringing you God’s mercy, worshiping with you; this is the gift we bring you. For the loss that truly hurts. We pray that we can open your heart. For God to soothe your pain.
We (society) live in a world of choices, and sometimes our choices seem to sneak up on us (society) and tell us we have made a serious mistake. The terrible part of this is that we (society) are unable to change what we have done. We can be completely intolerant and blame it on the “other guy” (our neighbor). After all, it was his fault; he was the one who caused all the problems in the first place. Or, we can be tolerant, and roll up our sleeves and work together to fix the problems as they come along. Our first goal is to find a common place to start. We know that place; it has been laid out before us; it is within us; God has shown us the way. The lighted path will encourage us to work together to accomplish the work the must be done for us to be in control of our own lives. If we work together, we can gain control of our individual lives as God desires us to do. We have maximum control of our lives; not for the material goals of more money, but maximum control of life, true life, the life that matters, not the one constantly reaching out for material wealth The work God wants us to do, we can do together; it is non-adversarial; it is non-counterproductive, if that is such a word. When we work together to reach a fuller and richer life according to God’s wishes (and remember, they may be different for all of us), the result is a fulfillment not just for each individual but for society as a whole, Therefore the subject of tolerance versus intolerance really does not arise , since the fulfillment is the richness of each individual’s life. I have always believed that a full life of prayer and love will take us a long way to avoid intolerance in our world. Let us hold this spiritual truth in our minds as we walk together on the individual paths of our lives.
Did you ever think about why the ancients wrote the way they did? Whenever they wrote about one person, there was always another one in the background, or with the person, sharing the adventure or the troubles. In all the major stories in the Bible, our heroes are surrounded by friends and followers who support them during times of fear, hunger, and pain. In times of human despair, God’s love is shown in the reactions of other humans. They are the budding trees of God’s love bringing peace and comfort to those in harm’s way. Friends are the invisible powers of togetherness.
Meditating to Heal 
Leave a comment