Meditating to Heal

“Meeting again after moments or lifetimes, are inevitable for friends.” I recently read this in Illusions written by Richard Bach. On the surface, this is the story of two men who are pilots flying old pre-WW1 bi-wing planes giving joy rides to people in the jet plane age. It is a small book, less than 150 pages, but it has taken me over a month to read because of all of the issues it has made and offered to  be meditation topics. The above is just one.

What does it mean to be inevitable? If I look in Websters, one definition is inescapable. I made two very close friends when growing up in East Orange, New Jersey; I also made another close male friend and an even closer female friend. The world was good. I had two friends that I ran the streets with and got into all sorts of mischief with and had two friends that I went to the movies, the library, and other semi-intellectual activities with. I say semi because we were just approaching our teenage years.

Then tragedy struck; on my thirteenth birthday, my father moved us to a ne town in New Jersey. It was only twelve miles away by train, but an infinite number of miles if you consider culture. I was immediately out of my league and had to catch up as if I were in a race for my life. It’s not that I forgot about my four good friends from East Orange, it’s just that I had so much more to learn, such as shining shoes (ouch) and wearing a jacket and tying a tie. I had trouble tying a tie every day of my life until I retired at the age of 75. Psychologically, I am still that pre-teen street boy from New Jersey.

Will I ever meet them again as Richard Bach says? Now I know what some of you will say. Yes, I will meet them in heaven; when we die we will meet all of our family and friends in heaven. We will rejoin those we love in God’s realm, because that is the promise of Jesus. Well friends, I don’t believe that. Heaven to me is a state of being. God is within us; therefor, heaven is also with in us. When we die, our soul becomes a part of God, as it was before we were born.

So, yes, Richard Bach, I have met my friends. Several times. Every time I think of them, at the age of 80, I meet them. I meet them not as they look at ages 12 and 13; I meet them as they look at ages 79, or 80, or 81; because they are my friends, and they have aged as I have, not so gracefully, except for Barbara; she was a beauty back then, maybe a little chubby, but still a beauty. but George, and Ronnie, Artie, and Russ, we are all just old guys leaning against on a fender of a 2023 Chrysler, remembering what it was like to play stickball on 19^th street. We were friends then and we are still friends now. It is inevitable that we meet again and again. And we are still friends.

©Russell Kendall Carter; BA, MAT, DLitt.                        

The world as we know is ending; there is no choice; we have no choice. There is nothing we can do to stop it. It is a mortal fact. We are born from our mothers’ womb, and within one hundred years, our personal world dies. We build a life for naught. We educate ourselves, we marry, we have children, we educate them, we work, we retire, then we take the time to look at nature. What we build may last, only if we have done something that benefits mankind, and if it does, perhaps it will last, but to eternity? Who knows!

Right now, I am looking at a gold finch sitting on a lilac branch just outside my window. She is beautiful with  a bright yellow body and a black mask hiding intelligent eyes. Why didn’t I notice her when I was younger? Was I too busy? Did I not care? Was I not smart enough to see beyond my own nose?

I do know that I am smart enough to know that God forgives me for anything that I may have done. God has allowed me to open my heart to love all whom I meet.  In my later years, I have learned to love all whom I meet. This has made me a happier person. Other people are fun; they are interesting; they are lovely. They are God’s children. They are my siblings. I enjoy meeting and talking with them; they become my friends, part of my family.

I have asked God’s forgiveness for my past mistakes of not loving those I have met. Acceptance of others and all their faults, coupled with the recognition that they see my faults, allows me to love, just as Jesus asks. Repentance is at hand, and is easy to accept, and to go through when I realize that my life has been one of one human mistake after another. My life now is one of atonement. I try!

Do we have the strength to be community? Do we have enough love to be community? If we have the joy to join together in love to form the community of God where we love together, eat together, work together, share together, care together, and pray together, can we live and enjoy the love of God in our midst. Can we call this the promise of Eternity? We’ve done it before, but always after periods of destructive war. Then, after a period of peace that never truly lasts, we again grow apart and close ourselves off in our own cellars of protection.

But we are only protecting ourselves from ourselves.

Our true legacies; the ones that are the promise of eternity are family. The seeds we plant in the minds of our family that are passed on from generation to generation are our true promise of eternity. I say this because mt children and grandchildren will remember me; my great-grandchildren will never know me, but what I have passed on and they pass on are my contributions that God gave me, and God gives them to pass on through eternity. This is my promise of eternity. I pray it is good; I pray it is worthy of eternity.

©Russell Kendall Carter; BA, MAT,   DLitt.      

After Jesus was brutally hung on a cross, we joyously celebrated his resurrection and vowed to follow His words of wisdom, love God above all, and love others as we love ourselves. These seem to be remarkably simple things to ask of us. However, right off, we, as humans, began to betray these simple commandments. Rome became the leader of Christianity and began dictating what was right and what was wrong.

Immediately, there was a group of people who objected to this and migrated to various deserts in Egypt and the Middle East. These few people offered a rich alternative to Rome; their communities were built on Love, the Love that Jesus taught. The people prayed; they worked for the benefit of the community; they shared. They supported each other; they loved, as Jesus asked. They read the Bible together, they discussed, argued, and learned of God.

How I wish we could roam in the woods, think about God’s creation, hear the streams flowing and understand that what we are is not what we are taught by others; it is what God has made us. If we listen, every bird, every tree, every rocky hill we climb speaks mountains to us about who we are and how we relate to each other. When the ancient Hebrews ran from Pharoah, they bickered all through the deserts, but they were faithful to each other, they cared for each other, they embrace each other when sick. This is the culture that Jesus grew in; this is the culture that He taught. Why can’t we have more respect for what He taught, what the desert Christians prayed and lived? Is it too far out of our reach today?

© Russell Kendall Carter, B.A., M.A.T., D.Lit.

This is philia; this is friendship; the ancient friendship honored by the Greeks, celebrated by Jews of the Bible, revered by Jesus in His works during His time on Earth. This is what God is doing in the world. This is our faith expressed in love, God’s Love. I know thee by name; I know thee by thy name; you are my beloved friend, forever; you are my brother, my sister, my beloved. Thank God.

God love us; all He asks is that we share our stories, share our journeys, our successes, our failures, be charitable when we hear each other’s failures. Our stories are all about families because we are all about families. God knows in His all hearing and all-knowing mind that when we share, when we find the capacity in our hearts to be kind to others, we experience a gratitude in our hearts that is like none other.

God’s Love is absolute. When we talk to people by their name, we share God’s Love, we share philia. Let us do what Jesus asks, love others as ourselves.

© Russell Kendall Carter, B.A., M.A.T., D.Lit.

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“All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full; unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again (Eccl. 1: 7).”

Do we ever think how the rivers keep flowing with water? We learned in our school science that clouds form over the oceans collecting tons of moisture and then deposit that water over the earth where the birth places of the rivers then flow back down to the oceans; it is an eternal cycle God created to replenish His Earth. Even though the water in the oceans is very salty, the clouds (somehow) remove the salt so when it rains on the land it is pure and refreshes the soil for our life-fiving plants. This is an example of God’s forever rebirth!

I think of God’s other creation: Mankind. We have been helpful; we have been destructive. Personally, I have grown to the top of my academic field; some would say I have attained wisdom; some would say I am smart. I am not so sure. What  I do know is that I did not become anywhere near either of those until I began sharing what little knowledge I attained with others.  I learned from them as they learned from me. This also is an example of God’s forever rebirth.

God brings us into this wonderful world as a pure infant knowing absolutely nothing; or knowing absolutely everything; it is then we just have to decide what is important. We have to learn what God’s mission on earth is for us. . . and then follow it as best we can. Unfortunately, we may never truly discover what that mission is; we can only hope we are on the right path. We only discover this mission when we die. It is then we know the mission is complete. We leave our loved ones in emotional  pain. But we know that we have completed the mission God has given us. We are a successful part of God’s Forever Rebirth.

©Russell Kendall Carter; BA, MAT, DLitt.

Brotherhood, such a simple idea. And yet, we have not been able to keep this simple idea since Genesis 4:8 when Cain slew his brother Abel.

If we just follow what the Bible preaches, we killed and killed for many generations. Jesus then simplified the Commandments, because ten were too difficult for Mankind to follow. First, love God, then love others. I’ll check with the families living in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but I do believe we failed at these two simple commandments also.

Let’s face it, brothers, we have failed at loving one and others. But, our God is strong; our god is supreme, our god rules all, our god is all-powerful. Our god is all-possessive! My god possesses me, and it is all mine; not yours. What’s mine is mine and what’s yours, I want. That’s the way it is brother.

OMG!!! Has it really come this far? I fear it has. Truthfully, I do not live this way; I share as I can. I give freely to three different churches. My wife and I support several organizations that help those in need. I am the chaplain for my local Marine Corps League, and I pray for all in my community who need God’s Love and Care. And, I write this column of Love and Care for all.

I believe in brotherhood; I believe in sisterhood. I believe we are all one family of God, regardless of the color of are skin, or the language we speak, or the name we call our Savior. We are all one family. And, I love you brothers and sisters.

So, when you part from each other today, don’t shake hands, that’s too corporate; hug, and if that’s too personal, a fist bump will do. I love you brothers and sisters.

Let us celebrate brotherhood (and sisterhood) everyday of our lives.

©Russe1ll Kendall Carter; BA, MAT, DLitt.                                           

I don’t attend church too often, at least physically, but I do online. My home church is downtown with limited parking and when I do get there early enough I find it difficult because it is five steps up or I have to navigate a steep hill to get to a doorway to go to an elevator. So, I get my spiritual uplift from modern internet.

After watching my home church on YouTube, I got bored due to the lack of close brotherhood I felt in the congregation and the neutrality of the lectionary-based discussion of the weekly homily. So, I tuned into the former church I attended before I moved. Instead of a conservative Episcopal church, this is a liberal UCC church whose minister is a vibrant leader in the equal rights from community activity in children’s education to voting rights to anything and everything allowing people of all colors and all genders to be live the life that Jesus taught.

Both are wonderful, compassionate men. Don’t get me wrong, the Rector of my current church is also a very liberal civil rights leader, but he rarely preaches about it from the lectern, staying mainly with the required lectionary. Thus, his Sunday messages can be a little stale.

Now that I have blathered on about the state of nothing. Let’s get down to the eternal question. I sent an email to the minister of my former church today praising him on the strength of his sermon. Then a few minutes later I sent him another that I expected no answer to, but I probably  get. I told him that if Jesus were alive today and walked up the aisle of that church today, he too would be walking in flip-flops (just as this minister was).

That got me thinking about Jesus in the marketplace upturning the tables in the den of thieves; and I wondered what and how long it would take Jesus to upturn the sacred raised mahogany benches our royal Supreme Court Justices hide behind.

Those in the marketplace made sure the leaders killed Jesus. What do you think our Supreme Court Justices would do, besides tell us that there is nothing that we could do to stop them, as they are now doing.

Jesus wants us to find God’s Truth, God’s Love  – – – always – – – that at least is the eternal answer.

Amen.

©Russell Kendall Carter; BA, MAT, DLitt.

What would it be like to be truly ignorant, to have not a care in the world except to forage for food? I have tried to think of any creature on Earth that would fit this description, but there is not. Even the ant builds a system of protection for its colony against the larger insect that threatens its existence. The most ferocious , wildest, scariest animal protects and nurtures its young until it is capable of living on its own. No, God id not create a creature that did not have some form of intelligence.

Then there is man! Our Bible says, “. . . God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them (Genesis 1:27 KJV).” We may not have the wisdom of Solomon, but we can learn to respect and to care for God’s creation. We need validity in our lives to really tend to the purity of God’s creation. This is the gift God gives, every day. I start simply. I want to be a doer in God’s world. Sitting on my back porch, I absorb God’s creation. I wonder how I can be true to God’s creation. Limited in my functionality, but not my creativity, I search the surrounding gardens, trees and grasses, wondering how I can prove my authenticity.

I am looking at my neighbor’s garden and I see a squirrel preening himself on a rock, and I am thinking how my neighbor has left a rock that size in his garden. So, I started thinking about that rock. That rock grew on me. What would I do with that rock if it were in my garden? What could I do? I started writing about being a rock. Maybe when I was twenty, now a piece of fiction. But then a light went off. I’m not the rock; He is. The reason the rock grew so big is because that rock is God. God is my Rock.

A simple squirrel was God’s messenger to remind me that I have the intelligence to continue to serve Him in love as I meet people and serve them with the Love that He gives to me and all people. Isn’t this what Jesus did and taught? As long as I have the simple smarts to recognize the little hints that God sends me each day to recognize His presence in my life every day, I will never live in ignorance.

©Russell Kendall Carter; BA, MAT, DLitt.

It is no coincidence when we find God! We awaken each morning. This morning when I awaken, it is raining, what I call liquid sunshine. I thank God for the rain. I thank God for watering my plants; I thank God for filling the rivers and the ponds allowing the animals around me to drink their fill. I thank God for doing what I cannot do, and that is caring for His creation.

Before I rise from my bed each morning I thank God for allowing me one more day of life with my wife of fifty-six years. I use a walker because my brain does not allow me to balance myself, but I enjoy every step I take.

We live with three cats; we are guests in their house. All my wife has to do is feed them and clean their litter box. Two of them bring us love in their cuddling. . . on their terms of course. The third cat is in control, she allows closeness on her terms; she will cuddle for a short period of time once or twice a day; she teaches us humility. She teaches us we are not in charge. She reminds us. . .  It is no coincidence when we find God! God is in her infrequent attention.

I talk to God in the morning. I talk to God occasionally throughout the day. I talk to God before bedtime when I meditate. I meditate to calm my mind because so much has happened in my life and so much has happened in the world that all has alarmed my soul about the safety of the future; my meditation calms me. Finally, I talk to God at night, thanking Him for keeping me safe throughout the day and keeping my wife, my grown children and their families safe. It is no coincidence when we find God! God is always with us.

©Russell Kendall Carter; BA, MAT, DLitt.

It’s about the future; when you reinvent yourself to God’s world, He gives you a new self, one that knows happiness, Truth, and Love. Jesus said if you give up your old self, you will receive a new self instead. Be it happy or sad, your past cannot rule your future. Once you see God within yourself, your future is clear; all you must do is listen.

If you truly listen to God, listen to your heart, you will begin to perform miracles. No, you will not raise someone from the dead, but you will perform miracle in your life and those around you. This is no coincidence when we discover that God is within us always. When we speak through our heart, we discover a universe both perfect and beautiful, at peace, loving.

Our brains are constantly bombarded by the news of the day, and we are dulled by the burdens of our everyday jobs. But when we pause we feel our hearts beating freely, unaffected by these turbulent pressures, for this is where God dwells. “So, we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal” 2 Corinthians. We think that what we see and hear is permanent and affects our lives, but it is only God that truly affects our futures.

Our hearts and minds are searching the future for that one perfect thing that will change our perspective on what our lives are for. Let’s think about ourselves. First happiness. Does happiness depend on what others do? Does happiness depend on what we do? Are we here only to live a long life then die? Are we here to accept God’s eternal Love and then give it away, immediately, living a life in God’s eternal house.?

God cares not for the past because He always forgives our sins and welcome us into His eternal kingdom. So, my advice is to live your life according to the way He prefer. Accept His everlasting Love and give it away to your neighbor immediately. And enjoy an everlasting future life.

©Russell Kendall Carter; BA, MAT, DLitt.