“Yahweh Tsuri-The Lord Is My Rock!” is one of the ancient Hebrew names of God. I recently wrote a reflection on whether I was worthy enough to refer to God as “ABBA,” the name Jesus used for God. I am not strong enough, or pure enough in my own mind, to call God Abba, but from my earliest religious Sunday school education, I am sure, no, I know that God, you are my way, my truth, and my life. No one has the power to change that. My relationship with my Father is too strong.
I know that life throws us many problems to face; I have stumbled over many, and with the help of a strong family, a super-loving wife, and my faith in a loving God, I have been able to surpass these problems and journey on the path to spiritual enlightenment.
I’m a practical person, so I do not believe in a return to Eden, but I do believe in a path to return to earth, God’s creation, to some semblance of rightful peace. Yet I fear that humankind is too enamored by its toys of warfare! I feel that I am blessed to believe that I can luxuriate on the final lines of Maya Angelou’s Poem, “On the Pulse of Morning”:
I have been contemplating my navel a great deal lately, which is a futile attempt at hypocrisy since the last time a had a naval was 1985 after a nearly fatal auto accident and major surgery on my abdomen.
Anyway. I’ve been seriously contemplating life. Because at the ripe young age. Of 82. I sometimes wonder how I’m still here. But God does have something for me to do. Maybe it’s just writing this blog. Where I attempt to pull that past love and kindness together, Peace and charity through my words. to those who read my blog three or four times a week I publish. Today my musings settle on medieval doctors, you remember the ones with the masks and the large horns that stick out about a foot and 1/2 from their faces, practicing voodoo medicine. I’m seeing one today because I’ve had migraine headaches for about two 2 1/2 years. I feel pressure on my brain. You know, sleeping, lying down, sitting in chair, standing, walking, exercising, reading, writing. 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 1/4 days a year. And all they do is say, here, take this pill. All from their horned masks. Voodoo. . .boo!
There is no Jesus walking around here and able to place his hands on my head to cure me. But. . . there is a God. . . and he does reach down every day. . . to comfort me and tell me that everything’s going to be fine. Because like you and all sons and daughters, I am one of His beloveds, and the path I walk on is sacred, as I do His bidding on Earth. In my daily meditations I receive a message to meet people with agape love, recognizing the face of God is in every person that I meet.
Friends, I am a great skeptic. I am of great faith. I believe in God, and I believe that She believes in me. I believe there was a man, a prophet, a healer named Jesus. When he gathered his disciples, he merely said, “Follow me!” He never said to believe in him, but always to believe in His Father. I understand this to mean that his miracles were performed by God, not by man.
Therefore, As I walk the streets of Virginia, I meet God with a smile and a blessing every time I say hello to someone new.
Russell Kendall Carter, BA. MAT. Dlitt.
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Violence rules our world. If we don’t like something, we burn it down; if we don’t like someone, we shoot him. See? Problem solved in one easy step. Suspicious boat heading to our shores, shoot it out of the waters; politician we don’t like, kill him; high school kid playing a prank on my lawn, shoot him dead. It’s OK, our guns rule the world; ask our President.
Isaiah 24
They shall beat their swords into plowshares
Our politicians agree, because they dare not make any laws against the gun money being passed around the halls of Congress. (Sshh! we’re not supposed to know or talk about that.) We just visit the families of all the children and kneel and pray with them when their children are killed in the mass shootings at their schools or their church schools. This shows we really truly care!
I truly believe that mankind is not a feebleminded as we appear. Sometime in the distant future we will come to our senses snap judgements, not hate make offerings more important than weapons, where lovingly kindness is our first response to hardships and not violence.
If I read the Bible correctly, and accept the mythology as written, exactly, about, 2000 years ago, in the aught twenties, a vagabond man named Jesus wandered around the lands east of Jerusalem causing an awful lot of problems for the religious leaders of the times. He healed the sick and the lame, raised at least two from death, and forgave many from their sins. We call Him the Son of God; and He called God, Abba. And my question is: do we as sinners have the right to call God, Abba, as Jesus did? Jesus being the official Son of God, or Son of Man as He called himself.
I was raised in the mystic faith of Christian Science where we all we created as people who could heal as Jesus did, therefore, I deduced that we were all children of God, so I being a son of God could legitimately call God, Abba. When I moved to Virginia, my wife and I joined an Episcopal church, and I very quickly learned how much of a sinner I was to assume being an equal of Jesus. I was not allowed to take this liberty. I was not pure enough.
Being completely lost, I began a life-long study of Jesus and Christianity and have been turned around several times, led down blind allies, turned around, started over, questioned Jesus, questioned myself, never truly questioned God. My faith remained with me. There are two truths we can pull from history. Jesus preached and told many stories and parables promising that we are all children of God.
At the Council of Nicaea, to end all the bickering and arguing, Constantine finally called an end to it and demanded it be as it stood st that time; all agreed. And the structure of the church they created was similar to that of the military Constantine led. The exception being in names, instead of Lieutenants, Captains, and Majors led by the General, the church would be led by priests, bishops, cardinals, and the Pope. Just as strict a hierarchy.
I call God, Abba, because I believe I am a child of
God: because for the past dozen years, even though I have an undeniable strong Christian history, I have called myself a man of faith, faith in God, faith in Jesus. Faith in Abba!
From my old 1896 King James Bible, Matthew writes “Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth (5:5);” but in the Old Testament, the Pslamist writes, “but the meek shall inherit the earth; and shall delight themselves in the abundance of peace (37:11).” Meekness is also one of the four dignities in the study of Buddhism. Being meek is not being weak; it is being kind and bringing love into all situations which we find ourselves involved. You may be surprised how many irate people become tongue-tied when my last words to them are “I love you.”
Sometimes I wonder whether or not what I’m thinking is rational. Christianity worships the Triune God. I find that to be repulsive at times. It’s more mythological than real. Do I believe in God? Absolutely! Yes! But there is only one God. God is the master of our creation, all creation. Why is it that we have to take something as important as God and bring Her (Him) down to our level of unimportance? If we believe what’s written in the Bible, and I understand that Bible was written by mankind for the purpose of mankind. It says in the Bible that God created man in his image. I am created in God’s image. Now if I think about that. I look in the mirror. Can I see an image of God? I don’t see God. I see an image of myself. A reflection. An imperfection. But not myself. Seeing myself is impossible. Because it’s not me. So, therefore. If I’m an image of God, I’m not seeing myself.
I have trained myself to see God in the faces of all whom I meet. This has changed my life. I am a happier and more sedate person, for I am not seeing evil; I am seeing contentment; I am seeing God’s perfection. Even when the person I meet is not a perfect human, I see God; I take her hand, or place my hand on his shoulder, while we are talking. We join together into each other’s sphere of friends or even families of love and understanding. We joke, se talk, we share! When we part, we part as friends; I always part with a simple blessing because we both have changed and become different people.
I grew up and matured in the life of the church. Two different denominations shaped my life, along with other factors that tried to influence how I should look at what life in the 20th century was supposed to mean; education, war, then the rush to earn money. And tucked in between all that, marriage, children, family, and the celebration of life in church. This was the life of the successful 20th century man. Life, family, and church, all incorporated by the struggles to earn money. Because . . . . . Church and money ruled our world!
My mid-life struggle began in violence after a near-fatal auto accident, a pool full of teenagers, and a love of reading history. God spoke to me and led me into the world of education, and I became a high school teacher, where I began to learn what was really important in life. Let me rephrase that; I learned really was not important I life; it has taken me many years of searching to approach the fact that I still do not truly know the answer. But I did learn during my first year of teaching that it is impossible to teach anything to young minds anxious and begging to learn. As a high school history teacher, I tried to open their minds to allow them to think for themselves and not be shy about sharing their thoughts. I was a guide, a mentor, never a teacher. And oh! How they succeeded!!!!
Over my twenty-five years of being a mentor to students of all ages, (I returned to college to get a doctorate in literate and taught in a local community college, where my oldest student was 72)and all backgrounds, and all religions, I opened my minded to all cultures and learned more from them than they could possible have learned from me. To this day, I believe that we all were blessed by being together.
I have been blessed with a variety of students who have made me a better person. From valedictorian to football star to a boy with severe cerebral palsy, or an Iran war veteran with PTSD, or an immigrant who has difficulty with the English language. All have blessed me by making me a better person and allowing me to be called aa mentor in their lives.
I am honored with the knowledge all of my students have shared with me, and at age 82, I do not know how much more time God will give me to learn more about life and what is important.
What I have learned is that we are all made in God’s image.
I opened my Bible at random before meditation today and my finger fell on Genesis 27: 15. “Then Rebekah took the best clothes of Esau her older son, which she had in the house, and put them on her younger son Jacob.”
We all know the story about Jacob’s fame and fortune thanks to Rebekah’s duplicity; or let us call it dishonesty. Is this why all of man’s history is based on duplicity and when extreme, spreads to wars? I won’t blame Rebekah because man’s quest for more has everything to do with it. Duplicity and greed seem to run our world.
I fear our greed is leading us to another huge international war. Those with money and power want more; they feel that their mansions and yachts are not as luxurious as “the other’s” are. They weren’t gifted with a personal luxury plane of their own.
Jealousy and greed are the fore-runners of great international tragedy, We must all pray that these forces of personal lust do not cause the earthquake that shatters the dreams of the other.
But —– call me an idiot; call me a fanatic; call me a man of too many dreams!!!!
But I believe that if we all turn our faces to Sol (our Sun) during the daylight hours and turn our faces to the billions of lights in the night sky, we will find God, or the name you call your all-mighty in the religion you practice; and in the clamor and noise of all the voices screaming the will of love and peace to Her (or Him if you prefer), God will hear the voice of a little three-year-old girl squatting by a stream with a small stick in her hand drawing a picture of her pet sheep in the mud, praying to God “please don’t let anyone hurt little Molly.” And God will hear her.
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I am now 82! I was born in wartime. I have lived through six other wars, police actions, armed conflicts, etc. Call them what you will; people died, and not just soldiers. I pray for the soldiers and the victims on boths ides; all are brothers and sisters whom I love. We all share a deep Love from God together.
See the little girl in the middle; her life is too precious to harm. Let us Love!
Or should this really be the turmoil of life and death; or, better yet, the stink of life and death~~~
A – We rise this morning to a day filled with promises of love and glory. The Sun is shining; the birds are singing their glorious songs; and the children are happily skipping their way to school down the street. We step out our front door, look at the beautiful day, and decide that it is the perfect day to walk to work, for the Lord is sending Her love and grace to fulfill our baskets of plenty today.
We stop at the local coffee shop, get our favorite cup of coffee and when we turn around, bump into a lady, being very upset, we apologize and go on the way to the office. When we get to the office, we notice our suit jacket, shirt, and tie are very stained by spilled coffee. . . the rest of our day goes downhill very quickly.
B – We rise this morning to a day filled with promises of love and glory. There is no Sun; a storm is blowing the leaves on the trees upside down. No birds are singing their glorious songs; and there are no children happily walking to school; their mothers are all backing their SUV’s out of the driveways to drive the children the three blocks down the street. We hop in our own cars, drive the few blocks to work, park, run into the coffee shop, grab a cup of coffee, turn quickly, exchange pleasantries with the same woman we bumped into yesterday behind to us, rush to our office, and go to our desk. . . and have the best day of the year.
Why does God play such foolish games on us?
Ah, yes, the fickleness and turmoil of modern-day life!
Meditating to Heal 
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