Wednesday, September 17, 2014

2013 JUNE 29 THOUGHTS ON RELIGION

6-29-2013

Somebody asked me what my beliefs are and why I believe them. 

I told him that I believe God imbues all of His creations with His Spirit; and that each of us responds to Him individually because, well because He made us and we belong to Him. 

I said it’s like every artist, ever – into each work we put a part of ourselves and it shows up in everything we create.  That’s how you can tell one artist from another, because no two are ever going to be the same.  Picasso is not de Vinci. 

God put a part of Himself into each of us before we drew our first breaths, just as artists imbue their pieces of art (in whatever form) with something of themselves.  It’s impossible to create something without putting a part of yourself into it. 

What about Jesus, where does he fit in? 

Ah, said I, He is one of the Trinity – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, I said, and then said that I personally feel that the Holy Spirit is essentially female.  What I didn't say because it didn't come to me until just now is that Jesus came to hug us in person, so to speak, and to tell us in human words a thing or two.  He represents the connection between God and humanity as well as being on equal footing with the Father and the Spirit.

Well, says he, how can you say the Holy Spirit is female?  You can’t say that’s the way it is ‘because you say so’. 

For me, yes I can.  For me, that’s the way it is.  I never said it’s that way for everyone, not even for ANYONE else.  It’s just MY way.  Nobody can prove otherwise and we’ll all find out sooner or later, preferably later.  Meanwhile, each of us decides for our own self.

Then he wanted to know if I believe the Bible is the Word of God. 

All of this was taking place in a few minutes as we were working, right? 

He wants simple yes or no answers and I don’t have those kinds of answers to give him. 

He wants me to cite my sources, concrete and verifiable. 

My personal belief is that Jesus is the Word of God and my source is the Bible he’s asking about, as well as the guidance of the Holy Spirit, but trying to explain that would have taken too long and it wasn’t what he was asking. 

The Bible we’re mostly familiar with is the King James Version.  It’s the result of men writing things down, men translating the words, men editing the translations, men deciding what stays in and what gets left out, and men interpreting the final product.

All of those men were without a shadow of a doubt the products of their cultures and societies and educations – you HAVE to take that into account.

If women had written, edited, translated, decided, and interpreted, the message of the Word of God – Jesus – would have remained the same.  His message sounds loud and clear; it’s unequivocal and immutable.  BUT the BIBLE as a book would no doubt be somewhat different from the one we know. 

On the one hand, sure it makes a difference who adapted what through the course of the centuries.  On the other hand, it’s not like we have to go poking through the Bible (as we know it) without a guide.  That’s the province of the Holy Spirit, to be our guide. 

A sincere desire for discernment (getting something meaningful to YOU out of whatever – whoever – wherever – whenever - … you’re trying to understand) will kind of automatically kick in the Spirit that is your gift as part of God’s creation. 

It’s one of those things you have to take on faith.  If you’re looking for peace, for example, you’ll find passages that bring you peace, or you’ll find someone near you that exudes peace, or you’ll notice a small flower living its own quiet little life in the midst of a crazy world filled with noise and distractions, or your own memory will supply you with a moment out of time that can still give you a peaceful easy moment. 

For me, finding what I need as I need it is a function of my reliance on the Holy Spirit for guidance.  It’s not a complicated concept, but just you try explaining it to someone who has never given it much thought.  

Good luck with that.

When people rely on any given religion to provide them with what they need when they need it in a spiritual sense, instead of going straight to the Source, so to speak, things get a lot more complicated than they need to be, in my opinion. 

It’s just the opinion of a little old gramma lady, but it makes sense to ME.  You figure out what makes sense to YOU and go with that. 

The thing is that, from the dawn of Mankind, at least as far back as we can trace it, which is quite a long way (relatively speaking, from our perspective), we humans have had religion in one form or another. 

I haven’t the time nor the inclination to research all of them, but the ones I have learned a little something about all have one thing in common, no matter how different they are on the surface.

That one thing is that we humans are not the be all and end all Someone or Something is beyond our ability to thoroughly comprehend, beyond our ability to control, beyond our ability to even adequately define.  It’s a mystery. 

Now, as human beings we want to define, understand, and control.  That’s honestly just the way it is. 

Long LONG before Jesus walked the earth, people were trying to define, understand, and control.  That’s honestly just the way it was. 

It’s not like any one religion ever sprang full-fledged from nowhere, you know. 

Whatever our choice of organized religion may be (or not be as the case MAY be) the fact of the matter, as I see it, is that each and all of us HAS THE CHOICE to embrace or reject the gift of spirituality which is within us, each and all.

Every last human being on the face of the earth is different from every other, even identical twins.  We are each a unique individual. 

Differing societal norms in differing regions (or times), education, family traditions, individual experiences … all play a part in the choice each of us makes. 

Me, I seek peace, on all levels from personal to universal.  That’s MY thing, mostly.  And I found it a bit fascinating to discover, in the course of my research for an artword project I’m in the middle of, that the Gaelic/Celtic form of my name can be spelled Sidhelagh.  If you break it down, Sidhe means (besides being a label for various peoples and such) ‘PEACE’ and lagh means ‘law’.  Being already in the midst of a mystic piece of work, that bit of information kind of jumped out at me. 

My point being:  I trust in God (my God being the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit) to give me what I need when I need it.  If a definition of my very name helps to reinforce and validate my inherent need to search for peace, even such a small piece of random information can be a gift from my Guide. 

You know, there’s a Mystery within each of us.  There’s Mystery in every organized religion and guess what.  The SOURCE of the Mystery is the SAME.  It has always been, for as long as there have been humans on earth (that we know of), and no doubt will be for as long as time exists. 

We, each and all of us, have an inborn need to seek our Creator; this is my thought and my belief. 

Rome was not the first or only to recognize and take advantage of that need to forge individuals into a unified and organized force to be reckoned with.

Just sayin’.


That’s my ‘thoughts on religion’.

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