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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