Among Us

So a well known author publicly "quits Christianity". She has had enough of Christians who are anti gay, anti feminist, anti Democrat, and anti science.

I smile.

Here we go again. Here we have Protestantism and its 33,000 denominations all over again. I don't like the way you do "my" faith and so I am going to leave you.

Are we really so pure that we can't afford to be associated with our "sinning" brothers and sisters - all those hypocrites? How pure does the group have to be before we will "own" them?

So lets assume that some groups move faster towards the Light than others. Surely, a marker that they are truly moving toward the Light would be compassion and understanding - understanding that it is only the grace of God that we are where we are - an understanding that we stand on the shoulders of all the Fundamentalists and Charismatics and Evangelicals and Pentecostals and Catholics that they are now scorning as being such hypocrites.

Oh, and what happened to . . . God loves sinners (and hypocrites) and so do I? And what happened to . . . and God dwelt "among" us? Thank God that Christ wasn't so good or so pure that He had to refrain from "owning" us.

The Knower

I'm reading "The Power of Now" while my church is doing something we call, 90 X 90. 90 X 90 is when we commit to "trying" to Center Prayer every day for 90 days i.e. 90 X 90. This book and the Centering Prayer, both say that it is a mistake to think that the mind is the (sole) problem solver. They both say that the Knower is a better problem solver than the mind.

I experience that truth in the oddest of places. For instance, I had come to an impasse in playing Free Cell. So I walked away (equivalent of leaving the mind in Centering Prayer), came back and there was the "way out", the solution.

 I love having a Way Out in life. I love having been introduced to Centering Prayer. I love "The Power of Now".

The Way Forward

There is a whole group of us out there that try to find our way forward through excessive thinking. We think that every one does this, but lo and behold, we are finding that that is not true. We are finding that some are not interested in finding their way forward, period, through the mind or through any other means. And we are finding that some are interested only in power and then there are others who live their lives through their hearts, caring nothing about power.

Being a part of the first group, it has been suggested that when excessive thinking fails you, there is an alternative. The alternative is to go and sit with your Knower. Now us Thinkers don't even know we have Knowers, much less how to sit with our Knower.

But I am finding that this is a True Way forward. When my mind torments me, I am finding I can go sit with my Knower and my Knower will show me the Way forward at the time I need to know.

Thank God for the Way Forward. Thank God for the Knower.

Co-Creators

In our Enneagram Group last night, it was suggested that our identity, our Essence, was like a light and that our personality was like a transparent piece of colored paper. So the question was asked, if our essence was the light, what was the purpose of the transparent colored paper? One of the answers that was suggested was that the colored paper was how we were able to express our Co-Creator-ness. One of the ways we were made in the Image of God was in the creating aspect and it is in our personality that we get to co-create. We get to (co)"create" a personality that blesses or we get to (co)"create" a personality the curses. We get to determine how the light is experienced by those around us (for better or for worse . . . ).