These are A Part of Me

From The Fourth Gospel: Tales of a Jewish Mystic by John Shelby Spong -

One cannot be fully human while continuing to violate the humanity of another which is what all prejudices encourage us to do. (p108)

The human and the divine are not two separate realms.  God is not external, God does not have to enter the world from some other realm.  When a human life is open to all that humanity can be, humanity and divinity flow together as one. (p171)

We are not fallen; we are simply incomplete.  We do not need to be rescued, but to experience the power of an all-embracing love.  Our call is not to be forgiven or even to be redeemed; it is to step beyond our limits into a new understanding of what it means to be human,  It is to move from a status of self-consciousness to a realization that we shave in a universal consciousness.  John's rendition of jesus' message is that the essence of life is discovered when one is free to give life away, that love is known in the act of loving and that the call of human life is to be all that each of us can be and then to be an agent of embowering others to be all that they can be. (p 206)

...Jesus reveals in his life the freedom to live and in that living not to be at the mercy of every distorting force in life.  It means that in Jesus there is a refusal to hide personal identity inside the security of tribal identity. It means that each of us can step outside the superiority that we think gives us a survival edge. It means that we can refuse to live inside the boundaries of a religious system that tells us that if we practice the things which our religion requires, we can win the favor of the one who has the power to guarantee our survival. It means that the drive to survive can no longer distort our humanity, nor can it compromise our existence.  It means that the life of God lives in us. It means that the love of God flows through us. It means that no one is placed beyond the boundaries of that love. It means that, like Jesus, we are free to give our life away and that this is what the experience of God is ultimately all about. That is John's understanding of the mystic reality that is met in Jesus. (p 232)

A door has been opened into a new meaning of life, a new humanity, an new being.  I have shown them the way to a new life, says Jesus. I have revealed God's glory, the glory which calls us to live fully, to love wastefully and to be all that each of us can be.  As we saw earlier there is no atonement here; there is just expanded humanity - humanity that enters into the love of God and shares in the eternity of God. (p 260-61)

... It [the resurrection] is the experience of the indwelling life of God in the form of the spirit. It comes as the life-giving breath of God flows to the disciples from Jesus, who has passed from death into life because he could five his life away in love for others. He could live the life of God. He could share in the oneness of God. He could open the door for us all to stem into the reality of God. the glorification of Jesus was in the crucifixion; the return of Jesus was in the imparting of the spirit on Easter evening.  From Friday to Sunday is in fact " a little while." There is to be no further wait for the second coming.

This is what resurrection means for John and it is not something that occurred just in the life of Jesus; it occurs or it can occur in each of us.  The Christian life is not about believing creeds and being obedient to divine rules; it is about living, loving and being.  Resurrection comes when we are freed to give our lives away, freed to love beyond the boundaries of our fears, freed not only to be ourselves, but to empower all others to be themselves in the full, rich variety of our multifaceted humanity.  Here prejudice dies. Here wholeness is tasted. Here resurrection becomes real. (p 298)

These Are a Part of Me

Matthew 7: 1

Anyone who thinks that he or she knows

all truth

or that there is only ONE WAY to

experience God is perhaps setting themselves up as a judge

-- a dangerous pastime.

jcs

These are a Part of Me.

Little Boy kneels at the foot of the bed, Droops on the little hands little gold head. Hush! Hush! Whisper who dares! Christopher Robin is saying his prayers. God bless Mummy. I know that's right. Wasn't it fun in the bath to-night? The cold's so cold, and the hot's so hot. Oh! God bless Daddy - I quite forgot. If I open my fingers a little bit more, I can see Nanny's dressing-gown on the door. It's a beautiful blue, but it hasn't a hood. Oh! God bless Nanny and make her good. Mine has a hood, and I lie in bed, And pull the hood right over my head, And I shut my eyes, and I curl up small, And nobody knows that I'm there at all. Oh! Thank you, God, for a lovely day. And what was the other I had to say? I said "Bless Daddy," so what can it be? Oh! Now I remember it. God bless Me. Little Boy kneels at the foot of the bed, Droops on the little hands little gold head. Hush! Hush! Whisper who dares! Christopher Robin is saying his prayers.

Alan Alexander Milne 1882-1956

I think this is my favorite poem of all times.  I have read it to all of my classes when I taught and loved reading it.  I never get tired of hearing it. 

These Are A Part of Me

From Minnesota by  Robert Mc Dermett
  The Minnesota lake country is of a primeval, almost embarrassing beauty, a land empty of people.
  The lake country can become a kind of addiction with men, a deep and private gut feeling that draws them back year after year to spend a few days or weeks as someone other than their "normal" selves.  People become possessed by the solitude and the wildness and bring their children so that they can learn the same strange feeling.

Pictures by Loren Bates

"Each man is a unique individual, not even identical twins are wholly alike.  By the Grace of God you are what you are. Glory in your self hood, accept yourself, trust yourself, respect yourself.  You have a right to be here and each of us has important work to do.  Never indulge yourself in self pity or spend time comparing yourself with others.  What is right for you may not be right for them and vice verse.  Don't stand in your own shadow, get your little self out of the way so your big self can stride forward."

These Are A Part of Me

From Seth II

pg. 403
    "We are the voices who speak without tongues of our own.  We are sources of that energy from which you have come. We are creators, yet we have also been created.  We seeded your universe as you seed other realities.
   We do not exist in your historical terms, nor have we known physical existence,  Our joys created the exaltation from which your world comes.  Our existence is such that communication must be made by others to you.
   Verbal symbols have no meaning for us. Our experience is not translatable.  We hope our intent is. In the vast infinite scope of consciousness, all is possible.  There is meaning in each thought.  We perceive your thoughts as lights. They form patterns.
  Because of the difficulties of communication it is nearly impossible for us to explain our reality. Know only that we exist.  We send immeasurable vitality to you and support all of those structures of consciousness with which you are familiar. You are never alone. We have always sent emissaries to you who understand your needs. Though you do not know us we cherish you.

  Seth is a point in my reference, in our reference. He is an ancient portion of us - we are separate but united - Always the spirit forms the flesh.
pg 183.
  Believing in evils you will of course perceive them. Your world has not tried the experiment as yet which would release you.  Christianity was but a distortion of the main truth - that is organized Christianity as you know it.  I am not speaking of the original precepts. They were hardly given a chance.

These Are a Part of Me

More from Seth Speaks

p 234 - God is more than the sum of all possible options of reality.  He has created and yet He is with us in each one of these without exception. He is therefore within each man and each woman. He is also within each spider, shadow and frog, and this is what man does not like to admit.
  God can only be experienced, and you can experience Him whether or not you realize it, through your own existence.
  It cannot be destroyed then. This inner self of yours, nor can it be diminished.  It shores in the abilities that are inherent within All that Is.  It must therefore create as it is created, for this is the great giving that is behind all dimensions of existence, this spilling over from the foundation of ALL THAT IS.

p 256 - All actions are initially mental acts.  This is the nature of reality.
All mental acts therefore are valid. They exist and cannot be negated.

p 360 -  You are positioned in the center of a cosmic web of probabilities that is
affected by your slightest mental or emotional act.

p 347 - Animals have varying degrees of self-consciousness, as indeed people do.  The consciousness that is within them is as valid and eternal as your own, however.  There is nothing to prevent a personality from investing a portion of his own energy into an animal form.  This is not transmigration of souls. It does not mean that a man can be reincarnated in an animal. It does mean that personalities can send a portion of their energy into verious kinds of form.

p 387 - ..there are no devils or demons except as you create them out of your belief.

These are a Part of Me.

I probably need to repeat the explanation for this series of posts - In the mid 1970's I purchased a blank book and I began to use it to write some things down which I had read at one place or another that I wanted to save.  As with many things I stopped writing in the book but I did find it the other day and so I have decided to share some of the things I had written in it.) 

From Seth Speaks by Jane Roberts.

p 13 -  I can tell you, for example, that there is consciousness even within a nail, but few of my readers will take me seriously enough to stop in mid sentence, and say good morning or good afternoon to the nearest nail they can find stuck in a piece of wood.

  Nevertheless, the atoms and molecules within the nail do possess their own kind of consciousness.  The atoms and molecules that make up the paper of this book are also, within their own level, aware.  Nothing exists -- neither rock, mineral, plant, animal, or air - that is not filled with consciousness of its own kind.  So you stand amid a constant vital commotion, a gestalt of aware energy, and you are yourselves composed of conscious cells that carry within themselves the realization of their own identity that cooperate willingly to form the corporeal structure that is your body

  I am saying, of course, that there is no such thing as dead matter.  There is no object that was not formed of consciousness and each consciousness regardless of its degree rejoices in sensation and creativity.  You cannot understand what you are unless you understand such matters.

p. 19 (Birth is more of a shock than death. Sometimes when you die you do not realize it, but birth always implies a sharp and sudden recognition...)



p 30 - Creation and perception are far more intimately connected than any of your scientists realize. It is quite true that your physical senses create the reality that they perceive.  A tree is something far different to a microbe, a bird an insect and a man who stands beneath it.  I am not saying the tree only appears basic way than it exists in the form perceived by the microbe insect or bird.  You cannot perceive the quite valid reality of that tree in any context but your own.  This applies to anything within the physical system you know.
to be different. It is different.  You perceive the reality through one set of highly specialized senses.  This does not mean that its reality exists in that form in any more
  It is not that the physical reality is false.  It is that the physical picture is simply one of an infinite number of ways of perceiving the various guises through which consciousness expresses itself.  The physical senses force you to translate experience into physical perception.

These are a Part of Me

 We should remember that the world is wide; that there are a thousand million different human wills, opinions, ambitions, tastes, and loves; that each person has a different history, constitution, culture, character, from all the rest; that human life is the work, the play, the ceaseless
action and reaction upon each other of these different
atoms.  

Then, we should go forth into life with the smallest
expectations, but with the largest patience; with a keen
relish for and appreciation of everything beautiful, great,
and good, but with a temper so genial that the friction
of the world shall not wear upon our sensibilities; with
an equanimity so settled that no passing breath nor
accidental disturbance shall agitate or ruffle it; with a
charity broad enough to cover the whole world's evil, and
sweet enough to neutralize what is bitter in it, - determined
not to be offended when no wrong is meant, nor
even when it is, unless the offense be against God.
 
  Nothing short of our own errors should offend us.  He
who can wilfully attempt to injure another, is an object
of pity rather than of resentment; while it is a question in my mind, whether there is enough of a flatterer, a fool, or a liar, to offend a whole-souled woman.

Mary Baker Eddy

These are a Part of Me

The light today was beautiful, the new green filtered it perfectly and I should have been out taking pictures but I had things to do and it was hot so I took a few pictures while I was driving to and from my hairscut. It is redbud season and the other trees are popping out. The red bud above was taken at the Ames Cemetery and the white tree is in front of my house. I will go out with the real camera later. This was my new phone camera.

From Children of Dune by Frank Herbert

There's unknown all around at every moment.  That's where you seek knowledge.

Knowing was a barrier which prevented learning.

The morality of indifference is what destroys many things ... even civilizations die of it.

There's no mystery about a human life.  Its not a problem to be solved but a reality to be experienced.

When you study an  object from a distance, only its principle may be seen

My mind controls my reality.

 I stand in the human presence.  As I do now, so should you do someday. I pray to your presence that this be so. The future remains uncertain and so it should, for it is the canvas upon which we paint our desires. Thus always the human condition faces a beautifully human canvas.   We possess only the moment in which to dedicate ourselves to the sacred presence which we share and create,

Let the future happen of itself. The only rule governing creativity is the act of creation itself.

The child who refuses to travel in the father's harness, this is the symbol of man's unique capacity.  I do not have to obey my father's rules or even believe everything he believed.  It is my strength as a human that I can make my own choices of what to believe and what not to believe, of what to be and what not to be.

These are A Part of Me

Great love springs from great knowledge of the beloved, and if you know but
little you will be able to love but little  -- or not at all.

Disdain me not, for I am not poor - poor is he only who has material desires.

Sleep is an image of death. so why not let your life be such that it is an image of immortality,

Man has the power of speech, but much of it is empty and false.  Animals have little poser, but what they have got is useful and true.  Better a small sure thing than a big lie.

Leonardo Da Vinci

Many a man who has only a dim idea of what it means to love God is really doing it all the time, in the best of all ways - by lending a hand to his fellows along the road.

Joseph Fort Newton

These Are A Part of Me

Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig.

Lazarus Long

If you would lift me up you must be on higher ground. 

Emerson

He who is sure of himself is deeply willing to let others be themselves.

J. L. Liebman

We enjoy thoroughly only the pleasure that we give.

Alexander Dumas

Children have neither a past nor a future. Thus they enjoy the present.

Jean de la Bruyere

The lion is not so fierce as he is painted.

Thomas Fuller

Animals are such agreeable friends - They ask no questions, they  pass no criticisms.      George Eliot

Do you think you are a mistake just because you  made one?  

Hugh Prather

These Are A Part of Me.

From Silver on the Tree by Susan Cooper

"For ever and ever ... so that a thing may be forever, a life or a love or a quest, and yet may begin again, and be forever just as before.  And any ending that may seem to come is not truly an ending, but an illusion. For Time does not die, Time has neither beginning nor end, and so nothing can end or die that has once had a place in time."  

These are a part of Me

From The Rainbow by Pearl S. Buck

 Steady in the state of fullness which shines when all desires are given up and peaceful in the state of freedom in life, act playfully in the world!

Inwardly free from all desires, dispassionate and detached, but outwardly active in all directions, act playfully in the world!

Free from egoism, but with mind detached as in sleep, pure like the sky, ever untainted, act playfully in the world!

Conducting yourself nobly with kindly tenderness,
Outwardly conforming to conventions but inwardly renouncing all,
act playfully in the world!

Quite unattached at heart, but for all appearance acting with attachment, inwardly cool, but outwardly full of fervour act playfully in the world!

Yoga Vasishta.

These Are A Part of Me

From:  The Gnostic Gospels

The Gospel of Thomas.

"There is light within a man of light and it lights up the whole world - If he does not shine he is in darkness."

"Rather the kingdom is inside of you. When you come to know yourself (yourselves) then you will be known and you will realize that you are the sons of the living Father.  But if you will know know yourselves, then you dwell in poverty, and it is you who are that poverty."



"The purpose of accepting authority is to learn to outgrow it.  When one becomes mature one no longer needs any external authority.

These are a Part of Me

From The Rape of the A*P*E* (American Puritan Ethic) by Allan Sherman.

When I say God I mean the Snowflake Maker the one who has been putting

them out since the world's first winter with no two alike. The God I mean is not in the religious business. He is much to busy to be sitting around judging anybody. His full time occupation is creating - flowers, planets, galaxies, new species - while you wait.  I have in mind the sponsor of our daily magic show, the Author of tonight's mystery. The Decorator who chose the colors of the rainbow, did the lighting for the sunset, and positioned the stars.

I choose to think he has a sense of humor, if not there would be no such thing as a duck billed platypus and there certainly wouldn't be any people.

The God I'm talking about isn't pushy. He couldn't care less if you or I believe in him or fear him or go to church. My God is not selling anything or issuing commandments, or recruiting anybody,  He's not very much on morals either.  He wishes us well, but He guarantees us nothing,  No heaven at all and no special favors on Earth.  He owes us nothing, having already given us life, which is all there is.

The God I am talking about is infinitely gentle.  He takes a half a million years to sculpt the Grand Canyon when He could if He wanted to gouge it out in a split second. Another nice thing about Him is that He cares, He gives a damn,  God never closes. He is everywhere at once,juggling atoms and steering comets.  He is busy 24 hours a day every day, planting seeds, pouring out thunderstorms, piling up mountains, pushing tides and designing rivers. He would never think of resting on the seventh day. Imagine what would happen if He did: one seventh of the creatures of the world stillborn, one seventh of the flowers unwatered, one seventh of the sunlight blacked out.

I don't know what he looks like but one thing I'm sure of He is not made in my image, nor am I in His.  What arrogant pipsqueaks we are to think God would want to look like us.  Remember He has a choice. Be honest if you were God, if you could choose any form wouldn't it be more likely that the butterfly would
be made in your image or the swan? of all creatures to look like us,  Is God cockeyed?

These Are A Part of Me

“A great ring of pure & endless light

Dazzles the darkness in my heart

And breaks apart the dusky clouds of night.

The end of all is hinted in the start.

When we are born we bear the seeds of blight;

Around us life & death are torn apart,

Yet a great ring of pure and endless light

Dazzles the darkness in my heart.

It lights the world to my delight.

Infinity is present in each part.

A loving smile contains all art.

The motes of starlight spark & dart.

A grain of sand holds power & might.

Infinity is present in each part,

And a great ring of pure and endless light

Dazzles the darkness in my heart.”

― Madeleine L'Engle, A Ring of Endless Light

These are a part of Me.

From Promise of Love by Mary Renault

"This is how all life should be accepted, in desireless wonder, reaching out for nothing and thrusting nothing away, rejoicing in the different essence of each moment as it blazes into the present from the folded future. But she was under no illusions; for a life of such moments one needed a heart without roots, a spirit free in the wind, and empty hands.  Once she had them she would never know them again. She had committed too much to earth."

From Mooncrow by Jack Massa

"Motion is all that exists.  Motion bound in a pattern is matter.  Motion flowing through a recurring pattern is life.  A life entity is a recurring pattern; it functions to bring motion into the world..."

These Are A Part of Me

Something about brethren -
  A poem by Doris Peel

Once people spoke
quite commonly, we are told,
not only - as now -
of a Pride of Lions
but also
of an Ostentation of Peacocks
a Murmuration of Starlings
a Charm of Finches
And loveliest of all
(to match what they are)
an Exaltation of Larks

Only for men --
men who so marvelously
have found a name
for all they behold
here on earth
there has been as yet
no consummate word
no elated consensus
singing itself

Presumably we are waiting
Still waiting to hear
Sweet syllabled
     essence-of-us
come clear.

These Are A Part of Me

I copied out this Poem which claims to be written by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.  It is entitled

Prayer

O Lord, it is easy to dwell with You!

So easy for me to believe in You!

When Spirit clouds over and I, crushed, am made dumb,

When even the smartest people know not what tomorrow will bring.

You bestow the assuredness of being.

Vigilantly keeping the Channels of Goodness unclogged.

Surpassing thus the summit of earthly glory I behold the way.

Which alone, I never could have found.

Wondrous Way, opposite of despair,

Whence myself shall become the reflection of your world.

What need have I to speak what You alone

shall reveal for me,

And if I find not the time to carry it through

It means You've chosen others for the task.

These Are A Part of Me

One time when I was doubting myself (I have done that often) and a friend shared this poem by Leo Ralston.  It helped.

In Some Ways, However Small and Secret

	"In some way, however small and secret, each of us is a little mad.
	Everyone is lonely at bottom, and cries to be understood,
	But we can never entirely understand anyone else,
	And each of us remains part stranger, Even to those who love us.
	It is the weak who are cruel; gentleness can only be expected from the strong.
	Those who do not know fear are not really brave,
	For courage is the capacity to confront what can be imagined.
	And you can understand people better if you look at them,
	no matter how old or impressive they are as if they are children;
	For most of us never really mature; we simply grow older.
	And happiness comes only when we push our hearts and brains
	to the farthest reaches of which they are capable,
	For the purpose of life is to matter;  . . . to count;  . . . to stand for something;
	To have it make some difference that you lived at all."