Sometimes I just want to believe, plain and simple. I think I feel like I would "follow You" better, more "faithfully," if I didn't have all these "wonderings." Maybe that's a "disadvantage" of living in a world where people so easily share their ideas, especially via internet, but also radio, TV, and yes, even so many easily accessible books.
But is lack of "thinking about, wondering, etc." and just accepting without much, if any, question at all, really "belief"? Or is it just default acceptance of the only thing you're ever known? Does that make it true?
(On the other hand, is that even possible, except perhaps by choosing it? I mean, what about the enemy? If the little one knows really is the Truth--would he not be trying hard to make one think otherwise?)
Which brings us back to "voices," doesn't it? How do we "hear" You? How, for that matter, do we hear the "enemy"? Where does our "conscience" come into all this? And all the things we've been taught as small children that are "bred" into us (and even things passed down genetically, as some would claim--the "old soul" types, and even some scientists...). and the things we've been taught in all our human institutions (church, school, politicians, scientists, etc.) and people just chatting, and all those entertaining "documentaries," and yes, all those "comments" at the end of internet articles (as well as the articles themselves, and all the other reading I seem driven to do...)?
Right now, I want to believe in You. I want to hear Your voice. I want to "be in a close relationship with You" (though, to be honest, I don't want it to be too comfortable and easy and "Oh, we just love each other" mushy... That really does scare me because how could a relationship between the God and Creator of the whole universe (with all which that huge, vast concept suggests) and a little, messed up, not too brilliant, individual human like me, ever be "simple friends" or "best buddies"?
Okay, I mean, I want wonderful relationship with You ... but I still want wonder and awe ... and yes, little bit (or maybe a lot!) of fear. Good fear, righteous fear.
In the Bible, some of the characters refer to You as their "Fear." I get that--and I worry that for far too long, I've missed out on that aspect of You, and in my relationship with You.
Might be that's a lot of what I've been "missing" from my "old beliefs"--that awe, wonder, "fear" ... and the mystery, the holding-my-breath, hardly daring to take a peek through the crack in the living room door on Christmas morning--the magic, that people like CS Lewis sometimes have managed to capture in some way (story, film, art, dance, etc.).
Wow, that's more writing in an hour than I have done in a long time...
It's nice to write a letter to You.
(There's something "magical" about letter writing, actually ... that I do miss).
COMMENT posted on Facebook by Rick Selinger:
My office is adorned with a few thousand books on religion, philosophy, mysticism, and other related subjects. I have put a lot of thought into the idea. My own impression is this: YOU are proof of God. Inflate your brain to the size of a football stadium, send in a team of scientists, they will never find Norma. She is a ghost in the machine. Want proof in spirits? Right there. Scientists would have us believe that life came out of a bunch of cosmic sludge and gases, and yet they cannot explain consciousness except to say that it just happened. They, in essence, want us to believe that something as magical as consciousness came out of nothing. I regard this as an unacceptable thesis. YOU are the proof, and You -- your consciousness -- is a spark of the Divine, which creates and sustains you. You cannot separate the micro from the macro and that is an important consideration -- one most know what that implies. Who looks out through your eyes? You alone? No. Think about it: God cannot be one place and you another, so where are you? The greatest mystics of antiquity pretty much all agreed. We are in a grand Divine Dream, what Isaac Newton called "Sensorium Dei", aka, the Mind of God, and you are his dream ... but careful, again, do not separate the micro from the macro). God does not speak in the usual ways; God speaks in dreams and what Jung called "synchronicity". I give you Sir Francis Bacon: "I had rather believe all the fables in the legends and the Talmud and the Alcoran, than that this universal frame is without a Mind. And therefore, God never wrought miracle, to convince atheism, because his ordinary works convince it. A little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion." Bacon says here that miracles are not required, for the existence of consciousness and the universe is proof enough in itself for the thoughtful. I concur. God's voice? God's voice is the Voice of Silence. God's voice is observing outward and inward at once and understanding the miracle of it all. THAT is the voice of God and it speaks clearly to those with open minds and hearts :-)
November 8 at 2:28pm
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