You are the light of the world!

You are the light of the world!

I Think

"You're different, aren't you?"

I'm the first person from Colorado you've met.

Rick and I were on break at our construction site in Coral Springs, Florida.

"No, that's not what I mean. You really are different from anyone I know, but in a good way, ya know?"

I know. The kindest synonym for "different" I can find is "distinctive" but the rest can and have been used. I am different and always have been. Now as I progress through my seventy-second amazing, astonishing, astounding year on Earth, I would like to offer an explanation for why I think I am the way I am. My current understanding is that what I have referred to as our worldview forms in us at birth and remains with us until death.

On my presumption that we actually are individualized expressions of God created for the purpose of experiencing the gift of Life, it is my present thinking that our initial personal perception emerges simultaneously with our God-self into what I have labeled our "Lifeview". The very first experience of all life, therefore, is acceptance or rejection. The very fact of existence confirms acceptance. Rejection many times is Life's brief and final experience.

This label, "Lifeview", might benefit from a name more easily recognizable, and in support of President Biden's societal and spiritual aspirations to save our nation's, let's instead call it our "Soul". I think that our Soul is born with us and therefore, I presume, dies with us.

When we started this journey I encouraged you to spend a little bit of your mindfulness contemplating the existence of God. Now I want to tell you why, again couched in the confidence that anything I have said thus far is not a bunch of malarkey, I think and behave the way I do.

I was about Wesley's age when, from my crib in the Platteville parsonage, I inexplicably became aware of a presence in the room with me. There was nothing hidden about the silent, neon-colored "pansy-like" apparition that remained until instantly disappearing when I called out for Mom. The waking dream of a toddler is an explanation difficult to refute and acceptable to me as just that. All I know is that what may have been my first awareness of my Soul, my life has never been the same since.

I accept God within me as my Soul, as the ever-present, ever-experiencing, and ever-comprehending part of me. I am confident that I am a child of God born to experience the gift of Life to its fullest!

I know and accept the reality of my Soul and its Source. Employing the metaphysical principle of First Cause allows me to look at my Life through a meaningfully theocentric lens that logically puts God first!

God is me but I am not God.

This is the Truth by which I attempt to live my Life. God is not my co-pilot because no one is piloting but me. God, instead,  is my faithful companion residing in my Soul, experiencing, comprehending, but never directing my actions because that would violate the gift of volition. I am a child of God included among the whole people of God!

My thinking, fortunately, is not mine alone. It is a composite drawn from the great minds to whom I am indebted for their profound contributions to the Truth I strive to live  in concert with:

Theology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Theology of Marcus Borg

Philosophy of René Descartes

Religious and philosophical views of Albert Einstein

Philosophical and psychological views of Victor Frankl

Philosophical and metaphysical views of Ernest Holmes

Lawrence Kohlberg's Stages of Moral Development

Abraham Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

Jean Piaget's Theory of Cognitive Development

Religious and philosophical views of Albert Schweitzer

Theology of John Wesley

Mathematical, logical, philosophical, and metaphysical views of Alfred North Whitehead

Does the Truth Matter Anymore?

As I write, the Senate of the United States of America will establish whether or not the Truth matters. They have just acquitted Donald John Trump, and I think it is now fair to say it does not. Please forgive me but I need a moment to think...

                                                                                     ...some Dylan to think by.

Does the Truth matter anymore?

As I write, the Senate of the United States of America will establish whether or not the Truth matters. They have just acquitted Donald John Trump, and I think it is now fair to say it does not. Please forgive me but I need a moment to think...

 ...some Dylan to think by.

Imagine!

This is the moment I've been waiting for! Since the issues heretofore legitimately raise the question of my credulity, I offer this blend of metaphysical, existential, and process thought to seek clarification of our relationship to and with God, thereby making it theological as well.

The first distinction in our quest to clarify is that between our brains and our Minds. Where do we think? How do our thoughts affect us? Who knows our thoughts and what they mean to us? Are there humans who can "read minds"?

As we eventually learn more about brain activity and its correlation to thought, might we find more effective ways to communicate those thoughts personal to us? Is it even possible for anyone other than yourself to know the authentic you?

We've asked many questions so far, and there are many more ahead. I consider this an important one: What the heck is imagination? I know you imagine because you tell me about your imaginations.

Here's another question of distinction to help clarify, maybe? Is there a difference between our imaginations and our dreams? And how are the Knowledge and the Wisdom we acquire through the process of learning distinct from our imaginations and dreams?

Consider this: Our newly elected President, Joseph R. Biden, campaigned to “Battle for the Soul of America”. Fundamentalists and literalists are immediately going to encounter the issue of interpretation which they are literally and fundamentally against. So, freeing our Minds from any such constraints, let’s use our imaginations to perceive, comprehend, and interpret (everybody does) what he Means:

Have You Had Your Epiphany?

The siege of our nation’s Capitol (the first since our mortal enemy, The British, did so in 1814) occurred on the Christian holiday of Epiphany. Other than maintaining my reputation as a religious fanatic, the ancient feeling of epiphany is of particular significance to me in the context of what I have learned about the teaching ministry of Jesus because it was the way of his early followers to express their understanding of “the revelation of God the Son as a human being in Jesus the Christ. 

What was their epiphany, and what has become of it over the past two millennia? For me, it provides a universal meaning for Christ as Immanuel and confirms that God is us and we are God! I find no more plausible explanation for Life on Earth than God, and my personal epiphany informs me that a fuller understanding is worthy of my continuing exploration. God is not dead. God is not good, bad, nor indifferent, because God simply is.

I cannot remember a time in my life that I haven’t experienced God within, throughout, and as George Harrison might say, without me. We started out with my telling you not to be afraid of the pandemic and what may still arise from it. I have told you that you are never alone because God is with us from the beginning of our lives to their end. What I have told you is a blatant, delusional lie if there is no God. Through these posts, I have tried to establish that God is more than real and that the key is our own personal and unique epiphany through which we experience it for ourselves. It took one-thousand, six-hundred and thirty-seven years after 0 [zero of the Common Era] for Descartes’ epiphany, Cogito, ergo sum, to emerge to human consciousness to which I humbly submit the epiphany of the Christ, Dei puer, as the clarification of God’s message to the whole human population of which we are part.

So, there you have it! I am a child of the same God you are as is every human being on Earth! With the myriad of problems that arise from such a statement, I still find it to be our best hope of survival. Just as every citizen has the constitutional right to vote, every human being has the right to life with liberty and death with dignity because s/he is truly a child of God!

I owe you this explanation of where I’m coming from lest you think I’m weird :-) especially since I’m temporarily turning my attention to my pathetic attempt to incite a global Lovelution! I encourage you to seek your connection with the whole people of God so that all of us can start loving one another as we are loved creating a better tomorrow for our whole world!

Joy to the World! (oops, wrong holiday)

One way we can make 2021 better is to make it a Year of Jubilee! I don't think we need to be Jewish, but anyway, Jesus was and I think it has potential!

Happy New Year!