FRAGMENTS FROM MY LECTIO DIVINA (updated)

Posted on January 25, 2023 by thecenterforcontemplativepractice

Here are some ideas from a broken-down, old Lay Cistercian. uiodg The following is found in what I wrote on Quora.com. Be careful, it is the Mirror of Arisad of the Internet.

What is meant by the eternal power of God.

The energy of God is pure energy, the power of Being 100% of your nature. Humans have neither the capacity nor the capability of comprehending what that is so God sent Jesus (Son of God) to tell us and show us that all we have to do is be baptized in water and the spirit and thus make us adopted sons and daughters of the Father and heirs to the kingdom of heaven on earth as it is in heaven. God has the power to lift us up to another level of our evolution, as God did when we went from animality to rationality. Reason alone does not permit us to push ourselved up to the next level. Only the eternal or pure energy of God can lift us up (Faith), but we must ask for it (Belief).

Does God exist because people created religion, therefore creating God?

Who else would create religion but humans, and who else could tell us that we are adopted sons and daughters of the father and that the key to our next phase of evolution is to deny everything you know that you learned and take a step into the unknown because you want to be fully human and love as much as our nature may permit? Of course, when God became human, Christ gave us the glasses to see the opposite of what the world sees, and a map to avoid stepping on the landmines of rationalism and idolatry of self as god. I must still walk THE WAY, but now I have THE TRUTH and aim towards THE LIFE of what it means to be fully human as my nature intended before the Fall. Don’t give us your day job.

Do all philosophies have their own idea about God?

Each human also has their own ideas about God which may or may not be influenced by one or more languages or philosophies. Personally, within my lifetime, mine is scientific inquiry for what I can see, existential phenomenological and psychological writers such as Abraham Maslow, plus Martin Buber, Steven Hawking, Francis Thompson, Erich Fromm, Carl Jung, Heidigger, the Four Gospels and Letters of St. Paul, Torah and Wisdom of the Rabbis, Joel Barker, Aidan Kavanaugh, O.S.B., Father Cassian Russell, O.C.S.O., Aristotle, Plato, The Pantheon of Roman and Greek Gods, Abraham and Sarah, Moses, David, Twelve Apostles, Canon of Roman Pontiffs, Eusebius, Ignatius of Antioch, John of Forde, Bernard of Clairvaux, Francis of Assisi, Benedict of Nursia, The Little Prince by Exupere, The Phenomenon of Man by Teilhard de Chardin, the Summa Theological by Thomas Aquinas, the writings of Marcus Aurelius, the sayings of Lao Tse, the writings and sayings of the Prophets in the Old Testament, including Psalms, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Song of Songs, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Rev. Dr. Billy Graham, Peter Zeihan, Elizabeth Kubler Ross, Myers-Briggs Type Inventory, that help me peer into invisible reality that my physical reality informs, just to name a fraction. Each human has this concoction of ideas rolling around in their head. Using all of this, we form choices as to What is the purpose of life? What my purpose in life is? What does reality look like? How does it all fit together? How can I love fiercely? You know you are going to die: now what? I can get both the questions and answer from the totality of my life experiences (I am not you; you are not me; God is not us; We, most certainly, are not God) outside of myself or within myself. Inside myself is risky because I need a key, an absolutely immutable cornerstone on which to measure what I observe to be true against what is truth. Since each person can be their own religion, their own god, their own objective truth, their own church, their own pope, and no one can tell them what to do, you can see how there is a Tower of Babel among thoughts about religion, about what is right or wrong, about why there does not seem to be a God we can see. Yet, we have a reason for a reason and a choice for a reason. The problem comes when I choose a reality outside my secular reasoning to deal with what I can’t see but what my heart and head tell me is there. This gap, for lack of a better word, is Faith (not opinion but a living reality outside of my ability to see, hear, taste, touch, and smell). This was such a conundrum that God sent Jesus to tell us AND SHOW us how to walk through the minefields of corruptible matter and mind to reach the true purpose of what it means to be human (to be an adopted son or daughter of the Father and to go home to that which nature intended for us before there was time and matter). I am a Lay Cistercian and follow the practices and the charisms of the Cistercian Way (silence, solitude, prayer, work, and community) to make real what I have just tried to describe, however painfully inadequate.

The Center for contemplative practice

FRAGMENTS FROM MY LECTIO DIVINA (updated)

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