Pope Francis and pastoral care of remarriage & divorce

Upon his return from World Youth Day in July 2013 Pope Francis surprised his followers by making reference to the predicament of divorced and remarried Catholics.  He told reporters that the next synod (October 2014 and now in session) would explore a "somewhat deeper pastoral care of marriage," including the question of the eligibility of divorced. At the same time Pope Francis added that church law governing marriage annulments has to be reviewed, because ecclesiastical tribunals are not sufficient for this.  Such problems, he said, exemplified a general need for forgiveness in the church today. The church is a mother, and she must travel this path of mercy, and find a form of mercy for all, the pope added.  This did not sit well with many traditional Catholics.

More recent public disagreements over whether the Roman Catholic Church can change its teachings on Communion for remarried Catholics are growing sharper with conservatives led by U.S. Cardinal Raymond Burke making another push against loosening the rules.  Burke said allowing Communion for the divorced and remarried would complicate the Church’s pastoral outreach and that better strategies are needed.   The church currently holds (with some exceptions) that divorce and remarriage without a proper annulment is considered 'a grave offence against natural law' and such individuals cannot therefore receive communion.

 

It is in this context that I recently found myself taking exception.  Withholding communion (in Catholic terms ‘the real presence of Christ’) seems to be a complete contradiction to how God works among his people.  The church appears to be saying “first you must repent and admit your sin, before you can come before God”.  Whereas Jesus said "When he [the Holy Spirit] comes, he will convict the world, and show where right and wrong and judgement lie. He will convict them of wrong..." (John 16:8). At this point the question that needs to be asked is simply:   ‘Who convicts our heart, God or the institution?  While the Church will no doubt refer its members to the various official Vatican documents including "Concerning the Reception of HolyCommunion by Divorced-and-Remarried Members of the Faithful” as submitted by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in a letter to the world's bishops on October 14, 1994. Others may search for a personal and compassionate answer by looking for a more merciful God within.  Guess what - here again the church claims its ruling has primacy over ‘personal conscience’.

While debating the issue on-line with a conservative Catholic news source I was surprised to learn that some Christians believe that have a duty to support their church which includes publically shaming divorced and remarried couples who, according to their definition, have not received the necessary sanction from the church to receive communion.  Reminding them about the biblical story of Jesus and the Samaritan Woman at the Well  (John 4:8) did little to diminish their demand for proper ‘old fashioned’ justice and punishment.    Did Jesus turn away from this adulteress or did he change her heart to the incredible degree the story ends for her?  Remember this woman would probably not have had access to a bible and definitely not the Roman Catholic Catechism. 

Of course in Matthew 5:29 we hear Jesus speaking to the Pharisees when asked by them “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for just any reason?”  And Jesus responds “whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries commits adultery; and whoever marries her who is divorced commits adultery.”  But did Jesus walk away from them?  The Eucharist was instituted to bring people together ‘in communion with one another and God’  - not for the purpose of judging others. 

Is should be obvious to readers that Jesus never shunned sinners in fact he is often seen surrounded by them.  So why then do some members of the clergy insist that the Eucharist should be publically withheld from the divorced or remarried? Yet we continue to use vengeful punishment language all the time. 

Jesus often used hyperbole and in the case of remarriage used it to underscore its sacredness.  However a few individuals prefer a literal interpretation.  O.K. then when was the last time you attended Mass and you were greeted with a parish full of one eyed sinners?  Because Jesus, again using hyperbole, said this in Matthew 25 about adultery, “If you’re right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away! It is better to lose one of your members than to have your whole body thrown into hell. Let us not get caught up interpreting everything at the expense of Jesus’ call to love and not punish our neighbour. The role of the Church is simply to walk with sinners and lead them to discover the God within – not outside. 

It cannot be the role of the Church, and that includes the laity, to DETERMINE the sins of others.  We may have a role to play in teaching people about sin, but in the end only God can convict a heart.  And the only way to the heart is through Jesus.  Why then would some Catholics insist on taking away his ‘real presence’ through the sacrament of the Eucharist?  Isn't that the place where Catholic hearts are renewed?  Church rules demand that only when sin is acknowledged and the person is truly repentant may Catholics celebrate the sacrament of reconciliation and finally receive communion.  But must that now be preceded with punishment?  When Jesus spoke about sin did he really turn his back on the sinner and demand some form of revenge or punishment?  Do we still believe that God is vengeful and far more interested in our sins then our potential?

Anyone familiar with Jesus’ actions and teachings, especially his Parables, would understand that he defied the ways of the world again and again.  It can thus be said that Jesus presents the ‘upside down values of the world’.  From the point of view from the world they are always seen as ludicrous.   The problem with a lot of Roman Catholic issues today, is that some of the teachings are presented and understood by some as being in legal and ABSOLUTE terms.  If only life were that simple.  That is not how God deals with his people as unique individuals.  Remember, God promised he would never leave us orphaned.  Thus, for Jesus to withhold himself i.e., the Eucharist – for whatever reason – cannot in any way express what he does for any sinner.  Think again about the woman at the well, the sinners he surrounded himself with.  It is important to understand that Jesus was not the least bit interested in PUNITIVE JUSTICE.  He always choose the more demanding and difficult path of RESTORATIVE JUSTICE.  

  

Perhaps we are still stuck on a religion based on reward and punishment.  Only by making the distinction between punitive and restorative justice can we begin to understand God’s redemptive justice.  Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM, one of my favourite spiritual teachers, suggests that for many God’s love or grace is sadly based on a false sense of justice which demands that sin must be punished and followed by a lengthy period of repentance.  Fr. Rohr calls this a religion based on meritocracy.  But Rohr provides the following beautiful illustration of God’s intended grace pattern as follows:

As some of us still understand it: 

Sin - - -  >punishment - - - >repentance - - - > transformation

But the actual grace pattern is:

Sin - - - >unconditional love- - - >transformation - - - >repentance

Note how this pattern is perfectly mirrored in the story of Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the  well. Here you will not find the slightest hint of punishment, only redemption in the form of God’s healing and restorative justice. Perhaps by seeing divorce and remarriage in this new light may we finally bring the necessary compassion and understanding to this controversial issue  thus fulfilling Pope Francis’ desire to bring a deeper pastoral care of marriage and divorce.

See also: update on the Synod to date:  http://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/bombshell-document-vatican-synod

Also:

http://whenreligionfails.blogspot.ca/2014/10/living-in-sin-divorce-remarriage.html

http://whenreligionfails.blogspot.ca/search/label/family%20values

http://whenreligionfails.blogspot.ca/2014/03/pope-francis-on-divorce-remarriage.html

Our struggle with the False and True Self

To understand the struggle between the False and True Self, as an option, was most certainly not always obvious in my life of seventy plus years.   In fact, it is relatively new to me. And I am only slowly beginning to grasp its full significance.  For one thing it revealed the hazard(s) of thinking ‘I’m a victim’ with the entitlement of self pity, and the assumption that I am not responsible for my miserable addiction or condition, etc.? Dr. David Hawkins has said "there is a secret payoff and satisfaction in being the victim, martyr, or loser." Seeing myself in that Light I can now better understand the words from Fr. Anthony de Mello when he states: 

“Nothing surpasses the [prayers] of those who have learned perfect acceptance of everything that is. In the game of cards called life one plays the hand one is dealt to the best of one's ability.  Those who insist on playing not the hand they were given, but the one they insist they should have been dealt— these are life's failures. We are not asked if we will play. That is not an option. Play we must. The option is how.”

While these may sound like harsh words, they immediately recognize our daily struggle with the alter ego.  Nothing easy about that kind of prayer, but doesn’t it bring us toward the ‘Right Relationship With Life Itself’?[1]      

At the same time it is wonderfully balanced by yet another meditation from de Mello, entitled ‘DON'T CHANGE’, as follows:

I was a neurotic for years. I was anxious and depressed and selfish. Everyone kept telling me to change. I resented them, and I agreed with them, and I wanted to change, but simply couldn't, no matter how hard I tried. What hurt the most was that, like the others, my best friend kept insisting that I change. So I felt powerless and trapped. Then, one day, he said to me. 'Don't change. I love you just as you are."  Those words were music to my ears: "Don’t change. Don't change. Don't change. . . . . . .I love you as you are." I relaxed.  I came alive. And suddenly I changed!  Now I know that I couldn't really change until I found someone who would love me whether I changed or not.

 Is this how you love me, God?” 

Finally, it is the question in the last line “Is this how you love me, God?” that reveals to me the way in which ‘God gives us more power than answers’[2].  I know, but yet I don’t know.  Therein, I can now place my total trust.

Note: Both of the above meditations from Fr. Anthony de Mello, are from his book The Song of the Bird, (1984).

---

[1] Richard Rohr, Breathing Under Water, Franciscan Media, p. 61

[2] Richard Rohr, Breathing Under Water, Franciscan Media, p. 64

God's Restorative Justice

Throughout this blog I have attempted to share my growing belief and experience about a God who does not punish, reward or hand out favours.  At the same time I continue to ask myself ‘how else can we come to understand a Being who loves all of his creation UNCONDITIONALLY?  Perhaps we can only ever seem to grasp small portions of this incredible healing and forgiving love.  Is seems simply too far beyond our daily experience!  For many God’s unconditional love  is too difficult to accept since they may never have received or experienced this kind of love from their parents, teachers and even members of their religious institution. And so we continue to demand punishment not just for ourselves but also for others and we continue to suffer. But God has a better plan – it is called restorative justice.

Fr. Richard Rohr,OFM one of my favourite spiritual teachers, suggests that for many God’s love or grace is still based on our false sense of justice which demands that sin must be punished and followed by a lengthy period of repentance and only after that we  might experience or be worthy of transformation.  Fr. Rohr calls this a religion based on meritocracy.  But Rohr provides the following beautiful illustration of God's intended grace pattern as follows:  

Sin - - -  >punishment - - ->repentance - - -> transformation

 The grace pattern is:

Sin - - ->unconditional love - - >transformation - ->repentance

  
 In other words Rohr reminds us that Yahweh’s fidelity is beyond a merit system where we will find the grace of God.  When we are ready and willing to expose our hidden sins under God’s unconditional love, transformation will out of necessity precede any form of real repentance.  And so, Rohr gently reminds us that God cannot heal what you not acknowledge!  Why have we misunderstood this healing message for so long?

A careful reading of Jesus’ parable of Prodigal Son might be of help.  Noted spiritual author and teacher, Henri Nouwen and his powerful reflection on the parable of the Prodigal Son in his book  book ‘The Return of the Prodigal Son’ (1992) so beautifully captures the mixed emotions we probably all experience in such a manner that I, for one, cannot possibly say it or improve on it in any other way.  The themes of homecoming, affirmation, and reconciliation set against our feelings of loneliness, dejection, jealousy, or anger are typically for me a daily struggle.  

Here follow just a few excerpts from Nouwen’s book:     

On the Prodigal Son

Receiving forgiveness requires a total willingness to let' God be God and do all the healing, restoring, and renewing. As long as I want to do even a part of that myself, I end up with partial solutions, such as becoming a hired servant. As a hired servant, I can still keep my distance, still revolt, reject, strike, run away, or complain about my pay. As the beloved son, I have to claim in full dignity and begin preparing myself to become the father.

On the True Elder Son

The return of the elder son is becoming as important to me as—if not more important than—the return of the younger son. How will the elder son look when he is free from his complaints, free from his anger; resentments, and jealousies? Because the parable tells us nothing about the response of the elder son, we are left with the choice of listening to the Father or of remaining imprisoned in our self-rejection.

I have to let go of all comparison; all rivalry and competition, and surrender to the Father's love. This requires a leap of faith because I have little experience of non-comparing love and do not know the healing power of such a love. As long as I stay outside in the darkness, I can only remain in the resentful complaint that results from my comparisons. Outside of the light, my younger brother seems to be more loved by the Father than I; in fact, outside of the light, I cannot even see him as my own brother.

On the Fatherhood of Compassion

Becoming like the heavenly Father is not just one important aspect of Jesus' teaching; it is the very heart of his message. The radical quality of Jesus' words and the seeming impossibility of his demands are quite obvious when heard as part of a general call to become and to be true sons and daughters of God.

Fr. Rohr reminds us that “The dominant culture is one based on an economy of merit and retributive justice. The economy of grace turns meritocracy on its head, aiming toward restorative justice, for “the revelation from the cross and the Twelve Steps, however, believes that sin and failure are, in fact, the setting and opportunity for the transformation and enlightenment of the offender—and then the future will take care of itself. The majority of human history has not been ready to see this revelation, but we are witnessing an evolution of consciousness drawing humanity forward.  Restorative justice emphasizes repairing the harm caused by crime.  When victims, offenders and community members meet to decide how to do that the results can be transformational.”

Rohr invites us to witness a practical example and application of restorativejustice here. Be sure to see how it is being applied in your community as well in other countries.  

For more on this topic readers are invited to listen to Fr. Rohr’s excellent homily on Retribution versus Restoration.

           

HATING FAMILY

"If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters--yes, even his own life--he cannot be my disciple.” – Luke 14:26

As a young boy of about 7 or 8 I remember first hearing the story about the woman caught in adultery (John 8). It is impossible now to recall if I even knew what adultary was but Jesus' response to her and her accusers was the beginning of understanding Christian justice for me.

I was recently accused of hating the Roman Catholic Church while discussing homosexuality and of fueling division among people of faith and seculars.

Perhaps I am, but certainly not in the way it was presented by my opponent.  At first I felt inclined not to respond, but this morning while reflecting on the words of one of my favourite teachers, Richard Rohr from his recent book ‘Falling Upward –A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life’ (2011). I will readily admit that there are times when I ‘hate’  institutional religion but not in the way that my opponent seems to think.   So I am taking the liberty to provide my explanation about ‘hating’ the institution using the words  so thoughtfully expressed by Rohr as follows:

. . . . . when Jesus talks about "leaving" or even "hating" mother, father, sister, brother, and family. Everything in us says that he surely cannot mean this, but if you are talking about moving into the second half of life, where we are about to go, he is in fact directing us correctly and courageously.

First of all, do you recognize that he is actually undo­ing the fourth commandment of Moses, which tells us to "honor your father and mother"? This commandment is necessary for the first half of life, and, one hopes, it can be possible forever. As we move into the second half of life, however, we are very often at odds with our natural family and the "dominant consciousness" of our cultures. It is true more often than I would have ever imagined. Many people are kept from mature religion because of the pious, immature, or rigid expectations of their first-half-of-life family. Even Jesus, whose family thought he was "crazy" (Mark 3:21), had to face this dilemma firsthand. The very fact that the evangelist would risk associating the word "crazy" with Jesus shows how Jesus was surely not fol­lowing the expected and mainline script for his culture or his religion.

One of the major blocks against the second journey is what we would now call the "collective," the crowd, our society, or our extended family. Some call it the crab bucket syndrome—you try to get out, but the other crabs just keep pulling you back in. What passes for morality or spirituality in the vast majority of people's lives is the way everybody they grew up with thinks. Some would call it conditioning or even imprinting. Without very real inner work, most folks never move beyond it. You might get beyond it in a negative sense, by reacting or rebelling against it, but it is much less common to get out of the crab bucket in a positive way. That is what we want here. Jesus uses quite strong words to push us out of the family nest and to name a necessary suffering at the most personal, counterintuitive, and sentimental level possible.

It takes a huge push, much self-doubt, and some degree of separation for.people to find their own soul and their own destiny apart from what Mom and Dad always wanted them to be and do. To move beyond family-of-origin stuff, local church stuff, cultural stuff, flag-and-country stuff is a path that few of us follow positively and with integrity. The pull is just too great, and the loyal soldier fills us with appropriate guilt, shame, and self-doubt, which, as we said earlier, feels like the very voice of God.

So Jesus pulls no punches, saying you must "hate" your home base in some way and make choices beyond it. I am happy he said this, or I would never have had the courage to believe how it might be true. It takes therapists years to achieve the same result and reestablish appropriate boundaries from wounding parents and early authority figures, and to heal the inappropriate shame in those who have been wounded. We all must leave home to find the real and larger home, which is so important that we will develop it more fully in the next chapter. The nuclear family has far too often been the enemy of the global family and mature spiritual seeking.

Perhaps it has never struck you how consistently the great religious teachers and founders leave home, go on pilgrimage to far-off places, do a major turnabout, choose downward mobility; and how often it is their parents, the established religion at that time, spiritual authorities, and often even civil authorities who fight against them. Read the biographies of Hindu sadhus, Buddha, Ashoka, Abraham, Joseph, Moses, Jesus, Sufi saints, Francis, Clare, and the numerous hermits and pilgrims of Cappadocia, Mt. Athos, and Russia. You will see that this pattern is rather universal.

Your True Self is who you objectively are from the beginning, in the mind and heart of God, "the face you had before you were born," as the Zen masters say. It is your substantial self, your absolute identity, which can be neither gained nor lost by any technique, group affiliation, morality, or formula whatsoever. The surrendering of our false self, which we have usually taken for our absolute identity, yet is merely a relative identity, is the necessary suffering needed to find "the pearl of great price" that is always hidden inside this lovely but passing shell.

Instead of our "Don't leave home without it" mentality, the spiritual greats' motto seems to be "Leave home to find it!" And of course, they were never primarily talking just about physical home, but about all the validations, securi­ties, illusions, prejudices, smallness — and hurts too —that home and family always imply.

Of course, to be honest and consistent, one must ask if "church family" is not also a family that one has to eventually "hate" in this very same way, and with the same scandal involved as hating the natural family. (We will address this in a later chapter under the rubric of "emerging Christianity.")

I encourage you to reread the epigraphs at the begin­ning of this chapter. They are pretty strong, almost brutal, by contemporary standards; but they make very clear that there is a necessary suffering that cannot be avoided, which Jesus calls "losing our very life," or losing what I and others call the "false self." Your false self is your role, title, and personal image that is largely a creation of your own mind and attachments. It will and must die in exact correlation to how much you want the Real. "How much false self are you willing to shed to find your True Self?" is the lasting question.² Such necessary suffering will always feel like dying, which is what good spiritual teachers will tell you about very honestly. (Alcoholics Anonymous is notoriously successful here!) If your spiritual guides do not talk to you about dying, they are not good spiritual guides!

I truly hope that my opponent and others will now understand my true love for God and my passionate desire to bring Christ's justice into the world and religious institutions everywhere.

Holy Week

One of my favourite Catholic teachers is Fr. Richard Rohr whom I have been following for many years.  His daily reflections speak to me in a way that can only be described as providing an inner understanding of a deeper reality.  I have taken the liberty to share his reflection for this Holy Week only.

Prayer: “Faith is a journey into darkness, into not-knowing.” - Richard Rohr

HOLY WEEK  April 1, 2012

Palm Sunday

“Rejoice heart and soul, daughter of Zion!  Shout with gladness, daughter of Jerusalem!  See now, your king comes to you; he is victorious, he is triumphant, humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.” – Zechariah 9:9

Luke uses that image as he has Jesus entering the Holy City. He's coming into  charge of his possession—namely, his people—and Luke has him coming in, according to the prophecy, as the Messiah. He is a humble Messiah, inaugurating a new kind of leadership, not one based in power but one based in service. The capital city hardly notices this kind of power, as we probably wouldn't have either. It is political power that fascinates us, not men on donkeys.

Monday, April 2, 2012

Jesus enters the temple and drives out the dealers who are trying to buy and sell worthiness and access (Luke 19:45-46), which is the great temptation of all religion. He symbolically dismantles the system. The temple of religion (read “church” or “mosque” too) is henceforth to become personal, relational, embodied in people, and not a physical building. He came to say that God is available everywhere, and for some reason we like to keep God “elsewhere,” where we can control God by our theologies and services.

His public demonstration against the sacred space is surely the historical action that finally gets Him killed. The trouble with declaring one space sacred is that we then imagine other spaces are not! Here He takes on the detours of false religion: any attempt to "buy" God, purity and debt codes, and the primacy of "sacrifices" over mercy and compassion. Jesus has come to liberate God for humanity and humanity for God.

Tuesday, April 3, 2012

Christians speak of the "paschal mystery," the process of loss and renewal that was lived and personified in the death and raising up of Jesus. We can affirm that belief in ritual and song, as we do in the Eucharist. However, until we have lost our foundation and ground, and then experience God upholding us so that we come out even more alive on the other side, the expression "paschal mystery" is little understood and not essentially transformative.

Paschal mystery is a doctrine that we Christians would probably intellectually assent to, but it is not yet the very cornerstone of our life philosophy. That is the difference between belief systems and living faith. We move from one to the other only through encounter, surrender, trust and an inner experience of presence and power.

Wednesday, April 4, 2012

“The greatest among you must behave as if you were the youngest, the leader as if he were the one who serves”  - Luke 22:26

That statement is probably the simplest and most powerful definition of authority to be found in all four Gospels.

"For who is the greater, the one at table or the one who serves?" Most of us would say immediately, "The one at table." He says, "Yet here I am among you as one who serves" (Luke 22:27). Jesus says, in effect, "I'm telling you that the way of domination will not build a new world. I have come to model for you the way to be human and the way to be divine—it is the way of loving service.” Sometimes even the church does not understand this.

Holy Thursday

There's no real story of the Last Supper in the Gospel of John as we find it in the other Gospels. There is no passing of the bread or passing of the cup. Instead we come upon the story of Jesus on his knees washing the Apostles' feet. Really quite amazing, and even more amazing that we never made the foot washing into a Sacrament! It is much more explicit in the Scriptures than many other actions we made into sacraments.

 Perhaps John realized that after seventy years the other Gospels had been read. He wanted to give a theology of the Eucharist that revealed the meaning behind the breaking of the bread. He made it into an active ritual of servanthood and solidarity, instead of the priestly cult that it has largely become.

Peter symbolizes all of us as he protests, "You will never wash my feet!" (John 13:8). But Jesus answers, "If I do not wash you, you can have nothing in common with me." That is strong! We all find it hard to receive undeserved love from another. For some reason it is very humiliating to the ego. We all want to think we have earned any love that we get by our worthiness or attractiveness. So Jesus has to insist on being the servant lover. Thank God, Peter surrenders, but it probably takes him the rest of his life to understand.

Good Friday, April 6, 2012

The supreme irony of the whole crucifixion scene is this: He who was everything had everything taken away from Him. He who was perfect was totally misjudged as "sin" itself (Romans 8:3-4). The crucified Jesus forever tells power and authority, and all of us, how utterly wrong we can be about who is in the right and who is sinful (John 16:8). All human solidarity and sympathy was taken away from Him and He finally had to walk the journey alone, in darkness, in not-knowing, as most humans finally have to do.

Jesus hung in total solidarity with the pain of the world and the far too many lives on this planet that have been "nasty, lonely, brutish, and short.” After the cross, we know that God is not watching human pain, nor apparently always stopping human pain, as much as God is found hanging with us alongside all human pain. Jesus forever tells us that God is found wherever the pain is, which leaves God on both sides of every war, in sympathy with both the pain of the perpetrator and the pain of the victim, with the excluded, the tortured, the abandoned, and the oppressed since the beginning of time. I wonder if we even like that. There are no games of moral superiority left. Yet this is exactly the kind of Lover and the universal Love that humanity needs.

What else could possibly give us a cosmic and final hope? This is exactly how Jesus redeemed the world "by the blood of the cross.” It was not some kind of heavenly transaction, or "paying a price" to God, as much as a cosmic communion with all that humanity has ever loved and ever suffered. If he was paying any price it was for the hard and resistant skin around our souls.


Holy Saturday, April 7,2012 

To be a Christian means to necessarily be an optimist because we remember what happened on the third day! We know the final stage of death, Jesus' leap of faith, was not in vain. He was not put to shame, and "God raised him up" (which is the correct way to say it, and not that he rose himself). Most of human life is Holy Saturday, a few days of life are Good Friday, but there only needs to be one single Easter Sunday for us to know the final and eternal pattern. We now live inside of such cosmic hope.

Jesus trusted enough to outstare the darkness, to outstare the void, to hold out for the resurrection of the forever-awaited "third day,” and not to try to manufacture His own. That is how God stretches and expands the soul, and makes it big enough to include God.

You see, to love fully is to die! (When you fully unite with the other, the separate self is gone.) What is handed over to God is always returned to us transformed into Christ Consciousness. Easter is the eternal third day that we forever await, but today we are content to live in the belly of the whale, in liminal space, in the "in between" that is most of human life. God is creating a Big Space inside of you. Just wait!

 

Christ experiencing himself through you

Ten days ago while lying in a hospital bed, soaked with fear, a voice came to me in the middle of the night that said ‘the life you live is not about you!   The life you live is Christ experiencing himself through you’. This brief message continues to sustain and strengthen me throughout my physical and emotional struggle. It simply could not have come at a better time.

I don’t know exactly when and where the idea of God experiencing itself through us came but realized it has a lot to do with the True Self and the False or Ego Self.  In order to connect with the True Self we are called to deny our Ego (which is not easy or obvious). The Bible speaks of the False Self in terms of ‘Flesh’ and the True Self as the spirit self.  Therefore we are all Holy Creations capable of great unholy actions, thoughts and deeds.  But did God not create us with a free will?   Scripture tells us when we re-learn to trust in God “it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. And the life I now lives in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God,^* who loved me and gave himself for me. Gal. 2:20.  Jesus said that children already live in the Kingdom, which also suggests that most of us lose the ability to trust in God as we mature into adulthood.  So, to regain that trust we must re-learn what we already knew as a child.

With the awareness that God rests in every soul we can be assured that “if Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit^* is life because of righteousness. ¹¹If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ^* from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through^* his Spirit that dwells in you. Romans 8: 10-20

Now don’t get caught up in the religious term ‘sin’ as fearing the wrath of  God, but rather as opportunities to help you recognize your True Self from the False Self. God does not ever leave your presence just because you ‘missed the mark’!   (that's what the word 'sin' means from the original Greek) God does not punish, reward or hand out favours. In fact each time we sin he draws us closer because he desires nothing more than your whole self.  Believe me God is more interested in our potential than in our mistakes.  In fact scripture reminds us that God does not remember our sins.

Fr Richard Rohr writes (Job and the Mystery of Suffering) “God loves us so perfectly he lets us be the heroes. God lets us wrestle with the angel of Yahweh, lets us struggle with God and win. When we try to let go and give our life to God, God gives it back to us. Should we be surprised? That's what love does. That's the only thing you can get excited about when you're in love--giving your life to the other and seeing enjoyment in the other. That's the union toward which God is calling us. The lover delighting in the beloved and the beloved delighting in the lover”.

If you are still stuck on the ‘sin’ rather than your potential know that you are totally entitled to claim your inheritance of the True Self  at any time because   “you are no longer a slave but God's own child. And since you are his child, God has made you his heir. Gal. 4:7

Simply by trusting  in and accepting God’s unconditional love we can allow ourselves to transformed into the very image of God. 2 Cor. 3:18  We may never completely succeed but God knows our heart and keeps us close to his.

Negative thoughts keep you awake?  Claim the mind of the Lord, its free.  “for who has known the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ. 1 Cor. 2:16

The choice is entirely yours, but remember You are responsible... for creating your own belief system and internal map of the world. For interpreting situations however you do and creating feelings based on those interpretations. For your choices, decisions and actions. For being true to your own judgment but never being judgmental of others. For communicating with honesty and integrity, developing and maintaining an open mind, and promoting understanding and empathy. For never compromising your freedoms and rights nor trampling on another's. For always acting from the primary motivation of love. That's all and quite enough.  Brother Mandus Before leaving this posting please watch: http://zanylol.com/ad.html Finally in our daily struggles it may be helpful to recall that ‘the life you live is not about you!   The life you live is Christ experiencing himself through you’. BTW. By truly recognizing that God resides in all humans we have to accept that God comes in many disguises and that's certainly not always easy.