Monday, October 22, 2018

A Work in Progress

For a while I’ve been having a problem with writer’s block, yet I wanted to write here this month. Searching my journals for inspiration I found this from 1986:

What I know to be absolutely true:                                                     

            One cannot know who or what God is.

            But that which is known as ‘God’s Kingdom” is the ONLY thing that is worth living/dying for.

            The soulless institutions we build destroy meaning, and life without meaning cannot be endured by creatures whose central quality is reflective awareness.

            We must live out our existence with ‘human nature’, which is attracted to evil as well as good.  We aren’t going to be transformed into another kind of being.

            We can train ourselves to develop and utilize the capacity for reflective awareness, which has sat mostly idle within the species (actualized in only a few).

            And thus as mankind becomes a choice-making creature guided by the wisdom in our sacred scriptures . . . that is none other than a blueprint of how humankind can co-exist in life’s diversity and find joy.

            There are only two options left: either we finally build the Kingdom of God, or we destroy ourselves and this planet—there is no other option available.                     
                                                               _ _ _

I remembered that after having read Teilhard’s book ‘How I Believe’, it haunted me for some time. I liked that he had distilled the genius of his mind to make a simple statement of belief.

I believe the universe is an evolution.
I believe that evolution proceeds toward spirit.
I believe that in man, spirit is fully realized in person.
I believe that the supremely personal is the Universal Christ.
                                                                                Teilhard de Chardin
                                         _ _ _

I wanted to do something similar and write a brief statement of belief.  It wasn’t brief and resulted in the above ‘What I Know’.   It took a surprising amount of time but I finally wrote what, after some 20 years, still reads as true.  I read and reread it and made a few changes.  It now reads:

            One cannot know who or what God is.

            But that which is known as ‘God’s kingdom’ is the only thing that is worth living and dying for.

            We must live out our existence with human nature that is attracted to evil as well as good; but with consciousness, we can learn to choose the good.

            We pray, “Thy kingdom come”.  What does that mean?  It will be our One peaceful global world with people choosing compassion, forgiveness and love.

            We, mankind, must evolve to become choice-making creatures with long-term vision guided by the Wisdom from all of our sacred scriptures.

            There are only two options: either we finally build the kingdom of God, or we destroy this planet and ourselves.
                                                               _ _ _


It is not yet concise enough; I will continue to search my soul and return to it another time.