God Is Dead – Long Live God

Most of the Universe is black and empty – a glance at the clear night sky will verify that. But quantum physicists would have us believe that all that blackness is pregnant with possibility – that there is a constant dance going on between existence and non-existence. It's like the void of space is maniacally fiddling with itself in random bursts of creation and annihilation as it awaits inspiration.

Apparently, everything that exists, was formed out of this blackness and is sustained by thought. But whose thought?

I avoid the word “God.” That is a word with so many meanings attached to it as to render it meaningless. An appropriate fate in my reckoning and here's why I think so.

Bad things happen to good people and bad people get away with all manner of nastiness. Not all bad people – sometimes justice is served, or at least it would seem so. And good things happen to good people, too, but, there sure is a lot of crap going on in the world.

If there is a God, wouldn't He/She/It put a stop to all of the insanity? Wouldn't God being all powerful and on the side of righteousness (otherwise, wouldn't we be talking about Satan?) be smiting evil and rewarding good until peace reigns pure in the Universe?

It sure seems like an argument in favor of the non-existence of God, or the death thereof. Maybe God took a vacation. I mean, for God, isn't a couple of weeks more like billions of years to us? One way to resolve the discrepancy between the Creationist's belief that it took seven days to make the Universe and the scientific stance that billions of years were involved is to consider context in the measure of a “Day.”

But, what if God is merely the possibility of creation? Like building blocks strewn willy-nilly across a floor. They remain a mess for a mom to yell about as long as no one arranges them into prideful structures. What they become is totally up to the builder. The blocks don't give a flop how they are used – their only ambition is to hold their shape so they can be relied on to function throughout time into whatever purpose they are applied.

That would explain why so many prayers go unanswered and why I so often hear the phrase, “It wasn't meant to be.” More like, “It wasn't made to be.” And what about those prayers that, apparently, are answered? Could it be in the asking?

Back in my Unity days, I joined the prayer team and was trained as a Prayer Minister. During that training a distinction was made between what was termed “Begging Prayer” and what could be called “Proactive Prayer.” Begging prayer goes something like this:

“Oh Heavenly Father, please, don't let anything happen to little Stevie, and make us strong and resourceful as we face the challenges to come, and hey, how about that Mercedes-Benz -- amen”

The same prayer in the style I was taught would go like this:

“Heavenly Father, from the knowing that we are co-creators and through the oneness of all things, I know, for little Stevie, that he is safe, secure, and surrounded by the love of his family and friends and by your infinite love and compassion. We recognize, within ourselves, the boundless source of strength and creativity which we will apply, without abandon, to the tasks at hand. And, hey, we see that Mercedes-Benz materializing in our near future from the wealth of your abundance – amen!”

Based on the testimonies, gleefully delivered on many a Sunday morning, our way of praying worked pretty good. The difference is simple – being active in the process, rather than passive. By accepting responsibility for how things turn out, rather than expecting some external power to take care of it is, from what I have seen, the crucial quality.

I think the question of whether God is dead or not, is nonsensical (as is this idea that there are “good” people and “bad” people – but that's a subject for a later post ;). It requires that there be a form that can die. I've always considered God as a formless and impersonal foundation for all “things” and that we are in charge of how it is applied in our lives. Isn't that what “free will” is all about?

There are a lot of details, and a caveat or two, that I plan to go into in future posts, but suffice it to say, God is love and love doesn't interfere. The state of the world is purely a result of how humanity has applied the infinite manna. In other words, it ain't God's fault.

Tithing The Natural Way

During my high school years I had a friend whose family maintained a pantry full of enough food to feed them for two years. He didn’t smoke, drink, take drugs, or even swear. He was my kind of guy and as it turned out, he was Mormon. I had never heard of a Mormon.

One day, his father took me aside and started up a conversation about a guy named Joseph Smith. He asked me if I would like to watch a short film that would clarify things a bit. I didn’t see any harm and it sounded interesting.

About all I remember of its content was a bunch of people wearing white sheets and standing around in water. Then, one by one, this one guy bent each person back until their head was under water. I remember thinking how unpleasant that must be, since whenever my head goes under water at that angle, I get loads of it up my nose.

Then he told me that my parents, should I choose to become a Mormon, would have to donate ten percent of their income to the church. He used a word I had never heard before. The word was “tithe.”

I went home and asked my parents about it, and I seem to recall that their attitude was I could become a Mormon if I wanted to, but any tithing would have to come out of my pocket. I decided to not become a Mormon.

Decades later, the subject of tithing once again crossed my path – this time at a Unity church and this time, I was a member. The church coffers were low and the minister thought it a good time to educate us on the power of giving. As a result I learned a great deal about tithing, both how to do it and how not to.

The sermon was based on Malachi who said: "Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house, and prove me now herewith, saith the LORD of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it."

Once again the minimum amount deemed effective was ten percent. Now, this minister wasn’t going to let us off easy. Her interpretation was ten percent of our gross income. At that particular time, the church wasn’t the only one having some financial difficulty and ten percent of my gross was going to be, well, painful.

But the minister said for it to work, we needed to be happy about our gift. We needed to be giving from a place of gratitude, knowing that the money was going to a worthy cause. In fact, and this was rather brave of this minister, her definition of tithing was giving to whatever or whomever provided our “spiritual food”. In my case, that wasn’t entirely her church. There was Self Realization Fellowship, Peace Pilgrim, and a guy named James.

It was a struggle, but I did manage to muster up some gratitude. All I had to do was think about how these organizations and/or people had benefited me and my heart swelled with gratitude – naturally.

That was when it made a difference. My previous attempts at tithing seemed to net nothing in the way of blessings gushing through open windows. When I actually wanted to show my appreciation, my fortune changed in the form of a raise in pay that made it much easier to do ten percent.

I suspect it isn’t really tithing unless you really want to do it. And when you really want to do it, you are behaving like that grand source that just loves to give us exactly what we want. I think that is what tithing is really all about. It’s about being like the essence of who we really are.

When we live and act from gratitude, we are closest to that higher part of us that is Creator. As a result, we come into the act of creation, and thus create. That’s what opens the window. That’s what delivers the blessing -- us being who we really are when we aren’t absorbed in ourselves.
When a tithe is offered out of obligation, I suspect it’s coming from a place of lack, and can only create more lack – which may be just fine. There is nothing like a little pain to promote piety within the flock ;)

Sunday School Hooky

I was raised Christian by a pair of agnostics. Each Sunday morning I tried to say in bed until the family left without me, but my parents preferred the late service (or perhaps they thought I did). As a result I had to lie in bed doing nothing for hours, which for my ten year old temper was worse than church, but not by much, so ‘try’ became the operative word.

Once seated in the temple, there was another agonizing wait that was probably only fifteen minutes, but seemed like days. Finally, after the minister mumbled something about Heavenly Fathers and ghosts, and everyone stood and sang some incomprehensible song, we kids were excused for Sunday School.

There was no escort – we were trusted to find our own way – a situation I took full advantage of.

About three times the number of paces it would have taken for me to arrive at the class for my age group was the distance to where I held my own personal Sunday School on the banks of the creek that ran behind the church property at the edge of a small eucalyptus forest in a suburb called “Northridge”.

There I communed with nature, hippy style, feeling the energy of the trees, delighting in the sway of algae and the gurgle of the water, and witnessing the cycle of life as I discovered frog eggs, then pollywogs, then little leaping frogs.

I was a pre-teen on the verge of puberty. It was the mid-sixties. And, like I said, though I didn’t know it at the time, I was plugged into the whole sixties peace and love revival. I was a one member commune, a child of the Earth with tree hugger tendencies, who was dismayed by the “establishment” and as a result, was generally treated as a pariah by the general public.
I still have to remind myself that I’m not “wrong” or ‘bad” because my views are so different from “the norm”. That it’s ok to believe that Love is for everyone and not just for members of whatever religion believes it has the favor of whatever God it prays to. That it’s ok to think that there’s more than just one “child of God” – that, in fact, we are all “of the creator” – isn’t that what Jesus was trying to tell us?

Should I be damned for thinking that Jesus, Buddha, Abraham, Krishna, and Lao-tzu, just to name a few, were all of the same ilk – that when Jesus said “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”, he was speaking from the context of the christ, and not from his ego self.

It is my conviction that Buddha knew himself as Christ, as did Krishna, Lao-tzu, and perhaps even Abraham (though I haven’t studied him all that much). I believe that a connection to The Christ is possible for all of us, from many different paths, by many different names, and that The Christ doesn’t give a flop how we do it, but that we do. It’s my view that The Christ is simply a channel to the oneness that we all came from – that it’s the “yellow brick road” back to our true home. That we’re all wearing ruby slippers and don’t know it. And the great master teachers through time have just been trying to tell us that!
Am I such a bad guy for believing that?

Maybe my beliefs would be more in line with the society that I live in had I not played hooky from Sunday School, and maybe my younger social life wouldn’t have been as miserable, but looking back, I like myself for doing it, so at least somebody likes me.

Before It Mattered, It Didn’t Matter

If current science is correct, since the beginning of time some tens of billions of years ago, stars have exploded, galaxies have slammed into each other, and comets and asteroids have rained down on planets turning their soil to blazing liquid and their oceans to vapor.

But, until matter developed the ability and impetus to scream “Oh shit!” [translation] – none of that mattered.

Our bodies are made of the same stuff that merrily roasts, freezes, collides, boils, melts, vaporizes, explodes, tumbles through the vacuum of space and spirals into the oblivion of black holes. So why does this stuff suddenly care?

Because of nerves – those long cells that wire the sensory organs to the brain. It’s the nervous system that has a problem with all the commotion in the Universe. Suddenly, all that banging about became dangerous. Suddenly pain became a consequence of exposure to the extreme. Suddenly conditions became important, and worry was invented.

It hurts when the body is injured. It hurts when it needs more food or water or air. It hurts when the opportunity to make more little bodies is thwarted. It even hurts when it thinks any of the above is going to happen.

So how do we vindicate this discrepancy between life’s fragility and the Universe’s hostility to life? I mean, think about it – here we are, these little blobs of gooey stuff that are so easily squashed, poked, suffocated, invaded, cooked, poisoned, and frozen, sitting in a Universe that, on a regular basis, squashes, pokes, suffocates, invades, cooks, poisons, and freezes things – how is that a reasonable state of affairs.

Most babies that I have encountered don’t seem to be worried about it at all. They just gleefully charge after whatever tickles their fancy – often, to the utter horror of some doting guardian. It isn’t until the fire burns – or the little hand gets slapped away – that they begin to equate the world with danger.

Are babies wrong to fear nothing? Is our grief, should something happen to that baby, warranted? What is lost when life ends? How are we different from, say, a rock? What is it that experiences pain as unpleasant? Does a rock feel pain?

Life’s preoccupation with survival, when compared to the events in the Universe, truly seems to be trivial. But then, is everything as it seems?




In this blog I intend to explore this and many other aspects of life, happiness, and the perplexing nature of existence.