WAKE UP WORLD

   Well, awake at four (that's am folks). Did my morning routine, got my pain meds, tossed in an Aleeve for  good measure. (dear undear tablet just because your word list  doesn't include what I just typed doesn't  mean it doesn't exist) looked outside and decided I might as well start the exercise routine. Watched color come in as the sky turned from indigo to pearly white. There was a quail calling in the courtyard and a jay calling the tree as the leaves turned from dark gray to green to gold as the rose higher. The finches and chickadees are telling the that they are awake too. 

This time of year the sun shines right into my eyes for over an hour. Yes, I could put down the blind. But I would miss the world waking up. Two twenty minute stepper sets and a total of about twenty minutes getting used to the elliptical routine. If we weren't on daylight savings time the sky would be getting light at 3:15 not 4:15.  On that note I believe I will squeeze. In a short snooze before breakfast.      

DRY AS DUST

Is how I feel right now.

"It is customary to blame secular science and anti-religious philosophy for the eclipse of religion in modern society. It would be more honest to blame religion for its own defeats. Religion declined not because it was refuted, but because it became irrelevant, dull, oppressive, insipid. When faith is completely replaced by creed, worship by discipline, love by habit; when the crisis of today is ignored because of the splendor of the past; when faith becomes an heirloom rather than a living fountain; when religion speaks only in the name of authority rather than with the voice of compassionits message becomes meaningless."

Rabbi Joshua A Heschel  The intro to God in Search of Man

Perhaps because most Christians aren't taught to look at the world that way. We're supposed to search for God, by the rules, as laid down by the powers that be, not the other way around. Perhaps that's why most denominations have trouble accepting mystics. We can't prove what we've seen or heard. And ususally we have trouble describing the experience in the first place. The words we have to work with just don't fit somehow.

The Catholic Church in the west calls that Personal Revlation. The guardians at the gate who attempt the enforce the rules frown on that. Oh, yes, do they frown on that.

NOT SURE WHERE I'M GOING

 

NOT SURE WHERE I"M HEADING

but I can't wait to get there. 

 I pulled this up from an old entry from 2011. It's odd. I was raised, sort of, Methodist. Working on the family tree I discovered several branches of Quakers. Exploring them I discovered their beliefs echoed mine. Quakers are, or were, mystics. Probably why there are so few of them after all these years and probably why the families were some form of Methodist by the time we hit Oregon. 

I have to admit there are damn few mystics in any branch of the tree. I may be jumpimg to conclusions but I believe that most mystics are born mystics who didn't run scared the first time the universe, or whatever is out there, tapped them on the shoulder and invited them to join the dance. It's scary and inviting and a whole list of words I don't even know. Yet. 

"f they ever take away our radio, suspend our newspaper, silence us, put to death all of us priests-bishop included, and you are left alone-a people without priests-then each of you will have to be God's microphone. Each of you will have to be a messenger, a prophet. The church will always live as long as one baptized person is left alive."

Oscar Romero, quoted in Messengers to the Kingdom by Jon Sobrino S.J.

I begin to understand by Romero scared the bejeesus out of some of the Vatican Curia in the three years he was archbishop of San Salvador. And I wonder how closely Morris West, author of the Clowns of God, followed the persecution of the church in Central America. Because he echoes that message in the novel. When the time comes, the little people, the lay people will have to carry on the work and the sacraments of the church whether they are ordained or not. Imagine how well that went over with old men who had spent their lives climbing the ladders of power.

This is probably true of most of the major denominations that seem more concerned with following the fules than caring for their people. So, in seventies I am basically starting from almost the beginning. I would apprecitae feed back if anyone cares to comment. You don't have to agree with me. In fact I was so surprised when I ran across Evangelical Quakers hired minister and all the trappings.

If this entry seems a little, or a lo,t mildly crazy that's pretty much where I am right now. Mildly crazy.