Pope Says People Should Doubt Church

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Pope Says People Should Doubt Church

Again, doubt is an important element of faith.  After reading Kyle Cupp’s article above about the pope, read the book NOTHING SACRED by Douglas Rushkoff. “Many will be outraged and even furious at Rushkoff for daring to revise the Jewish tradition of self-questioning.”  This tradition should be an all-faith tradition so that religion doesn’t degenerate into idolatry.

The Emptiness, this NOTHING of which Rushkoff speaks in his book is space for the divine to emerge in the midst of us. This Nothing space is SACRED!  This is definitely a book for people of all faiths to read and study together!

No Perfect God

 

Perfectly Imperfect World

 

Perfect gods are boring and stilted and static and dead.

No need for intercourse or interaction with us.

They just make rules or rituals for us to follow.

Or do we make the rules and rituals to fit our perfect gods?

 

A real God would never be perfect.

A real God would never create a perfect world,

For that would be a world as dead as a perfect god.

 

A real God would be intercoursing back and forth with us,

wanting to know us more intimately,

wanting to experience the mystery of us,

calling that mystery forth from us,

as only Love does.

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Fierce Love

 

“Learning to Soar above it all” by Consilia Karli

Enough of wimpy “God is love” stuff.  What good is that in the face of people who are suffering untold injustices and violent prejudices?   Promises of “I will save you” don’t  give us the fierce courage we need to move beyond the traumas that life brings.

It always helps, of course, to remember that we are loved. But to be loved by a god which has power to alleviate suffering, one which has the power to liberate the oppressed…how does such a god love and leave us to endure what “He” has the power to undo?

Instead we need a God who loves us fiercely, one which doesn’t take on the role of softy savior or almighty healer/ liberator from on high, god of cartoon kid-heroes.

What if we had a God with fierce faith in us, one who never gives up on us, one which refuses to let us get away with wimping out on life?

 

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God Has Bad Days?

Count to 10, then press the “play” arrow.

http://vimeo.com/leaconsilia/badday4god

God in a Lock-box?

As long as we keep God in a lock-box, “He” will rust or be eaten by moths or stolen by thieves. (Matthew 6:20)

You know, when we put our ideas of someone in a lock-box, then we relate to our ideas of that person.
We don’t allow them to be who they are
in any given moment.

 We demand that they be who we say they are.
When someone is in my lock-box, they can’t change.
I won’t let them.

When we are in someone’s lock-box,
we can’t change in their eyes
We can’t be the real and ever-new person we are in each moment to them.

That lock-box may be full of the best qualities, the purest intentions, but it still kills.

Often we put God in a lock-box, one we have been taught to use to lock God down.

Only we can break it open!

You there, GOD???

Watercolor by Consilia Karli…Alien

ARE YOU THERE, GOD???

Is Rogue God there when you need a God there?

Or are as we as alone and alien as we sometimes feel?

 

Would a rogue god be off in his own separateness sometimes

…like a mother wanting to get away from her children in all their neediness?

 

Does Rogue God, like parents, have to leave us on our own

…so we don’t become dependent on constant contact?

…so we develop confidence in our own strength and ability?

…so we learn how to depend on and relate to each other?

…so we learn how to be “separate yet one-with” as God seems to be?

 

 

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A DIFFERENT ADAM & EVE STORY

Who GOD is Not

Hand of God by Consilia K

ADAM and EVE GROWING UP

(Old myth transvalued for new meaning)

It was a beautiful garden, safe and secure,
furry lions playing with delicate lambs,
no violence, no fears,no messes, no tears.

Free to do and free to be,
except for this one big tree
marked off-limits by Godas private space, not to be shared.

Eve and Adam knew nothing about
the sacred space of privacy.
They knew only sharing in heaven,
as babes in the womb sharing everything in mother’s body.

Quite naturally then,
they ate of the fruit of.
God’s sacred space.
Knowing no separateness from God,
they claimed all as belonging to them.
(Su casa es mi casa, as one might say.)

God could have overlooked
this little apple-sharing event.
After all, no harm done.
Just One’s private space,
One’s sacred space ignored,
as if no separateness
existed between those who…

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From God on the Throne to God on the Edge

Religious leaders by Consilia K.

God on a throne was fine during the era of kings/queens/subjects, but that age has passed and even the kings and queens who still remain…they are a different breed than their foremothers/fathers.

Churches like the Catholic Church which rely heavily on the God/throne image are in major crisis as the media exposes all their warts, past sins and present vulnerabilities.  Suddenly the God which knew everything and kept everything under control…that God is no longer!

It’s Okay!  We don’t need to be afraid and neither do the Churches.  God was never on the throne. God was always on the edge…with the prophets, leading us by surfing the moment and seeing more in it than we ever could see.

The Good News is “Do not be afraid” because God has always been on the edge where we are now…interacting with us and the universe, calling forth and being called forth…never forcing, never dominating, ever interacting with us wherever we happen to be in our dreams of what is real.

These days, the Catholic Church and other religious institutions are waking from their dreams of what is real.  In earlier times, people needed religious institutions as the educated advisors on how to live.  Now, many people realize they don’t need religious institutions to tell them what to do or how to do it.

Today we need a different Church…one which helps us live on the edge the way God does..without fear so we can let go our defensive posturing and engage each other with a modicum of trust.

This new theology of God-on-the-Edge must hold “not knowing” as sacred as knowing.  It must hold “letting go” as sacred as “holding on” and separateness as sacred as oneness, for ego is as important as spirit…that we might know the greatness of who we are, as well as the humbleness of our dependence on each other and the universe.

 

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God on the Edge of Knowing

On the Edge of NOT knowing

I always thought of God as knowing everything, yet what, if instead, God is always on the edge of knowing?

What if God rides knowing on a wave, like we do?  What if God surfs the wave of knowing by responding to the moment with the whole of God’s being as a champion surfer would?

The idea of a God which knows everything seems a fairy tale, a wish for something that seems like good lasting forever, but also something that ends the story.

An interactive God would be always there with us on each new wave of Unknowing, instead of being out there somewhere knowing it all, like some people do, like I do sometimes.

What if God were there with each moment, coming to know and be known by everything IN that moment, knowing as one does in the throes of becoming one with the other, in the crest and crash of the great wave, in the ebb and flow of the small everyday waves?

What if God is always on the edge of knowing like we are?  Or what if we are always on the edge of knowing like God is?

(Watercolor on paper towel by Consilia Karli)

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Poor Hungry EGO

Poor hungry ego can never get enough control, so it fears for itself. standing always in an attack/defend posture, it freezes out relationships it cannot control.

Poor Hungry Ego can never get enough things to make itself happy. Soon the things pile up and trap ego all alone under the pile of things.

Poor hungry ego can never get enough love to feel complete, so it sucks up attention wherever it can…and still it never knows that it is loved.

Poor hungry ego is deprived, starved.  It cannot function as healthy ego which knows its sacred separateness.

Healthy ego has no fear of being one with others and no addiction to the company of others.

Healthy ego, our sacred separateness, is the opposite of egoism.