May 13, 2003

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  The God Fountain

  
  

  Do you ever sit down to write a blog with a particular generic goal in mind? I woke up thinking "I'm in a good mood this morning, what can I write to spread that around." Then I immediately started rejecting ideas - this one is too religious, that one is too obscure, this one is to smarmy, that one is too weird.

  
  

  One of the really cool things about writing online is that people of all different religious and philosophical worldviews come to read my stuff. Frankly, I'm amazed and humbled by the variety of people who have not only checked it out, but keep coming back.

  
  

  I am conscious of the need to be careful in what I say. I'm not talking about being politically correct, I don't believe in PC. How's that for a worldview? Hi, my name is Terri, and I don't believe in changing my word choices to euphemisms that sound nice in order to protect the feelings of people at the sacrifice of honesty. I'm talking about writing in a way that doesn't make assumptions about the worldview of the people who read this stuff. Writing with an awareness of the many different frames of reference held by potential readers is more fun but a lot harder than just talking about Christian ideas.

  
  

  I know, I sometimes "preach sermons". People inside the fellowship of Christian faith recognize that the sermons I preach are far enough from the mainstream of orthodoxy that I border on heresy. People outside Christianity, tend to skip those posts, which is okay too. But there are always a few people who sincerely try to understand what I’m talking about who don’t have access to the language of Christian spiritualism. So I try to translate my thoughts into words that get outside the narrow box.

  
  

  I've been thinking about the set of "givens" that leaves open to me. I take as a given that we are real, each of us individually exists. I take as a given that we live in and interact with a material world. I take as a given that we each have a "mind," whatever that is, that we use to interpret our experiences in the world.

  
  

  I also take as a given that some people's experience includes elements and phenomena that cannot be examined under a microscope, or tested for reliability. In the same way that we cannot predict global weather patterns because we can never find the starting point or identify all the conditions that influence it, we can't use linear analysis to prove or disprove the source of the mysticism that pervades human culture. I call the source of mystical experience, God.

  
  

  That doesn't mean we all worship or understand God in the same way. Some of us talk about a cosmic consciousness, some of us talk about the Goddess, some of us talk about Jesus. The ideas associated with these different descriptions of God may be vastly different. I do not claim that all religious ideas are the same idea. But I do say that all mystical experience is drunk from the same fountain.

  
  

  Now that I've said all that here's my positive thought for the day . . . "As we each make our way through life and death, loneliness and love, hope and defeat - affirmation is better than complaint, hope more viable than despair, and kindness nobler than it's opposite." Huston Smith

  
  

  May you be affirmed that you are priceless, may you have confidence that leads you forward, and may you give and receive kindness as the token of your humanity - Amen.

  • 8:31 am
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