ch-ch-changes

God can be accessible within, not because I'm so amazing or brilliant or talented, but because God's loving energy is so vast.

I am aware of my human failings, God knows, but to give in to perpetual self-loathing is to miss the purpose of God's presence in each of our lives.

Isn't that what we are asked to do?

A passive life is a terrible thing to lead.

Yes, I have heard the message for nearly 25 years.

Yet, if I choose to wait for the Kingdom of God, don't I prevent it from taking place here on earth, where change is so desperately needed?

The Christian message now is not love and peace and inclusiveness. But rather the message I have learned is that I have been blessed because I happened to have been born into a nice Protestant family.

How terribly convenient! All the religious ideas floating about, and I picked the right one!

Yes, I am a chosen one indeed.

But what happens when I just can't believe anymore? And why do I feel afraid to let go of these old ideas that no longer fit with my reality? And what kind of love is that?

Love means allowing people to change.

God, too.

God within

Maybe Jesus was special only because he KNEW he could access God within.

I say "only," but don't we all search for this?

No?

Of course we do not. Instead we rely on a Savior to rescue us from our own human nature.

How could God despise us, punish us, separate us from divinity because of our humanity?

We are weak and foolish, and we all have the capacity to be very cruel.

Or is it just me?

But this is who we are. These are the limits we face, our own glass ceiling as we gaze heavenward.

But it's awfully convenient to be human, don't you think?

We have no responsibilities to fulfill our own divine nature. Jesus did it for us.

But suppose we all have this capacity to access God within us?

Not because of our own massive human egos. But because if we can somehow get past them, these egos that strangle us in the binds of self-loathing, religious guilt, insecurity and pride, then we can see what has been here all along, throughout time, patiently waiting.

God.

what does this mean?

Recently a friend mentioned that the Apostles' Creed no longer means what it once did.

A few days later I had a dream:

I was in a church, maybe even the one I used to know. And I rose with my peers to recite a creed, some collection of words written centuries ago to express dogmatic ideals.

Yet in this dream, I knew the words but could not speak. And suddenly the familiar words became something new. Still English, but I could not make sense of the phrases echoing around me.

Meaningless.

After a few sentences, the stoic mumbles of the crowd grew quiet and I could only hear one voice. It was the voice of a man I did not know.

A man, certainty echoing in his voice as he spoke these words of truth.

These meaningless words.

he won. what next?

Maybe we can create change by believing it is possible.

IT'S HERE!!

E-day has arrived. Soon I will sleep, I hope, and I will awaken to a fresh morning full of possibilities.

I will ask people to vote, of course, all day.

Tomorrow night I will cry, but it will be good, I do believe.