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That In Which We Live, Move, and Have Our Being

Category: Spiritual Disciplines

We Are Too Often Blind; You Must Unlearn All That You Have Learned

May 21, 2024 / / 0 Comments

Too often we are ill equipped to embark on a spiritual life. Even if we have been raised in the Church in Europe or America we are overly rationalistic and materialistic. Somehow we decided, largely due to the dominant fiction of Scientism – the cultic belief that science can explain everything of value in the world – that despite the fact that every human society and culture that has existed or does exist acknowledges (or at least explores,) the existence of a spiritual reality of some kind. Even in America we have begun to understand that sometimes health conditions are caused by mental and spiritual conditions. We are, as I have always preached, not physical creatures with a body, a mind, and a soul. Instead the truth is we are body/mind/soul creatures and everything is harmoniously interconnected. At least it is supposed to be harmoniously integrated and interconnected.

Welcome to the Nature’s God Blog for 20240519 Grace and Peace to you.

There is something very, very real about a war between good and evil. If you have been told there is no evil then please stay with me. I was raised with the idea of Spiritual Warfare, angels, demons, and many misconceptions that come with that – one of which you can read about if you read about the exorcism I conducted of a church – an exorcism that I thought was going to be a simple cleansing of residual negative feelings but found…suddenly…that I was facing an actual entity; an evil entity that according to all that I had read and be taught should not have even been able to enter church grounds let alone come to dominate them. I also knew that I was not alone that a Divine power was assisting me and communicating with me throughout the ordeal. The fight was by no means as certain or direct as you would see on TV or sometimes hear from a pulpit. As is so often true in life even if the end is certain because God is With You – that does not mean the resolution is going to be an easy matter or that you don’t have to work for it.

These entities I describe as evil. There is a deep hunger that can never be satisfied. It is a hunger for life that feeds on pain, fear, and suffering. In my mind the best way to describe such an overwheening desire and hunger for suffering and pain is evil. To me, living for the suffering of others or living in a way that causes the suffering of others is evil – or at the very least demonically insensitive.

One thing I have often mentioned is that most of the references to Satan in the English Old Testament are not a capital “S” Satan but a lower “s” satan. Satan means “enemy, adversary, prosecutor, etc.” There IS a big “S” Satan but most of the references to Satan that you read in the Old Testament are “enemies” of life and the Divine and not “The Devil” but devils, efreets, and other creatures just as most “angels” are a variety of creatures and not only the human shaped winged creatures we have been taught to imagine.

So, if you have trouble with “evil” maybe it is due to the over-used and sometimes comical simplicity of how good and evil are portrayed. I want to ensure that you understand my paradigm and definition.

Know that there is a Source of Life that I call God/the Divine/Source of Life/The Ground of All Being/etc. As I have said before I could care less what name you choose to give it if you are speaking of the Entity or Force that strengthens life, maintains or instigated the laws of physics and nature, and whose creative force initiated the Big Bang – quite possibly from the power of the Word. Then we are speaking of the same thing. I would include the Tao although those who follow Tao would say it has no intelligence, I have learned a lot about the Holy Spirit by studying understandings of the Tao. I suggest that perhaps Tao has an intelligence that you simply don’t recognize because it is not human.

The creatures that are evil have cut themselves off from this Source and therefore they are always “hungry” for survival. Since they have cut themselves off from the Source of life. But just as we need to convert food to energy to live they need energy to maintain their spiritual existence. They therefore have a parasitic existence by feeding off of (not the Source itself but by sucking the “life” out of,) the Source’s creatures that are still connected to the Divine Source – even if it is only residually so. They feed by creating “anti-life/anti-existence.” If truly living is having an abundant life they suck the energy of that life away by causing, fear, pain, suffering, and hatred. They do this not only just to survive but because of their jealousy and hatred of all things still connected to and created by the Source. They seem to feel they are exacting a kind of vengeance by twisting, warping, scarring, and destroying life and its quality.

We are born with our connection to the Divine but every decision we make that is “not God” [see also The Vital Truth of Life – ofNaturesGod.com ] moves us farther from the Source and closer to oblivion because we are not strong enough spiritual creatures to even survive in the “outer darkness” where the “evil” creatures were banished after they rebelled against the Divine.

So, that was all for anyone who have not been with us long enough to have “context.”

The battle between good and evil won a great victory for “evil” when the Western World became skewed and convinced in Scientism and the break between the spiritual and physical worlds as if they were different or even worse that there is NOTHING but the physical world. A lie that most of us have, at some level, been taught in America and Europe if we were born after 1900. It is a dead end that we are coming to that the Western World started down just over a hundred years ago. It is not the Western World it is a mutation of the Western World.

We are not physical beings but body/mind/soul creatures that are an organic/spiritual whole. The physical and spiritual are one but we have been raised in a world that directly cuts us off from the spiritual. We were conditioned by an infant “science” that could only focus on the physical and spread the belief of “radical materialism” that there IS no spiritual. This is really a fascinating development when testimony from every human society in every time and age has affirmed that there IS a spiritual world. Now medical science has come to realize that just as 50% of all cures with medicine are actually a “placebo” affect where the person heals themselves because they “believe” that they took a cure. So, they are beginning to understand that perhaps 50% or more of disease (read this as dis – ease) is actually caused by a dis-ease in the mental or spiritual whelm. Life is not physical or spiritual it is like science has discovered with the particle and wave physics (look it up with the particle/wave observer effect). They are both depending upon the observer but the physical reality is that existence is both.

Reality is a physical and spiritual reality that are not separate but a kind of unified field and we are not whole creatures unless we can perceive it as such. Because we have been formed in a world that told us all this is “just your imagination” or “that was a dream.” Then most of us have to do a great deal of work in order to learn to “see” because being raised in “radical materialism” we have to work at something that, when we are born, comes naturally to all of us.

I remember when my son first told me of “an invisible friend.” He was at an age where he could explain it and we could talk about it (about six or so.) I asked, “What did she look like?” He described a girl in a white shift that went down to her ankles. She had black hair beneath her shoulders and dark eyes.” I nodded an asked, “Did you feel scared or did she try to hurt you in any way.” “No she just surprised me and knocked me over. Actually, I don’t know if she knocked me over or if I fell backwards to keep from running into her.” I nodded again. “Yes, I have seen her too. I don’t believe that she means any harm she has just come to us because we are able to see her and most people have convinced themselves that what they are seeing isn’t real. So you need to be careful who you talk to about this because most people, even your mother’s family, are scared of this stuff and will insist it is your imagination because they don’t want to deal with it.”

I tried to raise all of my sons like that, however, my two oldest sons were the product of a marriage that was not a good match and my ex-wife worked very very hard at making sure they understood what she believed was “real” and what wasn’t. My sister maintained regular contact with her and by the time she was older I think she came around but she had rejected much of what we had encountered when married and convinced herself that it never happened. Likewise, when we ran out of gas on a Sunday and all of the gas stations were closed (yes it was a while ago and we were not near an interstate.) We prayed and drove an additional half hour on an empty tank. I suggest you not “test” that because “tests” where we don’t fully believe don’t do well. Somehow, my oldest son, convinced himself that we “had made that all up” for some reason. I asked him why we would lie to him like that? And he gave some vague answer that revealed he simply did not want to believe because belief held other ramifications for him he was not ready to deal with.

Be aware, don’t force this on people. Some cannot deal with it.

I had five parishioners/farmers standing around trying to get my tiller to work to get my garden ready. They all looked at it. We even took it apart. It seemed to be getting air, spark, and fuel so there was no reason why the simple engine didn’t work. But we had all tried it. One by one, farmers drove by and saw the pastor and others standing around the tiller and stopped to help. But none of us could get it to run. They all had to look for themselves and ensure that it had all three elements and that none of us could figure out why it wasn’t working. “Well,” I said. “We haven’t prayed over it and I’m the pastor so lets try that.” We joined hands and I prayed, “Lord, we have all tried to get this machine work and we cannot do it. We don’t see anything wrong with it but there is work to be done. Grant us your blessing and bring this machine to life so that I can get my garden ready for planting. In Christ’s name we pray.” We then tried the cord again and it started on the first pull. Eyebrows went up. There had been some chuckling when I suggested praying but, after all, I was the pastor so they did it. “Hmm” and “I’ll be damned, sorry pastor.” were the only comments I got, and then everyone left.

The physical and spiritual world are not separate. All are one. There is not a “spiritual reality” and a “physical reality” there is simply reality and the radical materialism found and propounded by modern scientism (the belief that science can find and define anything “real,”), and the emphasis on capitalistic consumerism, and communism which are all radical materialistic ways of understanding. Even our religions separate the material and spiritual as if “spiritual” is what you do at church and then you “put it away” to get on with life the other six days of the week. One advantage Catholicism can have is the availability of mass every day of the week in most places.

All of this is in the Bible because a unity and reality and omnipresence of the spiritual was assumed by everyone who wrote the Bible. As Jesus would say, “Let those who have eyes to see, let them see.” or “Let those who have ears to hear, let them hear.” Yet most of us have been taught to not see, and to not hear. We must unlearn, all that we have learned.

If this is very foreign to you you might try reading the Rhineland mystics like Hildegard of Bingen, Meister Eckhart, the Gospel of John, Theresa of Avila, or any of the multitude of Christian mystics. There are other mystical traditions but the Western mind is not conditioned for Eastern thinking and most I have encountered who try make mistakes because they are looking at them through Western Eyes. They don’t have the “full moon sight” as discussed by good Shotokan Karate instructors and other marital arts ways.* Irish and Celtic traditions are closer but many who claim to follow them do not fully attain a Celtic way of thinking. The best introduction in my view is looking at Celtic Christian mystics because they are speaking from a Western way of thinking with a Celtic mindset – only without the blocks of “modern” Westernism. There is no way for us to fully recover ancient Celtic or Nordic thought because it died out due to lack of written record. We may approach it but it will always be colored by the radically materialistic world that we were raised in. Please note, as you will if you begin reading the Rhineland and Spanish mystics of the Middle Ages (although some translations work hard at translating these ideas into a radical materialistic paradigm and are not very useful. English, unfortunately, is an extremely materialistic language and not very good at spiritual matters. If you can fully learn German it will help open your mind – especially when you start reading German philosophy where the physical and spiritual are much more “real” and enterwined. Gesellschaft and Gemeinschaft are a basic concept and we only really have half of it in English/American Western Culture. Again, our Western Culture is not real, it has been warped by radical Materialism but it is through Western Mysticism that we can most quickly and easily move back into the spiritual realm.

Christian mystics, Rosicrusians, can sometimes help depending on the prejudices of those you encounter. I am told the books The Burning Bush; Rudolf Steiner, Anthroposophy, and the Holy Scriptures: Terms and Phrases by Edward Reaugh Smith can help those well steeped in Christian background find the truths that they can glean from scripture. While Rudof Steiner’s book can. also be good books for beginners. The great morass of spiritual and mystical writing which you can find in an occult bookstore is a good way to spin your wheels and get nowhere for most modern books are written by dabblers who don’t really seem to understand what they are talking about and you will get lost in a surface study and never find your way out of the wading pool of knowledge they place you in.

You are a child of God and God’s Spirit was implanted in you at Birth (or conception,) and if you need help all you have to do is sincerely ask and then pay attention! The answer may not always come in the form you are expecting.

More advanced readers can find practices in Wisdom of the Mystic Masters by Jospeh J. Weed. I caution you though there are not a lot of advanced readers because, in the words of Yoda (and nearly every other mystic master you may encounter,) you must first “unlearn all that you have learned.”

The illusion of multiplicity that the Unity is sometimes presented as and the illusion of Unity of this Multiplicity is another “wave/particle” dichotomy you must come to understand.

The impatience of our society has caused too many students I have spoken with try to rush on to studies they are not ready for and sometimes disaster and destruction in their life has resulted and ultimately they turn away or lose themselves in the oblivion of drink as they are unable to reconcile their worlds, and return (with a vengeance,) to the world and paradigm of radical materialism. They, in the language of Star Wars, were tempted by the Dark Side and, because they were not yet ready for the challenge, they failed.

Somewhere, somehow, you must begin to unlearn your “radical materialist” beliefs to remove the blinders you were almost certainly raised with. People who are born with a deep understanding of this unity of physical and spiritual (in our society,) usually are drugged so heavily to make them “normal” that their “spiritual sight” is completely blinded. I was fortunate in that I had the parents that I had and a sister who was more than a decade older and had “the sight,” as did my brothers but one lost himself in alcohol and another simply seems to have ignored it. Even so, it was not an effortless journey for me and others seem to have a much harder time. I have come to realize that my upbringing and the writings I was exposed to were unique, then again, progressing to reading the Lord of the Rings in Second Grade probably gave me a head start as well as wondering through the dusty books of the stacks at the university among books that had not been checked out in over 70 years that probably helped as well.

There is no physical world and a spiritual world. There is a physical/spiritual world that is all around us. There is no “supernatural” all is natural and part of the Design, it is supranatural to our understanding.

So, I wish you good growth as you unlearn all that you have learned. Grace and Peace to you.

Above I made a comment of martial arts and full moon sight. Here is a more detailed explanation to introduce the idea to you:

*The full moon sight is an example of ideas of East and West and the depth of ideas. Like the existence of cherry blossoms as a sign of the brief and fleeting beauty of life and the immanence of death, in Japanese stories one need only show or mention a cherry blossom and all of those ideas and understanding are brought to the fore but for the Western it is just a flower. The Full moon sight is a simple phrase that Westerners may have to spend months or even years studying to fully understand. he concept of the moon hold significance in various martial arts philosophies (so martial artists may have some concept of this, that was where I first learned of it in Shotokan Karate by Sensei Schmidt and his classes on Martial Arts and Martial Culture through the classes, and practices. Martial Arts that does not try to teach the philosophy is like a child building blocks but never learning engineering.

For instance, in Karate, there’s a stance called Hangetsu-dachi or Half-moon stance1. This stance is part of the Hangetsu Kata, which emphasizes breathing, focus, and the flow of movements that are both circular and powerful, much like the phases of the moon.

Moreover, martial arts philosophies, such as those expressed by Bruce Lee, often draw parallels between the adaptability and formlessness of water and the moon’s influence on i2. Bruce Lee’s famous quote, “Be like water,” reflects the idea of being adaptable and resilient, qualities that are also enhanced by the calm and reflective nature of a full moon night.

The full moon can also symbolize the peak of one’s martial arts journey, where the practitioner has gathered knowledge and is now reflecting upon it, much like the moon reflects the sun’s light. It’s a time for introspection and understanding the depth of one’s skills and philosophy.

In traditional Chinese philosophy, which influences many martial arts, the moon’s phases are linked to the Yin and Yang, representing balance and harmony, essential principles in martial arts training and executio3.

Overall, the full moon can be seen as a metaphor for the martial artist’s pursuit of balance, clarity, and the peak of their personal development. If you’re interested in exploring this topic further, I recommend reading about the philosophies of martial arts masters and how natural elements are incorporated into their teachings. All of this, and more, are encompassed in the phrase “full moon sight” but if you weren’t raised in the background of it then you have to relearn all of it before it can make complete sense to you. This is just a fragment of one example for you to consider.

Don’t Be Lawful Stupid – Wesley’s Rules for Life

May 5, 2024 / / 0 Comments

It was Jesus that called upon all Christians to “be innocent as doves and wise as serpents.” Those in games and stories who equate the good guys with being “lawful stupid” don’t really understand good, (and having worked in the gaming industry,) they absolutely don’t understand evil. Equally so many Christians, who have fallen for the heresy of what I call “the Barney Gospel” (the idea that everything is about love and principles and violence is always wrong,) this is totally not Biblical, but the lies are regularly told from pulpits throughout Europe and America. [We will discuss Good and Evil and what I mean by those things in a future article.]

Despite the complete Biblical testimony which is balanced and designed for real life, ideologues from all sides have tried to make the Bible into something it is not. Humans like to follow rules and they want life simple. However, life is not simple, and neither is God. Jesus also said that “laws were made for man, man was not made for the law.” By this he was talking about his disciples being hungry and actually gathering food on the Sabbath when the Holy People said there was to be NO work done. Jesus acknowledged the law but said my disciples are hungry and they need to eat. The rules that the human church had made to interpret what the Bible said as “observe the Sabbath day and keep it holy” were not what God intended. He wanted people to take a break one day a week off from all their work (a radical idea in a world that had no days off except on the New and the Full moon.) God did not want people to go hungry when they were doing God’s work on the Sabbath. As a Pastor I regularly worked on the Sabbath, often more than 8 hours. In fact, some pastors have a problem in their 70-hour work weeks in that they don’t take time off for prayer, rest, and study. Burnout is a regular occurrence.

Many Christians have embraced the “innocent as doves” part but fail to be “wise as serpents.” In fact, some use the “innocent as doves” as an excuse to not have to act because it would stir up controversy. Remember, that “if you cannot say anything nice don’t say anything at all” is not a Christian way of life. It is a coward’s way that advises people to “keep your head down, don’t make waves.” Many call these people “sheeple.”

All over the world people attack the Bible for things either taken out of context or because of what Christians they knew have done to them that have nothing to do with authentic Christianity. They mistakenly use actions of Nominal Christians (people who wear a cross or call themselves Christians but do not know the first thing about being an authentic Christian,) as indicating what real Christians believe. Let me know in the comments if you have encountered this anywhere in your experience.

John Wesley was an Anglican Priest in the 18th Century whose preaching fathered over 185 denominations from the African Methodist Episcopal to the Nazarene to the Global Methodist. He offered three rules to live a Christian Life – 1st Do No Harm; 2nd Do All the Good You Can; and 3rd Attend to the Ordinances of the Church. Now language was used a bit different in the 18th Century – the 1700s, even the late 1700s were a long time ago so lets talk about them.

The first two really aren’t very difficult at first glance. At least they aren’t difficult to explain – they require constant vigilance and effort to accomplish.

First, Do No Harm – God made the world and called it good. Then we began mucking it up. People like to blame bad things on God but most bad things can be traced back to people and their actions or inaction. Science is even identifying that cancer, hormonal imbalance, and infertility can often be placed at the door of industrialists in packaging, pharmaceuticals, and food production who use chemical ingredients not found in nature and that have not been fully tested for their effects on humans.

There is more to this rule than simply doing “good deeds” there is also the requirement to stand for what is right. That is what served to build Western Society in the way it grew. Repeatedly, men and women chose to stand for what was right against the general push of society.

As Saint Paul said, “He who knows what is right to do and does not do it, for him it is sin.” That, if we are honest with ourselves, is an indictment against all of us. We have all, at one time or another, remained silent when we should have spoken truth to power, or truth to massed ignorance.

These are not problems faced in most primitive societies. Rather, they seem to be problems that have to do with our ‘modern’ way of life. As corporations take cheaper shortcuts in order to make more money by using chemicals and artificial preservatives to give longer shelf-life to their already overly processed and artificial foods those chemicals, as well as the hormones and drugs they give to food animals, genetic modification of crops, and pesticides that carry through the crops and into our cereal boxes. It is in the ‘modern’ world that we find a proliferation of cancer, numerous digestion difficulties, clogged arteries, obesity, unexplained pain and bloating, and much much more.

If your father or mother has a heart attack or stroke you may well ask God why. However, perhaps you would be more accurate to blame the foods available and stresses of the corporate lifestyle than to set the blame at the foot of God. Imagine the way life would be if corporate leaders followed this first rule of the Christian life and really and truly “did no harm.”

When we were predominantly a Christian Country with Christian values there were numerous cases of businessmen who refused to take actions that would increase their profits because they were morally wrong. It is so bad today that universities have started demanding that business majors take an ethics class because we increasingly live in a world where no one knows right from wrong. They increasingly believe the lie that everything is relative when, amazingly across cultures, rules amazingly similar to the Ten Commandments have regularly cropped up. Either there is a universal idea of good, bad, loyalty, and betrayal, or we are hard-wired through evolution to believe these things because those who rejected them were banished from society and their genes couldn’t reproduce. Despite that, every generation has its narcissists and psychopaths. But America and the Globalists seem to want to make those traits into virtues.

Christianity used to hold capitalism in some degree of check. The government, corporations, and individuals knew that if they flagrantly defied Judeo-Christian principles the public would turn against them. Even those who denied Deity and Religion had ideas of right and wrong that were based on the Judeo-Christian principles. Indeed, without religion, (as we are finding out today in our society.) There is no check on the potential wickedness, selfishness, and greed of humanity.

Moses was drafted by God to be that check and to carry his message to the people as were and are the prophets. Christ was sent to embody that check upon our wickedness. Without religion the only moral imperative is survival of your own tribe and to hell with anyone else. This is how the world outside of the West operates. Western Civilization built on the foundations of Rome, Christendom, and the Norse/Germanic egalitarian society traditions where their philosophers and the Havamal came to conclusions that were very close to what is found in the Proverbs and Wisdom literature of the Bible. There was an understanding that in Christendom you could basically trust your fellow Christians (whether, Catholic, Amish, Protestant, Quaker or any of over a hundred other ways to follow Christ, to obey the rule of law, to not bear false witness, and to conduct themselves with honor and respect for life even in war.

“Do no harm” means to NOT remain silent when lies are being spread and injustice occurs. “Do no harm” is a rule calling us to dare to NOT look the other way when crime, extortion, or government or corporate power does wrong. “Do no harm” means NOT stepping over the one who is beaten and bleeding and NOT crossing over to the other side of the street as happened in the story of the Good Samaritan that Christ told. It was the Samaritan, the outcasts of Jewish society in the first century, who stopped and helped the man to an inn and paid for his room, bored, and medical care – even though he didn’t know him. While the “good” people looked the other way and didn’t want to get involved. “Do no harm” means acting sometimes even when we are scared to and fear ridicule, rejection, or legal consequences (such as hiding Jewish families in Nazi Germany.)

Indeed, the song Amazing Grace was written by a slave trader (obviously someone who prioritized money over what is right,) in celebration of his encounter with Christ and his salvation. When he became a Christian he gave up his life as a slaver and spearheaded the campaign in England to make the international slave trade a thing of the past. Not because of secular values but because of Christian values. [See: An Amazing Story – ofNaturesGod.com ] One man acting on principle made a difference in the world.

Indeed, you can trace most of the rights, benefits, and blessings of twentieth century Western Society can be traced back to Christianity, Western philosophers, Rome, or the Germanic peoples. It was people who took their own principles, refused to compromise and made a nuisance of themselves that changed the world. It starts with one voice raised and speaking the truth. We make a mistake when we tell ourselves the whole world feels as we do. This is the heritage of Western Civilization, Western Philosophy, and Christianity and the value it places on all people and life itself.

John Wesley’s second rule of life is Do All the Good You Can. Yet, we are not all wise. Indeed, for some Do All the Good You Can meant to bring the teachings of Western Civilization to the rest of the world. Unfortunately, they did not always respect local cultures. Over all, however, if you look at the nations that are doing the best economically, and have the highest standards of living, they are the countries that are still part of the British Commonwealth or who were linked to them historically. That is because colonizers not only brought domination, they also brought respect for law and order, libraries, hospitals, sanitation, and schools to places that didn’t have them.

Most people don’t know but one of the goals of communism was to attack colonialism and use guilt to get the West to abandon their colonies before the colony was ready to take on the responsibilities of a modern society. Then, in the resulting chaos, the Communists could step in and re-order the society. Despite Marx’ predictions Communism has only been able to dominate in societies that were per-industrial or behind on the industrial curve from the West. This is not the only thing Marx was wrong on. [See: Are We the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave? Or Did We Lose the Cold War? – SabersEdge – Cutting Through the Lies to Get to the Truth ; and Admitted Goals of Marxists in America – SabersEdge – Cutting Through the Lies to Get to the Truth ]

For some, deluded by the media and government misinformation, “doing good” was acting in ways that browbeat and isolated people who didn’t get vaccinated. The abandoned the principles of Liberty and America (if schools had taught even a modicum of understanding of Western Liberties – or even if they really believed “my body my choice” then they would have rejected these lies). But, as is so often the case, fear over-rode common sense and people acted in ways that were wholly against American Philosophy by marginalizing people who thought differently from them and who sought to exercise their rights over their own body. But even these natural rights are no longer understood in our society. [See also: Denial of Natural Laws and Natural Rights Endangers Our Survival – SabersEdge – Cutting Through the Lies to Get to the Truth ; We Now Live In A Totalitarian State – SabersEdge – Cutting Through the Lies to Get to the Truth ] (those who understood virology and still were thinking critically as opposed to those driven by irrational fear and ignorance.) Such people tell themselves they are good people but they are really self-interested people trying to cover their self-interest in a cloak of virtue. This is not the type of “doing good” that Wesley was speaking of. He was speaking of doing good in a rational and prayerful manner with the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

This brings us to Wesley’s Third Rule of Life – attend to the ordinances and disciplines of the Faith. Because you cannot have any knowledge of the outcome of your actions – but God does know and by faithfully attending to the spiritual disciplines you learn those ways (although honestly, many who claim to be Christian don’t – as Father Hoolighan told me once: “Mr. Business went to church. He never missed a Sunday. But Mr. Business went to Hell for what he did on Monday.”

Ordinances and disciplines of the faith include studying the Bible and religious teachings, attend worship services, pray and meditate on the scriptures, seek communion with God, and grow in the faith. [If you want to grow in the Faith I have found the writings of the Benedictine Order to be incredibly helpful in living a godly life. See AUSCULA – Listen With The Ears Of Your Heart – ofNaturesGod.com ] Also, included in this was helping the poor and the destitute as Christ commanded and sharing the good news that we can escape this treadmill and the hell of this world we have made.

Christianity has been dumped on a lot with half-truths and out and out lies a lot in the 20th and 21st Centuries.

However, the world was arguably a better place when the West identified as Christendom. As for the Crusades, that deserves its own article but let me make it clear that Europe and Christian countries had been invaded for almost 400 years by Islamic nations before the first Crusade was launched. That is not opinion it is historical fact! And the first crusade was launched not to conquer Islamic countries but it was launched to defend the Christian city of Byzantium that was under attack by Islamic armies. Spain was conquered by Islam as was all of Northern Africa and now they were battling to destroy the Roman Empire whose capital was in Byzantium. Persia/Iran and Afghanistan were not originally Islamic. They were conquered and converted. Charles Martel turned back invaders in France or all of Europe would have been conquered long before now. Rome had been sacked, Christian Russia and balkans were repeatedly invaded, and FINALLY, Christendom rallied to defend Byzantium and the Eastern Roman Empire. Christians rallied again when Vienna was beseiged by the armies of Islam when an army of Germans and Poles led by Jan and the Polish Winged Hussars saved Vienna and saved Europe from the armies of Islam again in the 1600s.

Today we allow those armies across our border without restraint while Islamic Imams preach that after centuries of trying to conquer the West Jihad has a new form. They should now infiltrate the West have more babies than Europeans and Americans and take over their countries from within. This is not my idea. This is what THEY have said in their temples and websites. Why is it that we repeatedly ignore what our enemies themselves say they are going to do to us. Are we that fragile that we cannnot understand there are people in the world that hate us. That didn’t go well with Hitler and ignoring their aggression and stated intent to destroy America and the West won’t go well today. You can hide you head in the sand but it won’t change the result – it just means that you won’t see the sword when it falls. That is not skepticism that is denial and cowardice.

After the Crusades it was Christians that spearheaded the war against slavery and the international slave trade, not Muslims, not Hindus, not Pagans, but Christians. It was not secular society it was Christian society. Secular society didn’t give a damn about anyone but themselves and they have a long history of violating rights not preserving them. The most educated and advanced society in Europe in the 1930s was Germany and we all should know what happened there. While the Left is eager to distance themselves from the Nazis the more I study them the more clearly that they were, indeed, socialists. However, unlike the international socialist/communist movement they were nationalist socialists and after gaining power they broke the power of the right-wing conservative groups that didn’t toe the line of the national socialist worldview.

Oh, witches? Yeah, history has identified a few thousand witches killed by ‘the church’ which was horrible and wrong. But more witches were imprisoned and driven underground by secular doctors who accused them of practicing medicine without a license than were persecuted by the church and we don’t hear about that very much do we?

Its convenient for society not to mention the tens of thousands of Christians killed by pagans and the tens of thousands of Christians and Jews who are today still being killed in Islamic countries. If they mentioned it they may have to do something about it.

Somehow secular society, which has on its hands the 100 millions killed by Communists and the 6 million jews killed by Hitler. As I have said, Jews, like Christians, are still being killed in Islamic countries today. Israel is literally fighting for its right to exist. Palestinians don’t want a 2-state solution. “From the River to the Sea” means there will be no Jews left alive from the river to the sea, they are very clear about that in their own websites.

Selective morality is no morality at all.

Palestinians want to divest Jews of the lands of Israel and Judah that were theirs all the way back to the days of the Pharoah and the Babylonians. The Jews are the indigenous people of the area and the Palestinians the colonizers. They do not allow any Jews in Palestine but Muslims, Arab Bedouins, and more are allowed to serve as judges and in political office in Israel. Israel follows the values of a modern Western State including having one of the largest gay populations in Tel Aviv in the Middle East – one of the few places in the Middle East gays can live and not be killed.

But all of these facts are ignored or twisted by lying “fact-checkers” and other media magnates and their lackeys because they don’t fit the narrative. It’s easier to lie to people when you have stolen their education. [see also: Who Stole Your Education? Were You Indoctrinated in Ignorance? – SabersEdge – Cutting Through the Lies to Get to the Truth ]

The level of ignorance by the Left leaning political organizations of American campuses are disgusting to me. Universities are supposed to be centers of learning and not centers and instigators of anti-semitism. I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised with all the Marxist professors because Marx was both of Jewish decent and flagrantly anti-Jewish…in fact Communism opposes all religions. I suppose because religious conflicts didn’t kill enough people to sate the blood-lust endemic to all communist states that have ever existed.

[But as I write this evidence is growing that many of those arrested in college demonstrations may not be students but agents of radical Islam and their sycophants.]

The ignorance of history is endemic in today’s society. As it has been for thousands of years. I guess that is why humans do the same things, and making the same mistakes, over and over again.

Fortunately, one of the ordinances of the church is communion. Communion should be taken only after confession and prayer. You don’t need to go through confession in the Catholic sense but before you become one with Christ through the ritual of Communion you must be sin free. For us humans that means we must repent all that we have done, and all that we have failed to do, that for us was sin. The glory of Communion is that when we repent and decide to turn from our failings that God throws those sins “as far as the East is from the West” and remembers them no more. While humans may nurse affronts and wrongs against us, God is able to completely forget transgressions that we confess and repent to God for.

I love Communion because I am a very imperfect servant of the Living God. I make mistakes regularly. Like King David I am not a paragon of virtue, however, I do love the Living God and my experiences and relationship with that mysterious indefinable but loving entity. Every time I take communion I know (from having read and taught the Bible,) that my sins are forgotten and as I take the elements into my body so Christ re-enters me in a special way and I am made new once again. A fresh start. Clean and new as Christ promised: “Behold, I make all things new.”

That is special and unique in human society. You cannot get that through the legal system. You cannot get it from Universities, and you sure as hell cannot get it from Communism and the Left who cancel, attack with law-fare, and imprison, people “at the drop of a hat,” as they say. But Christianity in each communion service offers a fresh start for all who legitimately repent of their sins. Maybe that is why secular society hates them so, because they know that no matter what they do they will never be free of their own past and Christians get fresh starts regularly.

Attend to the ordinances and disciplines of the Church and seek communion frequently. Especially if you are like me and need to make a fresh start often.

Whether you are Christian or not I suggest you consider at least the first two injunctions of 1st Do no Harm and 2nd Do all the good you can, as you journey through life and you will find that, ultimately, it makes a difference in society. Don’t be like those doomed to repeat history due to their own ignorance and stand up for truth wherever you may find yourselves. Don’t run from a “fight” but when truth is called for to oppose evil and falsehood stand in the gap. We don’t put our heads in the sand, or pretend not to see injustice. Draw sabers, ride to the sound of the guns, and cut through the lies to get to the truth, and…

[Edited version, the original was published on Sabersedge.Online another website of SabersEdge Foundation, an educational association that says the quiet parts outloud.]

A Prophesy or Warning

November 16, 2022 / / 2 Comments

I have hesitated to post this. For over a month every time I do Lectio Divina I have received the same message through the Biblical passages I have read and prayed over. Lectio has always had a special place for me and it is one of the spiritual disciplines I use to get closer to God. It became clear to me that I was getting a message for the world and not just one for my own edification. I tried to avoid it but it kept coming up over and over again. Every session of Lectio continued on this theme until I finally came to believe that until I write it out for others I will not be able to move on in my spiritual walk. I have found that God can even be more stubborn than I am…that is saying something.

I told my wife about what was happening during my Lectio. “I have tried different Bibles because I was beginning to think that mine was just opening up in the same areas because of the way the Bibles have worn. Although, I don’t like to dwell on these “judgment” passages.” But no matter which Bible I used, we have lots, and the results were the same. “Here,” my wife said, “use my Bible, I just bought it and it hasn’t been used yet.” I opened it up and read the passages that follow.

First, a word for those who don’t understand Lectio. I used to teach this in my churches and at religious retreats and still have the materials I wrote for the Order of St. Luke retreat we held at the Seminary.

The idea of Lectio is ancient and has roots in earliest Christianity and possibly even back to ancient Israel. Lectio is on a similar principle to the Benedictine saying of “Ora et Labora” that the monastic life was a balance of Prayer and Work. In Lectio, there are the words “Lectio et Actio” which means “Reading and Action.” As it was first explained to me I was told that even if you don’t believe God speaks to you, you are using the Bible to guide your life, which can’t be all bad. However, I have been doing Lectio since I was a teen and it has been spot on so many times that I cannot believe it is anything but a spiritual exercise and communication with the Divine.

In Lectio, you pray and center yourself in the presence of God. You ask for God’s guidance and open the Bible prayerfully and begin reading where your eyes first fall. You read until a passage “jumps out” at you. Or you can pick a passage that is important to you and use Lectio to deepen your understanding of scripture.

Step One – Lectio – This is the Initial Reading. What does this passage say to readers?

Step Two – Meditatio – This is the second reading of the same passage. What does this passage say to you? What parts or words stand out?

Step Three – Oratio – This is the third reading. What part stands out specifically? What is it saying to you in your own life and what would you say to God in response?

Step Four – Contemplatio – This is a deep meditation on the scripture you have read. What is God saying? Bring together all of the thoughts prior so that you let the passage speak to you through you mind, your heart, and a message for your life.

Step Four – Actio- What does this say about how I should be living my life? What am I to do?

Before, I received what I thought were messages for specific people rather than myself. This is the first time in Actio that I believed that I had a message for the world; a message I am not sure how to spread but I am posting it here and leaving the rest to God.

This is what the Divine Presence said to me during Lectio. And I feel I need to share it. I find it disturbing. I have had this affliction of the Lord speaking to me for most of my life and although I tried to run from him you cannot run from God. It is a difficult thing to do what God wants you to do and I have often found his speaking to me to be burdensome and have turned away from time to time. These gifts of knowledge and discernment, and others can be a trial. But the gift of preaching was always a pleasure. I passed this on to Father Dean before publishing this to get yet another opinion. He agreed this was not a message for me but for the nation, if not the world.

I firmly believe that God raised this nation up to be a city on a hill and a light to the nations and there are many today who seek to extinguish this light. But more than that this light was Given to the Western Nations. Through them, an unprecedented level of learning and wealth has come into the world. The principles of the United States Republic came from the teachings of Rome, and the best minds of Europe and America but it is fully in the best of the Western Tradition which is built on the idea that the World was created by the Divine Presence and therefore it has value and each individual is special as a child of the Living God. It seems the west has turned its back on its foundations and simply embraced materialism…how is that going for you?

I started SabersEdge.Online and ofNaturesGod.com because God has directed me to and he is more persistent than I am stubborn. I pray before each blog post and he often wakes me in the wee hours of the morning where we share Lectio Divina and prayer and then I write what he has put upon my heart.

He has impressed upon me that our society has turned against God and our heritage of the greatest culture in the world has been betrayed. God raised up a culture that wove the philosophy of Greece and Rome, the Wisdom of Egypt, and the Word of the Lord so tightly together that it is difficult to distinguish one from another. We are now in a culture war that is also a spiritual battle for the soul of a nation and a world.

We come to the Church because we cannot serve God alone. I believe that we need a worship home, spiritual disciplines, and community to sustain us. Just as the Army has not and never will be an “Army of One” it is a community with a purpose. I believe we all must join a community of likeminded people for as the founders of America said, “If we don’t hang together we will certainly hang separately.”

Here is the Word the Lord has shared with me concerning the Nations for today:

Thus says the LORD concerning this people: Truly they have loved to wander, they have not restrained their feet; therefore the LORD does not accept them, now he will remember their iniquity and punish their sins.

The LORD said to me: Do not pray for the welfare of this people. Although I hear their cry, and although they offer burnt offering and grain offering, I do not accept them; but by the sword, by famine, and by pestilence I consume them.

“Then I said: “Ah, LORD GOD! Here are the prophets saying to them, ‘You shall not see the sword, nor shall you have famine, but I will give you true peace in this place.’” And the LORD said to me: The prophets are prophesying lies in my name; I did not send them, nor did I command them or speak to them. They are prophesying to you a lying vision, worthless divination, and the deceit of their own minds. Therefore thus says the LORD concerning the prophets who prophesy in my name though I did not send them, and who say, “Sword and famine shall not come to this land”: by sword and famine those prophets shall be consumed. And the people to whom they prophesy shall be thrown out into the streets of Jerusalem, victims of famine and sword. There shall be no one to bury them – themselves, their wives, their sons, and their daughters. For I will pour out their wickedness upon them. You shall say to them this word: Let my eyes run down with tears night and day, and let them not cease, for the virgin daughter – my people – is struck down with a crushing blow, with a very grievous would. If I go into the field, look – those killed by the sword! And if I enter the city, look – those sick with famine! For both prophet and priest ply their trade throughout the land, and have no knowledge.”

Then my eyes fell to the reading at the beginning of Chapter 15 where it said:

“Then the LORD said to me; Though Moses and Samuel stood before me, yet my heart would not turn toward this people. Send them out of my sight, and let them go! And when they say to you, “Where shall we go?” you shall say to them. Thus says the LORD:

“Those destined for pestilence for pestilence, and those destined for the sword, to the sword; those destined for famine, to famine, and those destined for captivity, to captivity.

“And I will appoint over them four kinds of destroyers, says the LORD: the sword to kill, the dogs to drag away, and the birds of the air and the wild animals of the earth to devour and destroy. I will make them a horror to all the kingdoms of the earth because of what King Manasseh son of Hezekiah of Judah did in Jerusalem…”

skip….[ Please understand. I cannot explain why the skips or how I know what I read was from God but I know just as I know the parts where he was speaking to us today rather than Jeremiah speaking to Judah. I is very hard to talk to someone about how God communicates directly to someone it has never happened to. However, once you admit it to others people will come to your privately and you will find it is much more common than our society beleives.]

“You have rejected me, says the LORD, you are going backward; so I have stretched out my hand against you and destroyed you – I am weary of relenting. I have winnowed them with a winnowing fork in the gates of the land; I have bereaved them, I have destroyed my people; they did not turn from their ways. The widows became more numerous than the sand of the seas; I have brought against the mothers of youths a destroyer at noonday..”

then relevance continued at verse 13:

“Your wealth and your treasure I will give as plunder, without price, for all your sins, throughout all your territory. I will make you serve you enemies in a land that you do not know, for in my anger a fire is kindled that shall burn forever.”

and continued here:

“Therefore thus says the LORD: If you turn back, I will take you back, and you shall stand before me. If you utter what is precious, and not what is worthless, you shall serve as my mouth. It is they who will turn to you, not you who will turn to them. And I will make you to this people a fortified wall of bronze, they will fight against you, but they shall not prevail over you, for I am with you to save and deliver you, says the LORD. I will deliver out of the hand of the wicked, and redeem you from the grasp of the ruthless.”

Chapter 16:17 –

“For my eyes are on all their ways; they are not hidden from my presence, nor is their iniquity concealed from my sight. And I will doubly repay their iniquity and their sin, because they have polluted my land with the carcasses of their detestable idols, and have filled my inheritance with their abominations….[17:3b] You wealth and all your treasures I will give for spoil as the price of your sin throughout all your territory. By your own act you shall lose the heritage that I gave you, and I will make you serve your enemies in a land that you do not know for in my anger a fire is kindled that shall burn forever.”

Verbum domini.

There was more. But it is not for me to share. The above is what is key and what I was told to share.

I give this to you because I feel I should. I don’t know why precisely. You are free to share this with any that you feel led to share it with but I ask you do so prayerfully and in consultation with God. If God shares a word with you for me please share it with me, in turn. You can write me at PO Box 433, Leavenworth, KS 66048 or at SabersEdge.Online@gmail.com

At a funeral recently, during the silence of Prayer, God said to me, “Do not hate people because they have been decieved.”

But at what point do those who are deceived become complicit in the destruction of God’s vision of justice and freedom that he raised up in this nation? This is something that I still struggle with and on this, God has remained silent.

An Amazing Story

October 16, 2022 / / 4 Comments

Amazing Grace is more than a much-loved song it also has a moving story behind it. This song is one of the two most commonly used songs at funerals and is often used in movies when a “religious” song is needed, it is one of the ten top hymns cited by pastors as significant in their “call to ministry.” In fact, in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Chief Engineer Montgomery Scott plays “Amazing Grace” to honor his fallen comrade Spock at that officer’s funeral. The song grew in fame and use through the American Civil War and during the Viet Nam war as well. But the story behind it is as fascinating as the song is moving.

Once you know the story it gives new depth to the all the words but especially the beginning:

Amazing grace! How sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me.
I once was lost, but now am found,
Was blind, but now I see.

Amazing grace by john newton, 1772

This song, beloved in the African American, and virtually all Christian communities, was one of over 200 hymns written by John Newton. Newton, ironically, was a slave trader and the son of a slave trader. Born to a Puritan mother who died just shy of his 17th birthday, he first went to sea with his father at the age of 11 on his father’s slave ship. He became a careless libertine and drank heavily. As happened to many careless, raucous, licentious libertines in a seaport he was impressed into the British Navy, which heavily “recruited” drunk young men. He attempted to desert from the Royal Navy and received 8 bloody lashes across his back with a whip while tied to the mast for his escape attempt. Flogging was a common punishment back then and continued even into the 19th Century where it persisted in the naval and military communities long after it stopped being used for civilian punishment.

Later, he followed his father’s path and became a slaver who hauled cargoes of African slaves to the New World for the Plantations in North and South America and the Caribbean. While serving on the ship the Pegasus Newton had some disagreements with the crew and they sold him into slavery to an African king and princess and marooned him in Africa. John Newton’s father engaged another ship captain to find and rescue him and, once rescued, he was sailing back to England when the ship became embroiled in a horrible storm. The ship’s side ruptured and took on water, and John Newton prayed for deliverance. Whereupon the cargo shifted in the storm in such a way that it closed off the hole and the ship was saved. John viewed this as an answer to his prayer and from that point on became a Christian. Although not a very good one, at first.

What so many fail to understand is that Christians are not paragons of virtue. As the saying goes churches are a hospital for sinners and not a museum for saints. Every cross should be read as an “under construction” sign perhaps along with “please excuse our mess.”

So, John determined to become a follower of Christ. What did that mean? Perhaps he had seen something about what that meant through his mother in his youth, and he now sought to learn what it meant to be a Christian and he started by regularly reading his Bible. But, in his own words he said:

“I cannot consider myself to have been a believer in the full sense of the word, until a considerable time afterward,” – John Newton

While he wasn’t sure what it meant to be a follower of Christ he knew that compassion and the “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” had something to do with it. He therefore determined to become the fairest, most compassionate slave trader the world had yet seen. He made three more voyages as the ship captain of slave ships the Duke of Argyle and the Arfrican. In 1754 he suffered a stroke and retired and in 1772 he became an Anglican Priest and finally came to the conclusion that being a slave trader was incompatible with being a Christian. Henceforth, he was an ardent abolitionist.

In 1772 he wrote Amazing Grace, and in 1788 he published a pamphlet that graphically described the horrors of the slave trade. The pamphlet was widely read and the description galvanized the opposition to slavery in the English world John Newton campaigned hard for its abolition. He lived to see the international slave trade abolished for both England and the newly minted United States (where the law banning the slave trade was signed into law by Thomas Jefferson who almost three decades earlier had written “all men are created equal” and so eloquently abjured the crown for trading in human beings – although his draft condemnation was not accepted as part of the final draft of the Declaration of Independence. Both the US and England stopped the international slave trade to their shores at the beginning of 1807 and John Newton died in December of that year, having seen this great work implemented in his lifetime.

Amazing grace! How sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me.
I once was lost, but now am found,
Was blind, but now I see.
‘Twas grace that taught my heart to fear,
And grace my fears relieved.
How precious did that grace appear
The hour I first believed.
Through many dangers, toils and snares
I have already come;
‘Tis grace hath brought me safe thus far
And grace will lead me home.
The Lord has promised good to me
His word my hope secures;
He will my shield and portion be,
As long as life endures.
Yea, when this flesh and heart shall fail,
and mortal life shall cease,
I shall possess within the veil,
A life of joy and peace.
When we’ve been there ten thousand years
Bright shining as the sun,
We’ve no less days to sing God’s praise
Than when we’ve first begun.
–John Newton, 1725-1807

AUSCULA – Listen With The Ears Of Your Heart

October 2, 2022 / / 1 Comment

The core of spirituality lies in listening. Saint Benedict said that we need to learn to “Listen with the ears of our heart.” In other words, we need to listen to that inner voice of intuition through which the Divine Presence speaks to all of us. If we will but listen. Perhaps this is why the first word in the Rule of Saint Benedict is Auscula, listen.

The example of Jesus is that he frequently retired from the crowds and withdrew into the wilds to pray. And we know how Jesus prayed because he told his disciples not to pray with a multitude of words. So, for Jesus, as for so many great spiritual teachers, communication with God had more to do with listening than with talking. Yet for so many of us, our own spiritual life is very different.

Too often our prayers are not about listening, learning, and then acting upon what God has told us, rather they look more like a want list. This stripped down to its starkest terms can be viewed as similar to saying, “O.K. Lord, this is what I want you to do. This is your assignment list for the next month. Your “Honey-Do List” from me. I would like you to…” once we have run down our list of what we want God to do we say “Amen.” Then we get up and go on with our life. Rarely, if ever, do we continue to sit in an attitude of prayer and allow the Divine Presence to tell us, “O.K. I understand what you want from me. Now let me tell you what I would like you to change in your life. Also, have you noticed that your neighbor lost their spouse? Have you said anything to them or spent time with them? They are very lonely you know. And, I would like you to reconsider the way you treated that phone solicitor the other day – that is a very hard job you know and they are just trying to survive. And you were a bit short with the grocery checker at the supermarket. You do know that was her first day, right?”

John Wesley had several “methods” for helping him in his spiritual life. One of them was his review of his day in prayer at each day’s end. Before retiring this Anglican priest would ask that the Living God show him where he did well and what opportunities he had to minister to others and represent the Divine Creative Force of the Universe to people that he encountered throughout the day. He encouraged all those who followed him “the Methodists” to do the same. In this way, he would learn from God in his prayer time as to how he could improve in his own life.

Meditation is another way to listen, depending on how you practice it meditation may facilitate listening a great deal or at least a little. Lectio Divina is yet another. I have already talked a little about meditation in my blog and my videos and soon I will talk about Lectio Divina.

But another way I want to discuss listening is to be aware as we go through our life that the Divine Presence is always with us. We don’t have to be in “prayer time” to hear God speaking to us. If you look at the accounts of the prophets in the Bible, and often of prophets in other faiths, they could hear God speaking through what was happening in their life. This is not easy. It takes a great deal of practice and openness to the Divine Presence – an openness that becomes a habit and not just something that we do sometimes.

I placed a Holy Water font at the front and rear exit to the house so that when I leave I can use it, make the sign of the cross, and say a quick prayer asking the Divine to show me, as I am out in the world, show me what I can do for you to make the world and the lives of those around me better. It only takes a couple of seconds. But it reminds me to be aware of the Presence of the Divine and what it might be saying to me.

In the Old Testament, the prophets would say things like, God took me down to the Potter’s wheel and I watched and he told me that God was forming us like this pot. And the pot developed a blemish that started small and became larger until it was deformed and the potter broke down the pot and reformed it. So God can renew us. Or that the potter took the unformed clay from the mud of the earth and turned it into a beautiful finished product. The prophets sometimes had dramatic visions in their meditations and during prayer and other times they simply knew that God was delivering the message through what was happening around them.

I remember a woman whose husband had died. Her family was close to her and helped her through the immediate time of the funeral but when she was left alone she was faced with the dramatic silence of being alone. She went to sit at her husband’s grave side and when she left she was starting to drive out of the cemetery and had to pull over because she could not see through her tears. She cried out to God and said “I cannot do this alone!”

Her deepest desire was to get help and reassurance from God. She looked through the windshield and realized that a beautiful butterfly had come and landed upon the glass. It sat there with her for a while and then flew off. She understood the symbols of Christianity and knew that the butterfly (which had fought its way out of the chrysalis to leave behind its worm-ness and become a beautiful butterfly,) was a symbol of rebirth and the presence of the Holy Spirit. She told me that at that moment she realized God was saying to her that this was a new phase in her life but that God was with her and she didn’t have to do it alone.

Similarly, my mother, after my father died found herself sitting on my Dad’s side of the bed in a similar state of despair. She didn’t know how she could go on. She heard what she described as an audible voice that was so clear that she looked around the room and then perceived it was the voice of God. It said, “Do not be afraid. I am with you.”

My father would walk with me and would often see something that prompted him to quote proverbs. He would show me how squirrels were busy in the summer gathering food so that they could live through the winter months. He would often say, “Listen to the trees, Daniel. Cottonwoods will talk to your more than any other of God’s trees. Hear the wind rustling the leaves? God can speak to us through that if we learn to listen.” I asked him once, as he sat on the bank of the lake with his fishing pole if he was catching any fish. “No,” he answered. “Sometimes, I just put the pole in the water because people leave you alone if they think you’re fishing. There’s no bait on the hook. It gives me time to think and talk to God. Come sit with me awhile and watch the way the light sparkles upon the water.”

If we truly wish to grow as faithful, spiritual beings we must learn to take action and live out our faith truly. To live out our faith we must be formed and study what it means to walk the spiritual path. I feel that the best means of study is Wisdom which has been proven by longevity and some of the oldest spiritual writings that have prevailed in the formation of human beings are the easiest to obtain. For over three thousand years portions of the Bible have guided people in their spiritual life and they are easy to find to guide us.

Faith is nothing if it does not include action in every aspect of our lives. If our faith is not revealed in virtually everything that we do and all of our interactions then it is not real. Instead of being an integral part of us, it is just a jacket that we wear when we desire to be seen as “spiritual.” This is a superficial trap. To truly be spiritual we must, as Saint Benedict said, listen with the ears of our hearts and the more we listen the more we will hear.

Action without meditation and divine guidance, as we are told in the Bible, makes us like a clanging gong or a clashing cymbal. We will always lose our way on our own if we don’t listen to that inner voice. If we don’t spend a substantial amount of our spiritual life reading, listening, and being aware of all that is around us then we will not realize what God is trying to say to us and we will truly be alone. The Divine Presence is always with us. We just need to learn to listen. The beginning of Psalm 19 tells us:

The heavens declare the glory of God;
    the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
Day after day they pour forth speech;
    night after night they reveal knowledge.
They have no speech, they use no words;
    no sound is heard from them.
Yet their voice[b] goes out into all the earth,
    their words to the ends of the world.

Psalm 19: 1-4

This holds true as much with our relationship with the Divine as it does with our relationships with people. My Dad used to say, “God gave you two eyes, two ears, but only one mouth. There is a message in that. You should watch and listen four times as much as you talk.”

Called To Serve

September 15, 2022 / / 0 Comments

Today I want to talk about a story that is near and dear to my heart. The story of the Maid or Orleans, Joan of Arc. Her story shows us how one person, in response to God’s call can change the world.

When I was young I saw Joan of Arc on TV (with Ingrid Bergman – 1948; later I saw Leelie Sobieski in the same roll 2001; and one of my favorite actresses Mila Jovovich as The Messenger.) In this story a teenage girl believed she was visited by a Divine visitation and called upon to save France from British domination. For an uneducated teen in the later Middle Ages to come forward (there was also a prophecy of a Maid from Orleans saving France that she seemed to be unaware of,) impress herself on the nobility of the time, and lead the armies of France to break the hold of the British on the Kingdom of France makes me think she really was answering God’s call.

There are many stories of miracles surrounding her story. As expected, scholars who weren’t there, doubt anything that does not match their experience. But in my life, I have experienced miracles and many of the ones surrounding Joan of Arc have the ring of truth. At least in my own experience and study of Divine revelation and experience and relationship with the Divine. I also think the results speak for themselves.

God has a long history of using the weak and the outcast to humble the mighty.

The mighty have a long history of killing (martyring) God’s messengers. Note, they don’t stop God’s plan but they still respond petulantly and violently to being humbled. Some may think that death is a severe price to pay but taken on its whole it is not really. You see, we all will die. However, most of us will not die for a cause that changes history, and the promise of eternal reward in heaven for a death that we all must suffer – whether we serve God or not – is not that high of a price to pay. IMHO. One thing that is true for all of us is that none of us will get out of this life alive. However, it is sad when people die without ever having truly lived.

I think Joan of Arc truly lived a full life – even if it was crammed into a few years. She died at the age of 19 but we still talk about her almost a thousand years later. And, as one of my pastors used to say whenever someone did a good deed, “There is another star for your Crown of Righteousness.” (Perhaps I will talk about the verse that comment comes from some day.)

That is what happened to Saint Joan of Arc. The elite she humbled responded violently and viciously to being humbled. The British captured her and tried her for witchcraft, and if you read accounts of the trial, it seems that these “scholars” of the church at her trial were unable to trick this ignorant girl into incriminating herself. Nevertheless, she was ultimately burned as a relapsed heretic and was accused by the British at the time of being a witch. Later, the Pope declared her a Saint (and being declared a Saint is never something that is done on a whim – despite some popular opinions to the contrary – there is a long detailed process of verification before anyone is declared a Saint.) Anyone who has studied the lives of the Saints will find that nearly all of them are paragons of faith and virtue and we could do worse than to use them as examples for our own lives.

The movies are interesting, and the biographies vary in their quality, but I like studying how things actually were compared to movie presentations. I enjoy movies for their own sake as entertainment even though they all are subject to errors and interpretation.

One thing I have turned to many times in my life is the Prayer of Saint Joan. It reminds me that even when I face trials they are nothing compared to what she faced and yet she remained true to her Divine call and Mission. A mission we all have if we but find it, and that will probably not demand as much from us as it did from the Maid of Orleans.

St. Joan of Arc – In the face of your enemies, in the face of harassment, ridicule, and doubt, you held firm in your faith. Even in your abandonment, alone and without friends, you held firm in your faith. Even as you faced your own mortality, you held firm in your faith. I pray that I may be as bold in my faith as you, St. Joan. I ask that you ride alongside me in my own battles. Help me be mindful that what is worthwhile can be won when I persist. Help me believe in my ability to act well and wisely, Amen.

PraYER TO SAINT JOAN OF ARC

It reminds me of another one who spoke of holding true to a cause, although he was not a Saint, by any means:

A Place For Prayer and Meditation

August 13, 2022 / / 0 Comments

We are creatures who evolved and grew in dangerous circumstances. Our very instinct is to be on alert when we are not in a safe place. It is then not surprising that where we choose to pray or meditate should affect our success and ability to concentrate. The more comfortable we are the better it will work.

Being in Nature activates the same parts of our brain that are activated when we meditate.

Last time we discussed a time for prayer and how having a regular prayer time is significant and can aid us in our Spiritual Growth. Today we will look at how our place of prayer and meditation is equally significant. Nothing here should ever keep you from praying or meditating because you are not in the “proper” place or at the proper time. The proper time and place are when and where you are moved to do so. However, if you have trouble in prayer or what to expand your prayer life and experience in meditating then read on.

First, I would like to discuss a scientific discovery that has been known for many years but still seems new to a lot of people.

When we are in the woods walking, siting, or simply being it activates the same parts of our brain that are activated when we meditate. Therefore the same benefits of resetting our bio-rhythms, the deep relaxation, the rest, and the blood cleansing and health benefits that are obtained in regular meditation can be obtained by being in nature. One doctor even mused that meditation was developed as a life hack to reconnect us with the Source of All Life after we had severed our link to the natural rhythms of the world by living in cities.

There Are 74 Forests in Japan Medically Certified As Having Health Benefits

In Japan, they have medially certified, through studies, that just walking in these forests has health benefits. I don’t think it is only forests in Japan. I think that Ayurvedic beliefs are true we need to reconnect with the natural world. And being in nature is one of those ways.

I can attest to the benefits myself. I have always loved being in the woods and felt the stress and strain of life drain away when I was there. When meditating at Pioneer Park in NE, I would enter the Nature Center area, walk into the forested area, and walk about ten meters off the path to sit on a bank overlooking a brook. I always had the best results meditating there and it was very renewing. At the time I was going through a difficult divorce (as if there is an easy one,) and trying to reconcile myself to my two dreams of an army career and a wife and family was all crashing down around me due to the divorce and a back injury. But there, in the woods, my soul and mind quieted enough that I could actually meditate. So I went there every day to do so.

One day when I was sitting cross-legged and meditating I opened my eyes and there, about ten inches or so from my right knee was a snake. It was not coiled but stretched out about two and a half feet at an angle to my right. It was raised, not to strike but at what looked to me like curiosity. I know that snakes don’t see like we do so I have always wondered what it saw, and how long it had watched me. To add to the oddity there was a bird about the same distance from my left knee that had also been looking at me. Both the bird and the snake, sitting together looking at me meditate when they are mortal enemies of each other. It was astounding. I opened my eyes and watched them and suddenly they both left in haste.

Meditation Changes Our Energy Field and Can Reset Our Natural Rhythms Disturbed By Stress

I had read that meditation changes the energy field that surrounds us and the Ayurvedic teachings about meditation had preceded the scientific discovery by thousands of years through the teaching of Chakras and meditation. Could they sense the differing energy fields? Could they see them? Or was it something else that attracted them? But I never would have had such an experience without finding a spot in nature to regularly meditate.

The substantial health benefits of prayer and meditation have been proven in multiple double-blind studies but they are only verifying Life-Truths that have been known for thousands of years. Science didn’t make it beneficial. Science only now finally verified things that spiritual leaders and people have known for over 50 centuries. It is nice that it has finally caught up.

But if meditation is truly a hack for those who can’t get into nature. Like those who live in large cities. Then we need to discuss options. To this, I would like to add that I had trouble meditating in my tank. I don’t know if it was the electronics and steel that surrounded me but if that was the case then modern cities would also pose a bit of a difficulty. But it’s not impossible.

Say A Prayer Of Blessing Of Your Sacred Space

One of the things you can do is bless the area before you begin. Pray a prayer to cleanse and purify your area as light a candle, ring a bell, smudge sage, light incense, or burn holy water. The other thing you can do is have a set area in which you meditate. Then when you get to that place your body will begin to open up to the Divine. Getting into your place of prayer and meditation will alert your body and subconscious of your intention.

My wife made a “prayer closet” under the stairs. She had a small table she could kneel at and had her candles, incense, and prayer book there in that room where she could meditate and pray. No one else entered that room. Most of us cannot spare a room for each person but in a previous house we had a small bedroom that we used as a prayer room for all of us. In this house we are preparing the attic as our spiritual library and temple as we have stairs that lead up to it and it is floored as a room.

Preparing A Place To Pray Has the Same Benefit As A Regular Time of Prayer

Preparing a place to pray, study, and meditate has the same advantages as having a set prayer time. The atmosphere of the place begins to change and it just “feels” holy. You can place whatever reminds you of your spiritual life and your connection to the Divine, the Source of All Life, the Ground of Being.

If you cannot set aside something for only prayer-time place by your chair or common seat, kitchen table, or wherever, a cross or other symbol, a candle holder, an incense burner, and/or a bell, or any other symbol that reminds you of your spiritual life. You can also set them on a tray or in a box and pull them out at prayer time, especially if you use a kitchen table you may not want them out all the time. When you sit in your seat of prayer then take a deep breath,say a prayer of blessing and presence, light your candle, burn your incense, ring your bell, or whatever you need to do to signal to yourself and your subconscious that we are entering a sacred place and a sacred time that is outside of and protected from the myriad cares of the world. No longer is it your TV chair or the kitchen table but your own sacred space and table.

The story I told in the YouTube Video A Time Of Prayer that was interrupted by a knock on the door was in my chair in the living room, where I had a cross on my end table, lit a scented candle in front of me on the coffee table, and began to pray. It was the same chair in my living room that I sat in to watch TV, play games with friends, or just visit with family and company. But, when I lit the candle it became my place of prayer. In the next blog, we will discuss centering and grounding.

One last thing. I have found that any part of my body completely surrounded by metal reduces effectiveness. I hold chains that I wear with my medal of St. Joan of Arc and my wedding ring in the palm of my hand when I meditate. Any necklace on a string or leather doesn’t seem to affect it. It makes sense to avoid conductive metal if you are dealing with energy fields but do what seems right to you. Nothing is effective if it makes you very uncomfortable to do it.

Do what seems right to you but be open to growing and trying new things. – Namaste

A Time For Prayer and Meditation

August 10, 2022 / / 2 Comments

Prayer and Meditation, Orienting our Hearts and Minds to the Divine

When we think of prayer many of us think of Christian prayers that are either written out or extemporaneous. I believe both are valuable. But every religion has prayer and meditation. It is an act of striving to communicate with our deepest selves as well as the Living Force, the Ground of All Being, the Source of All Life. Every religion from the Far East to Rome to the Bible Belt of the Midwest has references in their scriptures to ‘prayers rising like incense‘ as well as to the importance of meditation. I hope you will join your intentional prayers, meditations, and light to ours by keeping the prayer list from ofNaturesGod.com in your heart and mind.

Join Our Community & Prayer List

In this blog, I will give a very brief introduction to prayer and the importance of having a regular time of prayer as part of our Spiritual Discipline and practice. In future blogs, we continue a brief series focusing on prayer and how to “listen with the ears of our heart.” Then we will look at Centering and Mediation. However, because of the nature of blogs, we will only be able to scratch the surface here but we will go into much more detail, for those who are interested and join the ofNaturesGod community through Patreon. We cannot do that here unless that was all that we did here and there is much for us to discuss and many facets of our spiritual lives to cover here.

Indeed most religions have practices that include lighting candles and/or incense during a time of prayer and meditation. This symbolizes that the prayers rise to heaven even as the smoke rises from the candle or the incense. Although I am clear about the Divine Presence is everywhere about us and within us, and that it is the presence in which we live move, and have our being I still light a candle and incense on my home altar each morning. I do that not for God. Not to appease some Divine overlord or make an offering to keep him from smiting me. I do it out of love to help orient my thoughts and my actions for the day to the Divine Presence. As I go about my morning and day seeing the candle or incense burning reminds me of where my heart draws its strength from and that we are not alone. As I light them I say a quick prayer to the Trinitarian Presence as I understand it:

Queen of Heaven,* Lord of Light, Eternal Holy One be with me and guide me this day, strengthen and guide me as I go about my business, and defend and sustain me against all trials.

(or something similar).

For many, prayers of this sort coupled with a quick prayer at bed, rising, and/or before and after meals is the extent of their prayer life. It was the extent of mine when I was a child. My life changed when I was 12 and had my first religious experience and my heart turned more to God. I would like to say I have served th Lord of Life faithfully since but my spiritual life has been ups and downs rising to the gates of heaven and wallowing in the muck of swamps that were largely of my own design.

I want to talk to you about taking your spiritual life deeper.

First, you must understand that we are creatures of habit. Because we are physical creatures ritual is important and has a powerful effect on our spiritual life. That is one thing I like about Catholic services. They are deep in ritual. However, because we are physical creatures we run the risk of going about these rituals habitually without thought and without engaging our hearts or emotions in the actions. Rituals practiced in this way are worse than useless. I say they are worse because following these rituals of prayer or whatever we may do, even attendance at Mass or Worship and service to the poor IF they are done without engaging our hearts, or if they are done as a slave seeking to avoid the master’s punishment, they can give us the illusion that we are doing something “spiritual” and that we are right with God when we are not. However, if we perform the ritual as a way of moving our hearts and consciousness toward the Divine Source they are very powerful. Scott Cunningham, a Wiccan, to be sure has described Wiccan Ritual as Prayer with props. These rituals are powerful as a way to give our body something to do as our mind and heart orient upon the Divine. Similarly, I found that praying the Catholic Rosary sometimes “got my mind out of the way” so my heart could pray directly to my Creator. The Bible says when we are distressed sometimes the Spirit intercedes for us with “sighs to deep for words.” Indeed, it was reading his books on Wicca that made me realize he had directed his heart to that Creative Force that controls and created the universe. A Force that I knew, among other names, as Yahweh or Elohim.

It is possible to “go through the motions” and never orient your heart to this Divine Source. To just do the ritual with your body and mouth while your mind and soul go elsewhere and worry about grocery lists, your project at work, what to feed the kids, or any of billions of questions we could consider instead of touching the Source of Life. Jesus said, many will come to me on that day (when they die and on the day of judgment) and say “Lord Lord!” in joyful greeting and he will say, “Get away from me you doers of iniquity! I never knew you!” Unfortunately, I think many who attend our churches, as well as many who don’t, may be in that group who are rejected. In other words many who follow rituals or religious practices but never engage their hearts or enter into a living interacting relationship with the Divine may believe they are being spiritual because they are doing the right “things” but its like turning on a lightswitch that has no power to it. You can flip the switch all you want – you may do the right thing but the light will not come into your life. You need to complete the circuit and activate the power. The power of our heart, our intention, the emotion and not just of our mind.

I often qoute a diddy that Fr. Hoolighan, an Irish Catholic, once shared with me:

Mr. Business went to church; he never missed a Sunday; But Mr. Business went to hell; For what he did on Monday.

Saint Benedict told us the most important aspect of prayer was not speaking but learning to listen with the ears of our heart. How do we do that? While I will go into more detail in future blogs this question of how do we live, breathe, and pray in the prescence of the Divine is vital to all of us? We will cover that two blogposts from now and go into even more detail in our community. Indeed, that is one of the things I created the ofNaturesGod Patreon community to help with but I will strive to help everyone here in a general way, as I am able: www.Patreon.com/ofNaturesGod

Because we are creatures of habit if we can resist doing things habitually. Doing them without thinking and without engaging our heart or intention and keep our whole existence focused on the Divine then the rituals can actually help us get in touch with our Creator, that Creative Force that brought forth life and ordered all creation.

Time of Prayer and Meditation

If we have and keep a regular time of prayer and meditation our body orients its internal clock toward the Ground of All Being. If you create such a regular habit and you miss your time of prayer and meditation you are likely to have your subconscious remind you, “Aren’t we usually praying or meditating about now?” Similarly, when we enter our regular time with this Living Force, our body, our consciousness, and our soul all naturally orient toward the Source of All Life because doing so has become a living ritual. If we get it into the “habit” of doing so at a particular time our body and consciousness adjust. This does not preclude us from doing so at other times as well for the Divine Presence is always with us. But because we are physical creatures having a regular time in which we are not interrupted, when we consciously turn our hearts toward that Presence in which we live, move, and have our being, is very valuable to us for our spiritual development, our health, our balance, and our resilience in life.

I learned from one of the Saints of the Church to put up a sign to salesmen and people who come to our door (or maybe even to tell family members,) that you are in a time of prayer and not to be disturbed.

“Please Be Quiet and Do Not Knock on the door. I am at my regular prayer time and I will not answer. Please come back later.”

A note like this or something similar can reduce your interruptions. Shut off your phone and shut off the notifications on your computer or go where you cannot hear them to ensure that your full heart and attention can be oriented toward the Divine Presence. If you are distracted by noises outside play soft music without words (that is important because words will distract you – even if they are holy songs.)

I was in deep in prayer and struggling with an issue that I had not talked to anyone but my wife about. My prayer time had actually become kind of a time where I was arguing with God and telling the Creator of the Universe that He/She/It had made a mistake and that I was really not the person to do the job that I felt the Lord of LIfe was pushing me to do. (Yes, I will argue with anyone.) During that time I had a knock on the door! Didn’t they read the note? I usually ignore it but something made me answer this time.

“May I help you?”

“Hi, you probably don’t remember me. My sister brought me with her to your church once last year to listen to your preach and we met briefly after church.”

“Yes, I do actually remember you. How can I help you.”

“Well, I don’t know what you believe about Christianity. I know people have different ways of thinking…”

“Yes,” it was clear to me whatever it was was difficult for her so I thought I needed to say something to help her get out what she was trying to get out.

“Well, I was praying and God told me I need to come here and tell you something. May I tell you his message so God will leave me alone and I can get back to my regular prayers?”

“I think I know what you mean,” I smiled. “Yes, you may tell me what message God has for me.”

“God told me to tell you: ‘You need to accept the power that God wants to give you.’ Does that make any sense to you?”

“Why yes, it does. In fact, I was just arguing with God about that very thing when you knocked. I guess I need to listen and obey instead of arguing. I think God would like me to tell you, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant.’ That was a very important message to me. Thank you.”

She left and I never saw her again.

But I will never seriously entertain anyone who tries to tell me that the Creator, the Universe, the Ground of All Being, the Source of Life, the very Presence in which we live move and have our being doesn’t care about us and doesn’t interact with us. My entire life is an experience to the contrary and I would say if yours has not been it is not because God doesn’t care about you but perhaps it’s because you are too busy or self-absorbed to hear the Divine Force which may speaking in that still small voice heard by the prophet Elijah in the Old Testament. Quietly speaking, and waiting for you to slow down, be still, and listen.

If you haven’t experienced that, if no one has ever taught you to listen with the ears of your heart, follow me here or join me on Patreon and I will help you learn to listen with the ears of your heart so that we may all grow close to the Source of Life.

[Watch for the upcoming blogs on A Place of Prayer and Listening With The Ears of Your Heart.]

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