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Posts Tagged ‘Spiritual’

On The Bible

“Unless the religious claims of the Bible are again acknowledged, its literary claims will, I think, be given only “mouth honor” and that decreasingly. . . . It is, if you like to put it that way, not merely a sacred book but a book so remorselessly and continuously sacred that it does not invite, it excludes or repels, the merely aesthetic approach. 
 
You can read it as literature only by a tour de force. You are cutting the wood against the grain, using the tool for a purpose it was not intended to serve. It demands incessantly to be taken on its own terms: it will not continue to give literary delight very long except to those who go to it for something quite different.” C.S. Lewis
 
The Bible is the manufacturers operating manual for fully living the spiritual life while in the physical world. The information contained therein may bring pleasure or pain, but it remains true regardless of how we react to it. For instance, we may not like to pay for gasoline, and we may not like to pump it into our cars, but failure to do so will render the car useless for transportation.
 
So it is with the Bible. We don’t get to choose which truth to accept and which to reject. Our only option is to read it with an open mind, a desire to learn and the will to follow it. Then, it will bring everything we need for our best good. Whether it what’s we want or not. 
 
Seeing truth,
Z gardener

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“If you do not take the distinction between good and bad very seriously, then it is easy to say that anything you find in this world is a part of God. But, of course, if you think some things really bad, and God really good, then you cannot talk like that. You must believe that God is separate from the world and that some of the things we see in it are contrary to His will. 
 
Confronted with a cancer or a slum the Pantheist can say, ‘If you could only see it from the divine point of view, you would realize that this also is God.’ The Christian replies, ‘Don’t talk damned nonsense.’ For Christianity is a fighting religion. It thinks God made the world—that space and time, heat and cold, and all the colors and tastes, and all the animals and vegetables, are things that God ‘made up out of His head’ as a man makes up a story. 
 
But it also thinks that a great many things have gone wrong with the world that God made and that God insists, and insists very loudly, on our putting them right again.” C.S. Lewis
 
Putting things right again is a major element of mankind’s part in creation. You see, because God gave us free will to choose, we also have the responsibility for those choices. Much of what has gone wrong in God’s creation springs from Mankind’s bad choices and refusal to accept God’s primacy and will. In short, we are not operating according to the manufacturers instructions and therefore causing many of the malfunctions which afflict us all.
 
The difference between good and bad is as real and profound as the difference between darkness and light. Physical existence by it’s very nature will always have good and bad. The divine role we play is to make the choice for good, for God and for light. Remember, “the light shone forth and the darkness did not overcome it”.
 
Spreading light,
Z gardener

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When I said that your besetting sin was Indolence and mine Pride I was thinking of the old classification of the seven deadly sins. 
 
“The seven sins are Gula (Gluttony), Luxuria (Unchastity), Accidia (Indolence), Ira (Anger), Superbia (Pride), Invidia (Envy), Avaritia (Avarice), Accidia, which is sometimes called Tristitia (despondence) is the kind of indolence which comes from indifference to the good—the mood in which though it tries to play on us we have no string to respond. 
 
Pride, on the other hand, is the mother of all sins, and the original sin of Lucifer—so you are rather better off than I am. You at your worst are an instrument unstrung: I am an instrument strung but preferring to play itself because it thinks it knows the tune better than the Musician.” C.L. Lewis
 
Just remember this, “Pride goeth before the fall”. It is the gateway sin and one of the most pernicious of human failings. Pride blinds us, then drives us to act in ways that further blinds us and confuses our path. 
 
So, today let each of us recognize our false pride as the enemy, the servant of the adversary and the obstacle that blocks us from the light of truth. Overcoming false pride is simply a matter of turning our will over to God. Then the light of truth will shine and it will not be overcome by the darkness.
 
Shine on,
Z gardener

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On Evolution

 
 
One reason why many people find Creative Evolution so attractive is that it gives one much of the emotional comfort of believing in God and none of the less pleasant consequences. When you are feeling fit and the sun is shining and you do not want to believe that the whole universe is a mere mechanical dance of atoms, it is nice to be able to think of this great mysterious Force rolling on through the centuries and carrying you on its crest. If, on the other hand, you want to do something rather shabby, the Life-Force, being only a blind force, with no morals and no mind, will never interfere with you like that troublesome God we learned about when we were children. The Life-Force is a sort of tame God. You can switch it on when you want, but it will not bother you. All the thrills of religion and none of the cost. Is the Life-Force the greatest achievement of wishful thinking the world has yet seen?
 
In this writer’s opinion, evolution is the intelligent design of the creator. It is the way God created us. That does not obviate the existence of a conscious loving God who holds us accountable for our misdeeds. In fact, it is one of the most solid arguments for a loving God.
 
Why then, does a conscious loving God allow suffering (negativity)? It seems clear that physical existence is not possible without negative experiences. Without negative stimulus, the first simple organisms would have had no need to adapt and evolution would not have occurred. 
 
It is no different in our daily lives. Our growth springs from overcoming adversity, just as our spiritual growth springs from mastering our doubts, egos and fear. No loving God would deny us the ability and yes, the inevitability of growing through adversity. 
 
Let God,
Z gardener

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On Being Beauty

We want so much more—something the books on aesthetics take little notice of. But the poets and the mythologies know all about it. We do not want merely to see beauty, though, God knows, even that is bounty enough. We want something else which can hardly be put into words—to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it.
 
This beauty with which we seek communion is nothing less than the face of God, who manifests himself most splendidly in the aesthetics around us. This beauty can be joined in the garden called Eden. The door is open and the invitation sent. All we have to do is RSVP and walk in. When we do, we will find infinite love which is the source of our ability to be beauty.
 
In communion with beauty,
Z gardener

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On Individuality

 
 
The thing you long for summons you away from the self. Even the desire for the thing lives only if you abandon it. This is the ultimate law—the seed dies to live, the bread must be cast upon the waters, he that loses his soul will save it. 
 
But the life of the seed, the finding of the bread, the recovery of the soul, are as real as the preliminary sacrifice. Hence it is truly said of heaven ‘in heaven there is no ownership. If any there took upon him to call anything his own, he would straightway be thrust out into hell and become an evil spirit.’ But it is also said ‘To him that overcometh I will give a white stone, and in the stone a new name written, which no man knoweth saving he that receiveth it’ [Revelation 2:17]. 
 
What can be more a man’s own than this new name which even in eternity remains a secret between God and him? And what shall we take this secrecy to mean? Surely, that each of the redeemed shall forever know and praise some one aspect of the Divine beauty better than any other creature can. Why else were individuals created, but that God, loving all infinitely, should love each differently? 
 
And this difference, so far from impairing, floods with meaning the love of all blessed creatures for one another, the communion of the saints. If all experienced God in the same way and returned Him an identical worship, the song of the Church triumphant would have no symphony, it would be like an orchestra in which all the instruments played the same note.
 
The only thing we individually own is ourselves. Even that is in constant communion with all others. When we give away our individual selves, then we fully gain our God-given selves. That is a good deal. 
 
It is impossible to give away more than we receive back from the giving.
 
In symphony,
Z gardener

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On Illumination

 
 
Let us suppose we possess parts of a novel or a symphony. Someone now brings us a newly discovered piece of manuscript and says, ‘This is the missing part of the work. This is the chapter on which the whole plot of the novel really turned. This is the main theme of the symphony’. 

 
Our business would be to see whether the new passage, if admitted to the central place which the discoverer claimed for it, did actually illuminate all the parts we had already seen and ‘pull them together’. Nor should we be likely to go very far wrong. The new passage, if spurious, however attractive it looked at the first glance, would become harder and harder to reconcile with the rest of the work the longer we considered the matter. But if it were genuine then at every fresh hearing of the music or every fresh reading of the book, we should find it settling down, making itself more at home and eliciting significance from all sorts of details in the whole work which we had hitherto neglected. 
 
Even though the new central chapter or main theme contained great difficulties in itself, we should still think it genuine provided that it continually removed difficulties elsewhere. Something like this we must do with the doctrine of the Incarnation. Here, instead of a symphony or a novel, we have the whole mass of our knowledge. The credibility will depend on the extent to which the doctrine, if accepted, can illuminate and integrate that whole mass. 
 
It is much less important that the doctrine itself should be fully comprehensible. We believe that the sun is in the sky at midday in summer not because we can clearly see the sun (in fact, we cannot) but because we can see everything else.
 
‘Nuff said,
 
Z gardener

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On Forgiveness

 
“Do you know, only a few weeks ago I realized suddenly that I at last had forgiven the cruel schoolmaster who so darkened my childhood. I’d been trying to do it for years: and like you, each time I thought I’d done it, I found, after a week or so it all had to be attempted over again. But this time I feel sure it is the real thing. And (like learning to swim or to ride a bicycle) the moment it does happen it seems so easy and you wonder why on earth you didn’t do it years ago. 
 
So the parable of the unjust judge comes true, and what has been vainly asked for years can suddenly be granted. I also get a quite new feeling about ‘If you forgive you will be forgiven.’ I don’t believe it is, as it sounds, a bargain. The forgiving and the being forgiven are really the very same thing. But one is safe as long as one keeps on trying”, wrote C.S. Lewis.
 
I would go one step further than Mr. Lewis. It is clear to this scribe that we cannot be forgiven until we forgive. The Lord’s prayer says”forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who have trespassed against us”. Very clear.
 
If we are to be the recipients of forgiveness, we must create the channel in our hearts to receive the forgiveness we seek. Forgiving others creates that channel. Admitting our own sins, and asking for forgiveness clears the debris from that channel, making clear the way for forgiveness to enter our lives.
 
Then, as forgiven spirits, we can access the peace, hope and joy of the garden God created for us here.
 
Seeking and offering forgiveness,
Z gardener

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Beyond Nature

 
 
When human souls have become as perfect in voluntary obedience as the inanimate creation is in its lifeless obedience, then they will put on its glory, or rather that greater glory of which Nature is only the first sketch. For you must not think that I am putting forward any heathen fancy of being absorbed into Nature. Nature is mortal; we shall outlive her. When all the suns and nebulae have passed away, each one of you will still be alive. Nature is only the image, the symbol; but it is the symbol Scripture invites me to use. We are summoned to pass in through Nature, beyond her, into that splendour which she fitfully reflects.
 
And in there, in beyond Nature, we shall eat of the tree of life. At present, if we are reborn in Christ, the spirit in us lives directly on God; but the mind and, still more, the body receives life from Him at a thousand removes—through our ancestors, through our food, through the elements. The faint, far-off results of those energies which God’s creative rapture implanted in matter when He made the worlds are what we now call physical pleasures; and even thus filtered, they are too much for our present management. What would it be to taste at the fountainhead that stream of which even these lower reaches prove so intoxicating? Yet that, I believe, is what lies before us. The whole man is to drink joy from the fountain of joy. As St. Augustine said, the rapture of the saved soul will “flow over” into the glorified body.
 
May we, while experiencing this sketch of glory in our earthly lives, draw ever closer to the true glory that is ahead. As we live it now, may our paths be guided this taste of rapture to come.
 
Living our glory,
Z gardener

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On Truth

“I suppose there are two views about everything,” said Mark.
 
“Eh? Two views? There are a dozen views about everything until you know the answer. Then there’s never more than one.”
 
Funny thing about the truth; it is always true. Even one false element  precludes something being the truth. Our views about things are not always validated by the truth. So, we should subject our views to that which we know is true, if our views are to be depended upon. 
 
Many times, “the answer’ is impossible to know without knowing the truth. The most assured way of finding “the answer” about our views is to start with the truth. Seek first the truth, then all answers will be more clear and certain.
 
Where do we find truth? The Bible says, “seek and ye shall find, knock and the door will be opened to you, ask and ye shall receive”. If we are diligently seeking the truth, we will find it. When we base our views on these truths, they will guide us toward greater truth and communion with the source of truth…God.
 
Today, let us seek first the truth, then that truth will shape our views so that we can see and live in the garden God created for us.
 
Seeking truth,
Z gardener

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