To Everyone

[Hopalong]

It is staggering how much information and insight can appear here in a week.
I would never have known if I hadn't been quiet for a while.

So wonderful to hear the new voices and some old ones too, thanks to the wise leaders who reached out and helped it happen.

I hope no one is too annoyed with me if I'm slow to catch up or mess up on the details...I am afraid that's sure to happen. It's really a dazzling amount of posts. Like a fountain turned on. I have a deadline and am a buried for a while. Overwhelming amount of things I have to do.

But I hope everyone knows I'm caring. I'll just dip back in when I can. I've missed you!

I am glad to see it all, to read it all, and to have the privilege.

Hops

[moonlight52]

Hi Hops , Missed ya 
 It is raining and Mr moon and little miss moon are sitting on Mr moon's 68 mustang getting wet.

I have some thoughts.Let's for a moment give up the us against them and hold that vision.

We can choose to step free through the extended grace of Christ.What would rob us from experiencing this peace?

It is the attitude of against. We alone are the projectors of the world we see.We can choose to see love,wisdom,and the heart of GOD. And celebrate everyones uniqueness.Oh got to go the thunder just scared little miss moon

Wait a minute she liked being scared by the thunder.
I should tell you when Mr moon took the mustang out on the desert and went 120 mph sheriff stopped
him had to catch him first then Mr moon talked himself out of the ticket.


Love TO ALL

MOON

[Hopalong]

Hi Moon,
I just can't do it. I am agnostic. Sometimes I wish I weren't but the most sacred thing I can say is "I don't know." When I am in a happy space (not very right now, too much death around and my D is absent from me)...anyway, when I am happy, I truly do experience my agnosticism as a position of faith. Sounds backward, but that's my inability to find better words. IOW (hm), for me, thinking about what I sensed "god" meant as a little girl...I feel so much awe and holiness about the mystery...that I can't name it. I won't accept that one book holds it all and I can't fit it inside the phrases.

So, that's where I am. Sometimes I wish I could float back to the "easy parts". The gentle, meek and mild.

I do remember complete faith, a trusting ability to pray and then feel peace, as a tiny girl. I miss it. But I have never been able to will it back. (I do pray. I just have no idea who or what I'm talking to.)

I loved J dearly as a child and believe it would be good to read him again, but I do not believe Jesus was divine, or rose from the dead. Because if I accept that, then I have to accept all the rest...the converting and the threats to the unconverted. It seems dishonorable to pretend that this side of things doesn't stop me.

Today, in this world at war, I associate religion more with cruelty than with love.
But the same moon shines on us all.

And I am not atheist. I will never be. I think I am growing a very small sprout of faith, but it's not what I was raised to believe. So it feels kind of naked.

Night-night, dear Moon.
I can just see you and DH and little Moonlet dancing in the rain.

Hops

[moonlight52]

Hops ,

 Lets just say love then and I know its a big job war and the state of the world but keeping the love there.

I know you do .I am so sorry about all your good friends being ill .Oh HOPS its just too much.

I know this will get easier I know it will hang on and know how much you are loved .

night  night

MoonLight

[Portia]

Hiya (((((((((((((((((((Hops)))))))))))))))))))

darn good to see you. I was thinking about you yesterday; mainly a stand-up routine including the line "and now relax". Loved it Take it easy, it's just great to see you here again

[mudpuppy]

But I have never been able to will it back.

No one ever has. It doesn't come from us but from Him and only when we are ready.

Because if I accept that, then I have to accept all the rest...the converting and the threats to the unconverted.

Any true conversion is a voluntary surrender between an individual and God. There are neither threats nor coercion in the true Christ. Using man's corruptions to reject the true nature of God leads one away from the truth not toward it.

Today, in this world at war, I associate religion more with cruelty than with love.

OK, but moon mentioned Christ not religion. There is a yawning chasm between the two.

mud

[Portia]

Oh Mud, I feel so excluded. It's like listening to a foreign language you don't know. I wish I understood. I wish i didn't feel like a complete outsider, an alien. I feel sad (which is okay, just a feeling). Hiya Mud, hope you're doing okay. Over here, we're talking fundamentalist cults again. i wish we could identify the cult-trainers/leaders and send them to a country where they'll be able to live a life they appear to want to. Simplistic I know, but I'm fed up with it, this ..... insanity.

[Hopalong]

Portia,
It was my training. It was extensive. Every night of my childhood, every meal with a blessing, every Sunday morning with pews and the deep rattle of the organ and blast of the choir. And the stories (the gentle, meek and mild ones were the ones my heart heard).

That's why I still have an emotional connection to Jesus, who was as real to me as a child as I was told to believe he was. The embodiment of the Golden Rule? I'm not sorry I was taught to believe that.

It's the bible, the religion, the thumping and bumping and bashing of others, that drove me away.

But if you grew up with stories of a gentle, ever-present norse or african or fairy or asian god (maybe god is another word for mythic person)...and they were effective and made you feel safe...same thing?

I think it was a gift of my childhood packaged in a box of lead. It's okay. It adds to the richness of not-knowing.

I lean toward Mud too, his intelligence and kindess and (usually  ( restraint), his....CS Lewishness.

(((Pt))) ((((Md)))) ((((Mrs. Md)))))

((((Hps))))

[mountainspring]

Hi Hops....

I'm so glad you're back. 

MS

[Portia]

Hops,

But if you grew up with stories of a gentle, ever-present norse or african or fairy or asian god (maybe god is another word for mythic person)...and they were effective and made you feel safe...same thing?

I guess...I honestly can't remember having any thing which (I'm struggling to find the words because where I am doesn't have words) i didn't have any notion, any idea, any concept of an actual or an imagined 'god' introduced to me so that I took notice....I mean, there is nothing super-natural there in that region of my brain and sometimes it creates an envy, a wish to experience, and I do feel - different. That's all, just saying, I feel this 'difference' for which I don't have words, i don't have a non-god-brain 'thing' to label myself with. Not that I want to 99.9% of the time, but sometimes I just feel like such an outsider. (Just 'expressing' here, not looking for debate.)

I'm sad that you had such a raw experience but take comfort that you're fully aware of what you did experience! If you have an emotional connection, hang on to it for yourself, you don't have to lose it do you? I don't think so, I really don't. ((((((Hops)))))

[mudpuppy]

Oh Mud, I feel so excluded. It's like listening to a foreign language you don't know. I wish I understood. I wish i didn't feel like a complete outsider, an alien. I feel sad

Portia it is a foreign language. But I believe at different points in everyone's life there come times when our ears are unstopped and we can understand if we will only listen. Those are the times He is beckoning each one of us to abandon ourselves and turn to something far greater. And I believe each one of us has it in us to turn if we so choose, but for most people pride or anger or the pleasures of this world soon close their ears back up and the opportunity is lost. It doesn't mean it won't come again, but the opportunities are finite just as our time here is.
Maybe you just haven't been ready for him to approach you yet. Or perhaps He has and you were too preoccupied to listen.
In any event God is who He is and the evil done in His name does not go unnoticed. But the evil done in His name doesn't make Him unworthy, only those doing the evil.

But if you grew up with stories of a gentle, ever-present norse or african or fairy or asian god (maybe god is another word for mythic person)...and they were effective and made you feel safe...same thing?

No, because none of them fulfilled hundreds of prophecies made hundreds of years before nor have any of them actually walked the earth nor did any of them demonstrate their love for their creations by sacrificing themselves on their creations behalf.
A one eyed, rag-tag teddy bear can make you feel safe, but that doesn't make it God.
The surpassing love of the Supreme Being laying down His life for those He created does.

mud

[penelope]

well hello hops, and moon...oh and look there's portia and mud and mountainspring too

hey it's good to hear all your crusty oLD voices... you guys, and it's nice to see you again.   

I feel encouraged and inspired by your posts.  thank you

pb

[moonlight52]

Hi Hops ,
Let us know how you are feeling and what you want to talk about  I was not meaning to bring up religion
on your thread.

Christ Consciousness is something quite different than religion anyway to me.
Good to hear from you.................


MoonLight

[mountainspring]

Hi pb.. good to see you too!

Glad everyone's coming back. 

[Hopalong]

Hi Moon, Mud, Portia, MS, everybody:

It's okay Moon, I don't mind. And I do know what you mean about the christ within...some metaphors are real and I see this in the people and acts that are obvious emblems of love, everywhere. (There's hope for me yet!)

I will step back from conversion to a specific message about who's-safe-who's-not, but just to say to Portia, I really do understand that yearning and it's near to my own. My own is really more to RE-experience a trust I had as a lonesome little lump in the bed. Telling my troubles to the friendly thing somewhere in my chest and also beyond the mysterious ceiling.

I am on a path to finding my own kind of faith. I do know it will be something without dogma. Very likely to become more clear when I'm sitting on a boulder beside my favorite mountain stream. In my own case, not likely to be much involved with words, though some texts and music can help, depending on which verse.

Thank you everybody of any faith or yearning, for generously wanting to share your happiness.
Your intention is what I experience, and what I take away. And that's very real to me.

(I know for the deeply committed to one religion, I fall short of your hopes for me. I am peaceful in that, but I am sorry to be disappointing. Not guilty-sorry, just not wanting anyone sad on my account.)

I'll let the subject go now myself, but anybody's welcome to talk on here all they'd like, about this or anything at all. Please do carry on!

(((((((((((((((()))))))))))))))))))

Hops