THE CERTITUDE OF THE DIVINE

.

.

From THE URANTIA BOOK

Part III, 102, 7

.

 .

The Universal Father, being self-existent, is also self-explanatory; he actually lives in every rational mortal. But you cannot be sure about God unless you know him; sonship is the only experience which makes fatherhood certain. The universe is everywhere undergoing change. A changing universe is a dependent universe; such a creation cannot be either final or absolute. A finite universe is wholly dependent on the Ultimate and the Absolute. The universe and God are not identical; one is cause, the other effect. The cause is absolute, infinite, eternal, and changeless; the effect, time-space and transcendental but ever changing, always growing.

.

.

 God is the one and only self-caused fact in the universe. He is the secret of the order, plan, and purpose of the whole creation of things and beings. The everywhere-changing universe is regulated and stabilized by absolutely unchanging laws, the habits of an unchanging God. The fact of God, the divine law, is changeless; the truth of God, his relation to the universe, is a relative revelation which is ever adaptable to the constantly evolving universe.
.

 Those who would invent a religion without God are like those who would gather fruit without trees, have children without parents. You cannot have effects without causes; only the I AM is causeless. The fact of religious experience implies God, and such a God of personal experience must be a personal Deity. You cannot pray to a chemical formula, supplicate a mathematical equation, worship a hypothesis, confide in a postulate, commune with a process, serve an abstraction, or hold loving fellowship with a law.

.

.

True, many apparently religious traits can grow out of nonreligious roots. Man can, intellectually, deny God and yet be morally good, loyal, filial, honest, and even idealistic. Man may graft many purely humanistic branches onto his basic spiritual nature and thus apparently prove his contentions in behalf of a godless religion, but such an experience is devoid of survival values, God-knowingness and God-ascension. In such a mortal experience only social fruits are forthcoming, not spiritual. The graft determines the nature of the fruit, notwithstanding
 that the living sustenance is drawn from the roots of
 original divine endowment of both mind and spirit.

.

 The intellectual earmark of religion is certainty; the philosophical characteristic is consistency; the social fruits are love and service.

.

.

 The God-knowing individual is not one who is blind to the difficulties or unmindful of the obstacles which stand in the way of finding God in the maze of superstition, tradition, and materialistic tendencies of modern times. He has encountered all these deterrents and triumphed over them, surmounted them by living faith, and attained the highlands of spiritual experience in spite of them. But it is true that many who are inwardly sure about God fear to assert such feelings of certainty because of the multiplicity and cleverness of those who assemble objections and magnify difficulties about believing in God. It requires no great depth of intellect to pick flaws, ask questions, or raise objections. But it does require brilliance of mind to answer these questions and solve these difficulties; faith certainty is the greatest technique for dealing with all such superficial contentions.

.

If science, philosophy, or sociology dares to become dogmatic in contending with the prophets of true religion, then should God-knowing men reply to such unwarranted dogmatism with that more farseeing dogmatism of the certainty of personal spiritual experience, " I know what I have experienced because I am a son of I AM. " If the personal experience of a faither is to be challenged by dogma, then this faith-born son of the experiencible Father may reply with that unchallengeable dogma, the statement of his actual sonship with

 the Universal Father.
.

 Only an unqualified reality, an absolute, could dare consistently to be dogmatic. Those who assume to be dogmatic must, if consistent, sooner or later be driven into the arms of the Absolute of energy, the Universal of truth,

 and the Infinite of love.

.

.

 If the nonreligious approaches to cosmic reality presume to challenge the certainty of faith on the grounds of its unproved status, then the spirit experiencer can likewise resort to the dogmatic challenge of the facts of science and the beliefs of philosophy on the grounds that they are likewise unproved; they are likewise experiences in the consciousness of the scientist or the philosopher.

.

.

Of God, the most inescapable of all presences, the most real of all facts, the most living of all truths, the most loving of all friends, and the most divine of all values, we have the right to be the most certain of all universe experiences.
.

.

.

CARL JUNG ON GETTING OLD & THE ART OF LIFE

.

.

 .

In primitive tribes we observe that

the old people are almost always the guardians

of the mysteries and the laws, and it is in these

that the cultural heritage of the tribe is expressed.

How does the matter stand with us ?

Where is the wisdom of our old people -

where are their precious secrets and their visions?

For the most part our old people try to compete

with the young.  In the United States it is almost

an ideal for the father to be the brother of his sons,

and for the mother if possible to be the younger

sister of her daughter.

.

.

.

.

.

I do not know how much of this confusion

comes as a reaction to an earlier exaggeration

of the dignity of age, and how much is to be

charged to false ideals.  These undoubtedly exist

and the goal of those who hold them lies behind,

and not in front.  Therefore they are always striving

to turn back.  We have to grant to these persons

that it is hard to see what other goal the second half

of life can offer than the well-known goal of the first.

Expansion of life, usefulness, efficiency, the cutting

of a figure in social life, the shrewd steering of

offspring into suitable marriages and good positions -

are not these purposes enough?
.

.

Unfortunately this is not enough meaning or purpose

for many persons who see in the approach of old age

a mere diminution of life, and who look upon their

earlier ideals only as something faded and worn out.

Of course, if those persons had filled up the beaker

of life earlier and emptied it to the lees,

they would feel quite differently about
 everything now; had they kept nothing back,
 all that wanted to catch fire would have been
 consumed, and the quiet of old age would be

very welcome to them. 

  But we must not forget that only

a very few people are artists in life;

that the art of life is the most distinguished

and rarest of all the arts.
.

.

.

.

Who ever succeeded in draining the whole cup

with grace?  So for many people all too much

unlived life remains over - sometimes potentialities

which they could never have lived with the
 best of wills; and so they approach the
 threshold of old age with unsatisfied claims
 which inevitably turn their glances backward.

.

.

.

It is particularly fatal for such people to

look backward.  For them a prospect and a goal

in the future are indispensable.  This is why

all great religions hold the promise of a life

beyond; it makes it possible for mortal man to

live the second half of life with as much perseverance

and aim as the first.  For the man of today the

enlargement of life and its culmination are plausible

goals; but the idea of life after death seems to him

questionable or beyond belief.  And yet life's cessation,

that is, death, can only be accepted as a goal when

existence is so wretched that we are glad for it to end,

or when we are convinced that the sun strives to

its setting - "to illuminate distant races" - with

the same perseverance it showed in rising to its

zenith.  But to believe has become today such a

difficult art, that people, and particularly the

educated part of humanity, can hardly find their

way there.
.

.

.
  They have become too accustomed to

the thought that, with regard to immortality and

such questions, there are many contradictory

opinions and no convincing proofs. 

Since "science" has become the catchword which

carries the weight of conviction in the contemporary

world, we ask for "scientific" proofs.

But educated people who can think know that

proof of this kind is out of the question.

We simply know nothing whatever about it.

.

Carl Jung

MODERN MAN IN SEARCH OF A SOUL

1933

.

.

.

 Matt's 12th casket....racing stripe version....

.

JEWS AND GENTILES

.

.

From THE URANTIA BOOK

Part IV, 121, 7

.

By the times of Jesus the Jews had arrived at a settled concept of their origin, history, and destiny. They had built up a rigid wall of separation between themselves and the gentile world; they looked upon all gentile ways with utter contempt. They worshiped the letter of the law and indulged a form of self-righteousness based upon the false pride of descent. They had formed preconceived notions regarding the promised Messiah, and most of these expectations envisaged a Messiah who would come as a part of their national and racial history. To the Hebrews of those days Jewish theology was irrevocably settled, forever fixed.
.

. 
The teachings and practices of Jesus regarding tolerance and kindness ran counter to the long-standing attitude of the Jews toward other peoples whom they considered heathen. For generations the Jews had nourished an attitude toward the outside world which made it impossible for them to accept the Master’s teachings about the spiritual brotherhood of man. They were unwilling to share Yahweh on equal terms with the gentiles and were likewise unwilling to accept as the Son of God one who taught such new and strange doctrines.
.

.
The scribes, the Pharisees, and the priesthood held the Jews in a terrible bondage of ritualism and legalism, a bondage far more real than that of the Roman political rule. The Jews of Jesus’ time were not only held in subjugation to the law but were equally bound by the slavish demands of the traditions, which involved and invaded every domain of personal and social life. These minute regulations of conduct pursued and dominated every loyal Jew, and it is not strange that they promptly rejected one of their number who presumed to ignore their sacred traditions, and who dared to flout their long-honored regulations of social conduct. They could hardly regard with favor the teachings of one who did not hesitate to clash with dogmas which they regarded as having been ordained by Father Abraham himself. Moses had given them their law and they would not compromise.
. 

.
By the time of the first century after Christ the spoken interpretation of the law by the recognized teachers, the scribes, had become a higher authority than the written law itself. And all this made it easier for certain religious leaders of the Jews to array the people against the acceptance of a new gospel.

 These circumstances rendered it impossible for the Jews to fulfill their divine destiny as messengers of the new gospel of religious freedom and spiritual liberty. They could not break the fetters of tradition. Jeremiah had told of the “law to be written in men’s hearts,” Ezekiel had spoken of a “new spirit to live in man’s soul,” and the Psalmist had prayed that God would “create a clean heart within and renew a right spirit.” But when the Jewish religion of good works and slavery to law fell victim to the stagnation of traditionalistic inertia, the motion of religious evolution passed westward to the European peoples.
.

.
And so a different people were called upon to carry an advancing theology to the world, a system of teaching embodying the philosophy of the Greeks, the law of the Romans, the morality of the Hebrews, and the gospel of personality sanctity and spiritual liberty formulated by Paul and based on the teachings of Jesus.
.

.

PRAYER FOR THE TORNADO VICTIMS

 .

.

.

.

.

.

.

O Lord of the Heavens,

give courage and a strong heart

to the victims of the swarms of tornadoes

that have terrorized communities

across America's midsection.

.

Help the first-responders and volunteers

work efficiently and thoroughly to

find victims and render them aid.

Give them the stamina and the strength

to be at their best while they

confront the absolute worst.

.

Let those who have lost loved ones

and friends be comforted in their grief.

Let the wounded bodies and minds

be healed in Your good time;

bless them and hold them,

we humbly ask.

.

Let us all learn to accept

what seems to be an inescapable fact:

 the violent and record-breaking

geological and atmospheric events across the globe 

which we are witnessing are but the beginning

 signs and omens of that which is predicted.

Give us the guts to go through the end times

with faith, courage, and a little grace.

Take away our fears.

Still our hearts.

Through Christ Our Lord.

Amen.

.

.

.

..

.

.

THROUGH THE ALL-PERVADING LIFE IN SPACE....

.

.

Beloved Lord, Almighty God!

Through the rays of the sun,

Through the waves of the air,

Through the All-pervading Life in space,

Purify and revivify me, and, I pray,

Heal my body, heart, and soul.

.

Hazrat Inayat Khan (1882-1927)

Founder of "The Sufi Order of the West"

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

A LETTER ABOUT THE PEOPLE OF APPALACHIA

.

.

.

We speak of the people

who live in this land,

people who love nature's freedom

 and beauty,

who are alive with song

and poetry.

.

.

.

.

.

But many of these people are also poor

and suffer oppression.

The poor of our land

have been wounded,

but they are not crushed.

The spirit still lives.

.

.

.

.

Their struggles and their poetry

together keep alive

a dream

a tradition

a longing

a promise

which is not just their dream,

but the voiceless vision buried beneath life's bitterness

wherever it is found.

.

.

.

.

.

They sing of a life

free and simple,

with time for one another,

and for people's needs,

based on the dignity of the human person,

at one with nature's beauty,

crowned by poetry.
.

.

If that dream dies,

all our struggles

die with it.

 This struggle of resistance

is a struggle against violence -

against institutional violence

which sometimes subtly,

sometimes brutally,

attacks human dignity and life.

At stake is the spirit

of all our humanity.

.

Pastoral Letter

Catholic Bishops of Applachia

.

.

.

.

.
Below is a video from the Google Earth Hero
series titled "Appalachian Voices."  It's a good
"update," you might say, to the reality in the letter above.
And below that is a music video from West Virginia,
with a story about D. Ray White, a man who was considered
 by many in his time to be the best mountain dancer in Appalchia.  
 He was murdered in 1985.
Both videos offer good insights into this most unique and, unfortunately, 
 somewhat abandoned part of our country.
.

.
.

.