Category Archives: The Spiritual journey from Fear to Love.
Sexual Morals and Love in our Day
I’m turning 89. My generation grew up not even knowing what queer meant. We knew boys who seemed feminine. My brother, who is very religious, dated a woman for ten years who was happy to be treated like a sister. At 40 he gave up and accepted that he was gay because he wanted to love someone his whole life. He and I discovered that we had lesbians in two generations of both sides of our family. We discovered the first, a great-great aunt who in the turn of the century in the late 1890’s became a pediatrician and founded a clinic for poor children in California. I saw a beautiful woman in a long dress in a photo of my cousin’s family album and asked who she was. When told of her achievements at a time when she would have had to been amazing to do this, I asked why I had never heard of her. My cousin pointed out another woman in the background of the photo and said, “Well, she lived with this woman all her life.” My brother and I also agreed that on our other side, a great-aunt who was very masculine and lived a very sad solitary life was also gay though she chose to live her life alone. My brother and his spouse have been together over 35 years. So, I was prepared then when one of my sons came out after college and moved to California where it was more acceptable. He and his husband have been together thirty years. Another son also decided he was gay at about thirty. My husband has one gay cousin that we know of. So, I’ve become pretty sure it’s a recessive gene that has to be on both sides of a family. We now have a grandchild that is trans. My brother and one of my gay sons have always been very religious and kind. And my other son and my grandchild are two of the kindest people I’ve ever known. In my spiritual journey and my sixty year heterosexual marriage, my experience has led me to see marriage as the best opportunity to make the journey from the neediness of a baby to the spiritual maturity of being able to love another person more than yourself. Our current sexual permissiveness for heterosexuals is much more likely to create children born into situations that are tragic. I personally did not choose abortion as a Catholic though I almost died having a fifth child by Cesarean Section when my church taught me it was wrong to use birth control. I have come to see NOT using birth control as one of the greatest evils we are currently doing since more children are suffering from that. Interestingly enough, if being gay had been accepted all along, so gays didn’t marry women and lesbians didn’t marry men trying to conform, maybe the genes would have died out by now! My first experience personally of becoming aware of gays was when taking art classes from gay teachers, which opened my eyes to how much better gay men treat women, even ugly women and old women. They treat us as interesting individuals and friends. Gays often have more women friends than men, because they treat them as people, not sex objects. I am a born again Christian, who has experienced the unconditional love of God expressed in Jesus and many miracles, including in my last years becoming free of judging people, even the judgmental people who find safety in the rules as they have learned them. I don’t agree with them and I see the terrible harm it does, but I understand them. Once you understand people, you may not agree and may work hard to make society more loving of minorities, but understanding frees us of hating and judging.
Can We Love All?
Congressman John Lewis (1940–2020) describes his Christian faith as the foundation of his commitment to nonviolence:
I believe in the philosophy and discipline of nonviolence. I accepted it not simply as a technique or as a tactic, but as a way of life, a way of living. We have to arrive at the point, as believers in the Christian faith, that in every human being there is a spark of divinity. Every human personality is something sacred, something special. We don’t have a right, as another person or as a nation, to destroy that spark of divinity, that spark of humanity, that is made and created in the image of God.
I saw Sheriff Clark in Selma, or Bull Connor in Birmingham, or George Wallace, the governor of Alabama, as victims of the system. We were not out to destroy these men. We were out to destroy a vicious and evil system. [1]
Theologian Walter Wink (1935–2012) recalls a tense moment in Selma in which a reminder to love their enemies shocked the conscience of the crowd and forged a nonviolent path forward:
King so imbued this understanding of nonviolence into his followers that it became the ethos of the entire civil rights movement. One evening … the large crowd of black and white activists standing outside the Ebenezer Baptist Church was electrified by the sudden arrival of a black funeral home operator from Montgomery. He reported that a group of black students demonstrating near the capitol just that afternoon had been surrounded by police on horseback, all escape barred, and cynically commanded to disperse or take the consequences. Then the mounted police waded into the students and beat them at will. Police prevented ambulances from reaching the injured for two hours….
The crowd outside the church seethed with rage. Cries went up, “Let’s march!” Behind us, across the street, stood, rank on rank, the Alabama State Troopers and the local police forces of Sheriff Jim Clark. The situation was explosive. A young black minister stepped to the microphone and said, “It’s time we sang a song.” He opened with the line, “Do you love Martin King?” to which those who knew the song responded, “Certainly, Lord!”… Right through the chain of command of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference he went, the crowd each time echoing, warming to the song, “Certainly, certainly, certainly Lord!” Without warning he sang out, “Do you love Jim Clark?”—the Sheriff?! “Cer … certainly, Lord” came the stunned, halting reply. “Do you love Jim Clark?” “Certainly, Lord”—it was stronger this time. “Do you love Jim Clark?” Now the point had sunk in, as surely as Amos’ in chapters 1 and 2: “Certainly, certainly, certainly Lord!”
Rev. James Bevel then took the mike. We are not just fighting for our rights, he said, but for the good of the whole society. “It’s not enough to defeat Jim Clark—do you hear me Jim?—we want you converted. We cannot win by hating our oppressors. We have to love them into changing.”
The Broken Body of Christ
OUCH!
The Power of the Cross
Now I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you be in agreement and there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and purpose.
Christ sends us to proclaim the gospel simply, so that the cross of Christ might not be emptied of its power.
For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God.
Jesus died and rose for all, but many want a savior who is about power for this world, this life.
The power of the cross is the resurrection, which shows us that this life is not all there is.
The power of the cross is that it is the ultimate expression of unconditional love for us imperfect, unfinished people.
The power of the cross can free us to die to our self-centeredness, our self-righteousness, our false sense of superiority, our judgmental spirit, our delusion of infallibility. These are the mindsets that twist our belief that we belong to the people of God into the blinding sin of pride. The power of the love of God expressed in dying on the cross can free us from our blind spots of pride, so we can become peacemakers.
The Broken Body by Eileen
Reflecting on the Body
You, the hand, I, the foot
Christ, the head, perhaps the heart
Someone else, the hidden part,
I let the scriptures
Flood my mind with images.
Then suddenly one image
Is so harshly real,
I gasp aloud.
I see a person staggering
And stumbling toward me,
Arms flailing, head jerking
Back and forth in spasms,
Body parts all pulling
Different ways.
This then – reality
Christ’s earthly body now.
Forgive us! Eileen
OUCH!
My Journey from Agnostic to Christian
As a Catholic from childhood, I had four children in the first five years of marriage. Unfortunately, I had to have them by Caesarean Section. Then the doctor told me I would die if I had another C section in the next few years. When I asked the priest what to do since birth control was considered a mortal sin, he said,
“Many children have good stepmothers.”
I decided that men who had never married or had children shouldn’t be making that kind of decision for women. Since I unknowingly had made the Catholic Church my God, when I left the Catholic Church, I threw Jesus and God out with it.
I was not a typical woman who loved to cook and bake, sew and make flower arrangements. In fact, I felt totally inadequate as a wife and mother. We were affluent then and I had help and we both enjoyed giving parties. So, for several years we led a party life, and I began drinking even before the parties and on weekday afternoons when we didn’t have parties.
I got scared that I was losing control of my drinking and found a therapy group for alcoholics. After several months of reading and going to therapy, I broke down weeping one night, admitting that I felt totally inadequate as a wife and mother and didn’t think I was capable of loving anyone, even my husband and children. The group did not judge me, but rather seemed to hurt with me. Somehow it was a beginning of healing.
The next day as I was vacuuming, I had a sense of someone standing behind me with their hand gently on my shoulder. My first thought was that it was Jesus, but then decided since I didn’t believe in Jesus it couldn’t be. So, I just put the feeling into my “need more information file.”
Unexpectedly my father died.at fifty-two years of age. I closed down my feelings, so I could deal with it intellectually and cope with life. I took a course at Vanderbilt Divinity school on the Christian View of Death and another on other World Religions. Neither made much impression on me, so I began to visit various Christian denominations and reading the bible. The book of Acts was an eye opener and made me a bit wistful that Christians might still have life changing experiences. About that time some affluent friends of ours gave up their lifestyle and his Vice Presidency in his family’s company to be missionaries in a non-denominational ministry, Campus Crusade for Christ. I hoped they had kept some investments for the future for their three children, but I was intrigued by their willingness to change their life so drastically.
Sometime later they came back to town asking our group of friends to give a Christian coffee where several women would talk about how Jesus had changed their lives. I laughingly invited women to come, saying I didn’t know our current gatherings weren’t Christian, but come and enjoy the great food we were going to have.
Several women gave talks about the changes in their lives and relationships when they said a prayer asking Jesus to be their Savior and Lord. Then they invited us to say the prayer with them. I was impressed with the changes they described, but since I didn’t believe in God or Jesus, I didn’t say the prayer. As the other women who prayed the prayer were being embraced, I started washing dishes.
One of the women came in and asked if I had said the prayer. I said I didn’t believe in God or Jesus, so I had not. She didn’t hesitate, suggesting I say the prayer this way, “Jesus, IF you are who you claimed to be, I want you to be my Savior and Lord.” That seemed like a win/win, so I said the prayer and went back to washing dishes wondering if this would make any difference.
Suddenly, I was simply over come with the feeling of being totally loved with no small print. The joy was so great, I was afraid I’d burst from it. And that began my fifty-seven-year spiritual journey that has had awesome times of joy and very difficult times when I sometimes felt that loving presence even when in great pain.
It has not been easy. And there were times when temptation was so strong that God literally intervened in amazing ways to keep me from screwing up my own and others’ lives.
I have learned that saying the prayer isn’t a magic incantation. For some of us it makes an immediate difference, but it doesn’t make us perfect. And for some it doesn’t make a difference for years. Asking Jesus to be our savior is one thing. Letting Him be Lord is a whole other ball game and for me it’s taking a lifetime. Different personalities experience the Spiritual Journey in very different ways. Some of us are relationship people. Others are worker bees and doers. Some are thinkers and questioners. God did not make His children with a cookie-cutter.
Following Jesus means literally following in His footprints in His journey through the Gospels. And that takes grace in our emotional, intellectual, physical, and spiritual lives that changes us in many different ways over the years.
We are loved unconditionally, but we are on a journey of change from being needy to being loving. And that is not easy and takes commitment, courage, and grace.
Jim Palmer’s “What I Do NOT Believe” and Eileen Noman’s “Yes! I Agree! But What I DO Believe, Because I Have Experienced IT and It Is Life Changing.’
Jim Palmer
“I can’t believe in a “God” who condemns people to eternal conscious torment for not believing the correct theology, which is based upon the interpretation of an ancient book that predates modern science.
I can’t believe in a “Gospel” that claims the human species was afflicted with a genetic sinful condition, originating and passed down from a literal Adam and Eve as the primordial parents of all humankind.
I can’t believe that a woman was directly impregnated by God in order to give birth to a sinless child who would qualify for the perfect human sacrifice to complete God’s salvation plan for humankind.
I can’t believe that men are divinely anointed with special qualities, skills and wisdom that women do not have, which allows men to hold positions of leadership and authority in the church, but not women.
I can’t believe that the Bible, which is an assortment of chosen ancient writings that have been edited several times and approved by church councils out of political expedience, should be considered the infallible, binding, and only truth from God to humankind.
I can’t believe that the only hope for our world is that one day Jesus will descend from the sky on a white horse to claim his own and leave the rest behind for tribulation and suffering.
I can’t believe these things because they all violate rational thinking and the law of love.”
Jim Palmer , Notes from (Over) the Edge
Eileen Norman
I too don’t believe those things. I have also been on a spiritual journey that freed me from those, but I opened my heart to “God’s” (whatever “God” is) unconditional Love fleshed out in the Spiritual Journey of the person Jesus , who grew in understanding and empathy until he was able to Love not just the neighbor like himself, but all others, including his best friends who abandoned him, and even the “religious” leaders that had him tortured and killed. “Father, forgive them. They know not what they do.” Life is a journey from the neediness of a baby to the ability to love even our enemies. Ultimately, we are all one, whatever we do to anyone, we do to all. But there is a reality of a “force” of unconditional Love that is grace for the journey when we can be open to. It is both outside us and inside us. And though I experienced that grace/Love fleshed out in the person of Jesus, I do not believe God’s Love only comes through Jesus. Most of the prophets that began any religion said the same thing: We are all one. And the journey from the selfishness of need to the freedom to Love is what it is all about.
Laughter: Carbonated Grace 