It Is Good, It Is Very Good

 

IT IS GOOD, IT IS VERY GOOD

So much to do!  

So much to contemplate.

So many lives to impact.

So much love needed.

So many people needing the touch of God.

God’s will be done, and we have to do it.

So much to learn.

So much damaged by ignorance.

Actions of love,

actions of life misdirected,

competence and effort,

incompetence and effort,

comfort level and skill level,

how to reach, how to touch,

each doing a job,

each of us doing our job,

wondering, guessing,

the art of life,

the ambiguous, desperate art of life.

A hand reached out,

a hand clenched,

both trying,

overcoming fear,

testing, testing,

testing the soul,

the children showing the way,

our desperation driving the effort,

and through it all

growth,

growth while waiting,

waiting to understand,

doing something anyway,

running forward toward flickering Light,

beauty in the effort,

the blind, loving effort,

charging out of our defensive bunkers to act in the name of caring,

taking the chance,

accepting the risk,

in order to help as best we can,

playing to strengths,

dealing with weakness,

the human drama, the human creation.

Will God ever again be able to look and say, “it is good, it is very good.”

God’s will waiting to be done……

…….by us.

Copyright 2025 Don Ray.  Please share.

Know

 

KNOW

Beware the lessons of the leaders.

They will make you believe,

and once you believe,

they own you.

Beware what you want to believe,

for it is too easy.

Eschew belief. 

 In its place discover ineffable certainty. 

The worldly projection of that certainty will change with living.

Its forms and practice will evolve.

Its name will routinely don new clothing.

But underneath the trappings and vestments with which your mind must  adorn it,

it remains immutable.

Yes, there is Truth,

disguised in various worldly forms.

There is something to know, 

to know much more deeply than the glare of "belief".

Beliefs have to be dearly held because they can so easily blow away in the next gust of wind.  

But some things, something, can be known, known because it is part of you, because you are an expression of it.  You know it as you know yourself, you dear soul you.  You need not put it into words, for our words are of this world, useful only for communicating worldly concepts.

 Belief deals with details.  Knowing deals with essence.  Know, with each new day, know ever more deeply, perhaps discovering that something you so wanted to believe is indeed true.

God Has Left the Building

 

GOD HAS LEFT THE BUILDING

Holiness?

Do we not believe it exists?

Do we believe "holiness" to be a vestigial mental concept of no relevance to our carnal lives?

Is "holiness" relegated to an altar or reliquary or ritual?

Does that mean God has deserted us?  If we sense no "holiness" through the course of a day, what's that say about God, or the world, or us?

God has left the building?

The world supposedly of God's Creation is now corrupt and bereft of any residual holiness?

Or we just don't see that holiness, don't sense it, or maybe we're blinded to it by our goal-oriented busyness.

"Holiness"....seriously?....relegated to something constructed by human hands?....or constrained to some ritual or liturgy?.....or relegated to the past?  

Imagine what life would be like if we were more adept at discerning holiness.  Imagine what the world would be like if more people were willing to accept the possibility of holiness.

"Holiness".....in the routine, in the grasp of a baby, in the blossom of a flower, in an exercise of patience.

"Holiness", not an alien and inscrutable weirdness stuck in pages of scripture, not divorced from our morning chores, but an integral component of each, the foundation underlying all.  Doesn't that seem more reasonable for a world created by a God worthy of any worship?

Look for it, be open to it, just in case, just in case it is there after all, awaiting a respite from our denials.

Copyright 2025 Don Ray.  Please share.

Beware God's Will

 

BEWARE GOD’S WILL

All these people, sincerely believing they are doing God’s will.  All these people, inflicting suffering for God...and yes, there are two interpretations of that last sentence.

Invoke God’s will and watch the conflict begin.

Invoke God’s will and listen to the rising anger.

Invoke God’s will,  I defy you to do it passively, unless making excuses for some cataclysm, tragedy, suffering, or God-forsaken wretch.

Invoke God’s will, and condemn.

Invoke God’s will, and turn away.

Invoke Gods will, and pull the trigger.

Or admit you have no idea how to extricate God’s will from your opinions, wants, wishes, and jealously fortified beliefs.  Admit, confess even if only secretly to yourself, then go forth and do something caring and compassionate. Then you won’t have to wonder if you are doing God’s will.  Then, the recipient of your efforts will be glad to welcome your version of God’s will.  If such a radical course of action means neglecting God’s theological, political, social, or moral will, fear not, there are ample numbers of people abjectly certain they are implementing God’s theological, political, social, and moral will.

You too will be certain, certain in that moment of caring, in your touch of compassion, in a flickering moment of fulfillment of a loving God’s will on earth, as in Heaven.  

Copyright 2025 Don Ray.  Please share.

Meaningless Time

 Meaningless Time

Time.  Corporeal existence.  Somehow it is through those that interaction Reality arises.  Through those Deep Love arises.  And horrors arise.  And beauty arises.  

Time.  Matter.  For now what we have to work with.

Yet nothing arising from them has meaning other than in the eternal.  Here and Now is the moment of Creation, we a painful part of that Creation.

The time and vanishing physical forms are illusions.  Yet through them we are empowered by God to create the eternal, eternal bonds and Love.

"Do not be discouraged", whispers Spirit.  Our capacity for control and power seems terribly limited.  Our wishes and will, even when uttered in the name of Jesus, seem pointless and hopeless.  Yet time deceives, making us think that the will of God is not unfolding.  Our entrapment in the Now blocks our view of unfolding Purpose and fulfillment of our hopes.  Our incarceration in the corporeal keeps us apart.  Yet in the usual Paradox, it is that corporeal and temporal nature that facilitate  creation of the real and enduring.

Faith, faith worn and tattered by the interminable delay of prophecy, faith is our source of warmth in the biting cold of the temporal world.  Faith is a capacity to sense and know beyond the body of Now.  

The moment will pass, has already passed.  The physical forms are disappearing before our eyes.  All that passing makes room for fulfillment of our prayers.  All that is real and meaningful takes time.  That is the oft repeated lesson, the lesson of the widow and of the bridesmaids.  Time and the physical, in their fleeting passage, erect the eternal.  Hold fast to the vision of faith, to awareness of Truth.  So much better, a seemingly delayed answer that endures through eternity than an instant gratification that just as promptly disappears along with the rest of the world.  Be glad the answers to your prayers are not immediately evident in the world, for that would mean they would just as quickly disappear along with the world.  

Let it unfold.  Do not be deceived by time.  The needs are known.  The prayers are heard.  Their fulfillment will not be through anything as unreliable as worldly outcomes.  Hold fast to faith as you watch time render the corporeal to dust, thereby making room for answers eternal.

Darned Love

 

Darned Love

Look at that emphasis in the Bible on Love, two thousand years ago!  Palestina was a rough place and time!  Love?!  Where did that come from?!  You would not think people would even know what that was!  Love!

Every discussion of the Bible should promptly return to that core message, because that is the radical message, the unique message.  Everything else is filler and marketing to make the unpalatable Love less obvious.  Throw in the usual us vs. them, some blood and battles, a bunch of rules and regulations, some guarantees of a judgment day when we (the good guys of course) will finally win and get our tickets to eternal paradise, and you've got the ingredients for yet one more religion suitable for wielding condemnation, retribution, and persecution.  But then there is that darned Love.  Unique, and usually uniquely ignored, in words two thousand years old abides this curious and irritating admonition to change our innermost being, our external actions, and the world.  

Theologians will dissect verses and elaborate on eschatologies, while one single differentiating point, one overtly seditious word and its corollaries, distinguish the core message of this messenger from the jostling crowd of scriptures, teachings, and texts vying for our readily malleable belief.

Love.  Sacrificial, selfless Love.  One sermon.  One command.  One theology.  Leaving you one Choice.  

Son of Man

 

SON OF MAN

 

 "Son of Man".  What a perfect self-appellation Yeshu (Jesus) chose!....especially coupled with references to us as "this generation".  Yes, fully human, unambiguously human, yet a descendent, more advanced, of a different spiritual generation.  It is a title accurate and informative, meaningful because it was not bestowed, but matter of factly claimed.  

Son of Man…..knowing so much more than this generation could ever understand, homeless for lack of understanding by our generation, crucified by our rejection of the unheard lessons that might indict us.  

Son of Man, reduced to struggling for parables to try to communicate a little of what we would not want to understand.  

Son of Man, all ego stripped in that curious title, but at each mention dropping a hint as to His nature…..and ours.

The Deep Bass Voice of God

The Deep Bass Voice of God

Copyright 2021 Don Ray.  Feel free to print and share.

I read of another  charismatic church in Texas, another young jeans-clad wannabe messiah getting piles of money from politicians and businessmen to fund another institution to spread their gospel, disguised as The Gospel.

The young followers claim "they are called" as they wander streets and parking lots telling strangers God loves them.  In other words, they are delivering the message I would hope to deliver, but with a different methodology.

I am intrigued by such church phenomenon.  Maybe I am envious of their clarity of mission.  But my experience of fundamentalist church services and modern “praise” services and political rallies also leaves me acutely aware of my visceral response to modern amplified invocations of a high decibel "holy spirit".

Those followers are good folks, sincere folks, and their pastoral and political leaders would be the first to know, even if not the first to admit, those folks are being manipulated.  Was I any less manipulated in those guilt-fostering, emotionally not-so-subtle church services of my childhood?  Were the villagers at an ancient Egyptian temple ceremony any less manipulated?  How about the villagers in those Papua New Guinea tribal ceremonies I witnessed?

Why would God need masks or altars or guilt or amplifiers to reach us?  What is it we feel in those invocations of fear, ecstasy, guilt, awe, and vibrating chest cavity?  Why do we want to be manipulated?  If the manipulation opens our heart and mind to Creator and Holy Spirit and Love, is it necessarily bad?  If it's not bad, why am I so consistently appalled and repelled by it?  

I am repelled by use of such ritual - visual - and aural tools because they are so consistently used to deceive and manipulate innocent people to the benefit of the shaman - priest - preacher - politician - and despot.

Authentic and enduring faith is not inspired by deep bass vibrations, whether from log drums in a jungle village or a 1200 Watt subwoofer.  These are tools to be used to excite chimpanzees, not the children of God.  

The adherents feel called.  Once the speakers go quiet and the spotlights go dark, we'll see to what the worshipers were called, and by whom.  

Copyright 2021 Don Ray.  Feel free to print and share.