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.

Embrace of Comfort

 Copyright 2025 Don Ray.  Please share.

EMBRACE OF COMFORT

Comfort, comfort….from whom?....or from what?

Who and what awaits us,

that who and what that so resolutely hides itself from us now.

 

Comfort, comfort,

don't look for sense in it,

yet it is not deniable.

The very thought and awareness

testifies to its presence.

Comfort.

Comfort.

All is not lost,

and will never be lost.

 

Most dare not look for that Source of comfort

for the prospect of its nonexistence is too terrifying.

It is too abstract,

too irrelevant to this materialistic world,

and too unneeded in this age of screens, entertainment, and distraction.

Comfort is something in a bottle or a download.

But a day comes, inexorably approaching,

when yes, comfort, 

irrational, inexplicable

comfort,

will unavoidably and desperately be needed.

Soon enough, soon enough,

making no sense,

from Source indistinct and incomprehensible,

comfort, comfort

will be needed,

    and will softly embrace.

 

Conflicted Choice

 Copyright 2025 Don Ray

Feel free to print and share.

CONFLICTED CHOICE

Conflicts, between nations and people, inevitable.

Collapse of systems, inevitable.

Conflict internally, inevitable.

Conflict, what to do, the assessment of what is right.  Leaving one’s  children to earn money to feed those children.  Choosing among overlapping demands of friends, family, obligations, God, church, team, patriotism, pets, colleagues.

Conflict and choice…..there is the core nature of this worldly life.  Each moment at work, playing with children, helping a friend, supporting the team, is a moment not given to all the others.

Law and order, compassion, enforcement, acceptance…...each of them right, each justifiable.  Each choice of what to do bringing to light everything not done.

We defer the choice to holy texts, to imams and preachers, to team colors, to authority, blessed authority, anyone, anyone to save us from the torment of choice.

There will be suffering, and we don't want to make it worse, but the lovingly purchased pet food entailed suffering and death of natural resources or confined domesticated livestock.

Conflict and choices, enough choice by one group of people leading to conflict with that other group who made a different choice.

It is all good.  It will all induce suffering.

Some agonize over the choices.  Others don't.

"Just make them" time and mortality demand.  Decide who will suffer, who you will neglect, while trying to love and help the others.  

Every opportunity is from God?.....but the "ruler of this world", satan or coyote or crow, confuses the issue.

Note and observe, record without judgement, then adjust as feels right.  That is a way to avoid taking control.  It is a way to make informed decisions.  

This is a finite world.  It is so in order to promote values and awareness.  It is the big Choice that matters.  

It is a world of mortality.  Only in the limitations of mortality do values and priorities arise.

God does indeed place before us opportunities, but we cannot take advantage of all of them.  The real opportunity is the Choice…..and there is no right answer for that Choice.  Manifold opportunities to rescue mean manifold necessities to neglect.  It is simply so in this world.  It is important,  critically important, to recognize that.

Give up control, but don't think that means escaping terrible choices.  The desire to escape moral choices leads to horrors of ISIS, Taliban, and Baptists.  Make informed decisions.  Be aware of what you are doing.  Accept, and this is critical, what you cannot do as determined by each choice of what to do.  

Yes, each life opportunity, each opportunity to serve and help and heal and rescue is from God, personally delivered to you, demanding your response.  And you cannot do it all.  It is a huge act of faith and spiritual growth to recognize and accept that.  

Mortality demands faith to accept what cannot be.  Eternity assures all good will be.  

Copyright 2025 Don Ray

Feel free to print and 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.  

Christmas Cards

Christmas Cards 

Writing Christmas cards,

trite, shallow, pointless

Christmas cards,

growing more depressed with each.

'Tis the season,

the music,

Ol' Claus,

colored lights,

all contrived,

fake and facade,

no reality here,

wretchedly unrealistic…..

Yet images of Hope,

a wish,

relationships that will be, though not now.

The seemingly empty traditions

clarify and express our hopes,

granting vision of what could be.

The almost empty cards and carols

are desperately needed,

pulling us to something better.

…pulling us to be something better.

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.

Calling

 CALLING

You would think there would be some profound and wise instruction for how to follow your life's calling, whether you believe that calling comes from God, destiny, universe, or whatever.  There is a calling, or callings.  You can follow it.  But how it will be revealed is acutely individual.  

Of course you have to want a calling before you can discern it.  You have to surrender to something before you can be called by it.  It is a rare and curious thing in an age of materialism for anyone to surrender to a calling.  It is also a rare and curious thing in an age of basic survival to surrender to a calling.  Yet all are called, but few accept it.   You will be alone.  Following a calling is terrifying, fraught with doubt, a glorious madness, indefensible and inexplicable.  Yet once accepting calling, you can never again deny it, at least not for long.  You would have it no other way, the world's tawdry profits rendered banal and tedious by a glimpse, even a fleeting glimpse, of Purpose and meaning and the invitation to be a part of it.  

Almost Forgotten Words

 

Almost Forgotten Words 

We all long for peace.  But with the slightest miscommunication wars erupt, within the household or between nations.

The great conflicts and the domestic disputes coalesce out of the swirling storm of disconnection and distance.  Each of these inner worlds, each ensemble of beliefs and expectations and desires, i.e. each individual human being, churns within the prison cell of its worldly experience.  Words form feeble and distorted connections among the individual cells, but the almost universal aversion to really listening renders the words impotent and their effects unpredictable.  

So arguments ensue and wars erupt.  

It is tragedy unnecessary and horror avoidable, but our trenchant resistance to learning ensures the tragedies and horrors will compound.

Ludicrous sound the admonitions to turn the other cheek and give away your coat as well as cloak.  Such progressive ideas were and are resoundingly ignored.  But imagine the world in the absence of those admonitions.  Indeed, look at parts of the world untouched by those impractical admonitions.  

Against all odds those words and their source have and do make a difference.  They at least sufficiently prick our conscience that we give lip-service to the premise that war and divorce are not to be celebrated.  

We may not turn the other cheek, but at least we ever so slightly uncomfortably squirm upon hearing the phrase.  Maybe our retributive blows are in turn ever so slightly tempered by some nagging sub-conscious awareness that some unrealistic itinerant progressive long ago pointed out a better way.  

Do not listen.  Do not learn.  Continue as always, pragmatic and patriotic, resolute and righteous.  Try to deny that irritating tiny grain of sand in your well shined marching shoes,.... "turn the other cheek…..turn…...turn and repent."

Candles

 Candles

What fragments will survive, what remnant of touch.

Blessed, blessed,

immersion in Source and holiness,

those first safe moments of the day.

None can share, 

not yet,

blessed, blessed ritual,

not hollow ritual of things and mumbled words and smoke that promptly disappears,

but ritual of soul for the moment embraced.

The world, the world, 

terrible and terrifying,

potential unrealized.

But in the still of pre-dawn

the madness abates,

and blessed, blessed Communion

is enabled.

A touch,

reminding touch,

safe touch,

and the soul remembers

what was and

what will be.

Time finally slows.

The torrent of needs and hungers and demands is set aside.

Finally, finally,

miracle returns,

or better said,

eyes are opened to perceive the miracles always present.

None will wonder at such words.

They will prompt only momentary curiosity.

But surely there is more.

Surely those hints are of meaning.

Celebrate them,

though the soul longs to celebrate so much more.

While waiting for sunrise even a flickering candle is comfort in the cold and dark.

Yes, it is cold and dark.

Yes, those are beautiful candles, those imperfect children struggling to immerge from the spiritual womb of this carnal existence.  

Do not look to them for sunrise.  But in the midst of the isolation in the cold dark, do not miss the beauty of their tiny candle flames, though they cast even darker shadows.

Grim the moment, but bright the promise.

The sun will rise,

all will rise.

Do not pretend it is not dark and cold.

But do not miss the beauty of the candles,

do not miss the essential, though for now meager, light and warmth they cast.

See the Wholeness in all its darkness,

this birth of individual children of One loving Source

Manipulation

 Manipulation 

In recent decades as society has careened through ever faster and more radical changes, people have fled toward fundamentalism, demanding that there be one thing in their lives that does not change because they won't allow it to change, the one thing in their lives in their absolute control to prevent from changing, i.e. their beliefs.  Combine that with the introduction of powerful entertainment technology into church services.  Combine those with, ironically, a severing of bonds with and trust of traditional centralized church authority.  Combine that with a thermonuclear explosion of media technology best suited to manipulating malleable, unaware minds.  Put all those factors in an economic and political system structured so as to the greatest degree possible empower psychological-marketing as the primary influencer of belief and action.  Season this wicked cauldron with innate human nature of greed and lust for power.

Of course fundamentalist mega-churches sprung up like poisonous mushrooms, all  bright and enticing!  Of course a Rupert Murdoch would seize the opportunity for profit in peddling fear, hatred, and inevitable violence.  Of course a Trump would arise out of the fetid moral wastelands of the obscenely rich.  

Too rapid change and progress do not open doors to enlightenment and renaissance.  They drive frightened minds back to the familiar comforts of witch-doctors and evangelists.  It is instead the traumatic collapse of convenient faith, the sacking of temples and the spread of plagues, that finally reveal the impotence of those wearing the robes and the hollowness of the idols.  Then the scales are removed from the eyes of a few, then a few precious scattered seeds can sprout, and renaissance and enlightenment and revival can momentarily again flourish.

A Secretive God

 

The obvious problem in trying to follow God's will for our lives is God's recalcitrance about unambiguously communicating that will.  Oh, we will promptly think we know what it is.  We will plan our lives accordingly.  Then when life unceremoniously tosses our holy plans into the dumpster we will stubbornly hold onto those plans because after all they are not our plans but God's plans.  

Our will and God's will quickly become convoluted because God is so danged secretive about whatever plan there is.  Our "willing" morphs into "willful" without our noticing.  

So for the umpteenth time it's back to the drawing board to resketch the priorities God seems to have given us, maybe, unless it's just our wishful thinking.

One is left to keep guessing, and adapt, and incorporate, and compromise.  Somewhere under all the practical considerations still resides that desire to do God's will, were it only clearly expressed.  Somewhere in the passing years, advancing age, and compounding shocks we of course may not "do" God's will, but we may live it.  Out of our control, unforeseen by our eyes, unanticipated in our plans, we somehow live God's will.  In that we can find some solace, some salve for our tattered faith.  

Commit your life to God's path, and promptly get abjectly lost, gloriously lost, in the dense fog of unfolding healing and redemption.

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.

Lessons of the Mystery

LESSONS OF THE MYSTERY

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

Lessons,

life lessons,

learned and taken so seriously,

lessons for the individual, 

no one else.

Lessons,

life lessons,

never to be shared,

except with others who already learned them.

There is a depth of understanding, a depth of seeing and feeling and experiencing,

that is of little use to and little interest for this world.

Promise mysteries solved and people will listen.

Pronounce that all is mystery and shall so remain,

and watch the faces turn away.

Mystery, wrapped in life.

We love a mystery, but only with solution.

That’s why we dare not look too closely at life,

for then we see just how inscrutable it is.

But the looking, the looking,

is what makes us human.

The looking, that defines us as children of God,

even  of a well hidden, or at least disguised, God.

Hurry, hurry,

it seems so long ago,

surely there is little time left.

This gift, this moment, is too precious,

too ripe with potential,

to let slide.

But there are no answers, at least none that any want to hear,

and none that solve the Mystery.

But they do ease the pain, don’t you think?

Listen!  

Was that a hint?  One has to listen to hear them, you know.

They are always whispered, and never repeated.

Always nebulous, discrete, private,

the answers to the Mysteries.  

They are not to be shared,

not due to some cosmic dictate,

but because no one will listen.

Listen.

Keep listening.

Hear the sounds of speculations rattle to and fro within the Mystery.

All you will hear is the Mystery laughing…..

but it is not a scornful laugh.

It is almost playful, as if we take the Mystery much too seriously.

It is glad we explore it, welcomes our investigations and speculations,

our philosophies and theologies,

like a parent smiling at the crawling infant’s explorations 

about the room.

It is healthy, a part of growth, these explorations,

this crawling and putting things in our mind.

It is serious business, this growing up.

It is playful and joyful, and fraught with dangers.

It seems so long ago, 

we started exploring, started crawling, started asking,

but there is time, and there is beyond time,

so no need to fret or hurry.

The Mystery abides,

welcoming our explorations,

answers awaiting, but only once we begin to crawl.

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