Personalized Scripture

Copyright 2015 Don Ray

I think back on this week’s Lectionary study group meeting.

It is evident that the study of scripture is not to ferret out absolute, unequivocal meaning from verses and chapters.

Were it only that simple, by now all the meaning would have been long ago squeezed out and the vintage distilled from the fruit of the scripture, and we would simply have to choose from among a variety of expert opinions, seeking

The Antithetical Societal Solution

Copyright 2016 Don Ray

Can it be?!  A quiet Saturday morning at home alone?!  ‘Tasha holding me in the chair by the patio door as snow lightly falls?!  Oh joy, oh joy!  How many lifetimes have passed since I experienced this sublime joy!  And I experience it now only because of a wicked bad cold that I do not want others to catch. 

But oh this long forgotten, blessed morning state of mind and spirit!  Oh joy, long missed joy!  Unhurried!  Quiet!  Unpressured!  All because of a cold and a purring ‘Tasha kitty. 

‘Tasha also celebrates this rare, rare moment of quiet at home on a Saturday morning.  Such a blessing!

Ahhh, an unhurried morning….such a curse that such an experience should so rarely bless the modern man and woman.
I get to scruff a purring ‘Tasha kitty!  Thank You!  Thank You!  Thank You!...for the cold that made this possible!
Such joys and life await in contemplation!

How impoverished the life always busy, active, moving!

Heart Blindness

Copyright 2016 Don Ray

The following is written while outside an office I wait on courageous, emotionally devastated friends who two nights ago suddenly found themselves immersed in an incomprehensible tsunami of shocking, life-wrenching tragedies involving suicide, coroners, lawyers, custody, hospitals, court hearings, and God only knows what more.

Such madness besets this poor blinded humanity! Dear God, such madness! This surely testifies to there being far more to existence than mere reductionist physical and mechanical forms. Such madness contradicts the principles of evolution. No species would ever evolve into such madness. How evident it is that we must be blind, yet we know not to what we are blind. It is so painfully evident that we have lost contact with something critically important. 

Faith Crisis, Faith Freedom

Copyright 2016 Don Ray

Faith Crisis, Faith Freedom

Ever had a crisis of faith when you had to give up a dearly held belief?  I desperately dislike the wrenching torments of such crises, but eventually am inevitably grateful for them, whether addressing faith in a person, an institution, or a belief system. 

I’m sure they must afflict any open minded person, anyone willing to learn and grow, anyone questioning and searching.  I don’t think real faith has much strength without being exercised by crises of faith. 

In a crisis of faith, reality keeps slapping you in the face to wake you up to the fact that a core principle of your beliefs is clearly mistaken.  That in turns leads to the real problem.

 You are left asking if everything you believe is mistaken.

Beauty in the madness

Beauty in the Madness

Copyright 2016 Don Ray

On a recent sunrise contemplative walk, I experienced a most curious peaceful insight.  It arose in part in response to a recent afternoon spent at an acquaintance’s house where he had me watch innumerable old video clips of war in its innumerable forms, documentary video clips, movie excerpts, compilations, technology of weaponry, cavalry charges, black and white movies with handsome heroes charging into a wall of spears or a hail of bullets, etc., etc., a compendium of testimony to the madness of the human condition.

Life Adrift or Navigating Life

Life Adrift or Navigating Life

Copyright 2016 Don Ray

As we go through life the shallow waters of a familiar lagoon seem safe and pretty and warm.

How terrifying are the deep waters!  How dark and cold!....worst of all, how unknown! 

The shallow waters, their enticing hues, their warmth, their brightness, their clarity, entice us to stay close to shore, preventing our leaving for any other shore, precluding our exploring that which could expand our horizons.

It is usually only hunger, need, and desperation that drive us to leave the warm, shallow waters and set sail across the dark and deep…..

….and of course sometimes the occasional storm, the crisis, the disaster, tossing us out of our familiar harbors and bays, marooning us in uncharted emptiness, forcing us to choose our direction.

Heaven With a Little Help From Me Friends

Copyright 2016 Don Ray 

DrDonRay@HotMail.com

Joe Cocker, dead?!  That is of course preposterous.  Surely it is time to dispel this cruel illusion of death.

Joe Cocker is dead?  How ludicrous.  How can anyone watch that performance at Woodstock and for an instant think the vitality of that individual consciousness no longer exists?  Ludicrous I say.

But wait!  Joe Cocker in the same Heaven as my Southern Baptist mother?!  Now there’s a logical incongruity! 

In the lessons learned from this temporal world have I learned anything to resolve this incongruity?