imagine

When I can see it, feel it, know it...it tends to happen. What's the "it"? Doesn't matter. Any it! If I can visualize a situation and if I can summon the feeling of the occasion, sooner or later, it materializes in my experience. It may happen overnight. It may take a month, or a year, or a decade. Sometimes I forget that I created the picture and felt with intensity what the outcome might be like. But then it happens and I recall, "Oh, that's exactly what I visualized, imagined, prayed for."

So, my advice on how to pray for success, health, prosperity, happiness, or anything else is not to beg God for these blessings, but to see them in Mind and feel them as accomplished.

Don't get distracted by details (though making plans is a good plan). Imagine the result, feel the joy that comes from accomplishment or from hearing good news. And that's prayer and eventually, in some way, the picture you've created in your mind must be made manifest in your experience.

Of course there are two caveats. (1) It works no matter what the picture is. If we hold a fearful picture, that situation will become imprinted on our subconscious and our Mind will work to bring that into reality. So, anxiety is as much prayer as hope is. Keep the pictures positive. (2) Pay attention and be grateful. For instance, you imagined yourself being wealthy. But the mansion, the limo, the summer house, and the pool still aren't here. But you do have a comofortable home, you have unlimited access to the beach, you have a dependable car, and you have friends in fun places to visit. You have everything that the mansion/limo/summer house/pool combo represents. So, notice how your dreams of wealth are already coming true and be thankful.

The question isn't if you'll pray. The question is how you'll pray. Postive, mental imaging accompanied by feelings of fulfillment and gratitude make up the prayer of power, and it works.

3 Religious FAQs

These are questions I am frequently asked. If you have had any of these questions, I hope this blog entry will be interesting to you. If you know someone who has any of these questions, feel free to share this entry with them. Enjoy:

1. How can you believe in God?
A belief is just a habitual thought. I've spent my entire life thinking about God, so, believing in God is the natural consequence. Put another way, to believe in something is to focus one's attention on it. I have given a lot of attention to this question, so, naturally, "belief" is the result.
Now, WHAT do I believe about God? That complicates the issue. I'm 40 years old. I don't believe today what I did at 35, or 25, or 18, or 12, or 6. I'm not sure I believe what I did three weeks ago! That I believe seems natural. What I believe is constantly growing, changing, and being worked out.
I'm not married to god-language, and in fact, am quite put off by some speech and vocabularies about God. I personally don't "need" the word "god" for my spirituality at this moment, but in this western culture, we have inherited art, imagery, music, literature, and philosophies that use god-language. So, it is easier to follow the path of least resistance.
What I mean by "god" is the totality of All That Is, ultimate reality, the way life works, the substance of all form, the best aspects of existence (i.e., love, beauty, truth, hope, etc.). I believe in God because I believe in all that God represents. I could call It "Law" or "Love" or "Spirit" or anything else. The power of God isn't in what we call It, but in what we do with the concept once we've identified It.

2. Do you really believe Jesus is the son of God and/or the savior of humankind?
The real Jesus is shrouded in myth and mystery, legend and lore. The stories we have about Jesus were all written to promote specific agendas, many of which are largely unknown to the average person today. So whatever anyone believes about Jesus will involve a good bit of conjecture.
However, what Jesus represents to people on an emotional level is very real and important. The Jesus of our sacred stories and historic creeds represents a path to freedom, empowerment, and enlightenment, and those are things that I not only believe in but also strive to obtain and share. If stories about Jesus help offer some of us an experience of healing or liberation, then the hero of those stories is divine enough and does save us from needless limitation. That does not negate the heroes of other stories, nor does it diminish people who find freedom apart from mythic heroes, but for the Christian, Jesus is (at least rhetorically) the son of God and as such demonstrates that we too are sons and daughters of God, or more simply, that we all are persons of sacred value.

3. What happens to the soul after death?
To answer this one, I simply quote Dr. Ernest Holmes, the founder of the Science of Mind movement: "Immortality is not something we purchase from the Almighty, nor is it a bargain we make with the universe. Immortality either is a principle in nature and common to all [people] or it has no existence whatsoever."
I don't know what is next beyond this life. I don't know what is next for any of us in this life! I couldn't tell you what tomorrow holds. But the energy of life didn't begin in 1966 when I was born and I doubt if it ceases to be after my body stops functioning. I trust that we somehow, in some way, continue to exist beyond this experience of life. I do not believe that immortality is the reward for holding one kind of belief or that it is withheld from those who don't embrace a certain belief. If immortality exists, it exists for us all and the best way to prepare for it is to live this life well. If immortality does not exist, then the most reasonable approach to our one shot at life is to live it well. In either case, our goal should be to live life well. A life well lived will have few regrets, whether it is eternal or not. That having been stated, I continue to suspect that immortality is a reality.

Haggard Tragedy

Could Ted Haggard be more tragic? Not because he's gay...gay's just an innate orientation whereby one is attracted to people of the same gender. It's perfectly natural (at least for those who are gay). Not because he had an affair with a sex worker...that may have been painful or embarrassing for his family, but his mutual, consensual relationship with another man was probably harmless enough. Not because he lost his position of influence in fundamentalist circles...the hypocrisy of condemning a lifestyle that he was living should have damaged his credibility. No, the tragedy of Ted Haggard is that he believes he has received legitimate counseling and the thinks that counseling has left him straight.

You see, Haggard received counseling for three weeks. Not three months. Not three years. Three weeks. Three weeks is not a therapeutically significant period of time. And, I don't know the credentials of his so-called counselors, but I doubt if they have been certified by the American Psychological Association as psychotherapists (or, if they have, the APA must surely now be embarrassed).

The "counseling" has left Haggard with the conclusion that he is and always has been straight and was simply "acting out" during his homosexual affair. Of course, this has not restored Haggard to evangelical leadership. And my guess is that this 3 week exercise in denial has only given Haggard another excuse to hide his true feelings (whether he is homosexual or bisexual) and to hate himself for having them. Neither Haggard, his family, nor the faith communities he once led have been well served by the bizarre notion that legitimate therapy can take place in less than a month and that therapy of any duration can change one's innate sexual orientation.

I have great respect for the behavioral sciences and those who practice the mental healing arts. But I have no confidence that Haggard has genuinely accessed any such healing art or science. The result of his counseling isn't any real healing, but more likely continued denial, self-deception, self-loathing, and pain that could have been avoided by appropriate therapy, self-acceptance, and a rejection of homophobic prejudice. I don't know how this will all end for Haggard, but my guess is that it won't end as well as it might have had he benefited from real counseling from a qualified therapist over a respectable length of time.

I'm Religious; I Hope My Government Isn't

"There was a time when religion ruled the world. It is known as The Dark Ages." - Ruth H. Green

My reasons for being religious are my own. Some of the best people I have ever known I met in worshiping communities. Some of the best music I have ever enjoyoed was composed as tributes of faith. In fact, one of my favorite songs ever is Schubert's Ave Maria, a prayer to the mother of Jesus.

In moments of crisis, religion has comforted me. Sacred texts have challenged me and caused me to wrestle with important questions, a process that has led me to empowering ideas and conclusions (often in opposition to the institution that introduced me to those texts!). The sacred stories of my tradition are true for me because of the inspiration they provide, even when I don't believe the stories are historically factual (I don't believe, for instance, that Moses magically parted a sea or that a snake spoke in a prehistoric garden or that Jesus walked on top of water, but the fictive elements of these stories do not prevent the stories from revealing deeper truths).

I pray daily (though, by prayer, I mean quieting my discursive thinking, expressing hope for myself and others, and affirming possibilities rather than begging a far away but always spying deity for favors or forgiveness). I worship weekly. I support my church with time, talent, and treasure. I am seminary educated. I am baptized, confirmed, and ordained. I am a religious person.

It is my choice to be religious. My reasons are personal, and I believe valid. Everyone is entitled to be religious for their own reasons, or to be non-religious, also for their own reasons.

However, in a secular democracy, the personal religion of individuals (no matter how many they number) cannot be legislated by local or federal governments. I am religious and will share my religious views with anyone who shows the least bit of interest, but my government must protect and serve and represent the Muslim, the Jew, the Catholic, the Protestant, the Atheist, the Buddhist, the neo-Pagan, etc. Theocracies are by definition un-democratic, and whereas I may invite the god of my understanding into my daily life, I am very much afraid of the god of anyone's understanding sitting on the imaginary throne of my nation. As deeply as I value religion in my life, I value liberty at least as much.

The freedom of religion in life requires freedom from religion in government.

"Leave the matter of religion to the family altar, the church, and the private schools, supported entirely by private contributions. Keep the church and the state forever separated." - Ulysses S. Grant

Virgins Don't Have Babies, But Why Mess With A Good Story

I love stories. I've heard people try to dismiss the bible as just "fairy tales" and others who defend the bible by saying it isn't "just" fairy tales. Others try to insist that the bible is "all true or not at all true," and such poorly thought out comments are meant to suggest that every word found in the bible is somehow factual. Of course, its easier to pretend to believe that than it is to try to make sense of the contraditions, unethical practices, historical inaccuracies, and scientific impossibilities that fill the bible.

The mistaken belief that the bible must be factual to be valuable means that people will either do terrible things in the name of the bible, or they will reject the bible from their lives. I think there is another alternative.

I love taking the stories of the bible and sharing them as stories. They are not for me "just" stories, they are sacred literature, a powerful art form that offers truth independent of fact. If not one thing in the stories ever actually happened, if not one person in the stories ever really lived, the stories remain true for me because they activate my imagination where new truths can constantly be discovered. The power of the bible doesn't depend on its being factual, but in its being creative. The stories are powerful. And if we let them be stories, they can be true by helping us discover new truths with each reading of them.

Virgin Birth? Resurrection? Walking on water? Raising the dead? Fiery chariot? Water into wine? Did these things ever really happen? I have my doubts, but the power of the stories for me isn't whether or not they happened. And that's why they can be true for me even if they didn't happen. More important than being true, they are relevant, and therefore sacred.

Match Game

The original Hollywood Squares and Tattle Tales are in the same ball park, but the all time best game show must be the Match Game. Not the original in the late '60s, and not the later remakes (such as the 1990 travesty), but the long running version beginning in 1973. I bless the television deities for allowing the re-runs to be shown nightly on the Game Show Network!

Sure, I'm glad to see some star struck contestant win some extra cash. And, yes, I'm amused to revisit what passed for fashion in the 1970s. And I enjoy the quirky unhummable theme song. But what I like most is the chemistry of the celebrity panel (and, of course, the host Gene Rayburn).

The regulars: Brett Summers (wife of Jack Klugman), Charles Nelson Reilly (accomplished theatre actor and director and fairly obvious homosexual), and Dick Dawson (television actor and game show host).
The rotating semi-regulars: Betty White (television actor), Patty Deutsch (voice over actor), Joyce Bulifant (I honestly don't know what the hell else she ever did), and the FABULOUS Fanny Flagg (brilliant author).

In addition to the two contestants and broadcasting veteran Gene Rayburn, there was the gender balanced panel of 6 celebrities. Somehow, this arrangement lent itself to humorous, smart, and even naughty play. It was a combination party/variety entertainment/improvisational theatre that included audience participation and almost at the margins, two contestants competing for fairly modest sums of money.

In addition to the 3 regulars, 3 other "stars" would rotate in from week to week. The first celebrity panelist would be either a charming (Bob Barker), sexy (Bert Convey), or quirky (Nimpsey Russell) personality, always male. Next to this rotating first chair was Brett and Charles.

The next row on the panel would be Dawson with two women on either side. The first woman usually played the part of a sexy, buxom, "airhead" (Ethel Merman and Dr. Joyce Brothers being notable exceptions) and the final panelists would rotate funny, smart women who could be counted on to give off-the-wall answers (Flagg, Bulifant, White, Deutsch).

This formula created an energy on stage that has not been matched in American television history. The Match Game modeled community building, use of intellect and wit, spontenaity, and the value of fun. I long for that kind of intelligent, clever, cohesive (but not overly rehearsed) entertainment again. The Match Game made me feel smart, witty, sophisticated, and part of a group of people who would never meet me in person. That kind of magic is needed in our world today. I hope such a spell can be cast over the airways again.

Ethical Vs. Religious

Earlier today, a friend of mine included the following line in an email to me:
"I can surpress the urge to curse old ladies, steal candy from convenience stores and kill anyone who cuts in front of me in the check-out line without relying on a Supreme Being for help."

In response, I wrote:
"In my bible study last night, I told the story of Hagar, Sarah's slave. I pointed out that having a slave disqualified Sarah from being a good person. The bible and the god of the bible are not always good sources for ethical behavior. In fact, the most ghastly things ever done by man to man, man to woman, man to child, man to environment, etc. have almost always been done by religious people! So, I can think of a few good reasons to be religious, but ethics don't make the list. In fact, if ethics were my primary concern, I could probably NOT be religious."

It's true. Slavery, child abuse, misogyny, war, religious bigotry, and other atrocities fill the pages of the bible. Such heinous acts are usually not condemned and sometimes even glorified. The bible cannot be for people of conscience a rule book of behavior. Rather, the bible is a collection of sacred stories from ancient peoples. As we engage, diologue with, struggle with, argue with, and contemplate the scriptures, they become our stories and we become part of the story. The experience is a useful one and can lead to spiritual growth. But the bible is not a rule book that can be relied upon to tell us what is and isn't good behavior. The bible can be relied upon to show us how flawed but devout people can search for meaning in life and remain as faithful as possible in good times and bad. Once we become clear about what the bible is and what it isn't, then it can no longer be used as a weapon of oppression against us or others.

For ethics, use your common sense. For an example of people in their own cultural and historical context trying to understand the mysteries of life, read the bible.