Posted by giveawayboy on November 07, 2004 at 02:50:05:
In Reply to: the power of God on the inside posted by J on November 05, 2004 at 12:59:58:
I agree with John that our lives are ephemeral to some point. I think one problem is when we try too hard to 'lock in' on our own image. Some of my best time is wasted in trying to become myself, instead of just being. Some of my best efforts are wasted by waiting until I can do something right, or feel like I'm on top of something. The thought of doing something imperfectly or too open-endedly cripples alot of potential good works. Recently, having a nasty personal ailment, which has kept my on antibiotics and running back and forth to clinics and physicians, I have come to see the impermanence of my own life, or my own health. I'm not downing the idea that we ARE someone or that e can be healthy people. What I am suggesting is that we forget that those things, our existence, our sanity, our health, are not givens. The very fact of our existence relies on a greater force holding us together, making all the elements which lend themselves to our ongoing manifestation work in unison, in concert. We forget that we are not our own, so we try to make ourselves into our own image. We forget that an unborn image is seeking birth in us. We forget that an unmade existence births us in every nanosecond. Hope has not lost her gifts. They are always at any moment ready to manifest under different forms. She might need to learn how the works she was created to do are not limited to one kind expressed in one way, with one group of people in one time of her life, but that if she opens herself up to it, all the good works and talents she can think of or even imagine, are all one action shattering across all of time and space. She might begin to see those little children in the realities and persons she encounters in her workplace for instance. She must get past the notion of herself existing apart from everyone else, and the twin illusion of her gifts as something inherent inside her, as if she were some great dispenser, Then she can see more clearly her relation to God and her neighbor. When my body functions without a hitch and my daily routine is dismantled, I begin to see how self-reliant I have become. This self-reliance can block our perceptions of God and others. When I take suffering, even the smallest pronounced suffering, look at it head on and find that it is Christ's suffering, he transforms me in the process. I am able to see the ways I am connected to others and also find, in momentary glimpses, the ways to open up the paths for Grace to do her work.