In Yoke

“This is God's Message, the God who made earth, made it livable and lasting, known everywhere as God: 'Call to me and I will answer you. I'll tell you marvelous and wondrous things that you could never figure out on your own.' Jeremiah 33:2 I just finished reading Karen Armstrong’s 1998 book, “The History of God”, which is actually the overview of humanity's misconceptions about the Creator and about many of the explanations of who God is, and the cosmologies behind the general existence we all experience as the reality of life on earth. From one perspective, it is really quite depressing. So many egregious and dysfunctional human behaviors have been attributed to G-d.They cannot be counted. The G-d concept has taken many forms and constructs, all of which seem flawed. My mind is drawn to many versions of the Creator, some of which have been constructed by Israelites and Arameans, some of which have emerged from neighboring cultures, such as the Arabs. And thes...

The wine of life is oozing drop by drop, The leaves of life are falling one by one.   – Omar Khayyam Easwaran muses: Like leaves, we come into this life, are here for a few days, and then are gone. Nobody remembers us, and nobody misses us. As long as we believe that we are separate, we inevitably have to die. Our immortality is in the whole, which never dies. In living just for personal profit and pleasure, no matter under what philosophical name we may call it, our real personality withers away. It cannot be otherwise. When you become aware that you are not a leaf but the tree , something amazing happens in your life: you are able to act spontaneously, almost effortlessly, for the good of all. This is the proof of your awareness that you are the tree: everywhere it will motivate you, everywhere you will see what contribution you can make. You won’t have to deliberate the pros and cons. You won’t need a computer to provide you with a plan of action. You will kn...

Random notes on this thing known as 'faith'. "To 'faith' is to hand over the direction of one's life journey to another, to yield up the' illusion of control' to someone who is essentially beyond one's control, over whom we have no power." Faith is a verb, a process, and not a static reality. In our faith journey, there are several similar or common elements: (1) conversion: also known as metanoia --change of mind or life/direction; (2) a struggle to internalize and act on that conversion experience; (3) a call to integrity; (4) a call to reality; (5) a call to radicality . These elements emerge regardless of era, culture, theology, life-style, or ministry. Faith is primarily a relationship. Any love relationship challenges us to greater honesty and transparency, to awareness of those areas of our lives where we hold back or refuse to face ourselves, or to let others see us as we truly are. To really love others means to become progressively ...