Spiritual Book Review: Dating Jesus

The Spiritual Book reviews actually covers ANY book that has any spiritual/religious insight or meaning.   Slight Spoiler alert: If you are an ardent believer in God and your personal faith and feel that your faith is sufficient than you may not want to read anymore.    I personally believe that God is working everywhere all the time.  I believe that God is teaching things in those individual religions for an individual instruction to fulfil that person’s total reunion with God.  Sometimes though God wants us to grow in other ways and we may have a path that is less than traditional. 

“Dating Jesus” was written by Susan Campbell and published in 2009.  In trying to write an honest review I have to be truthful about the less than good things about this book.   Please keep in mind though that I feel the book is meaningful and worthwhile to read otherwise I wouldn’t write a review at all.  

1. The book could have been longer, it was only 205 pages long.

2. She skips important and meaningful things in her personal life that probably had a direct impact upon her religious/spiritual values.

3. The larger development  about her faith is questioned as to whether it crumbled away or a full-blown spiritual realignment occurred. 

I believe that the editor and publisher should have compelled a greater input and direction for the answers to the above shortcomings.  

There….I got that out-of-the-way.  I don’t like being negative but at the same time if it’s the truth I can’t paint over it and let future readers believe that the book  is supremely great.  It’s just merely GREAT.

I admire Susan Campbell for her courage to write this book. It’s very honest account of growing up in a bedrock, good as gold fundamentalist religion from Missouri, the back bone of middle America.  This is not altogether a book about spiritual growth as much as it is a book about the spiritual realizations about her own faith that she was raised to believe in. She still believes in God, but differently.

As a child growing up she followed her faith and did as she was asked.  She was Baptised and then Baptized again.   He community, her friends were almost all belonging to the same church. She and her friends would proselytize door to door to find new members.  Frequently she made clear to others that belief in God and Jesus were not sufficient, that their church was the one true church. Any other church wouldn’t do.  She attended church three times a week.  That was an important facet of their social world.  She became an excellent Bible student and would attend Bible camps.   It soon becomes apparent that Susan Campbell does know her Bible because several Bible quotes are referenced throughout the book.  

As she states so aptly, “”So begins my memorization of vast snatches of the Bible-Old and New Testament. I can recite the books and the apostles and the Beatitudes.”  Her teachers proclaim, “that girl know her Bible.” 

Her realizations of unfairness and differences came as she watched her brother ascend to a beginning ministry position.   It was made clear that she could never do that or be that. Further dashed hopes were the differences in the sports area.   The boys were encouraged and applauded.  The girls were merely tolerated.  One was real and earnest, the other was just entertainment. When Title IX was enacted to promote equality in high school sports some things even changed.  It still took a long time to bring about even a semblance of fairness and equality.

The most important thing that I learned from the book is that in 1909, two bothers named Lyman and Milton Stewart, compiled a number of religious writings of the time and published them as The Fundamentals: A Testimony to the Truth. It was originally a twelve volume tract that essentially defined and gave birth to the beginnings of Fundamentalism.   These books were then sent FREE  to several ministers, missionaries, YMCA and YWCA  secretary’s, College Professors, Church superintendents and other like-minded leading Christians throughout the United States and the World.  While many of these ideas are  subject to great debate and controversy I believe that the authors intentions were sincere.   I am not an advocate of fundamentalism but  I understand now how these ideas became so widespread even though many themes have non-existent or debatable reference in the Bible and even the exaltation of the Bible. For more information see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fundamentals.

The other main point of the book is when Susan Campbell goes back to Missouri and visits with her brother and his family.   They attend church while she’s there and she sees that it’s different….very different.   The church has modern musical instruments while her original church didn’t even have a piano.   The choir doesn’t have that familiar closed four-part harmony.  It becomes obvious that many members don’t really know their Bible, at least not like her and her brother did when they were kids.  

This realization becomes something that she realizes is lost.  Not just for others, but herself too.  She laments and regrets that at one time she had total and complete conviction, total religious understanding, total purpose and spiritual meaning in her life.   There was NOTHING grey or fuzzy or uncertain.   Her religious life had purpose, meaning and direction. 

In moving from children to adults,  in seeing reality intruding, we observe that things are not always what we have been taught. Sometimes, such as in Susan’s case, we question ourselves and the so-called values we’ve been taught.   We try to find real answers for real questions.

Many of the things Susan has been through have occurred in many others, myself included.  I applaud her courage and vision to dispense with the old even if she doesn’t have a replacement of new values and spiritual understandings.   That’s what takes real courage.   She didn’t switch, she didn’t just change religions or try something else.   She just evolved and grew.  That is FAITH.   She truly is letting go and letting God work it.  

Even with all the things that I think I know, I pray that I will be able to discard my old ideas and rise to new understandings. I know that even now I’m relying on old ideas that are probably just a bridge to new understandings.

I rate this book an 8 out of 10 stars,    ********.  

Dating Jesus: A Story of Fundamentalism, Feminism, and the American Girl.      ISBN:    978-0-8070-1066-2

They must often change, who would be constant in happiness or wisdom.
                                          Confucius

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Faith(102)

A famous entertainer had developed a habit that upon arising in the morning and taking care of the morning preparations he would stand in front of the mirror and recite special affirmations.   These were personal and uplifting and filled with love and appreciation.  He was a great star and had great faith in himself and his abilities.  Unfortunately his life ended with less than satisfactory results and social approval.   I’m purposely not revealing the name so as to not besmirch the individual.  The reasons I cite him in this post though is because I question “What went wrong?”    If he had faith how did his life end differently than what he would have wanted? I’m not sure if he had faith of if he was living in an illusion.

A  young adolescent boy about nine years old was asked one day “Son, what do you think faith is?’  He looked up and said plain as day, “Faith is something you believe in even thought in your heart you know it really isn’t true.” <(Source Unknown)   It’s hard to really pinpoint exactly what faith really, really is.   We know it when we see it but again it’s not really something you can hold in your hand.

According to Merrium-Webster Dictionary:

Definition of FAITH

1

a : allegiance to duty or a person : loyalty b (1) : fidelity to one’s promises (2) : sincerity of intentions

2

a (1) : belief and trust in and loyalty to God (2) : belief in the traditional doctrines of a religion b (1) : firm belief in something for which there is no proof (2) : complete trust

3

: something that is believed especially with strong conviction; especially : a system of religious beliefs <the Protestant faith>

I am intrigued by 2b(1) “firm belief in something for which there is no proof.”

When I think of Jesus baptism  and his travails in the desert for forty days and forty nights, wasn’t he examining his faith?   When he prayed in Gethsemane and expressed that this cup be taken from him, was that doubt?

Faith is the belief in something outside of ourselves.  In many ways it is denial.  It is living outside The Consciousness of Now.  It is Future Redemption. It is Something More, a Greater Reality and Something Ahead and Something in the Future.

Again I say the our faith has to have Substance.  It must be Real.  It must be made Whole. The Entertainer was in some ways living an illusion, maybe his faith was misplaced(himself), maybe he also had contradictory thoughts throughout the day that voided his faith. Many many people have had misplaced faith and illusions.  Many of my friends and relatives have invested heavily in dreams, illusions, hopes and fears that I could see were bound for failure.   Frequently too, after the fact, they politely let me know when I had believed in a false Ideal. I also have seen people express great energy, vision and faith and proved me wrong.   Are those having the greatest faith just madmen living in institutions?  Are those that live in a purely materialistic, faithless world living on an island?  Should our faith be more practical? Now comes some of the favorites words that I like to say, “I don’t know…..”

I invite your input here about illusion, practicality, and faith. What are your experiences?  This is something that I need further imput on. It’s something that I am constantly trying to figure out.  Do I lack faith or do I just not want to believe in the wrong. I obviously do have faith because I have endured many, many trials in which I realized “Yes, Yes, you were right in your convictions!!”

I do have an absolute faith so allow me to quote from one of the most direct, simple, practical visionaries of our time:

I am looking for a lot of men who have infinite capacity to not know what can’t be done.

                                                                        -Henry Ford

Prayer(105)

There are about 6.8 billion souls on the planet(in human form). Obviously more souls have reincarnated at this point  in time than at any other time(we think). If you’ve read my Prayer(102) then you know that I’ve made an argument for praying for the supposedly deceased souls in the hereafter.

Since I believe in Reincarnation and since there are about 6.8 billion souls on the planet, many of the people who I’ve prayed for are probably NOT in the hereafter. In the prior post I made the statement of prayer for the deceased, even those that entered the hereafter centuries ago.  My tweak on that concept in this post is that since so many souls currently inhabit the earth, many of those that have supposedly passed on in the whole skein of time have probably been reborn NOW. They are right here with us on good old planet earth.   They are our peers again, or we are their peers.

 The people who by some providence had happened onto my prayer list may in fact be in our current time. Today’s prayers for the hereafter include Charlie Parker, Grace Kelly, Winston Churchill, Redd Foxx, and Claude Pepper.  But they may very well be in the Here and Now learning new lessons.  So again, why would we stop praying for people based on the theory that they have ascended or again been well-placed in the hereafter. Maybe they have been well-placed in the Here and Now. We can stand to think of reasons to pray.   Idle moments create a vacuum that can be filled with prayer.  Referencing the theme of my prior post, we can pray for the waiter, the bellhop, the bank teller, the mechanic, & the accountant.   But we shouldn’t pray on up and down status…so, we should also pray for the Kings & Queens, Presidents, Prime ministers, Senators and Representatives,  & CEO’s. Then we should also pray for the Minsters, Mullahs, and Priests.  We can decide to pray for ALL people like it’s one world. Dead, undead, reborn, recently returned, status or no status, religious and irreligious…makes no difference.   We are all ONE, all the time.

“Prayer is not an old woman’s idle amusement. Properly understood and applied, it is the most potent instrument of action.”

                                              – Mahatma Gandhi

Spiritual Capitalism: Who is our customer?

Recently I saw an online poster picture of a saying that said, “A person who is nice to you, but is not nice to the waiter is not a nice person.” That kind of sums it up. When we go out and about in the world are we aware that God is everywhere always. It’s a hard consciousness to acquire because for us mere mortals that’s what it is, coming into consciousness.

When we meet people, those meetings are not happenstance encounters. There are no accidents. If we look at people we can see God’s Love/Karma to fulfill in every moment. God is always there in the waiter, the bellhop, the bank teller, the mechanic and the accountant. God is also our boss, our wife, our children and our parents. We can just see them as examples of Christ or spiritual beings and treat them as such.  The waiter example is perfect. Are we normally nice, civil, courteous to ALL.   Especially since a waiter has to fulfill their job.   If anything goes terribly amiss can’t we find recourse always with the management.  Isn’t it up to us to give people the benefit of the doubt.

We would do well to emulate that consideration of the other person, like we were the waiter, the bellhop, the bank teller, or the accountant. We should serve them. Not as a role reversal, but as Spiritual Beings ourselves.  We should pay it forward. 

If you want to invest in something(because we believe in ourselves), if you still think you want to promote something, why not advance the ideas of God’s economy: Love, charity, civility, tolerance, understanding & kindness. Not in personal selfishness but in collective wholeness. Not in “I’ll get mine” but “someday we’ll get there…together.”

My co-spiritual advocate Souldipper has stated it best in one of her comments, “not as promotion but as example.”  I’m not saying be nice to get yours, I’m saying that the seemingly simple act of love and consideration is the most meaningful thing we can do.  For all intents and purposes our world normally might say”Well, I didn’t get anything out of that gesture.” In fact though those considerations may very well be some of the most important things in the universe.

I’m saying that as we walk out and about that we should not be thinking, even subconsciously, “oh, an important person, an unimportant person, an important person, an unimportant person….”, they are all important, all the time. Everyone is our customer.

When chance meeting that other person we should remember this,

He who is not a good servant will not be a good master.
                                                                   Plato

Prayer(104)

All prayers are good. Spoken spontaneously or memorized, sincere or ritual, self or others. All prayers carry.  While I don’t have many memorized prayers I do have prayers that have the same theme or beginning or ending.  Like a jazz or blues musician, I have my favorite riffs and lines that I play over and over.

I’m enclosing here some of my favorite or useful themes of prayer:

I send them my love and my blessings that their life plan is actualized if it be within the alignment of God’s plan.

I pray that they can be healed and made whole on a physical, mental, emotional and spiritual level. 

I pray that they can be surrounded by Love and bathed in Healing Light. 

I pray that they can see more and be more if they so choose in the light of God.

I pray that I can consecrate this body, concentrate this mind that I may resolve myself to complete wholeness with you.

Some people don’t want prayers.   It’s a violation to pray for those that don’t want prayers. However, I can still pray “General Latent Prayers”, a bank account of god’s love and power if anyone ever decides to accept God and prayer. Like a trust or inheritance for our kids, if they ever want it all they have to do is ask.  These latent prayers are just hovering in the ephemeral universe waiting to be realized:

If anyone ever decides to seek God and to know God then let it be so, let it be real.  Let it be magnified a hundredfold if they ever want know God.

I send my love and blessings to any that would seek love and understanding.  I pray that IF it’s within their current life plan that they ARE healed.  If any want to know God more than let it be so, let it be true, let it be real.

Prayers can be like microscopic surgery.  They can be exact, efficient and to the POINT.

  A friend or relative’s surgery is a good case in point. While we and the patient still believe in earthly healing(surgery) we can still pray for healing in that manner.  We can pray that the surgeon is having a good day.   We can pray that the anesthesiologist and nurses are having a good day.  We can pray that the hospital is fulfilling its obligations properly.  We can pray the our friend or relative is in as peak and healthy a form as possible. We can pray that God guides the surgery, that he works through the surgeon.  We can pray that the surgeon is so on top of his game, that it’s easier than playing dominos, he just knocks them over.

Prayers sometimes should be left in God’s hands.  It may NOT be necessary to make an exact prayer.  The outcome can’t be conceived or seen. In those instances we can only generally pray:

Thy will be done oh Lord, thy will be done.  Not as we might want but according to your Plan. Thank you, God.

 What is that axiom, Let go and Let God.

In some instances, individuals have a path that is not to our understanding. I can’t remember where I read this but I’m reminded of the boy who came into his prayer benefactors dreams and specifically asked not to be prayed for.  His earthly mission was to be ill with disease so that his loved ones could know the love of caring for another.  His mission was a pathway for them to give LOVE.

Some may not like the above paragraph or understand it or believe it.  Sometimes I think that also.  I walk around in my daily life, I see things, come across things and I think “Is that man or God?”  “Are their spiritual things going on there that I don’t understand?”  Probably.  All I can do is my best.  Will I make mistakes?  Probably.   So with that I can only say, “Help me God, help me so very much please.”

“Pray as though everything depended on God. Work as though everything depended on you.”

                                                                                     – St. Augustine

Spiritual Book Review: The Little Red Book

Often the truth isn’t where we think it should be.  By accident I found a copy of  “The Little Red Book” that has a truth one might never expect to find.  It wasn’t written  by theologians.  Nor was it transcribed by Spanish Monks. Tibetan wise men were not counseled for their views.  Actually the book is the result of two people who struggled with temptations, fear and frustration their whole lives.  These precepts are the life lessons of Bill W. and Doctor Bob, originators of the AA program. The Little Red Book(ISBN number 978-0-89486-985-3 ) is the handheld companion book for the Big Book from Alcoholics Anonymous(AA).  I’m not a member of AA so my finding this book is quite remarkable. I was slightly acquainted with it though because I have acquaintances and friends that are members of AA. I actually found this in the bookstore, picked it up, and immediately recognized it.  As I read the 12 Step Program from the book I thought “what a perfect spiritual outlook.” In the subtext is my spiritual reinterpretation of the 12 Steps that can be used by the rest of us. My apologies to any that I may offend by showing this in a different light, the rest of humanity can really learn from these examples and from the people who have followed them:

 Step One: We admitted we were powerless over alcohol – that our lives had become unmanageable. 

Sub: We admitted that we were powerless over our lives – that our lives are separated from one another and God.

Step Two:Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to Sanity.

Sub: Came to believe that a Power(God) greater than ourselves could restore us to Sanity(Wholeness).

Step Three: Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood him.

Sub: Same

Step Four: Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

Sub: Same

Step Five: Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.

Sub: Same, a Spiritual Confession

Step Six: Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.

Sub: Same

Step Seven: Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.

Sub: Same

Step Eight: Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.

Sub: Same

Step Nine: Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

Sub: Same

Step Ten: Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong (and)  promptly admitted it.

Sub: Same

Step Eleven: Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.

Sub: Same

Step Twelve: Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

Sub: Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to other people, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

Our eternal thanks to Bill W. and Doctor Bob

One day at a time

       – Bill W.

 

“The Little Red Book”  Ten Stars   **********

  ISBN: 978-0-89486-985-3

Prayer(103)

More prayer methods. When and Where to Pray. When I can’t sleep is a really good time to pray.  Taking a walk is another. Folding clothes is another good time. Kneeling in Prayer beside my bed.  Prayer in church is good.  Prayer after church is good. If you are Muslim then you should probably pray to the East.   If you think that you have special requirements for prayer then you should follow them. But, if you can see other ways then do it. Pray to the North, West, & South.    Pray at Sunrise, pray at Sunset.

I haven’t talked about the Chakras yet.  That is concerning Meditation.  But it is also an alignment of our bodies and minds.   We are really seeking a physical, mental, emotional,and spiritual coordination.  We are sick when one of those four are out of alignment with the other three.  I bring this up because there is another way that I pray that “seizes the moment”, carpe diem. 

There’s a scene from the movie “Ghost” where Patrick Swayze is a lost and lonely ghost wandering the subways. He meets another ghost and pumps him for information. One thing that he asks is how can I control and move things in the material world again.   The other ghost uses a tin can to train Patrick how to push around material objects from their state of the Hereafter.  The principal lesson is that Patrick must reach way down inside of himself to find the emotional energy to “thrust” the tin can.  Patrick realizes that it’s more than a mere mental exercise. He then conjures that mental/emotional energy and  thrusts the can across the floor.

 If prayer seems like a duty then we need to try something new. We need to thrust our prayers. We need to give them importance. 

I was attending the county fair with my kids. We decided to ride the ferris wheel.  We get on and it starts to rotate upwards and naturally we became excited and wonderous of the view all at the same time.   We reached the top and were feeling “on top of the world”. As we descended I instinctually and emotionally realized “this is it”, PRAY NOW.   As we came up again to the top and we gazed at the whole surrounding countryside I mouthed the silent prayers for people, issues and opportunities. Because my emotions and my mind were aligned I felt these to be particularly powerful and good prayers.

I now try to pray using all of my emotional contexts.  I’m not in a state that my prayer is constant, but I realize now that I can and probably should pray when I am sad, depressed, hurt, happy, glad and moved. If it’s not a so pleasant an emotion I can transform it. If it’s a good emotion I can make it better.

So now if I’m depressed I say a prayer. If I am sullen I say a prayer. If I am anxious I say a prayer. If I’m walking through the countryside or the cosmpolitian city I say a prayer. If I’m walking on the beaches of St. Augustine I say a prayer.

As my kids and I got off the ferris wheel my daughter turned to me and said, “Can we do that again?” I laughed and said,”I was just thinking the same thing. Sure we can.”

“Prayer is as natural an expression of faith as breathing is of life”

                                                    – Jonathan Edwards

Prayer(102)

Continuation of Prayer.  As you may have gathered by now I think differently than many people. Some of what I’m about to write may seem very different.  Please keep in mind that this isn’t a list of personal triumphs and past kudos. I’m simply trying to share new and additional outlooks of prayer. It’s not mine. I don’t own it.  How I came to understand I don’t really know but I do know that all things are to God’s glory, not mine.

 Thoughts are things and our every thought is in fact a prayer.  From Prayer(101) I talked about the spontaneity of prayer, the sincerity of prayer, and gave permission for others to pray in the manner that seems best for them. I should point out that although I gave voice to a direct, spontaneous, improvised prayer I still believe that a  method prayer, a memorized prayer and learned prayer are good and meaningful.  Again I’m still saying the first thing I said which is you can pray any way that you want. I started praying a lot when I  read something  once that in essence said, “Worrying won’t help, the only time you should worry is when you can’t pray.“   I took that to heart and started praying after that.  I prayed before, but after I read that, then I really started praying.

Since I don’t believe in Time & Space, since I believe that no one is lost and all are reuniting with God, I pray for everyone.  I pray for my family, I pray for my loved ones, I pray for my supposed enemies. When I pray it can be at any Time(again remember theres’ no Time) or Space(no Space either).  I pray as much for the dead as I do the living. Not just recently deceased, but people who have been dead for centuries.  Sometimes by design, sometimes not.  When I’m praying it sometimes just flows out and saying a prayer for anyone just comes to me.  I pray for the deceased because they are still growing SPIRITUALLY.  I pray for them because I don’t presume that they have been judged and well placed.   I pray for them because they are still LIVING. The thing that we call death is just a door.  In the hereafter death is called birth.  It’s a new beginning for them, not the end.  Inevitably I end up praying for famous and infamous people only because their names are widely known.

Some of the people who I’ve prayed for are Benjamin Franklin, Gregory Hines, JFK, Dizzy Gillespie, Sid Vicious, Ryan White, Joan of Arc, Billy the Kid, Walter Matthau, Clyde and Bonnie Parker, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Merton & Sir Thomas Moore. I feel pretty sure that many in the Hereafter are praying for us. Whomever you can think of to pray for is worthy.  Good and Bad, Dead or Living, Right or Wrong. You can pray for anyone or anybody that ever was.

Allow me to recapitulate the message that I’ve been trying to communicate through all my posts. We are ONE.  The past, the present, the future; this world and the hereafter, ALL IS ONE.

“Pray, and let God worry”

               – Martin Luther

Thoughts Are Things

Thoughts are things.  They have a beginning, a middle, and end. Most of us, if pressed, would just say that it’s an electrical current running around in our head.   That’s true too. I think that thoughts are builders and destructors.   That each and every moment, each and every thought is building or destroying.  That’s why it’s so crucial to think properly.  Imagine something as soft as a feather but as dangerous as a Blue Flame Welding Torch. That is our minds.  Soft as a feather that when I’m bumped in line at the store, I’ve lost my thought. Yet,when totally utilizing a laser beam focus(like a welding torch) we can become unstoppable.   The blinding light, the searing heat, able to burn through any thing.   Normally though a torch creates a heat that creates plasma to weld two things together. Our ideas build things.

When I was a freshman in school we had a Grammer Book and it stated that the definition of a noun was, “A noun is a word used to name a person, place, or thing.”  About 6 Years later I happened upon a new copy of the book. The noun definition had changed to “A noun is a word used to name a person, place, thing, or idea.” Epiphany!!!  I suddenly realized that an Idea was a thing.  I was holding an Idea. It was the first time that I ever realized that an idea had substance.

Our minds create ideas that build up or tear down our own and others worlds.   In lockstep pattern we create our reality constantly. When you walk down the street and look at the buildings and park benches and buses and signs, keep in mind that at one time these were just the ideas on someone’s mind. Imagine the very beginnings of each object. All things begin with mental conception.  An idea in the engineer’s mind, an idea in the architect’s mind, an idea in the park commissioner’s mind. Imagine walking by these buildings, stores, park benches, street signs, and  street markets and being able to sweep your hands and arms through those idea patterns.  That’s what they were at one time, just idea patterns. 

I believe that our lives are analogous to that one movie “The Matrix”. The Superior beings had created a false world of computer code to ensnare human slaves.  Except that we are the ones creating the code, we are the ones creating our world with ideas.

Our reality is nothing but our Ideas.  Many spiritual books say this. A famous healer was treating a patient one time and he advised surgery.   The recorder of the event knew that a very similar case was treated very differently(medication, massage, proper diet).  She spoke up and asked “Why is this patient different?  Why does this patient need surgery when the other one didn’t?  The healer answered, “Very good question.   THIS PATIENT BELIEVES IN SURGERY. That is the only way he can accept being healed.”

If we were to focus with our laser like minds upon our plasma  like world we could change anything. 

 And Jesus said unto them,  Because of your unbelief: for verily I (Jesus) say unto you, If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you.

                                                                                              -Matt.17:20

 

The Whole Is Greater Than The Sum Of Its Parts

Try to imagine an Idea. We can’t really do it.  It’s an abstract thought.    It has no size, no shape, no color, or smell.  In fact the idea of an idea can only be fixed in the mind. Can we imagine our own totality, our own collective greatness? I doubt if we can. But I believe that collectively we are the end all, the greatest ever, and we are greatest when we are eventually reunited with God. When we are reunited with God we will be Greater Than The Sum Of Our Parts.

Let me give an example:

A blind man goes into a totally dark room(this is a double-blind experiment). He has a mission to find out what is in the room. Since he can’t see, he makes his way clumsily around the room.  He makes his way along and finally stumbles onto something. He picks it up, examines it, and thinks “It feels like an angular bar.”   He shuffles along again, careful not to fall.  His foot kicks something.  He picks it up and it appears to be a  short rubber tube closed at one end.  Then he bumps into another big piece of  angled piping or tubing of some kind.   He mumbles to himself, “A bunch of useless junk. These things don’t mean anything.”    Then he steps on a flat metal piece. He picks it up and it has sharp-pointed edges.  “Hmm…a type of disc.”    He hates this game and wishes he could be let out but knows this is his mission.   Next he finds another short rubber tube closed at one end.  ” It feels familiar though,” he says.   He shuffles and shuffles and can’t find anything,……finally he kicks something else.   He reaches down and picks it up.  “It’s a  chain of some sort.”     He has an epiphany!!!   “I think I know what it is.”      His eyes light up(even though he’s still blind), he sees the light(even though the room is still dark).  His heart starts pounding but he asks himself, “Is it a self-propelled or motor driven?”   He scrambles around the room looking frantically for the rest of the parts, two here, another there, three more across the room until finally he has all the parts and he knows what it is.   He cries out, “It’s a bicycle.”

The short tubes were the handle grips, the angular bar was the handlebars, the big angular tubing was the frame, the disc was the sprocket, and the chain was of course a bicycle chain.  Even here with his developmental reasoning he still had to ferret out slowly and deliberately the missing part to delineate what it was. “I know what it is, but still, is it a bicycle or motorcycle?  There is no engine so it must be a bicycle.”

The parts individually mean nothing. Just like he said “A bunch of useless junk.”  But taken together “The Whole is greater than the sum of its parts.”   We are like that.   Individually we are nothing, but working in harmony of motion we are magnified tenfold. It can be argued that “Yea, but the bike is a design, an engineering effort.” To which I reply “So what is God’s plan?”   Aren’t we HARMONIZED together and fine tuned?   Our true being can’t really be conceptualized into we become Spiritual Adults and we work together.

Actually we are the blind man, in a dark room, stumbling together, but separately.  The parts aren’t really pieces, they are PEOPLE.  As we come together we become more. God’s Design is greater than a bike.

“I see the Past, Present, and Future existing all at once before me…”
                        – William Blake