AletheiaRivers

Hi Jen. I've posted over there a few times under this same name. I'm still interested in getting to know more of the people there, but I'm a little tired that the only topic appears to be homosexuality. I have no problem with anyone's being gay. It's just that, once in a while, I'd like to see some theological or metaphysical discussions going on. So I come back here. The people here are great, but the board is WAY TOO QUIET! Wake up people and post! I hold the view, like Judaism, that humans were not born into "original sin". I think we were born with a radical free moral will to do good and a radical free moral will to do evil. By "evil" I mean the opposite of any action or lack of action. I know this opens up a whole "Well, then what did Jesus come for" can of worms. Marcus Borg's "The Heart of Christianity" has very good answers. So do many other progressive Christian thinkers. Good for you! It took me a long time to say: "I can't swallow this anymore. I'm outta here!" A discussion I've longed to have on this board: Which is the greater good? To have complete free will? Or to have the possibility of evil removed? I've hinted at this question in other posts, but no one seems to be biting. Having free will means more than my being able to choose to murder someone. It also means I can choose to walk out my front door in the morning and get into my car to go to the store. The "butterfly effect" that this simple action sets into motion is STUPENDOUS. Having the possibility of "evil" or pain removed means more than God's stepping in to stop the Holocaust or a tsunami. Unless we want God to be a cosmic superhero that does pretty much nothing but interfere in every action that could bring harm to us or any other living creature, then God would have to set things up from the beginning so that "evil" could not happen (ie no free will). There would be no more death or disease or injuries or pain, but the possibility that I could get in my car and drive to the store (and possibly hit someone) would have to be removed as well. I guess God could make us immortal supermen (like Jehovah's Witnesses believe), but then would have to take away our abiblity to procreate because no one would ever die. It's been a somewhat popular topic around here lately though (at least with me). It's my understanding that Christian Science is a New Thought church (although no longer affiliated). That means the God you were raised with is Pantheistic. A pantheistic God is truly an impersonal God. I don't know how much New Thought churches truly explore the implications of pantheism though. Basically, from that perspective, there is NO YOU at all. You are God. God is basically having an existential crisis or a daydream. However, panENtheism is making an inroads into New Thought churches. From those members that I've talked to however, it's very slow going. The impersonal God of pantheism combined with the personal God of theism is basically where panentheism came from. Other names are "qualified monism" or "qualified non-dualism" or "Monistic Theism". It could go on and on I think. I'm a panentheist. I believe that God does know all the particulars of you. I don't think anything is beyond God's notice. But, I don't think God is particularly concerned with the things most people think s/he is. For example, I don't think God cares if you eat pork. I don't think God cares if you are in a same-sex relationship. I don't think God cares if you swear. Etc, etc ... Exactly. I do think God wants us to be kind to one another with all that entails and s/he hopes that we can learn to get along and to take care of this planet. But should s/he force us to do so? Would that be the greater kindness or good? I love that particular sense of humor so much that I have FIVE cats. See above. It's very nice to have you here. Please stick around! Aletheia

“Life is this simple. We are living in a world that is absolutely transparent, and God is shining through all the time. This is not just a fable or a nice story. It is true. If we abandon ourselves to God and forget ourselves, we see it sometimes, and we see it maybe frequently. God shows Himself everywhere, in everything – in people and in things and in nature and in events. It becomes very obvious that God is everywhere and in everything and we cannot be without Him. It’s impossible. The only thing is we don’t see it.” - Thomas Merton

I'm glad you liked it and you are very welcome. I did a google search on my nickname to see what would surface and found a pretty cool websight with a very awesome poem. I'd post the entire thing here, but don't want to infringe on the author's copyright. Here is the first and second stanzas: The rest can be found here: http://thefourprecepts.com/propublish/art.php?artid=31 Aletheia

I bought the book a couple of weeks ago and am really enjoying it. I'm about 2/3 the through. I also highly recommend "The God You Never Knew" and "God at 2000". The first is by M. Borg, the second is a compilation and is edited by M. Borg. Panta said: I know when I left Jehovah's Witnesses, I was atheist for about a year. I so totally rejected supernatural theism with it's "God the record keeper" mentality that I couldn't conceive that God/dess could be any other way. It was Hinduism, Buddhism and Paganism that brought me back. "The moon! Look at the moon dang it. Quit watching my finger!" - Buddha in a moment of frustration. Aletheia

I can't. I'm jealous. ROFLMAO! Hehehe! Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Sheesh, a good laugh makes things so much better. (Wiping tears out of my eyes from laughing so hard!) Absolutely! Exactly! Perfectly stated! My desk/Aletheia interaction revelations for the day are so far as follows: I might persue a B.A. in Humanities. I need to dust. My water/sewer bill is due. My butt has a limit for sitting here. Every 30 minutes or so, my twice broken tailbone requires that I get up and MOVE! Aletheia

I know that atoms are 99.9 percent empty space. That there shouldn't be any substance at all in the universe because there is more space in "things" than not. I can't see quantum events. But I can see my desk. I know that it's mostly empty space and that for it to be "there" is amazing, a miracle. But still, I can touch it, set my coffee cup on it. (Well sort of. I know that I never actually "touch" the desk, but merely feel it as solid because of the force of the desk's atoms repelling the atoms in my hand. ) But still, I have to relate to it in a physical way, not as an "event". By relating to my enviroment and realizing what it is from a quantum perspective, I can glimpse the majesty of God. I realize that when I touch my desk, I am in fact, touching God because everything comes from God. Or, to try to put it in process terms, maybe we could say I'm (the events that are/is Aletheia) touching the event that is my desk which is being eminated from God. LOL. It's all well and good to describe my desk as an "event" but I have to relate to it as physical. Whether I describe something as "stuff" or as "events" or "processes", I know I mean the same thing. I'm not Wittegenstein. I think language is important, but not if it gets in the way of conversation. I appreciate process thought more than any other philosophy, but sometime I get frustrated by what I consider to be the nitpicky minutia in all philosophical discussions. As soon as someone shouts "a priori" at me (not that you did, just an example), then I'm outa there. I like discussions about the "big questions" in order to broaden my horizons (which this has done). But I think philosophical discussions need to be phrased so that those that have never studied philosophy can join the conversation. And again, I understand that. But in the end, the event that is a photon will effect my body in some way so that the events that are an X-ray can tell the doctor where my cavity is. Aletheia

I'm not sure that I completely understand your question, but I'll bite and give my 2 cents. When I sit at night, close my eyes, and reach out with my "spirit" (heart, senses, soul, insert word here) in contemplation, the feeling that I get back is like being immersed in an indescribable substance. It's not quite light. It's not quite fluid. Maybe it's what feeling our quantum state feels like. Maybe it's the vibration of quantum strings? Maybe it's the process of becoming or changing as process thought describes? (I dunno and I don't think accurately describing it matters as much as feeling it.) I feel surrounded and immersed and floating. When I try to relate to it in human terms, I picture being a "cell" in a huge life form. Sometimes I can imagine being a fish (or other marine animal) floating in the ocean. The indescribable substance surrounds me, flows through me as I breath it in and at times I lose both those feelings and realize that the substance is what I'm made up of. But I never lose the sense that I'm ME. It is always a sense of relationship. I know others have had the experience of completely losing themselves. I would agree with Don that we get out of our mystical experiences what we take into them. If we want to "become God", we can. If we want to "touch God" we can. Like I said in another post, I've never wanted to "become sugar, just taste sugar." I believe, like process thought, that God/dess gets something out of this relationship. As I feel and experience, so does she. But not because I'M God, but because she can feel as I feel. As far as our relationship to the universe and each other, I believe we are all interconnected. Where do I end at the quantum level and the air begin? Where does the air end and you begin? We are not the same, but we are connected. There is a poem (sortof) that I want to share, but I'll have to go find it. Aletheia

http://www.labyrinthonline.com/ Wonderful sight. Do what it says. Put on your favorite "meditative" music and enter one of the online labryinths. Just relax. Follow the curves. Let everything go and just be. Aletheia

Hi, existentialist here. And let me tell you, it's a pain in the rear. But like I said earlier to Panta, I just can't help myself. But I would have to disagree with Gardner in that I would put mathematicians, musicians and artists in the right brain, existentialist category and definitely take the politicians out of that category and put them on the other side of the solar system. Crap! Is that why my husband keeps falling asleep when I try to talk to him about the meaning of life and the universe? Aletheia

LOL! And I was actually worrying that we were discussing too much EASTERN philosophy on a Christian forum. I agree, but perhaps would have worded it as: God, in a desire to experience relationship, manifested itself into a Universe with conscious, independent life, thus creating relativity. How can a conscious thing experience itself except in relation to other conscious beings? I guess it's just me, trying to intergrate western theism with eastern pantheism, western duality with eastern monism. But wait! That brings us back to qualified monism or qualified duality! OK. I'm shutting my brain down now and going to go meditate. Aletheia

I've never thought of pantheism as meaning that God = "One without parts". Hmmm. I've always came from the perspective that pantheism means that all is God, fragmented, experiencing "reality". So in my mind, pantheism = maya. God's daydream per se. Panentheism, on the other hand, meant that God took "God stuff" and created individual beings (souls) that have individual experiences. (Please work with me here on the "stuff".) So we still came from God and exist in God. (Like if I could create little sentient cells in my body, be aware of them and love them. ) (Like in the definition of qualified monism: the universe is part of God, a type of panentheism, but there is a plurality of souls within this supreme Being.) God is still the source, but we are not just God having a daydream. That is how I understood pantheism versus panentheism. Maybe I need to redefine my beliefs? Panentheism doesn't necessarily = process thought though does it? I would agree that a "single actuality" could not create, but is that what pantheists meant by the term, or is it something imposed upon pantheism by process philosophy? I've never studied Spinoza. As much as I love philosophy, including process philosophy, I think that rather than making things understandable or clear, it definitely muddies the waters, yes. And not necessarily in a good way. I agree with Matt Fox that experience, mysticism, should be the basis of our faith and relationship with the Divine, and not necessarily what we reason out "logically" or philosophically. (Doesn't keep me from trying, though, does it? ) I understand a party is an occasion. It is an event. But the event is made up of physical substances participating in the event. Perhaps an "actual occasion" could be both? (I know I'm disagreeing with process thought here, but what the heck? Nothing would ever get discussed or changed otherwise, would it? ) Again, perhaps it is both? Like light? It is both a particle and a wave. (Maybe that is why light is such an apt analogy for God?) Aletheia

The name "Narayana" means, "He who is the dwelling place, the source, support and dissolving ground of all Jivas or souls, including inert matter." Yes, I just quoted myself and responded to myself. LOL. The definition of the name is cool though, no? I love finding my views of God expressed so perfectly by another. Aletheia

Hehehe, that's what I just said! Aletheia

Fatherman: Panta: Aren't these views the same? Panta: I've thought about creation out of nothing versus creation out of chaos and neither view makes sense to me. If we are in God, then we were created out of the stuff of God. So, we didn't come from "nothing". (Even if we don't reside "in" God, I would still argue that we were created out of God "stuff".) So creation ex nihilo doesn't make sense because there was never "no thing". But was God "chaos" that s/he had to bring order to "herself" and that is how we and the universe came to be? Or was there an external chaos that God assimilated into himself in order to bring order? If so, then where did that "chaos" come from? I know that it's the old "who created God" conundrum and has no logical answer. In moments of mystical connection that I've had, I've known that God had no beginning and so the conundrum doesn't bother me like it does some. Do I have a point? I'm not sure. I guess it's that I think there is a third option to "creation out of nothing" versus "order out of chaos". Aletheia

Yup, they are. When you mentioned "qualified non-dualism" it made me go "hmmm". And whenever I go "hmmm", I do a google search. When I was studying Hinduism I kept struggling with the view that all is God and nothing but God (pantheism). (I have the same problem with Gnosticism.) I kept thinking that if I'm just a "piece of God," fragmented, so God can experience "reality", that everying is one big cosmic joke. I, personally, don't like the place that it takes me. One saying that I like is (I think): I don't want to BE God, I want to BE WITH God. Another way of saying it: I don't want to BE sugar, I want to TASTE sugar. Anyway, I quit studying, so I never came to learn that there are different forms of monism and that even in Hinduism, qualified monism is the norm. Depends on your point of view, I guess. There are many Jews and Christians throughout history that have experienced God in a monistic (panentheistic) way. Of course, their experiences aren't likely to be accepted by many conservative Christians or orthodox Jews. Aletheia Edited for formatting (again!)

Here's a cut and paste that I thought might be of interest and relevant to the discussion: Here's one of my favorite stories. Perhaps you've read it. A seeker asked a holy one: "How are we to seek union with God?" The holy one said: "The harder you seek, the more distance you create between God and you." "Then what does one do about the distance?" the diciple persisted. And the holy one said: "Understand that it isn't there." "But does that mean that God and I are one?" the seeker asked? And the holy one said: "Not one. Not two." "But how is that possible?" the seeker said. And the holy one said: "The sun and it's light, the ocean and the wave, the singer and his song. Not one. Not two." Aletheia Edited for formatting

That's a nice 5th option fatherman. Thank you. Sometimes I need reminding not to be so skeptical. I haven't commented up till now because of my skepticism. I'm too skeptical most of the time, I think. It gets in the way of a healthy faith. Last year I read "Tomorrow's God" by Neal Walsh. I can't say that I disagreed with much of what he had (God had?) to say in the book. There were some gnostic viewpoints that I didn't jive with, but otherwise I found myself saying "Yes. I agree." Do I think Walsh was really channeling God? Hmmm. The skeptic in me says no. But does it matter? I think the views espoused in the book are healthy and wise. Where I got turned off was to join Walsh's grass roots movement, you had to pay a fee. It started to feel like a multi-level marketing program. Walsh definitely doesn't need the money, so why charge to join a movement that could make the world a better place? But again, to return to your point, it doesn't really matter if Walsh was channeling God or if Jen is channeling Jesus if the "fruits" are good. Aletheia PS: I've heard that Walsh's last book, Tomorrow's God, that I read, is completely different from his other Conversations books. He even admits that he may have "misunderstood" God's message before. The last book is pluralistic and inclusive, where apparently the others were more exclusively Christian. I couldn't say, I haven't read them.

Here is an article from over at Bnet on the Tsunami crisis that I thought was good. Gathering the Sparks Rodger Kamenetz Was God in This Disaster? Turning to both Judaism and Buddhism for solace, the author meditates on God's role in the tsunami tragedy. I am trying to connect to this tragedy the best I can. The pictures help a little. I see dead children on the floor, a parent weeping. The little ones look like they are sleeping; it is unimaginable that they are dead. I see a parent holding his dead child. I feel in my body what it is like to hold... that weight. To feel the life gone, and the heaviness of a body that does not have life. It is different from holding a sleeping child, carrying a child to bed for instance. I can feel what this father feels in the photo, can reach in my imagination, and in my memory. But I can't multiply what I feel by 10,000 or 40,000, or even by ten. We know more than we can feel. And we respond as best we can, I think. This is our situation in a time of instant global communication. The heart does see from one end of the world to the other, and faster than the internet. I read that when someone witnessed the huge tidal wave approaching the shore, he thought it was "biblical." The flood story came to his mind, I guess, and behind it the old primitive idea of an angry God, destroying what he once created. Some people still think this way: everything bad that happens is a curse or a punishment and has a reason, even if we don't know what the reason is. I don't buy it. This kind of disaster opens difficult prospects for the Western imagination. Some would see in it a monstrous demiurge: an all-powerful God who kills innocent children. We hear the bitter words in King Lear: "As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods; they kill us for their sport." Others, seeking to justify God to man, will offer the simple idea that whoever suffers somehow had it coming. There is a deeper story about suffering in the Talmud. In this story, Moses travels to heaven and sees for himself that Rabbi Akiba is the greatest teacher of Torah. When Moses asks God what Akiba's reward will be, God shows him a vision: Akiba tortured by Romans in the marketplace, his flesh stripped from his body. Just as it is incomprehensible to us that children, whole families, whole islands could be taken up by a wave and drowned, it is incomprehensible to Moses that a great and good teacher would be "rewarded" with torture. When Moses asks why, God answers with a riddle, "It arose in thought." To our own human notion of justice, "it arose in thought" seems cruel and unaccountable. Those who wrote this story must have felt that injustice keenly. But the starkness of this tale shows a kind of maturity of vision we sadly lack in today's religious discourse. God in the story offers no real explanation. There is none at the human level that we could understand. We stand before it stunned and uncomprehending. At the level of our feelings of right and wrong, we understand there is no explanation for dead children on a beach who were playing and swimming one moment and taken away by a huge wave in the next. I can't accept the answer suggested by the Buddhist idea of group karma, that whatever happens to a group is somehow the result of a previous action of that group, either in this life or in a previous life. I don't accept that explanation in this case. I don't believe it because this disaster happened to children. They didn't have enough time in this life to deserve this death. And in a previous life? No, that is too abstract for me. The explanation that their acts in a previous life may have warranted this death lacks specificity--and a number of deaths so huge already lacks too much specificity. I need to feel more, not less. One time I asked the Dalai Lama how he would respond to a parent who had lost a child. And he said--these aren't his exact words--that when you lose a child you are constantly thinking of that child in your imagination. He called the child a "dear one." And he said, "You must know that your 'dear one' does not want you to suffer, to feel so much grief." I found this meditation wholly beautiful. He added that for a Buddhist, suffering is in the nature of things, and so he would try to remind a Buddhist to reflect on that. But, he said, for a Westerner, there would arise the question of meaning. This boils down to the question of Job: Why would a just God allow the innocent to suffer? The question is just as profound for an individual loss as for a mass disaster: It doesn't get more profound, just more inescapable. I don't believe that a mass disaster, in and of itself, tells us anything about God. I don't believe in a God who punishes through disaster. The disaster is. That is exactly the way I would understand it, without adding my own interpretation, without supplying a meaning or completing the sentence. The disaster is. The tragedy is. And I need to abide with it, and feel it, instead of seeking an answer, because the answers just make me complacent and take me away from the children on the beach, and the father with the dead child in his arms. There is no God in the disaster. I think there is God in the response, in the human hearts of those who are feeling and responding to this, the families and neighbors of the victims, and the rest of us, the bystanders, and us, too. The whole world is feeling it. I used to think that if something unaccountably bad happened to someone, it needed to be compensated by something good. That was my own internal accounting, my own way of repairing my sense of order, of justice. A boy loses his sight, but he becomes a musical genius. A teacher of mine lost his mobility to polio, but he gained the ability to be a blessing to others. One time I said such things in a public talk, and a woman in a wheelchair rolled toward me and said with great seriousness and very slowly, "I would like you to consider that a disability means…absolutely nothing." I heard her and felt how I had glibly covered over my heart with an easy reaction. I love what the Baal Shem Tov, the founder of modern Hasidism, said when asked to define equanimity. "If whatever happens you can say, if it's good enough for God, who am I to judge? That's equanimity." And he added, "But that is a very high rung." It is a very high rung and I cannot say I am standing on it now, and rarely ever. I cannot say that this tsunami is for the good. It is not for the good, it is not for the bad. It just is. It is not a blessing, it is not a curse, it just is. A tectonic plate shifted, and a vast wave spread across the ocean, and took with it many lives. And now another wave is spreading, and it is also vast, and it spreads through the hearts of those who let themselves feel it. The disaster is. It happened to a "dear one," someone's "dear one," many dear ones. I open my heart and feel it. The place it touches in me touches God.

I just "finished" it. I put quotes around finished because, holy crap that made my head hurt! Finally! I'm not nutters after all. My husband thought I was very strange the first time I said that time didn't exist. I never realized/appreciated that under Einstein, space wasn't thought of as having structure. Is there a "Quantum Foam for Dummies" book out there? Aletheia

Yup. I doubt I'll go into them in the depth that many Jewish theologians would. But I would like to learn to look at them from a Jewish perspective. It took me 10 years to see them from a JW, Christian perspective. It just might take me 10 years to let go of the Christian "lense" and be able to read them with new eyes. Thanks for another recommendation. I just bought Harold Kushner's "To Life" this week. It's not about Jewish theology, but Jewish life and heart. Despite the obvious fact that I've asked a lot of metaphysical questions (in this thread and others), deep inside I'm just a simple girl looking to find her niche, a sense of community. I hope to be able to find that again within the Christian faith. Aletheia

Thich Nhat Han guides a wonderful mindfulness meditation on his book on CD "Creating True Peace". Aletheia

I'm trying to decide if you meant that as a pun or if you were being dismissively snide? It's so hard to tell someone's intentions in this medium. I hope it was the former and that I am misreading you. But this is what many believe, even unintentionally, because they don't "follow a thought to it's logical conclusion". I figured that most people that come to forum like this might have thought about the (or are in the process of thinking about the) "big picture" and so maybe I might get more thorough, thoughtfull answers and opinions than if I went and posted the question on a fundie board. Aletheia

I was reading about Open Theology (or what has been called Process Lite) on Christianity Today's websight. I came across a thought and decided I wanted to share it here and hopefully get some feedback. Who agrees that God exists outside space/time and sees all of space/time as an "eternal now" allowing God to see the future? Why do you feel that way? How do you relate to a God that is so completely removed from the Universe? Do you believe in predestination? To what extent? For those of you who are process thinkers or panentheists: How do you reconcile the theory of relativity with your views? Was Einstein wrong about time? I've had feelings over the past few years that there is no "time" per se. That reality is an eternal now (as opposed to being viewed remotely by God as an eternal now), and that God is panentheistically present in the "nowness". I start to feel great trepidation, as the quote above suggests, that I might be disagreeing with Einstein and just about every physicist out there. Thanks for reading and hopefully, responding. Aletheia (Edited for formatting errors)

I just purchased the New Oxford Annotated Study Bible with Apocrypha, which uses the NRSV. I find it easy to read. The annotations seem thorough. It is scholarly and balanced; not too far to the right, not to far to the left. The text is evenly spaced and easy on the eyes. The paper is of superior quality, which can be a problem with some Bibles. I figure my next bible will be The Access Bible, which also uses the NRSV. Or: This study bible looks awesome! I looked it up on Amazon and found the following review from someone who DOESN'T LIKE the NRSV for this reason: Can you believe it? How dare the editors of the NRSV call the Hebrew scriptures, well, the Hebrew scriptures?! And now, thanks to Socius, I will be obtaining this as well. Look what you did. You made me spend more money! Aletheia

That's great, it starts with an earthquake, birds and snakes, an aeroplane - Lenny Bruce is not afraid... It's the end of the world as we know it. It's the end of the world as we know it. It's the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine. Six o'clock - TV hour. Don't get caught in foreign tower. Slash and burn, return, listen to yourself churn... It's the end of the world as we know it. It's the end of the world as we know it. It's the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine. The other night I tripped a nice continental drift divide. Mount St. Edelite. Leonard Bernstein. Leonid Breshnev, Lenny Bruce and Lester Bangs. Birthday party, cheesecake, jelly bean, boom! You symbiotic, patriotic, slam, but neck, right? Right. It's the end of the world as we know it. It's the end of the world as we know it. It's the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine...fine... (It's time I had some time alone) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End_times http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eschatology http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_eschatology http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End_of_the_world http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennialism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapture http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preterism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dispensationalism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judgement_day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armageddon http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apocalypse http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tribulation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Coming