JenellYB

I will go back and try to read more of the UP....my first effort was short-lived, to be honest, when I encountered all the space alien stuff and sci-fi sounding explanations of the nature of the cosmos. I still do not understand how any of that wouuld be relevant or contribute to any value of a wisdom work. Not trying to be hyper-critical, just honest and practical. Jenell

Myron, thank you for your input, you present things I had not discovered in my own efforts to research Dr. Sadler. Brent, the material in your post is something I had already read in my internet browsings. On reading my way through Jung's works...of course his complete collected works as well as separately published works were accessable to me while I was attending UH toward my degree in recent years (2008 grad). I also had a number of occasions to spend time curled up in a library chair with various volumes as I delved through them for various references relevant to term papers and other projects, but not actually work my way through fully reading them. But as I imagine anyone that has tackled full time college studies, one thing the college experience did was utterly deprive me of much opportunity to pursue reading that I chose at will, for my own enjoyment or interests. I have long lists of books and authors I encountered during my years in college, that I hoped to be able to find time to read someday, when the grind of assigned college reading was behind me. Jenell I've decided this is my time for Jung. Many of his works can be found very cheap on auction sites like EBay, as well as used book sellers. I will also be checking the public library for some I can't get that way, but I'd prefer not having to worry about return/renewal dates as I take my time to read, think, re-read, to comprehend them. I do still have alumni access to the library at UH, but it's a round trip of well over 100 miles round trip, and right into the heart of downtown Houston. I did that trip multiple days a week for those years, looking back now, not quite sure how I actually did that!

I was away yesterday and most of today, so I guess its mostly done what its going to do to you by now, hope you came through it ok...being here on the upper Texas coast, took a direct hit by Ike and hard glancing blows from Rita and Gustov in recent years, I can sure sympathize with you, though must admit, glad its you and not me this time....Falling trees and big limbs are my greatest hurricane concern also, thought I am getting real tired of having to wander neighbor's yards and pastures to gather up what I can find of the sheet metal roofs on my sheds each time, at least Im not at risk of serious flooding due to storm times ir heavy rains. Jenell

"Fiddler on the Roof" is one I would add, perhaps someone else has already mentioned it and I missed it....I am going too copy and save some of the lists and comments... Espeically thanks to Rivanna for the resouce shared above, I went and glanced at it, its great! Jenell

It is strange how seemingly random events can shape any of our lives..... As a child, I was a voracious reader, by the end of elementary school, I had a devoured pretty much everything i both the school and local public library, at least the sections they would allow a child into those days. I've always been one of those that even have to read the cereal box in it's entirety at breakfast..I read every volume of the sets of encyclopedias for recreational pastime, if it lands in front of me, I figure I'm supposed to read it.... At some point along in there, I discovered a dusty, musty old box of books buried under the stacks of baggage of my parent's lives to that point, in a garage storage closet....and worked my way through pretty much all of them more than once.... they were Time-Life collected works of John Steinbeck, Sinclair Lewis, and Zane Gray. No wonder I turned out a little strange, and most definitely on the liberal social-justice bent......and no doubt my early introduction to Elmer Gantry had more than a minor influence on the directions my develpment of attitudes toward organized religion would take.... Jenell

George, yes.... For some reason, the story of Hagar and Ismael has always been one that touched me deeply, in ways not always compatable with the general religious thought around me... Hagar was at the mercy of her slave masters, an obedient servant to Sarah....just as the women I mentioned in my post above, she was at their mercy, and had no choice in the matter of laying with Abram and concieving a child by him. It was at her mistresses' order....she dutifully bore Ishmael, son of Abraham.... and then suffered the jealousy and wrath of that same mistress whe circumstances having nothing to do with her or what she did, changed everything. I have always felt such compassion for Hagar, thrown ouut into the wilderness, and her son Ishamel, rejected by the father he had loved and thought loved him... But most powerful to me, about that, was that God had compassion for Hagar, showed mercy on her and her child, and most of all, in His mercy, promised her that her that He knew her faithful service, and promised to make of her son a great nation.... When I learned Hagar and Ishmael are traditionally the progentators of the Arab peoples, they too took on a special place in my estimation and my heart. Long before today's tumultous matters in the middle east, and the present prevailing hatred and despising of Arabic peoples, I read a bit about these nomadic peoples of the wilderness, their culture, their values, their ideas about God, called in the Arabic tongue, Allah, and came to feel respect and love for them. That has made events and culturaldevelopmennts of recent years difficult for me, a source of great conflict... I still feel strongly different toward those peoples, and the place they may have in God's plan, even as set forth in the bible...what kind of God would have thought it merciful to spare Hagar and Ishmael, promise to make of them a great nation, only to have it end up with millions of members of that great nation doomed to damnation and hell? I cannot, will not, accept that. I am incliined to accept that Gd did indeed send to them "the Prophet", they were a nomadic culture basically rejected and cut out from the Jewish and Christian communities by merely their incompatable nomadic lifestyle. I cannot accept that God had no special provision for them as a people. And it all began with the obedience of a simple slave girl that lat with her mistress's husband, for the purpose of bearing him a child, a matter she had no choice in, yet accepted, embracing and loving that child as a a devoted mother....I cannot but feel the deepest compassion,and respect, for such a woman. Jenell

George, my own childhood memories of experiences of the social issues here in the south seem similar to your own..."colored people" were different, separate, no equal, but also not despised of the be treated disrespectfully. And, my family was mostly a lower working class that never had hired domestc help, and many had also lived through some hard times and poverty, had worked low prestige jobs, that included chopping and picking cotton, as well as a fair number of the women having themselves worked as domestics, house cleaning, taking in laundry, and the like, though these women were all white, not black or hispanic. I've read "The Help" but not seen the movie. My one reservation about not only "The Help" but the image of this sort about the white/black social issues of the South is what I feel is a distortion that misses an important component...underyling the black/white is the power/subjegation pertaining to wealth and social class, in addition to, and apart from, racism. The routine casual acceptance of the more wealthy, powerful, socially elite, commonly using and abusing those poor and less powerful, is not just a "Southern" issue, however. Without identifying their relationships to me out of respect for privacy for any touched by such incidents in the past, desperately poor women and even young minor girls were forced to tolerate often terrible abuse, inclding sexual abuse, rape, as a condition of their jobs. Even if willing to give up the job, they knew, or learned in hard ways, no one would believe them or take their part if they reported or protested the abuse. That is one part of what I know domestics suffered back then that I found missing from the book, "The Help", and that bothered me when I read it. Honestly, the women in "The Help" were treated with much more respect and decency than I know was common at the time. The attitudes of the whites are presented as being lack of respect, but in mostly petty ways, rather than the abusive disrespect that was unfortunately common at the time. I am aware of multiple older women within just my own extended family that suffered such sexual abuse while workig as domestics, and that even gave birth to their abusers' babies..in most, and actually in all those I have personally learned of, the pregnancies were hidden, the babies surrendered for adoption at birth, and the whole nasty matter kept tightly sealed under secret. In one particularly difficult and painful occasion not all that many years ago, within my own family, such a child, by then a woman in her 50's, at last found the birth mother she had searched for so many years...she had romanticized illusions of finding her birth mother, discovering her conception and birth circumstances as the result of her mother's "young love" forbidden by old-fashioned parents...she was totally unprepared for the terrible wounds her sudden appearance would rip open. The birth mother had largely blocked the memory, and neither her husband nor her children had ever even suspected she had given birth to a child no one knew about. Or, that she was going to have to replace her romantic notions of her birth circumstances with the ugly truth, that she was the result of her young teen mother's sexual abuse by her wealthy employers, and not some socially unapproved young love affair. "The Help" is a good book, and I do want to see the movie, but I do think it signficantly softens, prettys-up, a more nasty and harsh reality of the era it represents. Jenell

Brent, I feel I need to put some percpetive to my postion here...it is not my intent to treat this topic, you, or your beleifs in a manner that is disresptful or dismissive....honestly I would NOT have expended the time or energy I have toward researching the Urantia papers and their source and orgin if that were the case. But I am a very pragmatic and logic oriented thinker, and in anything I consider upon, am definitely the "why?" kid... You've stressed it seems, that any true evaluation of the Urantia papers requires reading them entirely, and that we are talking about a pretty massive text...I know I am not alone in that I already have a pretty formidable "must read" list, and forevery bookI finish reading there are at least a dozen more pulled out of my book stores awaiting me on my desk....and I've just just now begun to formidable undertaking of aquiring and reading the works of Carl Jung as I can locate them foran affordable cost. What I'm saying is, not only myself, but others here, need some substantial reason to devote that much time and effort to reading such a hefty tome that is admittedly heavy going for even advanced readers. Can you give us that? What have the Urantia papers to offer us we can't get elswhere more easily ,or do not already have? Jenell

Just to help clarifiy a common misunderstanding....the differences and relationship between Psychiatry and Clinical or Abnormal Psychology.... Both deal primarily with the MAJOR mental illnesses and brain diseases, most of which have an ORGANIC component, such as schizophrenia, but from a different perspective. For this reason, many such patients are treated concurrently by BOTH a Psychiatrist and a Psychologist. Psychiatry is based on the medical model, thus the required training as a medical doctor. The Psychiatrist most often uses medications and medical proceedures in the treatment/management of major mental illness. A Psychologist addresses the behavioral, cognitive and psychological aspects of the patient's treatment and management...ie, helping the person deal with and adapt to the particular problems with life the illness itself presents for them. In light of this, I do not understand why Dr.Sadler, supposedly a Psychiatrist, would have been attending to SS's incidents of 'unusual state' on a regular basis...usually, a psychiatrist would have attended medical testing to attempt to discover a physical cause, personally sitting with a patient experiencing on going abnormal episodes would not usually be something a psychiatrists would consider part of his task. These are serious questions for me about this topic. Jenell

Brent wrote: "Dr. William Sadler (sometimes called the father of American psychiatry)" Brent, do you have some kind of reference that can independently document this? I will be very honest, in having turned my attention to trying to learn something about Dr. Sadler and others associated with the Urantia papers, I'm very uncomfortable with what I'm finding. Perhaps you can provide some resources for directly addressing some of these issues ofconcern to me. As for your statement above, 1st, havong recently completed a BS in psychology, with incluuded coursesin Abnormal and Clinical Psychology,(which deal with the same major mental illnesses as tradtionally addressed with Psychiiatry, I can't recall any reference to this man, and now having gone through the indices of my textbooks from those courses, in which all persons cited or referenced in those texts are catalogued, did not find even a single reference to him. Anyone considered even by some part of these fields would, I think, at least mention someone consider 'the father of american psychiatry'. As best my research has found so far, Dr. Sadler held an M.D., was a medical doctor, but no reference anywhere outside Urantia related sources to his having held any degree or been formally recognized as either a psychiatrist or a psychologist. Also of concern, far from having a background that would indiicate he was an entirely scientific and pragmatic man, his back ground was with the early Seventh Day Adventisits. with personal connection to Ellen White, a self-proclaimed "prophet", and a religious movement out of which orginated a number of fringe groups and groups of questionable "cult' nature, including the Branch Davidian cult involved in the disaster in Waco, Texas a few years ago, rasies serious questions aboutthis evaluation of his postion. Dr.Sadler aparantly became involved in this Urantia papers matter after having broken from Seventh Day Adventists and Ellen White's organization under unpleasant circumstances. In one of my Psychology/Religious Studies "cross-over" courses, examining how dysfunction canarise within relgious scultures and movements, the Branch Davidians cult,beginningwith its origins withinthe Ellen White Seventh Day Advantist movement, was actually the case we studied in depth in exploring how evenseemingly sane, rational, intellegent people can be drawn into a process in which they progressively move further and further from consensus reality and rational world view. We also looked at that analysis in context of efforts at psychological/emotional "deprogramming" involved in retrieving someone from a cult influence. Based not only on the information regarding the Seventh day Adventist movement as I encountered in school,but on a good deal of personal contact with several segments of my extended family that are involved with that group, I do think Seventh Day Adventist IS a cult, does meet theological as well as psychological criteria as a cult. Some resources to clear concerns such as these appreciated. Jenell

Seen on tv news, on a sign in front of a Houston, Tx business: "Satan called...he wants his weather back."

Paul, your timing is perfect....wander over to the tcpc.org forums, Progressive Christianity and Dialog and Debate, we been tossing that very question about recently....come read what we've shared, perhaps there is something waiting for you to find it there... Jenell

That's always hard, even when you know it's best. And the economics is a real consideration especially as they age and have more problems, and in practical budget considerations in many cases. But after 14 yrs, there's going to be an empty spot for awhile. I am presently coming to acceptance that my 1 yr old cat is gone. I last saw her Wednesday evening. She had her own door, her food hasn't been touched since then, I've walked the highway daily, fearing she had been hit, but nothing. No neighbors have seen her. The awful thought is the wildlife here, with only an indoor dog, things come up near at night...we have many coyotes, wolves, bobcats, and at least one dark phase couger I and neighbors have seen within only a few hundred yards of my home. I put my 18 yr old cat down 4 yrs ago, this one is the second I've tried since then...both rescued stray kittens, I didn't go kitten shopping! The previous one was killed on the highway at 2 1/2 yrs old. I have to think I gave them a better life for at least longer than they'd have lived had I not taken them in. But....resources...I have only a small SS income for now....I sank more money that I could really afford into both of these, with spaying/nuetering and vaccinations alone, and the previous one also required surgery, when I found him, an aggressive old tom had ripped his belly open, baring his intestines .....I just can't do this again, both the emotional and financial...no more cats... But what do I do when the next abandoned one comes along....My horse is now 20, and my dog that was my late sister's, 10...sofarboth are healthy and strong, but...those years do tick by....with my own health now not that good, I've begun to be concerned should they out live me... Pets bring so much love and companionship, but also complications, to our lives. Jenell

I really don't mind sharing my precious water resources with local wildlife, I really really don't...BUT... I've realized that besides just being unattractive, the various dark shades of bird-poop permanent stain on the inflated top ring of my "easy-set" swimming pool seem to be, whether by their chemical composition or the effects of dark colors... absorbing more heat from the sun or both, seem to "melting" the plastic itself, which isn't real helpful trying to keep it aired up. I also do not appreciate that many insects that have reached the end of their tolerance of this cruel world see that inflated top ring as their own Golden Gate Bridge, from which to leap to their deaths. As I use the pool net daily to skim off their little dead bodies, I encounter an occasional one still struggling desperately on the surface, and assuming it may be having second thoughts about this, I scoop up those as well, flicking the net to send them to dry ground so they can dry their little wings and continue their life after all. However, I realized this morning my assumption may have been wrong, that those struggling, that I so kindly rescue, may entirely want to end their lives, and do not appreciate my well-intended interference. This afternoon I was attending my usual daily salvage and rescue operation with my net, flicking a fair number of survivors onto dry ground to reconsider their continued existence. One particularly unnappreciative hornet proceeded to flick the water from its wings, then immediately fly up and sting me on the arm. I am no longer quite sure what to do with these survivors.

For sure, Myron...so much, so much, that we just can't say to any one else, but we just so need to tell somebody that will just listen, not judge, and care. I am reminded of something I read about Mother Theresa...she had spoken of conversations with God,,,she was asked "What do you say to God?"She thought a minute, responded, "not much really..mostly I just listen..." Then she was asked, "And what does God say to you?" to which she responded, "not much really...mostly He just listens."

Thanks for sharing that, Bill. You give an excellent example of the at-once reliablity and unreliability of personal experience as away of knowing. It is culturally acceptable, even encouraged, to "talk to God." But to claim God has talked to you, that you have engaged in interactive conversations with God, pretty much relegates you to either charleton out to get attention and make a buck, or in need of serious mental health evaluations. I, too, have 'heard', literally a voice, with my ears, not just some passing novel thoughts in my head, a few times in my life. In began in early childhood (around 5) and has been more or less frequent at variouus stages of my life. I learned early not too tell, to keep it 'our' little secret, between He and I. I've formally studied psychology now, including mental illness, and in that context studied deeply how what I've experienced could be a manifestation ANY form of mental illness, and it just isn't there. The most signficant distinction is the nature of 'the voice'. in both tone and content. The "voices" of any and all kinds of mentall illness are characteristiclly negative, hurtful, demeaning, dysfunctionaletc. NONE are ever noted as being positive, encouraging,comforting, genuinely instructive and helpful, whether in dealing with practical life matters or matters of greater understanding. I do not mean to suggest this happens a lot, on any regular daily basis or anything like that. And more often than the conversations, the "voice" speaking in my waking state, they are far more often carried on while sleeping, in dreams that are vivid and memorable in detail. The "voice" as I've experienced has been male, in contrast to yours being female. Could that be related to the concept of anima and animus, each of us are "completed" by the features and qualities of the opposite sex? The "voice" I've heard I've come to feel, think of, as having a personality unique to Him,even though at various times He has seemed as Father, older Brother, comfortable Companion. Learning to verbally respond, talk aloud, to and with that voice, or the source of it,even when I do not hear it, was awkward ot first, I felt, as I suppose is normal, what kind of idiot am I talking to someone I have no reasonable reason to believe is actualy "there"..or "here", or whatever. It is hard to get to the place,psychologically, in which YOU trsut there is an "other" involved, that you are not just senselessly rambling to yourself. But doing so definitely increased both the frequency and depth of the "conversation." The responses to what I talked about, questions I asked, are not always returned to to "hear", but unfolding in events over a short span of time followiing them. An interesting element of the "personality" of this "voice" in my own experiences has been His sometimes annoying, but amazingly productive, use of answering my questions WITH questions...that when I follow up in seeking out the answers to questions thrown back at me, I discovered for myself the answer I had sought, rather than just having it handed to me. Its along the principle that we cannot find the answers until we know the questions. Now, just who or what am I "hearing" and conversing "with?" A truly separate entity from the Spirit realm? My own unconscious "Self", some part of my own mind splitting off into a role of "other?" Or something involving connection with some greater shared consciouusness? I don't know. Does that matter? I don't think it does. At now almost 63 years old, and having and engaged in communications with this "other" since about 5 yrs old, andhaving found "Him" or "it" or whatever, to have been invariably positive, helpfull, kind, compassionate, caring, accurately "knowing", and truthful, I have built up a deep trust in it. How anyone else might or might not experience something like this, I can't say anything, really. It's such a personal experience, and the very nature of that leads me to think it would have to be for any other, and very personally "tailored" to their personality, experiences, and world-view. Jenell

That we are hard wired to find agency and intentionin whatever happens....random chance? Well, rationally, intellectually, I have to agree with this. But, there are still singular experiences in my life that push that to the limit... As I have noted elsewhere, personal experience is at once both the most reliable and most unreliable of the various ways of knowing anything. As long as we take care to honestly test our own consclusions drawn from experience, it can be most reliable. At the same time, our senses and perceptions and minds can and do play tricks on us, deceive us. And no matter how solidly grounded we feel in what we've experienced and the conclusions we draw from that, it is of value only to ourselves and perhaps one or a few other personal witnesses, others have no sound reason for accepting our say so as true or accurate. Random chance is even itself an easily deceptive concept. Most people tend to confuse random chance with statistical probability, resulting in flawed observations and conclusions. In experiments in which the actual results of a number of consecutive coin tosses were recorded, mixed up with made-up sets, and then presented to subjects with instructions to pick out the sets that represented real results of real sets of coin tosses, they invariable chose sets that most "looked random", by conforming to the statistical outcome potential of any single coin toss, 50-50. In reality, an exact 50-50 result in a set of consecutive coin tosses is no more statistically likely than any other possible combination. An exact 50-50 result is just as statistically rare as a 100-0 or 0-100 outcome. In fact, ANY exact combination is as rare as any other. If placing a bet on the outcome of such a set of consecutive coin tosses, your odds of winning the bet are no better whether you choose 50-50, 100-0, 0-100, 60-40, or 75-25. I know all this. And yet.... When I was 12, my sister 9, she and I were playing in a field along with some neices around the same ages as we. We agreed to a race along the top of a recently mowed levee bordering an old, then dry and unused irrigation canal. Being one of the older of the group, and at that age, long legged and fast, I was, as usual, soon rather easily out distancing the others. My sister screamed, very convincingly, "Jenell! Snake!" I immediately looked down to see that, presently in mid-leap, my foot was about to come down right on top of a large cotton mouth water moccasin, laying coiled in classic cottonmouth "waiting position", head resting upon coiled body with mouth gaping wide, its namesake white mouth interior exposed and ready to strike.....I did the only thing I could, twisted my entire body hard in mid air, throwing myself sideways to land hard on the rough stubble covered ground, continuing to roll away further as I did so. I was hurt pretty bad...seriously wrenched back and hip that I ever fully recovered from, as well as nasty punctures and scrapes from the coarse stubble. My sister was at first laughing, then turned remorseful when she realized I was really hurt. A good deal of confusion prevailed for several minutes, as she confessed to having called out the warning just to scare me, try to make me break my stride, slow me down, while I was crying and trembling at the near-miss and thanking God she had seen the snake and warned me in time....the snake that she hadn't seen and didn't know was there. I had to locate the snake after the fact to prove its reality to her and the others. She and I talked about, revisited some of the unexplanable events like that from our childhoods, in the recent years she stayed withh me before she passed away. She and I and that little group of our neices personally experienced/witnessed something that would forever affect out faith, and yet.... You have no reason to believe such an incident ever happened, to know whether this story just came out of my imagination, or my real memories. And I still don't know why someone somewhere else is bitten by a poisonous snake, and I wasn't that day. Jenell

Yvonne wrote" I, for myself, cannot believe in an interventionist God - strictly speaking. The example I like to give is two people praying for two different families during a catastrophe, one family is wiped out, the other is saved. Would God play favorites like that? I wouldn't think so. To throw out my favorite question, what would that say about God? Having said that, however, I don't think we can really say for sure if God does or doesn't do this or that. It is a mystery, as is most of what we can say about God imo." I think a lot of us have struggled with this one, some resolve it better than others, some not at all. As Bill shared of his sister when she lost her baby, she struggled with "Why would God do this? Why would God let this happen?" When my own grandbaby was suddenly killed, and at many other times of tragedy and grief, even hard than asking such question one's self is being bombarded with them by others. I think the bereaved in general exercise admirable restraint in not slapping people for things said, perhaps well meaning, but inherently cruel, more often than they do. Two ideas here are troublesome...."Why did God do this? Why did God take my baby?" I agree with Bill, the worst kind of responses are such as God needed a new angel or some such drivel. (one of those tempting to slap moments) This idea that God "did this" terrible thing is to me abhorrant and disgusting. Equally so can be the question, "Why didn't Got intervene to prevent this?" So, what? God maybe just likes some people better than others? He would intervene for someone else, but not for me? Or you? Following the recent tragic outbreak of tornadoes in the SE of the country, killing record numbers of people, the classic 'pick and choose' characteristic came up in a number of tv news reports and interviews with survivors...why did it demolish this house, killing occupants, but leave the house next door untouched? Survivor emotonally told their stories of near-disaster, and often part of it was that they believed it was prayer that 'saved' them...as the house disintegrated around them, they prayed, and God placed His sheltering hand upon them. Are we really to believe that every survivor was praying, and every person that died,was not? Do they really believe no one dies praying in a disaster like that?? I can't accept that view of prayer. And I can't accept that when disaster strikes, people get hurt or die, its because somehow they were more pleasing to God. The babies of a lot mean people that do a lot of bad things do not die, and the babies of good loving caring people die, like my grandson and Bill's sister's baby. I accept that such events are just part of the environment within which we've been granted this occasion of a life. Who dies, who doesn't, in a tornado or tsunami of earthquake, isn't a 'pick and choose' thing on God's part. It just is part of our natural world. Does God ever intervene, to change the course of events that if played out uninterupted, would have led to someone's harm? Yes, I do believe that happens sometimes. And I dont know why it does or does not happen in any event. Sometimes I think we all have experience 'near-missess' that we may not even know about. Such things as for 'just a feeling' we take a different route to work than usual, and we avoid a deadly multi-car wreck that happens on our usual route. Coincidence? Some instances can be hard to dismiss as that. Sometimes, I think it may have to do with that "connection" we talk about here, and how sensitive to listening for it and how responsive we are. I recall an incident that was so startling in that way that others were 'made believers' in this idea...I attended an AoG church a while a few years back. One Sunday evening after services, I engaged the pastor in a conversation about this very thing. he was dismissive, even rejecting ofit, to him it didn't fit his 'magic God' concept....if God wanted to intervene, He would do so directly, not dependent on us to actually carry it out at some 'unconscious suggestion.' He had mentioned during service that he and his family were leaving that same night for a one week trip to San Antonio to visit relatives. (we are located NE of Houston) They were going home only to change clothes and toss already packed luggage into the car. An hour out, almost through Houston, his wife began to obsess about not being sure she had turned off the back yard water faucet she had left running to fill their dogs' large tub. The more he tried to reassure her that she probablyhad turned it off, the more adamant she became. They finally turned back, got home to find their house filled with smoke...thankfully the fire dept was called and arrived in time to prevent major damage. Turned out a chunk of mortar had broken and been dislodged from bricks as the rear of their fireplace, and coals from the fire they had enjoyed earlier in the evening had sifted through the crack, and had begun to burn the wooden studs behind it. Surely had they not returned as they did their house would have been engulfed and lost before anyone noticed and reported the fire. His eyes we filled with tears and wonder as he related the incident in service the next Sunday, He even thanked me for telling him what I had, when I did, and that he saw what had happened as the Spirit proving to him the truth of this kind of thing. And, oh yeah, btw, his wife HAD turned the water faucet off before they'd left. Why does that happen sometimes, but not at others? I cannot begin to know that, at least for now. Jenell

Learning that mistakes are learning opportunties.

Another aspect of this question of 'does God answer prayers.' There's an old country song that goes along the line of "thank God for unanswered prayers." Our perspective on our own needs and that of others is inherently flawed...we just don't have all the pertinent information to really know what is for the best. We often misunderstand what the true need in a situation really is, may be seeking an answer that is actually going to send more problems than it solves. We have no nice, handy crystal balls through which to look into future events. This can be so for ourselves, or when thinking to intercede in behalf of another, when we really don't know what that other would really want or choose for themselves in a situation. I've seen a few situations in which others sought intervention in the course of events, through both intercessory prayer as well as overt actions, for someone out of their own self interests and feelings. Several instances have involved some famiily member(s) insisting on aggressive medical treatment and interventions that the patient themselves did not, would not, have wanted, had even expressed rejection of either verbally or through a written living will. When those interventions "succeeded" the person that had expressed willingness, readiness to die, and aversion to a prolonged quantity of life without a certain level of qualiity of life, were put through weeks, months, even years of suffering they wouldn't have chosen for themselves. Sometimes, a person chooses for him or her self such agressive treatmennts and heroiic measures, only to regret having made that choice later as prolonged suffering bears heavily upon them. I have thought I needed or wanted things, that whether I got them or not, I later realiized hadn't or wouldn't have been such a good thing in the long run. Some of those experiences have helped me to become more accepting of the way things work out differently than I'd have planned in my life, and to neither feel such strong desires for something as to hurt for them, and/or to more easily let go, not suffer extreme dissapointment when things don't go as I'd have liked, to accept it may well have been for the best. One experience of that which stands out in my memories is of events as they played out when I thought my husband and I had found our most perfect dream home for ourselves and 4 children, as we sought to buy our first house. Absolutely every piece of what we felt we needed and wanted was met in perfection in the first home we attempted to buy. We, especially me, had fallen into absolute love with that property. We signed a contract and put up earnest money, entirely confident of approval of financing. We were stunned when told our application had been denied, and a second potential buyer's contengency application was already being processed. It turned out that an error somewhere in the process in which a mistake had been made by someone typing in my husband's SS number had brought up 'credit problems' that weren't even our own! But it was too late, the back-up buyer's application was already being processed and approved. I CRIED, even grieved, heartbroken, over losing that house! But within 6 mos, that property that had never been flooded before, suffered extensive damage when 4 ft of water overflowed it from a nearby creek during a massive hurricane, and within 5 years, the peaceful wooded natural setting around it had been transformed into industrial complexes and construction business compounds! A succession of similar 'near-misses' in other things i thought I wanted or needed in my life has brought me to an appreciation of how often we can thank God for unanwered prayers. Jenell

Thinking about that "connection", Joseph, perhaps that would be a good topic for another thread.

Good thought, Joseph. I do think sometimes "answers to prayer" can come through guidance if we are open to percievingit, and open and willing to be responsive, to act upon it in what way we can. That it may seem "indirect' in that it came through our own responsive action or another's, does not mean it did not come from God, the Spirit, the Greater Consciousness working through that. I know I have become personally uncomfortable offering up a prayer, or agreeing to pray for someone, when there is something I could do in the matter, but am not willing to do. It makes me feel kind of like I'm just tossing it to God, "here, God, you take care of it, I'm too busy/too inconvenienced or whatever..." It makes me feel insincere and shallow. It makes me feel, what if I was made aware of this need BECAUSE I am the one that could help, could be "the answer", and I shirked that call? Certainly I've had experiences, that go in both directions, my learning of another's need I was able to meet, as well as having requests for prayers for me strike the right ears and heart, those that were able to answer mine. I have experienced and witnessed occasions in which one person spontaneously shows up with the answer to another's prayer of need, that they didn't even know about before hand. Once many years ago, I was very young, had 2 babies to care for, my husband only able to find a low paying part time job, we were barely surviving...we were living in a cheap, run-down old house we rented unfurnished from something of a "slumlord" that owned a row of such old houses along the same block. Our old refridgerator had quit, it was hot summer, no air conditioning, and I had been struggling to keep milk, formula, opened baby food,and other perishables in an ice chest for nearly two weeks. Oh, Lord, was I praying for a refridgerator! Then the landlord came to our door, we'd said nothing about our need for a refridgerator to him, and he wasn't the nice friendly helpful sort of guy you'd ask for help anyway. And he told me tenants in another of the houses had moved out, and left an old, ugly, but working, refridgerator...and thought he'd ask if we could use it before he had his maintenance man haul it to the dump! Prayer answered! I've experienced and seen that many times, sometimes my need met, sometimes I met the need of another. In consideration of a "greater consciousness", a "shared consciouusness", this could be at work without our even knowing it. Jenell

Joseph wrote: "To me, and in my experience, effective intercessory prayer is the realization of connection with the whole where there is no separation, time, or distance, or natural law limitation and when that connection is made the answer to the issue is present whether it be an at peace with the issue, an inclination or word for action or an unction with power that is able to declare and see the evidence of that which cannot be seen but will certainly manifest itself. (yes, in the last part as in the supernatural though perhaps one day it will not be considered as such)" This presents a very interesting aspect of the nature and "power" of intercessory prayer that I feel truly goes beyond present concensus of realilty that we've touched upon elsewhere within these forums...that of what is now generally considered "supernatural", the hocus-pocus of proclaimed psychics and ESP just as much as within religious community perceptions/interpretations of such things being of communication with God through prayer. I've mentioned else where my experiences that seem to me an ability or capacity to actually percieve beyond rational senses, something of emotions and events in others' lives. And that my view on those things are that some natural phenomenon that human technology and science simply hasn't dsicovered yet. Now if there truly is a vast "shared consciouusness" beyond our limited individual experience of consciousness, that at least at somme times and under some circumstances, can facilitate intercommunication between individuals and other elements of this "shared cosmic consciousness" we might at times become aware of, then this does open the way for "real" effects of intercessory prayer. If one of us in our state of prayer or "constant prayerfulness" as well as the recipient toward whom and in who's behalf we have sincere concern and love and desire to lend support, or even hold any strong feelings annd thoughts in the oppositve direction, of despising, jealousy, hate, etc, then it would seem to me possible that both ourself amd the recipient, whether consciously or unconsciouusly, may participate in some level of communication of thoughts and feelings. That others in close connection may be "sending out" or "radiating" any particularly sincere strong emotion, feelings, toward another, might by this have a very "real" effect on another. Whether one suffering difficulties feels loved, supported, cared about, or the converse, criticized, judged, rejected, abandoned, by others, in their difficulties, might certainly be at least in part ones internal response to what others are "sending" in their direction, invisibly, without open verbalization. I think most of us can think of times, experiences, when in complete contrast of what others may be expressing only, at odds with their words, behaviors, actions, the sense they really felt quite differently toward us, that those outward indicators are a false front, a facade, for very different true feelings. I think many of us have also experienced this in different contexts, say, when we have come into contact with a seriously passive-aggressive person. The classic example is the too-sweet, too openly affectionate, too obliging, too self-depreciating, too humbled sweet little old lady that for some inexplicable reason makes you feel like there are shards of glass penetrating the mind and emotions as when you are near or in contact with her, or the outwardly benign, non-threatening, even seeminly friendlyand helpful person that sets your intuitive alarm bells ringing at high decible levels. Young children are far more sensitive to this than most of us as adults, and this was a point strongly stressed in context of a course I took on child maltreatment and abuse, whether physical, emotional, or sexual. Parents and other adult caregivers need to be more aware of this than they generally are. The child's sensivitivity in this regard, is often not only disregarded, but their natural intuitive self-protective instincts dulled and eventually disabled as parents actually scold them out of embarrassment, or even inconveneince, telling them to stop acting like that, quit being a baby or acting silly, or accused of just throwing a fit to get their own way. Likewise, by the same mechanisms, might our sincere, genuine feeliings of love, care, support, for another, be truly, actually, really, conveyed to that other through some as yet unknown and understood channel. To be experiencing the love, care, desire to support, coming at one from many other people might indeed feel like being bathed in a kind of Divine Love emanating from a "supernatural" or "higher power" source. Jenell

Bill, sounds like your observations and thoughts on prayer as it is often presented in church and religious communties, as well as some of the problems with that, and your perception of what prayer itself is or may be, as well as what it may be TO anyone, are quite close to my own. I especially agree with what you allude to about "need to fee in control", some seeming to need to feel they have, or at least have the potential for, controlling God and events beyond our normal human range of influence. There is no doubt many events in life leave us feeling powerless, that causes a natural frustration, for which there are more or less healthy and functional/dysfunctional ways of trying to deal with that. Confronting our ultimate helplessness is a hard part of attaining toward psychological, emotional, and spiritual maturity. Unfortunately, it does seem some very dysfunctional perceptions and responses to that inevitable psychological challenge have become deeply entrenched within not only the structures of doctrines within organized religion, but personal traditions handed down within families, religious communities, even the general culture at large. I have had to try to learn, keep present in mind in relating to others, that you challenge or threaten the illusory sense of security, power to control, at your own risk of what can be some pretty angry and desperate attempts to defend and maintain that illusion. The most compelling aspect of this, for me, my own reactions to my awareness of this problem, has always been the downright cruelty inherent in such a position at the very practical, personal human level of experience. It is all too easy a side-step from the ambiguious matter of whether one's prayers being answered, or not, is "God's will" or choosing to do so or not, to (enter the need to feel in control factor) that of if your prayers are ineffective, it must be your own fault, or the fault of the one you are praying for in intercessory prayer, because if you were "doing it right" or "in a right relationship with God", or with enought sincere faith, your prayers would have "succeeded" in changing God's plans, inciting God to intevene in the natural processes in the situation. "Prosperity doctrine" is pretty much generally regarded with disdain within most religious communities, yet it is widely accepted by those using cognitive copiing devices, Ego defenses, to avoid recognizing and confronting its presence among and within the group and accepted religious tradition. Through a number of difficult situations in my own and others, often loved ones' lives, this conflict has repeatedly strained, and in some cases, ultimately ended some of the personal relationships with family members, friends, aquaintances, that hold such views in this as I find cruel and destructive. Such conflicts over the 5 yr course of my younger sister's illness and eventual death to Ovarian cancer in which I felt both my own and my sister's faith and "obedience" and "right relationship with God", even our very state of "salvation" were under constant attack by some members and even whole small family groups within our larger family, resulted in some of them failing to attend her funeral, or even send their condolences. For not having been running here and there to every so-called miracle faith healer, such as the infamous Toronto and Brownwood "revivals, we had not really done all that we could have to "save her life", even to intimate or outright state that as evidence she nor I "really wanted her to get well." A few years before that, while attending a church service not long after a horrible family tragedy involving the sudden accidental death of my 5 week old grand son, still very raw over it, the preacher, an Evangelist visiting to conduct a "revival" actually worked into his sermon a "sermon illustration" of a family that had fallen out of regular attendance and relationship with their church, who had ignored their pastor's "warnings" that God would punish them if they didn't "get right with the church", suffered the sudden illness and death of their infant! That stands as one ofthe most horrible church experiences of my life, as feeling utterly ripped apart inside, I made my way out with the greatest difficulty, unable to even speak, probably apprearing as something of a drunk staggering outside before puking in the parking lot, then sitting for many minutes in my car before I was able to drive away. What was even worse than such a horrible thing for a preacher to say, was the look of rapt attention with heads nodding in aggreement across the expanse of the congregation. I know I am not unique in having recognized that, and perhaps one reason I am often more open about my "Progressive" kind of religious perspective if that I would hope to be an example to show others experiencing that same kind of recognition and pain caused by those attitudes, that there ARE Christians that abhor such things. At the time of that experience for me, i did not know that, felt very isolated in my grief, and yes, anger...no, the better term, rage, at the "God" image I was at the time very much in the process of rejecting completely and permanently. An aspect of this to me that is so contradictory to my perception of faith and God image is that even within those religious communties, at the same time, there are doctrines and traditions alluding to the need for that tate of "brokenness", of having actually come to realization of our true state of utter helplessness and powerlessness, in coming to true relationship with God, through Christ. But it seems that has gone terribly awry with the insertion of the idea that once having done so, the reward is to gain power to control events in our lives through controlling, being able to command, God, through "right behavior", "right beleifs", and commitment to an irrational faith in the "power of prayer." And ultimately of course, the ultimate power is held only in the hands of those promising to help us learn and know how to do that. There is no other designation for those kind of attitudes, in my mind, but the lowest and most inhumane and cruel response to the suffering of others. Jenell

To me, prayer is not about asking God to change the course that lies ahead, but rather to grant to me, as well as any other involved, the guidance and support to travel it as well as I (or we) might. The path I traveled as companion to my sister a few years ago when her daily life journey came to be centralized around cancer treaments and coping with the devastating effects of her illness for five years was one on which we both relied heavily on that "source" of our faith, to sustain, strengthen, guide, at times, just keep us taking the steps we had to travel each day. To us, for us, God, or whatever any would name that source of strength and guidance, got us through it as best we might have. But to many others engaged in the concept intercessory prayer as asking God to change the reality that was, God "chose not to answer" our (their) prayers. Jenell