ebloomer

Where does one get this inner strength. The literalist interpetation of the scriptures just doen't do it for me as it does forome people. I have been exploing the image of Christ as representing the Devine within all of us. The early Gnostics describe this as an eperience of intuive knowledge rather then a belief. I strengthens their life and made their lives meaningfull. I want this. I want the strengthen to speak up when I know I will be shut down. I want the strength to speak out where social justices only care about the people who control the money. I want the inner to fight for the person with a disability who is dying in hospital because they are neglected,

 

For me Progressive Christianity is a chance to explore with others the ideas and experience of the Divine as represent the force of unity within the Whole of Creation and to discover my part within this Whole. In my Church, Holy Trinity, I feel part of a social justice congregation where members have this inner strength I am looking for.

 

Christ in you, may s/he fill thy Spirit

 

Marilyn

I like what you have to say-- I especially like your closing, "Christ in you, may s/he fill thy spirit"

ebloomer

Lately, my prayer has been the question, what am I learning/seeing here?-- no matter what the situation.

Dear Undone,

You could be writing my story-- except the Episcopal church has been my spiritual base for the past fourteen years. And it has been a wonderful place, full of love and grace and people who spoke my language, people who had words for my spiritual hunger. I experienced God, Jesus in remarkable and very personal ways. Lately, however, I keep bumping into the images of Father and Son, and I am startled by my feelings of alienation (I am a 49 year old woman). Like you, I don't know what will replace the old certainty--perhaps nothing can. But I sense at a certain level (when I don't panic!) that this is a good, a growing place to be. Your voice, your truth affirms this for me, and this seems to be my experience of God.

Thank you.

The child symbolizes the pure and instantaneous feelings of creative intelligence. This child is delivered out of the womb of pure consciousness through Mother Nature herself, located in the depths of our own human nature. Christ said, "Unless you become as a child you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven." ...

This mystical child is the co-coordinating point in the mind because it is between the ower and the higher layers of the mind. In this layer the instinctive demands are given recognition, but the center of gravity of the total personality shifts its position. The position ceases to be in the ego that dominates the first two layers, but instead becomes located in a hypothetical place between the conscious and the unconscious mind. If this reorganization is effective, a personality develops that suffers only in the lower layers, but not in the upper layers of the mind where one is detached from pain and pleasure. The re-birth of this improved personality is the groundwork for the second coming of Christ in the higher realms.

 

Your description of a shift in the center of gravity of the total personality puts words to my experience of God! And to "become as a child" does not imply childishness but attentiveness, awareness, seeing with new eyes, eyes that see and ears that hear.

 

As for the second coming of Christ, I also suspect that this refers to a growing awareness in our collective consciousness. I'm standing in a place of questions right now regarding my relationship, my understanding of Christ. The old familiar story seems foreign to me; I try to remember to wait in the place of questions, trusting that the answers are seeking me as I am seeking them. The story isn't finished...