Intersect

Today I remember that we are all children of God, none deserving death at the hands of another.   Today I remember the heinous way we treat each other; the discarded lives of those called to service as a reminder that war is never the answer. Today I remember that I have a choice to make: I can serve the war machine of my government and its corporate overlords, or I can serve God and choose peaceful resistance. I can pretend there is an enemy, or I can hold my neighbor in my arms and shower them with love.   Today I remember my grandparents who died fighting against an enemy their parents created. I remember my brothers and sisters fighting against an enemy our parents created. I remember the endless cycle of enemy creation, war, defeat, repeat, and I renew my vow as a follower of Jesus the pacifist, to oppose the cycle of vengeance and grind it to a halt forever by refusing to participate in its systemic evils. Today I remember that enemies only exist when we lie to each other; steal

Gentle Spirit of gracious love, fill us with your presence.   We open our hearts to receive your infinite love. We open our minds to learn your timeless wisdom. We give you our bodies as holy temples, the place we discover at-one-ment with you, our precious God who dwells with and within us, mind, body and soul.   [pause to feel at-one-ment with God]   We ask to be filled with strength and courage because walking the spiritual path is treacherous. As we walk toward the light that lights us from within, we meet resistance. New ideas, inspired by you and about your presence in the world are met with violent fear. Often, the inspirations we are given are discounted. We are called heretics and liars, our faith and the Bible are thrown in our faces. Our love for you is refuted by religions for too long comfortable in the vacuum of their own dogma. Our new understandings of you are called into question because they require new ways of thinking— new ways of thinking that are, ironically,

Have you ever been in a meditation so deep that you lost a sense of time? You sort of “pop” back into reality and realize you’ve had a profound experience, an “a-ha!” moment that has connected you more deeply with a conscious awareness of the presence of God? I clearly remember an evening in college sitting on my couch, reading Joel Goldsmith’s Realization of Oneness. It was the first book I ever read that talked about Christ Consciousness. Rather than presenting Jesus as a human sacrifice, Joel—way ahead of his time, saw Jesus as a teacher attempting to awaken a more connected sense of wholeness and unity with God within all of us. At some point, I became aware that I was no longer reading, but experiencing what Joel was writing about: I was having a very deep and profound Christ moment; a realization of oneness, of the spirit of the Christ welling up deep inside me. The next thing I knew, I “popped!” back into reality (whatever that is), and an hour had passed; an hour that felt

I believe in a God who doesn’t need to manipulate, who does not look like me, who demands not wrath but love. I believe in a God who offers salvation by empowering every human being to simply act like a decent human being. I believe in a God who requires we sacrifice ourselves not by spilling our own— and especially not by spilling other peoples— blood, but by giving up the things that make us falsely believe we are set apart from each other and from God. I believe in a God of unity. I believe in a God who demands justice and equality, and inspires us to demand the same from our earthly leaders. I believe in a God who leads us out of the wilderness of our addictions, our selfish actions, our shame and sense of worthlessness, not by dying on an ancient instrument of torture, but by living through each of us, changing how we think and feel by filling our emptiness with mind-blowing love. I believe in a God who exalts us to a higher awareness of the interconnectedness of all things rather

I find science—and in particular quantum mechanics—a powerful way to ponder the nature and being of God. Using science as a rational baseline for our religious/spiritual philosophies helps us develop faiths that are well-reasoned, even while by definition, faith requires us to take some imaginative leaps. It is faith after all. By studying what is known of the natural world and applying it to what we believe about God, the universe, and everything, we follow the traditions of all the inspired people and authors of the world’s ancient holy books. These brilliant and philosophical people formed an image of God and created religious/spiritual systems based on what they saw and understood of their natural world. Today we find their idea that many gods (or even one Mega-God) were in control of things like your luck, thunder, and lightning quaint. But as their religious ideas developed, a crucial concept began to take root, one which finds support in the modern science of quantum mechanics:

Dear and loving God, thank you for the gift of mystery. If we are honest, we have no idea what you are or how you work. If we are faithful, we come to realize that neither of those things matter. All that matters is to sense your gentle touch, your loving breath, and your warm embrace, all around us; coursing through our veins, the very lifeblood of our being. [pause to sense the presence of God]   We confess that it is all too easy to become enraptured by and trapped in this soulless world. We get caught up in crass commercialism. Our hearts become hardened to the needs of our brothers and sisters. Fear of lack, limitation, and otherness causes us to act rashly and without reason. We readily and foolishly elect to follow hawks rather than doves. Send us the dove of peace, the prince of love, the Christ who opens our minds and unbinds our hearts from fear. Unchain our souls and free us to love and be loved in your image. [pause to sense the presence of God] It is as beings made in