A somewhat ”theological” email dialogue with an old, dear friend in Birmingham, Alabama, where I was hatched and raised. The dialogue was spawned by my publishing to my websites, goodmorningkeywest.com and goodmorningfloridakeys.com, and to my “bulk” email list, on which Linda’s email address resides, my laments about how rough God is on me, even in my dreams, and my very strong impression that Texas’ star quarterback Colt McCoy, on Texas’ first series of downs, was knocked out of the National Championship football game against Alabama by a Divine Intervention, because God had something else in mind for Colt than a professional football career.
I met Linda in 1973, as I recall, shortly after I began practicing law and while I was going through my first divorce. We met in a smoky, popular pub called “The Plaza.” She was there with friends, they met there once a week as I recall. Eventually, she and I dated a while, even though she was gay. She didn’t act gay when we made love. But is was what she was drawn to and eventually we stopped dating. As time passed, we would run into each other unexpectedly, and eventually Linda ended up on my “bulk” email list. Last time I saw her, maybe in 2001, I ask if she had been with a man since she was with me. No, she had not, she said.
My dream maker told me this writing that follows, if publicly posted, will not necessarily please Todd German’s hope that I will continue to influence Keys politics. A banker by trade, Todd is Chairman of Hometown! PAC, which hosts Calls to Candidates and Candidate forums in Key West, where I live and have run for office a few times before.
My part of the ensuing theological ”debate” is in italics, to distinguish from Linda’s. I suppose unaspiring political candidates should lay their “theological” perspectives bare before the public, and then stick to them. As if I haven’t done that a bejillion times already. As if.
Linda’s first email begins with her acknowledgement of my request that she stop praying for God to lay off me, because that seemed to be causing God to work me even harder. I had suggested that if she wanted to pray for me, simply pray: God’s will be done.
This is pretty long today, but then, I posted nothing the past two days, so maybe it all averages out.
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I guess I won’t be wishing you peaceful nights any more, dear Sloan. But I do believe something: God surely gives peace– that passeth all understanding– as well as hounding you. You’re doing something the scripture tells us: “Let your softeness be known unto all men . . .” Meaning, I think, gentleness. It emerges in my dim brain that so much of your pain and sorrow has to do with being the shaman to transmit other people’s troubles around, not just your own. But I don’t believe that it’s God’s will that you be in pain so much of the time. Dr. Edmonds said, when discussing the Abraham and Isaac story, “No God I believe in would ask a man to do that.” I make bold to remind you of another famous quote: “I came that ye may have life, and have it more abundantly.” My favorite.
About Colt Mc Coy: It also occurred to me that his life will be altered by this accident, and probably for the better. Apparently his father had a lot to say about “his NFL career”. I’ve been told by people who follow the game that Mr. McCoy is actually rather a jerk, and takes on himself the glory of victory. Your observation of him is surely accurate, so perhaps Colt will become his better self and not play football. I also agree that for Alabama the victory must be a bit dimmed because Colt wasn’t playing– but then, maybe the whole thing was for Gilbert [the freshman quarterback who took over for Colt]. That occurred to me at that minute, as he got better and bolder as the game wore on.
After all the money and car troubles ALREADY in 2010, I’m also thankful that my belief system directs me to consider it all as some kind of lesson, or reminder, or opportunity to be smarter and better. Plainly I have no relationship with money in this life. I’ll be terribly relieved when this brutal cold is over, and I can be more cheerful.
Okay, carry on, dear friend. Later . . . L.As for what God does to us, Dr. Edmonds has undertaken to rewrite the Bible, when he doesn’t agree with it? Scandalous for an ordained member of the Elect, that is, the Presbytarians 
. I spent two years in a prep high school run by Presbyterian fanatics, who were sure they were members of the Elect and the Bible was the literal word of God, down to, apparently, Cain going off into Nod to find a wife, since there wasn’t a woman living near where he, his mom and dad lived – the only three humans in the Bible after Cain killed Abel. Guess they weren’t the only three?
Linda, I have been put to the Abraham-Isaac test many times. God does test in that way. And unlike what happened in that story, an angel of the Lord did not step (or fly) in and stay my hand. I lost my father. I lost women I loved. I lost my daughters. I lost close friends. They didn’t die, they jsut vanished from my life because of things I was put to do. In some ways, it was worse than if they had died physically, which I experienced with my first child. So I know it from that side, too.
Jesus wasn’t joking, maybe somebody needs to get this to Colt McCoy, when he said we must leave our mother and our father and our brother and our sister and our spouse and our children, and even give up our own life, to enter the Kingdom of God. He never said it would be easy, and my experience is that it is very hard. Being in the Kingdom, while still alive, is not all harps and pslams. That’s what happens in churches. Out here in the trenches, it is about the same as it was for Jesus.
Oh dear Sloan– I know you’ve lost many people, one way or the other, in your life. Dr. Edmonds was saying what I so deeply believe, that God would not ask “Prove you love me” by slaying, with your own hand, your precious son whom He had given you as a gift and surprise so many years before. No more did you– nor would you EVER– have slain your own little boy. He would not have asked it, it’s too cruel to be believable, and I don’t believe it. I don’t believe the Bible is literally true, and I think it has much to do with cultural matters related to boys and men. The Scriptures also say that God does not love blood sacrifices, and he does not demand ransoms. As a lover of creation, I can only imagine His sorrow when anything dies in agony and bewilderment.
About the hugeness accompanying you– THAT I think I understand. L.It was my father, my daughters, some wives and a number of close friends I sacrificed by doing what I was told to do. I didn’t know what the outcomes would be going in, but I could imagine the outcomes because of what I was asked to do. My son, very different matter. I wrote about it last year a few times. Not again right now.
Abraham was before Moses, before the Ten Commandments. All sorts of weird stuff went on back then. How can I, you, Dr. Edmonds, or anyone say God didn’t test Abraham in that way, when the Gospels clearly say Jesus was required by God to make a bood sacrifice?
Certainly, parts of the Bible are represenative, symbolic, allegory, fable. Certainly, other parts are true. The way I read the Isaac story is representative of blind allegiance to God’s will, just as I read the earlier Abraham story that way: when God told Abraham to pack up everything and everybody and leave where he was, and go some place new, and Abraham did it, not having a clue what lay ahead.
It’s about the Lord’s prayer, as I see it: Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth . . . And, Not my will but yours O Lord be done.
The idea of the blood sacrifice of Jesus is 12th-century and horrible. I’m not a Bible scholar, but I don’t think it likely that atoning sacrifice was the idea of Jesus’ appearance and death on earth. It’s just that such an idea was understood by people at that time. And people still seem to be drawn to it, ghastly as it is. We don’t sacrifice virgins and perfect lambs any more, knowing it to be barbaric and useless. Why is the idea of sacrificing Jesus still so popular? I believe that he lived and died to show us how to live and die, and to assure us that there is so much more out there. Dr. Edmonds calls him the “revealer” of God– I think I said this in an earlier message. That seems right to me. Of course, what do I know?– a child of the American Century, optimistic to the end.
But the will of God– surely He doesn’t intend for any of his servants to suffer. It’s just that they do, and must, because humanity is so ignorant and vicious. Not everywhere though– there are plenty of humans who want to do good, and are doing it. Like you.
Atonement had nothing to do with it (other than Jesus’ own at-one-ment with God). Jesus was crucified because he upset the Jewish hierarchy and Pilate was a weenie. The Old Testament does, however, refer to the promised one meeting his end in much this way.
I agree, Jesus came to earth to live and teach the correct way to live, and to promise more than just this life. That was the sum total of his life here. Very few people got it over the years. What came instead were churches teaching people how easy it is to be saved by Jesus, by simply believing he was the only begotten son of God and he died on the cross for their sins and was resurrected on the third day, as he had predicted would happen. That how we live, what we do, is irrelevant; by God’s grace alone are we saved.
I think I recall back when we dated, you and I went to a movie about Martin Luther. He was in mighty soul struggle, was constipated. Finally he worked through it, and then came his Manifesto, which caused him to leave the Church and thus started the Protestant Reformation. Some years later I read where Martin Luther had some bad stuff in his past he didn’t want to confess to a priest, so he came up with the saved-by-grace-alone bypass, which excused him having to confess in favor of being saved simply by grace.
My father hardly led an exemplary life, but after his memorial service I heard in a dream, “Chips going to heaven.” Chips, potato chips — my father. I was glad for him, but puzzled why I was getting so roughed up for doing my dead level best to do what I was being TOLD to do?
I read yesterday online that a well known, controversial Christian minister (I’d never heard of) and a well-known American Buddhist leader (I’d never heard of, either) are vying for Tiger Woods’ salvation, and, I imagine, some of his loose change.
Not entirely unlike, I suspect, what the Baptist minister was trying to fish out of my father’s widow at his memorial service.
I wanted to kill (not literally) the son of a bitch (the Baptist minister), as, I imagine, did my fourth wife sitting beside me. Then to learn, in his Last Will and Testament, my father had stipulated that he would be cremated and his ashes scattered around the grounds of that church. Then also to learn that he left that church nothing.
Maybe Tiger Woods should just keep playing golf and, like my father did, give away a lot of money to people in need. Maybe it will save him.
Maybe Martin Luther had it right. Maybe we simply don’t know what gets us into heaven.
I found myself wondering, if I ever come back to Birmingham, would Dr. Edmonds give me a Sunday or two sharing with his congregation some of my experiences with Jesus, Archangel Michael, Melchizedek, the Holy Spirit? Just joking, sort of.
SloanLast first: Of course Dr. Edmonds would give you that time to share your experiences. He was more a Christian Agnostic in the Weatherhead mode–although he preceded Dr. Weatherhead in age and experience. He was really a mystic Christian, who, I believe, loved the Presbyterian Church in spite of himself.
I have to go to a Deacons’ meeting at the moment (don’t laugh, I’m a lousy deacon) but want to talk to you about much of what you said. Essentially, we agree. I remember something about Luther saying he could “expel the Devil with a fart” and that he was indeed dyspeptic or constipated or something like that– the latter, apparently. I find it difficult to follow the whole Luther/Calvin business– I’m fascinated with theology but don’t remember half of what I read about it. Am I an Arminian?*Googled: Arminianism, a form of theological thought based on the 1608 Declaration of Sentiments of the Dutch theologian
Jacobus Arminius (1559–1609). Often referred to as “anti-Calvinism,” Arminianism holds the freedom of the human will as its basic tenet and thus denies one of John Calvin’s foundational ideas: the irresistibility of the grace of God. Arminius states that God’s grace is indeed resistible because all human beings are responsible for their own thoughts and actions. Accordingly, sin is actual because it is possible, in direct contrast to Calvin’s treatment of sin as purely theoretical because of the inability of the elect to sin. Therefore, Arminianism states that salvation requires both willful repentance and willful acceptance of God’s grace, not simply a helpless reliance on arbitrary election. No, you are not an Arminian; you are human. As wuz Jesus, contrary to some viewpoints. He just was a tad more “filled out” than other people. A tad. Difficult for me to wrap my mind around a Christian mystic being in love with a denomination, or even a church building. Jesus would say, I imagine, to love the people despite the demoniation (Freudian slip — the spelling), but I don’t see him being too terribly delighted about any demonination (darn, it happened again, must be something in the air) claiming him as The Way. Au contraire, I wonder if Jesus wishes he could come back and do it all over again; maybe write it all down this time, so maybe it wouldn’t get all twisted around and screwed up. Not his part of it, anyway.
Jesus– or his differently-named successor doppleganger– IS going to come and do it all over again, as He has for eons. I believe he was human, too– and he was the perfect incarnation of the Holy Spirit. He was highly evolved– and, probably, much of your suffering is because you are evolved as well, and you are being asked to bear many burdens because of it. I sometimes think that God is bored with me because I’ve had such a cushy life. Lee Bennett used to say that I was either being rewarded for a hard last time or being softened up for the kill next time. Who knows?
Thanks for the short lesson on Arminius– You’ve clarified it as nobody has before now. I think I may be Arminian after all, because I think that people ARE responsible. The doctrine of the Elect has mystified smarter people than I am– At IPC we periodically try to explain it in Sunday School classes, but it never sticks. Is that because it’s essentially a stupid idea?
More later, I have to go to dinner. It must have made you glad, to hear that Chips was going to Heaven. Tiger– he’s a strange case. More later . . . L.
Based on what I’ve heard, Eve (representational) was the perfect incarnation of the Holy Spirit. Jesus was a blend of her and her male counterpart, a very wizened Adam. Many experiences tell me that the Holy Spirit has been ”in charge” of my “development,” in the overseer sense. She farmed me out to various ”departments” in the “company” for various “adjustments” to my thinking, behavior and perspective. And sometimes She’s directly on my case.
I keep saying She, because the Holy Spirit is the female aspect of God, which most of what I’ve read in Christian theology denies even exists, unless you include the “virgin” mother of Jesus, whom the Vatican, I think I read somewhere, declared was a virgin all of her life, even though the Gospels the Vatican uses say Jesus had siblings. It also is said Jesus was a monk. Nonsense. Mary Magdalene fixed that. If she washed his feet with her hair and tears in front of people, she sure as heck washed the rest of him with the rest of herself in private.
So much psychic/soul damage in Christendom caused by this Puritan perspective of Jesus and his mother. Far more important, why did he treat and speak so pejoratively of her in the Gospels, if she was the saint the Vatican now makes her out to be? I’ve written of that a few times before and will not go into the details again. Suffice to say, Mary had a lot to do with Jesus using miracles in his ministry, which ultimately proved to be a diversion away from the steep and narrow path he lived and tried to teach others.
As I read the Gospels, the disciples were still juvenile delinquents, so to speak, when Jesus left them. Only after they were infused with the Holy Spirit did they come into their own. Start eating meat, as explained in the Letter to the Hebrews, which I was told Mary Magdalene scribed. It is anonymous because nobody would have paid it any heed, if it was known a woman had scribed it. Jesus planted the seeds in the disciples, the ones we know about in the Gospels, and others not so visible, but the Holy Spirit brought them into adulthood.
Maybe Tiger Woods leans a bit too heavy into the male, needs to develop his internal female. Maybe if he did that, he wouldn’t be so driven to have sex with so many different women. I am pretty sure he is being sorely tested, and he needs to keep playing golf. On the ”golf course” God will meet Tiger. On the ”golf course” God will give Tiger plenty of opportunities to change, be refined. Golf might not be nearly as much fun for Tiger as it has been, but it might “save” him.
My father taught me golf. He could have been a pro, but gave it up to go into business with his father. Fairly often I dream of playing golf. The scenarios show me the lay of the course in something I’m dealing with externally and/or how to “execute a shot.” I’m required to play summer (tournament) rules. I have to play each shot as it lies, no improving the lie of the ball, unless God steps in and gives me a “mulligan” or another kind of shot to play. I used to cheat a bit when I played golf, but on this golf course there is no way to cheat with everyone watching on.
Some years ago, I came to understand God is like a radio, broadcasting to us on whatever stations we are tune in to. For me, it was the sports station, the law station, the writer’s station, the woman (wife/mating partner) station, the parent station, the child station, the friend station, the shaman station, the priest station, the chess station, the duplicate bridge station, and so forth. Always the Holy Spirit, or Her “departments,” are dreaming up stuff to test, refine and deepen me. Relentless is it.
If God has given you a cush life, then give thanks. As we both know, there always is more to come, if not in this life, then in the one to come, whatever and wherever that is and looks like.
I’m collecting our recent correspondences into a little “book,” which I will send to you after we are done “collecting” it.
P.S. The Elect is mentioned somewhere in the Bible, probably the New Testament. The Presbyterians at the prep school I attended believed the Elect are predestined, and, naturally, they were included. My view of the Elect, if I have to consider it, is reflected in Jesus’ saying many are called but few are chosen; steep is the way and narrow the gate, and few enter therein; the work is great and the laborers are few. This is what the author of Hebrews tried to convey to Jews who had known Jesus, or his immediate disciples, and were giving up because the way was so difficult.
Free will, yes we have it, in the sense of we get to choose how we respond to what life throws at us. But we don’t have it, in the sense that most of what we think, do, is driven by our unconscious, of which we are unaware, which is why it is called the unconscious. This, I think, is what Jesus was going after when he kept telling people to wake up. He wanted them to get to know themselves, and other people, too. He wanted them to know what was really going on, not what they hoped was really going on.
I was once told this is why I dream, so I will know what is really going on. Even so, I still need a great deal of other help seeing what I need to see, so I can respond in a way that best serves God and me. Apparently, I say apparently because I have been told this plenty of times and my experiences have ratified it, this weird course I’m on is tailored to develop me. As it happens, I am led to write/speak about some of it. If other people are affected, all the better. But I am not “graded” on the effect. Only on how I go about it am I “graded.”
Projecting from my own experience, and from what I have seen others experience, I have concluded this is how we all are ”graded” — by how we live. All the rest is fluff, diversion. I personally am not convinced studying theology changes us any more than driving a car turns us into an automobile. It’s life that changes us, if we live it in a holy, aware way, as opposed to driving on automatic. Yet, I suppose theology must be studied, as part of our waking up to what is and what isn’t important. That’s how it went for me, although most of my Christian theological study was within the four corners of the Bible, with some “extraterrestrial” views tossed in, to put different spins on it than the ones I had learned when I was younger.
P.P.S. After sending the p.s. today, more stuff came floating in about the Holy Spirit. Then, in a nap dream, I got some nudging to say a little more about Her.
In Jewish theology, the Spirit of God is called Shekinah and is assigned the female gender. In the Old Testament, Wisdom is assigned the female gender. Being Jewish and super-trained in the Jewish Scriptures, evidenced by some stories in the Gospels about his command of the Scriptures, Jesus knew the gender of the Spirit of God.
Somewhere in the Gospels, he tells his disciples that a man can blaspheme the son (him, Jesus) and be forgiven, but a man who blasphemes the Holy Spirit (Ghost) will not be forgiven. Taken at face value, Jesus clearly elevated the Holy Spirit far above himself, which fact I have never heard even explored, much less affirmed, in any Christian church I ever attended; nor by any Christian. The big focus was on Jesus, and it was as if the Holy Spirit was but a bit player. Compared to the Holy Spirit, Jesus was the bit player, according to him in the Gospels.
Most of Jesus’ sayings about how to live were from the female perspective. Resist not one who does evil; love and forgive your enemies; turn the other cheek; ask not back for what is taken from you by someone else; take no thought for your life or what to eat or wear, but trust God to provide; first, take the beam out of your own eye; let the one without sin cast the first stone; as you sow, you reap; as you judge, so will you be judged; worry not what to say when called before the tribunal, the Holy Spirit will put the words into your mouth; not my, but your will be done, O Lord, and so forth.
This was the path I was put on in the late 1980s. Although it went through many changes and permutations, it remains the core of my training. Although sometimes I get very rough with people, as Jesus also sometimes did, it always comes back around to the female approach. The Holy Spirit’s way, which I was told in my sleep in late 1993, is kindness, mercy and generosity.
Not long after that, I was put onto a new program, a female program, and I got the living shit beat out of me. Every time I transgressed Her, I was hammered. Hammered in my soul. It was terrifying. I got to the point I was afraid to publish. I still live with that terror. It will never leave me. It is why I am so very diligent about what I write today.
When I publish, I usually hold my breath, hoping it was okay; that I will not be hammered for it. This is not shaman work. This is not taking on the crap in the spirit. This is my being corrected and disciplined for transgressing the Holy Spirit; for being too rough when I have no permission to be rough.
This is the second day I didn’t publish. I don’t feel clearance to publish. I feel I’m to wait, which is another aspect of the female. She waits until it’s time to act. She is patience, faith. For how long I am to wait, I don’t know. Maybe I will publish tomorrow, maybe the next day, maybe next week, maybe next month. Maybe next year.
I have gone through years of not publishing, before the faucet was opened again. Several times this has happened, years of not publishing, then it starts again.
Maybe more later . . .
The next morning . . .
Walking to Sippin’ Internet Cafe today, as today’s post began to form in my thoughts, I recalled from the Old Testament: Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Then I recalled, as if tumblers were falling, Jesus saying somewhere in the Gospels: Fear not him who can take your life, but fear him who can take your life and your soul. What I came to fear most, however, was myself: my own hubris, my testosterone-drive. That’s what I came to fear most: me. To the point that I became convinced that I am dead meat, if I’m not shown how to do what is given to me to do. Dead meat.