As I listen to people’s conversations about God, I’m always interested in hearing how they view their relationship with God. More times than not what I hear are details about what God is doing in their lives via the great gifts he’s giving them or perhaps even the opposite – those things they perceive as ‘needs-to-be-filled’ for which they’re praying/waiting.

Certainly it is true that the gifts of God are many, and that God knows everything – ranging from our needs to the desires of our hearts – before we even utter a thought regarding them. And I believe it is true that God blesses us with a constant stream of gifts so numerous that many of them are taken for granted: our senses of sight and sound, taste and touch, sunrises and sunsets, friends and family. The list is infinite, really.

Even so, in the midst of all of this great gifting, we would benefit from pausing to give ourselves a heart-check:

Do we sometimes mistake the gifts of God for a relationship with God? Continue reading…

The other day I read a statement from a spiritual teacher who said that “The great teachers of humanity become streams of love.” As I believe that love is the greatest power in the universe, this statement obviously caught my attention. Of course, this echoes Jesus’ promise that those who trust in him (that is, the Way and path that he opens up into the Infinite) will flow “rivers of living water from your innermost being.” The more I reflected upon this, the better it seemed and the more it grew on me.

For one thing, this opens the door for all of us to become great teachers of humanity. Each of us, in our own ways (and within our own ‘gardens’) always has the option of being such a stream. The people who cross our paths are often in need of love – the ultimate ‘water of life’ for those parched souls not quite sure how best to find refreshment and quench their thirst. Continue reading…

As a follower of the Jesus of history – as best he can be known – I often spend time contemplating the wonderful paradoxes of his teaching. I even see paradox where he might not have intended it to be found. For instance, I love his teaching about only focusing on today, which, he claimed, has enough problems of its own. If one thing is true, certainly it’s the idea that none of us knows what tomorrow holds. Things change. Quickly. Radically. And not always for what we perceive to be ‘the better.’

For those of us who tend to first think and respond via the ego, the false-self, I think there is true irony in living for today; the one place the ego doesn’t do well is in the present moment. It takes a past and a future for the ego to really sow its self-centered seeds of fear, anxiety and displacement. Continue reading…

For those who are familiar with the teachings of Jesus (also as repeated by his followers), there was a certain over-arching paradox to what he referred to as ‘the kingdom of heaven.’ While it’s fairly common to hear Christians today still speak in terms of a ‘kingdom,’ I think if Jesus were among us teaching in more contemporary terms he’d probably use a phrase like ‘the nature of oneness’ or ‘the ecology of God’ or some such metaphor. Not many of us, especially in the West, live in a priestly setting within occupied territories we hope to gain back – it made more sense in Jesus’ day than in ours.

At any rate, his focus was often on helping others see how he and the one he called ‘father’ were one. His famous prayer in John 17 was that all of his followers and even all who would come after his time here on earth would know that they were also one with the father. This was his revelatory message. Oneness was the revelation of Jesus the Christ. Continue reading…

Love. What other idea is written about, pondered, and striven for more than this? The world of art is dominated by the subject. Imagine the world of poetry, music, novels, histories and paintings if overnight all references to love were vanquished?

The world would be dark indeed — bankrupt of purpose, it would seem.

But I have a bit of a ‘bone to pick’ with many of these expressions. Primarily when we think of love or what inspires us to consider its absence or presence in our lives we usually look upward. For instance, we behold the bright blue skies, the fullness of the moon and competition among stars as each seeks to outshine the other in order to gain our attention; we peruse sunrises and sunsets, our brow is lifted as we search the fragrance of flowers, blooming trees or seasons delivered to us upon the breeze of the wind. Ah, yes… love is ‘in the air,’ we sing. Continue reading…