I admit to having some difficulties recently with my 'walk'... I think I am at a slow fumbling crawl. If I can even call it that. But it could just be from sheer exhaustion. Exhaustion from wondering if I am doing the right things and saying the right things. It all gets so overwhelming at times.


I started to read another book called The Art of Spiritual Healing by Joel S. Goldsmith. It has some good points but he also contradicts himself several times and doesn't seem to notice it. Or I am just ultra-critical... probably a bit of both. I actually find some of what he has written helpful but I find Louise L. Hay's book You Can Heal Your Life a bit easier to apply and a bit more realistic in terms of an understandable God.

Joel's God, although supposedly loving and all powerful, leaves no room for a human being existence. All it leaves room for is an all mighty God that is like an amoeba that wants no separate identity outside of itself. I can't see a loving God wanting no expression of humanity. Yes, expression within the love and direction of God, but the ability to be someone not-God. I don't think a God who made us in all our variety wouldn't want us to be those expressions of variety.

While, in her writing, Hay's book covers a God who works with us side by side to create life and healing. We are partners with a loving God. A God who knows more, sees more and is more than we can imagine but a God that looks upon us as His wonderful creations in love.

Actually, The Shack gave the best vision of God that I have read so far. That is a God I want to know. That is a God I want to embrace and be embraced by. Truly that is a God I want to relate to. I suppose this means I need to go and crawl to Papa. I need a big healing hug.

I am coming Papa... I hope you have Your lap ready.

Just completed reading The Shack by William P. Young. Heady stuff and it is still rather difficult to wrap my brain around parts of it. Not that I don't believe what is written, quite the contrary, but for me to really grasp some of what has been written I need to learn full acceptance of Love. Yes, Love with a capital 'L'. Not there yet as I stated in an earlier entry. But at the same time I am not in the same place I was yesterday. Baby steps. (Don't mind me if I fall several times and bawl like a baby either.)

I have a lot to forgive and a lot more to be forgiven for. My life would be a perfect template for one of those awful* soap-operas that some watch. However, I don't want to settle for believing that is all my life is about anymore; that I was made to suffer, that I was made for failure. Yeah, I believed those things. I still carry a lot of guilt and shame that has manifested itself in dis-ease. (I believe when one is sick inside the outside can only follow suit.) This is part of the process and journey: to relearn how loved I am. Hard stuff. Which is why some of The Shack was more difficult to wrap my thoughts around... if I still have a hard time loving me how can I imagine anyone else wanting to? Much less the Creator of the heavens and Earth?

Recently I was at a discussion group and I truly think the only one at that meeting who got being loved and being in the now was an infant. That infant cried when he was hungry and got immediate gratification. He also knew that there was always someone in his space that would be there to cuddle him and adore him.

When do we lose that? When do we grow up and decide not to live in the honesty of now? Also why is it a baby can be the only recipient of such unconditional love and concern? We are all babies inside. Except, there are a few differences. A true infant does not doubt. He or she doesn't know how yet. Only as we grow into adults do we learn to doubt love; all broken inside, needing and hurting and never quite understanding where all the safe places and people went to. I am not suggesting throwing a temper tantrum to get your way but I am suggesting that if we all remembered we are still babies in the spiritual we might be kinder to one another and treat each other like that infant at the discussion group. If we learned to treat ourselves with that same concern and adoration we might not be so torn.

Heck, what do I know. I still need to learn love and Love. I do think if I continue, one day at a time, I may get closer. Even if I don't quite reach the fullness of understanding I can say I did my best. Watch me walk!

*Disclaimer: I don't think soap TV is wrong to watch but my own stance is garbage in garbage out, If someone wants to fill their life with the messages those shows portray I say good-on-ya. They just aren't for me.

People often talk about spiritual devotions as regarding a particular religion or creed. I feel religion has nothing to do with spirituality but everything to do with a nonessential thought process. True spirituality begins and ends in the heart where the only real 'law' is love. Yet, how many religions that profess love, are carriers of intolerance, apathy and downright hate. Oh, before I go on the opposite of extreme love is not extreme hate; it is apathy. To those apathetic souls who hide behind a barrier of their religious gods, laws, traditions, etc. well, I feel sad for you. You know not love and what it truly means.

Admittedly, I find myself on a journey that has divorced me from many of the preconceived notions I had as a child about faith. The journey is arduous. Hopefully it is not so long that I begin to despair of ever reaching a place where I can truly say I am living in love.

At the moment I am not quite capable of standing in such a pristine place of love... I still get angry when I am disappointed in someone. I still swear and grumble when frustrated. I still miss the mark of complete and total immersion in loving myself and loving others the way love is truly meant to be.

Hopefully, I will reach it one fine today.

Hopefully I can set a beacon out for those on the same journey that states 'you are not alone'.

Full of hoping I begin...