Month: May 2013

May 26, 2013 – My Jesus, Part II – The Soul

by

Rev. David McArthur

My Jesus, Part II — The Soul

Asking questions is a valuable part of the spiritual path. Our God-thought grows as we grow. Underneath the miracles and stories of Jesus, there is a person who so impacted the people with him that they wrote that the experience was something divine (in the God-thought of the time). Still it was a new God-thought—the indwelling God that is not separate from us.

Edgar Cayce told of Jesus’ prior incarnations (a fascinating way to look at things). In one, as Joshua, Jesus/Joshua understood his God-thought as telling him to use military might to slay all the native people of the promised land. He saw the divine hand in his making the promised land safe for the Israelites. But this wasn’t expressing the divine in the highest manner. Fascinating to know that the same man [soul] later walked through that land teaching peace, non-violence, love. That’s a tremendous step—for a person to step into the consciousness that we call the Christ, the Atman, etc. Then he responded to violence with love, inclusion instead of superiority. Was it an expression of karmic law that he was publicly ridiculed and hung on a tree like, as Joshua, he did to many of the kings in the Holy Land? As Jesus, he said he did not come to take away the law, but to fulfill it (meeting his life but responding with love?). Is that how it happened? I don’t know. For me, it’s not that it did or didn’t happen but the response to it.

When I look at that story it has meaning for my life. But this is not a “one size fits all” spirituality. There is so much variety in our paths. Part of our assignment is to find what works for us.

A skilled artist actually had the experience that Jesus appeared and posed for her. She wrote that he bore no witness to duality or opposition. He told her that Spirit is the ultimate because it is indivisible love—the source of your love, your beingness. You are created in that image. Holy will pours through, generation after generation. It is love. It is the common essence. Love is who you are. Affirm, I am love. I am love. I am love. His gift and chosen task was to come and restore the heart to its true power. The heart is your source of all higher knowledge. When the inside and the outside are the same, it is the gateway to the soul and to eternity.

What is there helps me to make the choice today, when I see our oneness and connection. In the consciousness of love separation fades away and harmony comes forth. If HE is there helping me to do that, then HE is my Jesus, and I’m ok with that!

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May 26, 2013 – My Jesus, Part II – The Soul

by

5/26/13 Rev. David McArthur
My Jesus, Part II — The Soul

Asking questions is a valuable part of the spiritual path. Our God-thought grows as we grow. Underneath the miracles and stories of Jesus, there is a person who so impacted the people with him that they wrote that the experience was something divine (in the God-thought of the time). Still it was a new God-thought—the indwelling God that is not separate from us.

Edgar Cayce told of Jesus’ prior incarnations (a fascinating way to look at things). In one, as Joshua, Jesus/Joshua understood his God-thought as telling him to use military might to slay all the native people of the promised land. He saw the divine hand in his making the promised land safe for the Israelites. But this wasn’t expressing the divine in the highest manner. Fascinating to know that the same man [soul] later walked through that land teaching peace, non-violence, love. That’s a tremendous step—for a person to step into the consciousness that we call the Christ, the Atman, etc. Then he responded to violence with love, inclusion instead of superiority. Was it an expression of karmic law that he was publicly ridiculed and hung on a tree like, as Joshua, he did to many of the kings in the Holy Land? As Jesus, he said he did not come to take away the law, but to fulfill it (meeting his life but responding with love?). Is that how it happened? I don’t know. For me, it’s not that it did or didn’t happen but the response to it.

When I look at that story it has meaning for my life. But this is not a “one size fits all” spirituality. There is so much variety in our paths. Part of our assignment is to find what works for us.

A skilled artist actually had the experience that Jesus appeared and posed for her. She wrote that he bore no witness to duality or opposition. He told her that Spirit is the ultimate because it is indivisible love—the source of your love, your beingness. You are created in that image. Holy will pours through, generation after generation. It is love. It is the common essence. Love is who you are. Affirm, I am love. I am love. I am love. His gift and chosen task was to come and restore the heart to its true power. The heart is your source of all higher knowledge. When the inside and the outside are the same, it is the gateway to the soul and to eternity.

What is there helps me to make the choice today, when I see our oneness and connection. In the consciousness of love separation fades away and harmony comes forth. If HE is there helping me to do that, then HE is my Jesus, and I’m ok with that!

May 19, 2013 – My Jesus, Part I

by

5/19/13 Rev. David McArthur
My Jesus, Part I

It’s ok to ask questions regarding the Bible. That “take it on faith” stuff makes me feel like they just didn’t know. Let’s start with the God thought. A very primitive people tried to make sense of their world. (This isn’t necessarily Unity.) They told stories about their questions and discoveries. They put God “out there” in the biggest thing they could see—the heavens. With Jesus, they had to figure a way for God to be down here—the virgin birth! It’s not a new idea (Horace, Dionysus, Krishna, Buddha, Quetzalcoatl). And then they had to get God back “up there”. (The resurrection and ascension.)

Let’s throw out everything that doesn’t make sense. Let’s pretend that Jesus is not God coming to Earth, but just a guy, a precocious Jewish boy. When people experienced him, they were touched and changed and talked of something “greater”. He didn’t see Jew/Gentile, but taught all people (even the Samaritan) inclusion, not exclusion; love, not rejection. He treated women as intelligent beings of value. But even without a single miracle, He touched the God thought.

Episcopalian Bishop Spong says how foolish we are to take the Bible literally. When we can see who we really are, we see the meaning of all life, the source of being, the God thought, seen when one has the courage to be, and not seen as separate. Jesus revealed God, and whenever God is seen in life, it is called Christ. He never said, “I healed you.” He said, “Your faith has healed you.” The magnificent law. No divine intervention. But through the beautiful laws we can be freed from where we are to be where we can be.

Walk on water? What really happened there nobody knows. Resurrection? It has nothing to do with the body. That primitive culture told stories of symbol and meaning. They were a context oriented culture. Our culture is content oriented. In the story of Lazarus they talked of life instead of death. Jesus arrived after four days and the stories they shared brought Lazarus alive in their hearts. In Jesus’ resurrection the disciples shared what He meant to them and the change He brought alive in them—an understanding of love that even today touches me. Unwilling to speak of a God “up there”, I speak of something that was so full of life it is alive today. It helps me to know the God in what I see in front of me. I put all else away except the God I see alive in front of me!

May 19, 2013 – My Jesus, Part I

by

Rev. David McArthur

My Jesus, Part I

It’s ok to ask questions regarding the Bible. That “take it on faith” stuff makes me feel like they just didn’t know. Let’s start with the God thought. A very primitive people tried to make sense of their world. (This isn’t necessarily Unity.) They told stories about their questions and discoveries. They put God “out there” in the biggest thing they could see—the heavens. With Jesus, they had to figure a way for God to be down here—the virgin birth! It’s not a new idea (Horace, Dionysus, Krishna, Buddha, Quetzalcoatl). And then they had to get God back “up there”. (The resurrection and ascension.)

Let’s throw out everything that doesn’t make sense. Let’s pretend that Jesus is not God coming to Earth, but just a guy, a precocious Jewish boy. When people experienced him, they were touched and changed and talked of something “greater”. He didn’t see Jew/Gentile, but taught all people (even the Samaritan) inclusion, not exclusion; love, not rejection. He treated women as intelligent beings of value. But even without a single miracle, He touched the God thought.

Episcopalian Bishop Spong says how foolish we are to take the Bible literally. When we can see who we really are, we see the meaning of all life, the source of being, the God thought, seen when one has the courage to be, and not seen as separate. Jesus revealed God, and whenever God is seen in life, it is called Christ. He never said, “I healed you.” He said, “Your faith has healed you.” The magnificent law. No divine intervention. But through the beautiful laws we can be freed from where we are to be where we can be.

Walk on water? What really happened there nobody knows. Resurrection? It has nothing to do with the body. That primitive culture told stories of symbol and meaning. They were a context oriented culture. Our culture is content oriented. In the story of Lazarus they talked of life instead of death. Jesus arrived after four days and the stories they shared brought Lazarus alive in their hearts. In Jesus’ resurrection the disciples shared what He meant to them and the change He brought alive in them—an understanding of love that even today touches me. Unwilling to speak of a God “up there”, I speak of something that was so full of life it is alive today. It helps me to know the God in what I see in front of me. I put all else away except the God I see alive in front of me!

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May 12, 2013 – Mom As Divine Mother

by


5/12/13 Rev. David McArthur
Mom As Divine Mother

One way we touch the love of God is the role of the mother. When there is a need for healing, for a healing presence, we connect with the figure of the Madonna and Child, of Mother Mary. At that point of pain, of overwhelm, when we feel we are asked to deliver far beyond our perception of our capacity, but we are asked anyway to show up for another, the divine presence shows up in the symbol of motherhood itself. Let that divine connection heal and nurture in that way mothers have of knowing we can step up to what is asked of us. Open that divine connection. It is not some God of power and authority, but of tenderness and caring. We know God is not male or female, yet we open to those divine feminine qualities that mothers embody for us.

All the greatest teachers the world has ever known have brought us awareness of awesome divine love. And every bit of that love and consciousness is seen in the mothers we know. Awaken to that. We know this divine is in us, works as us and through us, and that mothers embody this. In the times they didn’t, when their pain got in their way, when they were limited by their trauma, addiction, or struggle to awaken from their own sleep, remember that forgiveness is significant work, because it is in this relationship that we get to know, to glimpse that divine love.

Severely wounded, a young soldier in Viet Nam called to his momma. Back home, she heard him. “Super Mom” is that absolute divine intervention. We reach for that presence and know it as “momma”!

As her boy reached the difficult years of his early teens, a mother began leaving letters under his pillow “to be read when ever you are alone”. In the first she confided, “I know life is hard now. You are frustrated and nothing is right. I love you more than I can say. I am here if you want to talk. No matter where you go or want ever you do I will always be proud of you and love you.” Their connection deepened. What are you connected with? What are you going home to? Mother is that connection to “I am here for you and will always love you; that will never change” (which is God’s love). Mothers, you are the expression of divine connection. Thank you God, for loving me as “Mom”. And thank you, all moms, for loving us! Thank you!

May 12, 2013 – Mom As Divine Mother

by

5/12/13 Rev. David McArthur
Mom As Divine Mother

One way we touch the love of God is the role of the mother. When there is a need for healing, for a healing presence, we connect with the figure of the Madonna and Child, of Mother Mary. At that point of pain, of overwhelm, when we feel we are asked to deliver far beyond our perception of our capacity, but we are asked anyway to show up for another, the divine presence shows up in the symbol of motherhood itself. Let that divine connection heal and nurture in that way mothers have of knowing we can step up to what is asked of us. Open that divine connection. It is not some God of power and authority, but of tenderness and caring. We know God is not male or female, yet we open to those divine feminine qualities that mothers embody for us.

All the greatest teachers the world has ever known have brought us awareness of awesome divine love. And every bit of that love and consciousness is seen in the mothers we know. Awaken to that. We know this divine is in us, works as us and through us, and that mothers embody this. In the times they didn’t, when their pain got in their way, when they were limited by their trauma, addiction, or struggle to awaken from their own sleep, remember that forgiveness is significant work, because it is in this relationship that we get to know, to glimpse that divine love.

Severely wounded, a young soldier in Viet Nam called to his momma. Back home, she heard him. “Super Mom” is that absolute divine intervention. We reach for that presence and know it as “momma”!

As her boy reached the difficult years of his early teens, a mother began leaving letters under his pillow “to be read when ever you are alone”. In the first she confided, “I know life is hard now. You are frustrated and nothing is right. I love you more than I can say. I am here if you want to talk. No matter where you go or want ever you do I will always be proud of you and love you.” Their connection deepened. What are you connected with? What are you going home to? Mother is that connection to “I am here for you and will always love you; that will never change” (which is God’s love). Mothers, you are the expression of divine connection. Thank you God, for loving me as “Mom”. And thank you, all moms, for loving us! Thank you!

Play

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