Have faith, my Child, have faith. Do not be bewildered. For you are beyond all things, The heart of all knowing. You are the Self. You are God.
~~~
Religion: Hinduism
Reflection: You are God is a wonderful concept, especially when learnt alongside and so is everyone else.
Question: Do you believe there is a divinity within people? What makes this so?
Imagine a multidimensional spider’s web in the early morning covered with dew drops. And every dew drop contains the reflection of all the other dew drops. And, in each reflected dew drop, the reflections of all the other dew drops in that reflection. And so ad infinitum. That is the Buddhist conception of the universe in an image.
- Alan Watts (via ardhanari)
From my good friend Emily.
32:25 And Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him until the break of dawn.
32:26 When he saw that he could not prevail against him, he touched the socket of his hip, and the socket of Jacob’s hip became dislocated as he wrestled with him.
32:27 And he (the angel) said, “Let me go, for dawn is breaking,” but he (Jacob) said, “I will not let you go unless you have blessed me.”
32:28 So he said to him, “What is your name?” and he said, “Jacob.”
32:29 And he said, “Your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, because you have commanding power with [an angel of] God and with men, and you have prevailed.”
32:30 And Jacob asked and said, “Now tell me your name,” and he said, “Why is it that you ask for my name?” And he blessed him there.
~~~
Religion: Judaism
Reflection: I can’t think of this story without hearing Bullet the Blue Sky in my head, though the text is more complex than Jacob wrestled with an Angel and the Angel was overcome. Rashi’s commentary says that the angel was Esau’s guardian angel, come to wrest back the blessing Jacob stole from their dying father. When the Angel says “Your name shall no longer be called Jacob,” he is forgiving Jacob for his earlier duplicity and suggesting that this time Jacob has earned his blessing. Regardless of the details, though, there is something deeply powerful about the image of someone wrestling with an angel (and all that an angel might stand for). This wrestling, this struggle (or Jihad) is part of being human. It reminds me of a Winston Churchill quotation I’ve long loved: “If you’re going through hell, keep going.” The struggle is hard, but giving up means never escaping the struggle, allowing the struggle to define you.
Question: When have you wrestled with an angel?
(via buddhanature)
21:25 “There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves.
21:26 People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken.
21:27 Then they will see ‘the Son of Man coming in a cloud’ with power and great glory.
21:28 Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”
21:29 Then he told them a parable: “Look at the fig tree and all the trees;
21:30 as soon as they sprout leaves you can see for yourselves and know that summer is already near.
21:31 So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that the kingdom of God is near.
21:32 Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all things have taken place.
21:33 Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.
21:34 “Be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life, and that day catch you unexpectedly,
21:35 like a trap. For it will come upon all who live on the face of the whole earth.
21:36 Be alert at all times, praying that you may have the strength to escape all these things that will take place, and to stand before the Son of Man.”
~~~
Religion: Christianity
Reflection: Tomorrow is the first Sunday of Advent, the beginning of the church year for most churches. This is a time of transition, moving from Year B in the Lectionary to Year C. The thing that strikes me about this passage is remembering that so many people at the time of the gospels believed that the end of the world was imminent (it’s possible that Jesus himself believed this, though it’s even more likely that this idea came about after his death and was most widely spread by the writers of his story, not his own words and thoughts) I’ve never lived with the idea that the time I’m living in will be the last of human history. Having come of age at the tail end of the cold war and having witnessed historical catastrophes change but not end our lives as we know them, it seems radically implausible that the end of days is in any way imminent. Still, I have always been fascinated by the questions raised by the idea of the end of days. I love disaster movies and books, apocalypse stories and dystopic fantasies. Plagues, floods, earthquakes, nuclear bombs, I find all that stuff fascinating. I think because imagining the end of our world makes us reflect on what makes us human, and what makes our lives matter. It is a way to pare ourselves down to the essence of who we are.
We can experience this through transition too. Times like Advent or the new year can remind us to look at our lives in slightly different way for a time, remind us to search for the best in us and correct the worst, reflect on our blessings and pledge ourselves anew to becoming the people we most want to be.
Question: Who do you want to be?
A Yale librarian who cast doubt last year on the origins of the Serenity Prayer, adopted by Alcoholics Anonymous and reprinted on countless knickknacks, says new evidence has persuaded him to retain the famed Protestant theologian Reinhold Niebuhr as the author in the next edition of The Yale Book of Quotations.
The provenance of the prayer, which begins, “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,” became a subject of controversy last year with the publication of an article by the librarian, Fred R. Shapiro, who is also the editor of the book of quotations. Mr. Shapiro had found archival materials that led him to express doubt that Niebuhr was the author.
But now another researcher trawling the Internet has discovered evidence that attributes the prayer to Niebuhr. The researcher, Stephen Goranson, works in the circulation department at the Duke University library, has a doctorate from Duke in the history of religion and, as a sideline, searches for the origins of words and sayings and publishes his findings in etymology journals. This month he found a Christian student newsletter written in 1937 that cites Niebuhr as the prayer’s author.
The prayer in the newsletter is slightly different from the contemporary one often printed on mugs and wall plaques. It reads, “Father, give us courage to change what must be altered, serenity to accept what cannot be helped, and the insight to know the one from the other.”
The contemporary version puts the phrase about serenity before the one about courage, but Mr. Goranson said in an interview, “I think the 1937 document very much strengthens the probability that Niebuhr wrote it.”
Shiva Gangeses, Rishikesh
(via jarmotuisk)
Nature is not kind;
It treats all things impartially.
The Sage is not kind,
And treats all people impartially.
Nature is like a bellows,
Empty, yet never ceasing its supply.
The more it moves, the more it yields;
So the sage draws upon experience
And cannot be exhausted.
~~~
Religion: Taoism
Reflection: I can tell I’m in a contrary mood because my first thought as I typed this was that the bellows isn’t empty, it’s filled with air, which is the fuel it uses. But that’s not news to this passage, I’m just being contrary. The bellows/nature always has everything it needs because what it needs is always, unceasingly, available. So has the sage everything she needs, which is to say everything there is, which is to say her experience. One reading of this might be then that while the sage draws on her experience, un-sage-like people attempt to draw on more than their experience or fail to draw on their own experience and are lacking for it. Hmm.
Question: What does your experience tell you that other things do not?
An it harm none, do what ye will.
~~~
Religion: Wicca
Reflection: Is “An it harm none, do what ye will,” the same as “Do onto others as you would have them do onto you?” I think we could easily imagine ways in which these are different. It’s not too hard to put a wedge between two anythings if your goal is to force them apart. But I think part of why we like the “golden rule” is that it serves as a kind of proof that we are all somehow together in at least one aspect of religion and moral behavior. It ties humanity together. It is a thin abiding string of commonality at the center of often radically divergent traditions and belief systems. I find it comforting to think that there is a small bit of most religions of the world that I can believe in with my mind and my heart.
Question: Why do you think so many religions include this basic precept?
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