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Thanks for visiting – by accident or design (ha ha) – my website. Basically, I’ve been writing here for a few years, sorting out the tendril thoughts that attend reading and prayer and family and walking dogs in the forest. What have I learned? God is a good idea, one. And we make the soul up as we go. It’s okay. Or it’s going to be okay.
I’m a Christian by birth, a follower of Jesus by choice, and bent on the Kingdom of Heaven, regardless of the many flaws and desires and brokennesses of which I seem to be composed. I’m not under the illusion that Jesus is the only way, but I do think he’s a pretty good way. I hear him most clearly in A Course in Miracles and in writers like Joel Goldsmith and Thomas Merton and Tara Singh and Emily Dickinson and Henry Thoreau.
I spend a lot of time walking in the woods – with dogs, when I can, and walking sticks, when memory serves. I’m a wordy bastard which complicates Heaven but on the other hand what doesn’t? Never leave home without your writing utensils. That’s one motto. Avoid semicolons and conclusions. That’s another. I like being a father and a husband, both of which seem to have the salutary effect I once fantasized monasticism would bring. I’m the only public member of the School of Parenthetical Afterthought. It’s a calling.
I cobble together money by writing and teaching. I practiced law once, drove a cab once, stayed home with my little daughter for a few years once, too. I advise against careers and also against taking my advice. I don’t think Jesus gives a damn about wealth but I do think money (and the inevitable pursuit) makes it harder to hear the still voice inside us. Freedom is not the ability to fulfill our wants. Abundance is faith and all provision is of God. I know it and I know I know it but still.
What else? Did I mention Emily Dickinson? Apples? The Catholic Worker? Bluets and Forget-Me-Nots? My broken heart? Old country songs? Back roads at midnight? Black bears tumbling through bracken? Grandmothers? The smell of wood smoke in November? Baking bread? Longing? My guitars? Trout pools you can’t decide to fish or swim in? Homeschooling? Horses? Used bookstores? My gratitude you’re here?
Yes – that. My gratitude. Thank you.
{ 9 comments… read them below or add one }
Enjoyed the three things I’ve read so far. Don’t know why I looked up Gary Renard fraud on the web, but it brought me to your website. I like how you treated the controversy; it made great sense. Frankly, I probably have the same reaction as many to Gary which makes it so interesting that someone of his public persona could produce a book that has brought clarity to many of the concepts of the course. So who cares if the ascended masters were real or just friends who brought great insight into the course. Or maybe they are frauds. Who cares. Gary hit one theme during an early appearance on Coast to Coast, the late night radio show. He spoke to the matter of separation, harped on it so much that the host shut him down prematurely. I think of the concept a lot these days – thanks to Gary. So go figure.
Thanks for reading Jim. Yeah, it’s fascinating how controversy and conflict swirls around Renard. Disappearance is a solid Course book. It certainly helped me.
Sean,
I like the way your mind flows especially after what the Course has to say about the concrete and abstract. Nature and grandmas and all the other things you mentioned can touch us in ways that can’t really be expressed in words. I’ve studied the Course for decades and with time under my belt can say that persistance does create habit so all those knee jerk reactions to people or situations last only an instant before I’m right minded and can choose once again. I used to get down on myself that I had separation thoughts at all, but now realize they’ve been disolving over the years through practice and thats enough. . . I’m enough. The struggle stops.
I feel sorta’ blessed that when I started studying the Course the internet hadn’t yet been invented! I had to braille my way through all of it on my own and frankly most of it went right over my head, but I had the faith that somehow it was sinking in on some level. Now I can see that those early days of confusion and stuggle were a necessary part of my particular path. I also welcome all the people who are now available to pound the drum and point the way as they see it and like you, no right or wrong just are they helpful or not.
So keep writing, and although you consider yourself a ‘wordy bastard’ they’re just symbols anyway and some of those symbols are like sweetened arrows straight to my heart.
April
Thank you for the kind & loving words, April. To be honest, feeling one’s way through the text without the modern buzz sounds kind of delicious. Tara Singh wrote somewhere about spending time with ACIM in “spacious aloneness.” But our paths are our paths, no doubt about it.
I appreciate your note about how the struggle stops with time and practice. This is hard for me – letting go of doing, letting go of some ACIM ideal. I do judge myself for having any separation or attack thoughts but I hear you. It’s not as bad as it was and the choosing again feels more and more natural.
So thank you . . . I often feel kind of intense and crazy about Course stuff and you are spreading some confident just-breathe energy and it is so welcome!
You’re welcome, Sean
Enjoyed your essay a lot. Thank you!
God isn’t an idea. God is everything.
Do you have a Facebook?
Hi Naima,
Thank you for reading and writing. I believe I understand what you mean when you say God is everything – though it is not precisely what my own spiritual practice teaches. A Course in Miracles, like many spiritual traditions, particularly those of eastern origin, places great emphasis on our thoughts and our minds. “Nothing real can be threatened – nothing unreal exists.” That is a very powerful statement about matter! I think often of Meister Eckhart in these discussions who said – I paraphrase – “The mind with which I perceive God is the mind with which God perceives me.”
It’s not that I think God is not in that tree or this tea mug or that bar of chocolate. Rather, I think God is in my mind and thus my perceptions – be they of physical things (form) or the love that infuses them (content) – are holy. What is in my mind is not concrete but abstract – in other words thoughts, ideas. For me, the awareness of the fullness of God begins in the mind. Our true identity is that we are thoughts in the mind of God. In a sense, there is nothing but God – and the rest of it (all these other people, places and things) are merely the ego’s sideshow designed to keep us from remembering and celebrating this Oneness.
However, I think debates on this subject can be distracting. I am learning to be sensitive to the differences between right-mindedness and the intellect (though as this comment might indicate, I still have a long way to go). What matters is our choice to find a path that leads to God and pursue it whole-heartedly and joyfully. A Course in Miracles is merely one way – not the only way, not even the best way. Just a path that I have chosen to take that – step by little step – brings me closer to the natural joy and peace of knowing God. I am very grateful that so many people have similar experiences in other traditions, or have different – and often quite helpful – ideas than I do about how all this works. It keeps me both humble and motivated.
On some level, when I wrote those words – “God is a good idea” – I meant simply that choosing to make God the center of one’s life is more helpful than only thinking about God on Sunday, or for fifteen minutes of meditation in the morning and at night, or not at all. People whose aim is ending their seeming separation from God – regardless of how they define God – are doing a lot to spread peace and love and end strife and loss and pain and I think that’s a good thing! My way of doing that – seeing God as thought, and me as thought, and the world as one of ideas only – feels right to me. It works. No hard feelings at all with those who make different choices!
No, I don’t have a Facebook account. I used to, but it was very distracting. In terms of keeping in touch with people, I am always very honored by emails – agreeing, disagreeing, agreeing to disagree.
Thank you again for your note and for caring about God and finding God and helping others to find their way to God. It was the perfect start to my day!
~Sean
I’m glad you found it inspiring. And the way that you use the metaphor of us as thoughts really shows you’re a teacher and thinker by nature.. Very interesting. I agree that we as humans with our four personalities(spiritual, emotional, physical, and mental), do control everything in this life with our mind alone. That really is the origin of it all. One single thought or conception. I never exactly thought of it that way. Very well put..
–I look forward to reading more from you
God Bless always, Naima