[The Sun Kisses of the Holy] My Beloved is Mine...

I myself took up the cloak of blame;
I smashed the bottle of honor and virtue on a stone.
What of it?

Sometimes I rise up and watch the universe from above.
Sometimes I go down to earth and lose myself in love.
What of it?

Sometimes I study life's meaning in the holy books.
Sometimes I go to the tavern and get drunk.
What of it?

Sometimes I enter my garden to pick roses for my darling;
I grew the roses and I gathered them.
What of it?

The wine of this love is a sin, the orthodox think-
The sin is mine. I fill my glass and drink,
What of it?

The pious bow to the niche in the mosque.
I bow at the Beloved's doorstep, pressing my face up close.
What of it?

My enemy says loving beauty is sinful.
I love my Beloved so I'll gladly pay that price.
What of it?

They ask Nesimi,
are you and your beloved getting along?
Whether we get along or not, my Beloved is mine.
What of it?

-Nesimi, 15th C.

[The Sun Kisses of the Holy] Concrete Thinking and Faith

All Creation Honors Creator

One of the main components in holy wars has to do with concrete thinking in religious contexts. Our current climate has some of the most brilliant people with doctorates, of which most have a religious education and spiritual development age of about 5th Grade!! This means that functionally that your average person has a belief system that concretized at about 10 years of age. As we go forward in our inner development, often we begin to look for deeper and more functional images of God.

How we find these can be harder than it seems because often well meaning people scare of us off from looking at these with real intent in order to keep us "safe" from crossing some invisible line. One concrete idea of God is that there are many religions that have access to God and that there are other images or names for God. This idea scares people who cannot do abstract religious thinking because they are unable to hold the idea that more than one person might be right. This ideology moves hand in hand with the idea that if someone else is right, that automatically means that another is wrong.

With this fear in mind... I'll tell you an old story:

There are four blind men who discover an elephant. Since the men have never encountered an elephant, they grope about, seeking to understand and describe this new phenomenon. One grasps the trunk and concludes it is a snake. Another explores one of the elephant's legs and describes it as a tree. A third finds the elephant's tail and announces that it is a rope. And the fourth blind man, after discovering the elephant's side, concludes that it is, after all, a wall.

Each in his blindness is describing the same thing: an elephant. Yet each describes the same thing in a radically different way.

According to many, this is analogous to the different religions of the world -- they are describing the same thing in radically different ways. Thus one should conclude that no individual religion has a corner on truth, but that all should be viewed as essentially equally valid.

This is a powerful and provocative image, and it certainly seems to capture something of the truth.

If God is infinite and we are finite, it is reasonable to believe that none of us can fully capture that infinite nature.

... at the end of the day, we can never fully know the mind of God, but God knows us... and the point of ANY religion is to just help people get to know God better. Anyone who uses a religion to prove that they are right or wrong is using God to promote their own insecurity instead of moving into submission to the Holy Spirit.

In this same vein... I will leave you with an idea...it is not God that needs to be protected... it is our own fear around our beliefs.

Blessings on your journey to deepening your faith!