REDEFINING

Yes, it is now getting dark when I go for my morning walk.  Yes, I think I am up-grading from a stroll to a walk.
Walking under the lamplight makes me happy.
I feel the affects of the stopping the Prednisone;  which had given me more energy, so I am disappointed, but the cough is almost gone and I must continue to take things slowly.  I could get another refill but prefer not to.
I am thankful for all the lights.  There is a silent beauty and stillness all around me!
God with in me manifests the God without and around and present in all things.

                       This is a picture I tried to take of the moon and I rather like it.

Today I will not be reading so much but getting out in the yard it is warm and sunny again.  I think I dropped my clippers in the compost barrel so that is my first job.  I will do some racking and taking away the dead branches.  I will try not to overdue it, but it is like anything you get started you just keep going and going.

I find it helpful sometimes to be discussing a book with others too.  The writer or writers of the Gospel of John according to Spong  "seek to tell the story of Jesus' life as one who transcends limits, breaks barriers , and invites us into a new place.  A journey into life, (away from fear in contradiction to Dawkins who quotes in the Van. Sun religious societies can be more coherent largely because they are full of terrified people) beyond scripture, beyond creed, beyond doctrine, and beyond religion itself.  I have found church to be a place that takes away my fears and gives me hope!

How many of the characters are simply symbols.

One of the first group of characters we meet are Andrew and his brother Simon Peter who are immediately attracted to Jesus and then are willing to be his followers.  They proceed to tell Nathaniel.  Jesus tells him he has seen him under the fig tree.  A synonym for the place where rabbis studied the Torah.  He is among the first to be called a disciple, even though before he met Jesus he was doubtful that any good could come from Nazareth.  It would almost seem that he was portrayed as predestined for Christianity even while he was deeply engaged in the study of the Torah, the Jewish law.  Nathanial immediately breaks forth in an extravagant confession of faith.

Nicodemus comes by himself at night to question Jesus and is portrayed as enjoying the darkness of his own religious night.  He is portrayed as one bound by the limits of his own mind.  Jesus explains he must be born again not of the flesh but of the spirit.  Then Jesus identifies the spirit as the mystery of the wind "that blows where it will and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know whence it comes or where it goes."

Spong has written in the past that to be human is to embrace mortality,  It is to know that that while your mind can roam beyond the limits of your body, your body is still bound in time and space.


"To be self-conscious is to view all of life from within the center of the self, to look out to the world from the perspective of one who is separate and distinct."  

To feel loneliness, to know anxiety and to feel like you are engaged in a chronic struggle for survival.  The mystical reality is a sense of being with one with a supreme being, and a universal consciousness, a radical awareness of connectedness.

Jesus himself has been transformed and challenges Nicodemus to undergo a transformed experience and thereby escape his self-imposed boundaries. 

 

 "The source of love that comes not to judge human inadequacy, but to open eyes to see a new oneness" 

 There are times that our emotions seem to tell us we are not as good as we should be nor can we live up to the expectations of others.  That, I believe, is not as God sees us; but he sees us as beautiful and even magnificent human beings created to bring light into the world in unique ways. 

 

I know that I feel frustrated and left out when I am not well but Jesus has the power to transform my negative emotions and my unhealthy body.

Maybe Jesus looked a little like this who knows?

Sometimes I feel like I need to just kneel before all that He is and be absorbed by his goodness.  Redefined worthy!

"Be Thou my vision, O Lord of my heart. . . "

Heal me and I will be healed!  -The Good Book