Pure being is not an abstraction but a living force.

To the philosophers and theologians, feelings, along with other affects, are weaknesses.  So God is regarded as passionless, so passionless that it is difficult to see how He can love.  St. Anselm puzzles over how a passionless God can be com-passionate.  His solution is that “we experience the effect of compassion, but Thou dost not experience the feeling.”  You can see the logical puzzle: we experience God’s love, but God feels no love for us.  For the philosophers, even to speak of a personal God is at best a metaphor or analogy.  But, in my experience, God is not a metaphor.  He is a Person to whom we can pray, who can give us guidance about our lives.  However, I was told,

They have some aspects of Me right.

“What do they have right?”

They understand that I am pure Being, Being unto itself.  They understand My metaphysical essence.  They do not understand My dynamic existence, a force …

“A Person?”

… yes, and a Person.  They use these categories in a way that makes them mutually exclusive, but they are not.  Pure Being is not an abstraction but a living force, focused personally.  Do not avoid metaphysics, but always listen to Me or you will go on the wrong track.

Read Chapter 114

A Proper Appreciation of Yourself Opens Your Heart.

An ego rush always broke my connection with God.  So I tried to keep a cold watch on this ego of mine.

When I was still in Washington, D.C., a matter came up about which I needed the assistance of an eminent intellectual with whom I had a limited acquaintance.  He was completely forthcoming, and I felt flattered by his response.

“Lord, how should I take this?  Is it wrong for me to feel flattered?”

No, it is not.  This is joy, the joy of being yourself, which is proper to (appropriate for) human beings.  I want you to be happy, to feel the fullness of your own being, its bounty.  I blessed you with certain gifts.  Of course, you recognize them as gifts, as benefits, as talents.  That is okay.  It is not the same as ego.

Ego is destructive, separatist, defiant of My will, self-satisfied and self-lustful.  A proper appreciation of yourself opens your heart, binds you to Me, to those you love.

 

“Pray and I will tell you”

I started making a list of great spiritual leaders to pray about.  I thought the question would be, for example, What was God communicating to Martin Luther?  But, when I asked, I got a different answer.

Suppose you brought a guy in – say, Luther – and cut him up (dissected him, looked at the elements that make him up).  What would you find?

“Not just the single solitary individual, I suppose, but someone immersed in a tradition, institutions, and a culture.”

I act over the centuries in reference to individuals, but also movements, cultures, and the like.

“But only individuals receive communications.”

Just listen for the moment.  I interact with mankind, with the universe, in many different ways.  Do not assume that the only interaction is the same form of the interaction I have with you.  With some it is conversational, but with others it is by inspiration, by My spirit moving through them, infusing institutions and life-forms, cultures, cultural forms, art, music, dance, symbolism, ideational systems, thought forms …

So, looking at each cultural form, I should be able to figure out how it reflects You?”

The starting point is not the cultural forms and asking “What kind of God or transcendent order does that imply or suggest?” but start with Me and ask “What am I doing with that culture, individual, art, art form, or whatever.  What is it to Me?”  Pray and I will tell you.

Think of Joan at the Stake

I was told not just to read books but to look at “religious lives.”  Receiving an honorary degree from a small Catholic liberal arts college, I spoke about Joan of Arc.  She had the most well-documented life of anyone in history up to her time.  We still have the records from her two trials.  She had been convicted of heresy and burned at the stake at the age of nineteen as a result of a trial rigged by her English captors.  Some years after her death, a new trial was held, which exonerated her.  Both trials took evidence from people who had known her since childhood.  In the twentieth century, she was canonized.

“Lord, what can I learn from Joan of Arc?”

Think of Joan on the stake.  What are her feelings?

This is what came to me:  “Glory to God, blessed savior and lord, redeemer, I love God and am happy to sacrifice all for Him; a feeling of joy and triumph over this world, a rapture and sense of rising to heaven, to join God, to be received and welcomed by a chorus of angels; a peace, calm, inner togetherness, centeredness, kindness to mankind, to their suffering, to their burden of sin, smiling also in triumph.  They ‘know not what they do’ to their own souls!  They do not know they are the losers.  They are the ‘fools’ who do not know what’s really going on.  Radiant love sweeping out over the world, embracing the world, as soul-like awareness of the pain of the body and its frailty and vulnerability and impermanence, a deep understanding of the nature of reality, an immersion in the really real, a closing of the old eyes and opening of the new ones, a succumbing, a resignation, a withdrawal.”

 

“You are both other and same as Me.”

“Lord, are we all part of You?”

You are both other and same (as Me). I need you to be other so that I may encounter another self. I am a Person and, like other persons, define Myself by responding to other persons, and being responded to (by them).

But I also need union, not distance—just as other persons do. You and Abigail are both other and same. You need to be different people—love is a bridge between differences. You also merge spirits at certain moments, though not totally. That is also a kind of completion or fulfillment. Life, including My life, is the dialectic, as you might call it, of same and other, confrontation and union.

We are both other than God and yet the same as God? But same and other are opposites. This did not go down easy for a former logic professor, but I went on. “Lord, are those moments of union with God the goal or are they just nice accompaniments?”

Neither. You shouldn’t strive for moments of union per se, for peak experiences. That is self-indulgence, and a mistake of some who seek mystical experience. It is like orgasms—you should not seek them for their own sake. That is an abuse, a kind of idolatry. They happen naturally as the outcome and expression of love. But the experience of union is not just the accidental accompaniment of loving God. It is the essential expression.

Then, late at night, I felt the boundary between me and the world becoming thinner and less distinct. Slowly, subject and object were blending, becoming intimately bound, not standing apart from one another. I was noting this intellectually, but it was not an intellectual experience. It was an ontological experience, an experience of my whole being. Finally, for a few moments, it approached total one-ness, the complete loss of awareness of self. At that point, I pulled back.

“Lord, what is the meaning of this kind of experience?”

There are many levels and kinds of experience with Me—including music. Do not make too much of it. It is good, just let it happen. It does not mean that you are about to become a mystic or anything unworldly. It is not unlike—it is on a continuum with—a wide range of spiritual experiences, in and out of religious practice and sensibility, that people have all the time. But it is definitely good. It will give you energy and peace and insight, so let it in.

Many times one “loses oneself” in an experience, but those moments are less threatening than merging with God. I pulled back, but felt a nagging sense I was not supposed to. “Lord, I feel you want me to do more of the mystical stuff, ‘entering’ You and so forth.”

Yes, and you can remove the scare quotes. There is nothing strange about it. That is how the universe is. The parts can communicate with the whole. It is no more mystical or mysterious than your ability to move your arm.

Actually, since Descartes introduced a sharp mind-body distinction, how the mind moves the body has been a philosophical mystery. But, in actual life, it is not. The parts can communicate with the whole and vice versa. I had never thought of the universe that way.

 

“It is at the heart of my Being.”

In spite of the voice, I wondered why, most of the time, God is irritatingly elusive. But I was told,

You see Me all the time.

I looked around and tried to see God, but nothing registered. Martin Buber talks about saying Thou to nature, and that was about as close as I could get. If God wants to be so coy, why does He bother to get our attention at all? How, I asked, could our response possibly matter to Him?

It is very important. It is at the heart of my being.

Human recognition is at the heart of God’s being? I found that intriguing, but it only heightened the paradox of an invisible God who wants to be seen.

 

“Think in a Different Way”

“Lord, I have the feeling that you want me to read and think less, and to listen more and just write down your story.”

Don’t stop thinking, but think in a different way. Don’t work so hard to figure everything out, to make it rational, to make it fit your categories. Just listen and think through the implications of what I tell you.

“But, Lord, some of what I learn from You comes from worrying over what you say.”

Sometimes yes, but often no. Sometimes your questioning just gets in the way. The main point is to open your mind, to try to understand what I am saying on its own terms, and to see ways it might be true or understandable to you.

If something doesn’t make sense to me, how can I supposed to “see ways” to make it understandable? How do you get to that vantage point?

 

God: An Autobiography, As Told to a Philosopher – is the true story of a philosopher’s conversations with God. Dr. Jerry L. Martin, a lifelong agnostic. Dr. Martin served as head of the National Endowment for the Humanities and the University of Colorado philosophy department, is the founding chairman of the Theology Without Walls group at AAR, and editor of Theology Without Walls: The Transreligious Imperative. Dr. Martin’s work has prepared him to become a serious reporter of God’s narrative, experiences, evolution, and autobiography. In addition to scholarly publications, Dr. Martin has testified before Congress on educational policy. He has appeared on “World News Tonight,” and other television news programs.

________

Listen to this on God: An Autobiography, The Podcast– the dramatic adaptation and continuing discussion of the book God: An Autobiography, As Told To A Philosopher by Jerry L. Martin.

He was a lifelong agnostic, but one day he had an occasion to pray. To his vast surprise, God answered- in words. Being a philosopher, he had a lot of questions, and God had a lot to tell him.

“This is not a renunciation”

I want you to model the spiritual life. Live it deeply. Theology is not just an intellectual exercise. It must be grounded in an intimate relationship with Me, an intimate openness to My Word.

“Aren’t I already open, Lord?”

Yes, but you turn away. You know the problem. You hold Me at arm’s length and listen to Me only part of the time, and only partially, not as a whole person. You need to draw Me into yourself totally—live through Me—and let Me guide you totally.

“But that sounds miserable. I couldn’t have fun and enjoy life any more.”

No, it doesn’t mean that. You will find life perfectly pleasant. This is not a renunciation. It is an affirmation, a growing in a certain direction, in a certain domain.

This reminded me of saying a sad farewell, before getting married, to all I would be giving up—having my apartment as messy as I wanted, living on pizza, watching the Late Late Show. It’s amazing what a bachelor can cherish as the good life.

“Lord, what do You want me to do?”

Nothing dramatic. Just pause in the course of the day to take Me in. It doesn’t mean you have to interrupt other things you’re doing. But I will be co-present and a co-participant. Try that now, as you eat your lunch.

“Okay, Lord.” I drew Him in and unwrapped my sandwich. “Let me share this with You, Lord.”

Good.

That day I ate lunch “with God.” But most days I do not.