Originally published 9/15/2014
How the world is conspiring to shower you with blessings. Bob Brezney
Do you know how it is when you have a sudden realization about something that is obvious? Something that you would have claimed that you ‘knew already’, until you realize that you didn’t?
I was reading Jesus, A New Vision. The 6thchapter is called, Jesus as Sage: Challenge to Conventional Wisdom. Author Marcus Borg talks about how we perceive reality. He writes that one of the things Jesus came for was to challenge what conventional wisdom tells us about reality. “Jesus saw reality very differently from both us and most of his contemporaries. In common with them and with most people in the premodern world, he saw reality as ultimately Spirit (and not ultimately material), that is, that the ‘final word’ about reality was God. … The claim that God is gracious lies at the heart of the Old Testament. It flowed out of the charismatic stream of Jesus’ own tradition: “God is in love with his people”. It is at the heart of the exodus and exile stories.” (p. 100-102)Borg contends that conventional wisdom tells us that reality is hostile, indifferent and that self preservation is the first law of our being. “We must protect ourselves against reality and make ourselves secure in the face of its threats, whether we choose secular or religious means of doing so.” (p. 103). This is what caught my attention, “But if we see reality as supportive and nourishing, then another response to life becomes possible: trust. To say that God is gracious means that the relationship with God is not dependent upon performance as measured by the standard of conventional wisdom.” (p. 103).
While reading I had an ah-ha moment of clarity and it left me wondering how I could use this new clarity to improve my life? I am thinking of so many examples of how I bought the conventional wisdom version of reality. I have talked about how; this is ‘life school’ and that we are here to learn lessons the hard way, that there is a separation from my life and God, that heaven or whatever comes next is different than here and that hard things have to happen to me as some sort of test.
Jesus challenged us to believe in the reality that; everything is of God and God is love; gracious and compassionate.
I would have said that I believed in the truth of that statement. I would also have said that everything is ‘of God’. But I would not have said that my reality is that the world around me is full of love, grace and compassion. When I look at how I have lived my life it is clear I was operating with the ‘conventional wisdom’ form of reality. Ouch! I can’t deny that this is true. I have operated with so much fear and mistrust.
I have been focusing recently on finding joy, feeling gratitude, enjoying what comes no matter what. I am sure that some of you can say that it is easy for you to do, but not me. What if I could live in the reality where everything is of God and everything around me yearns to express itself as love, grace and compassion? I am ready for a daily practice to help me intentionally challenge my accepted context of reality. In the past I made gratitude lists as a way to feel more joy. I think I will use the same concept of a daily practice to see how life, people, the world; is expressing an expansive yearning to be love, grace and compassion. I know that I have a deep yearning to live and have a life that comes from that. I have a deep yearning for your life to be like that too. I hope you do too. Why not come to my FaceBook page and we can do this daily practice together? We can remind each other about what is REAL!
Here are a few reflective questions to get us going.
- How has someone else been love, grace and compassion today?
- How have I been love grace and compassion today?
- What event in the world shows how it is really is a place of love, grace and compassion today?
- In what way did the universe shower me with blessings today?
Affirmation:
- I see the world as love, grace and compassion today.
Borg, Marcus. (1987) Jesus: A New Vision. HarperOne. San Francisco, CA.
Another of my blog posts about how I can make life a hostile place. Hell in the hallway
If you are interested in irreverence and bold creativity you might enjoy this book by Bob Brezney. Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings