Pray and Work

I recently cleared an old bookshelf and found a booklet from the now closed Saint Joseph's Hospital in Queens where my uncle was in 2002. Several authors wrote it. Richard De Haan wrote this one. He refers to Psalm 55:17 "Evening and morning and at noon I will pray, and cry aloud, and He shall hear my voice."

He then writes:

"We sometimes forget that God may want us to be part of the answer to our own prayers. We expect Him to do everything, and then we sit back and do nothing.
We ask Him to bless the work of our church but offer excuses when asked to serve. We plead for loved ones to be saved, yet never speak a word f testimony to them. We earnestly intercede for people with serious financial needs, but we won’t dig deep into our won pockets eve though we have the means to help them. We ask the Lord to comfort and encourage the shut-ins and lonely, but we never go out of our way to pay them a visit or send them a note of encouragement.

Yes, God wants to bring our requests to Him, but many times He wants us to add feet to our prayers. Working often goes hand-in-hand with praying."

www.louizapatsis.com

Interfaith Meeting on the Environment

I attended a wonderful event today at the Turkish Cultural Center (TCC). A rabbi, an imam who works for the New York City government, and Father Mark Arey of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese, representing Patriarch Bartholomew, were there. I'd like to see a bigger audience and more religions represented in the future. A United Nations lady was there. She knows a female minster I know involved with Landmark Education: small world. Everyone had wonderful things to say.

I summed them up:

We treat the environment like we treat people: disregard like with the poor and sick.

We need to set an example: The imam had a water bottle. I did tell folks at the TCC though to get recycling bins!

Take action. Start with small steps.

Action can be bottom up, like starting in churches or other centers, or top down, like starting with big religious and government institutions.

We must give back to the Earth. We are not here to be kings of it as much as to live in harmony. Gather Arey said we sin, according to Patriarch Bartholomew, who has presided over six global environmental meetings, from the Arctic Circle to the Amazon, we sin when we hurt the environment, and thus must make amends. Father Arey also said, and the others agreed, starting with youth movements may work.
We must create good habits. A nice Turkish guy later told me his girlfriend got him to start recycling.

The imam had many wise things to say. Like that officials do not care about public protests. They close the windows. LOL We must start with actions. He answered my questions, which he liked, about city recycling: Yes, they do separate subway trash. Logistically, they cannot put blue and green trashcans on corners because of the volume of people and tourists in New York City, even compared to Los Angeles and San Francisco. Our greatest export is trash. A Newark incinerator does not work well, the rabbi said, and pollutes mostly a low-income neighborhood where it is located.

We got together in groups and talked about the event. One leader of each group spoke. I did. I summed up what we'd heard, and said that in places like Greece, Mexico and Turkey, in small town tourists’ spots, tons of bottles and other trash are thrown out each day. Where the consciousness does not exist, laws must be passed.

There will be an interfaith peace event at the TCC at 535 Fifth Avenue on may 4th at 6:00pm.
www.louizapatsis.com

Karen Armstrong at Saint John the Divine in New York City

I just heard Karen Armstrong talk about her compassion initiative. She talked about being open, not ignorant, to other religions. She mentioned how each religion has compassionate and violent aspects, and how texts are chosen. She recommends choosing compassionate texts.

She dabbled into the meaning of "pistis" and the Holy Trinity, two concepts that are Greek. "Pistis" is clear faith, not obedience really, at least how I hear it most often used. For a non-Greek, she did well. I have nuances to add, but won't talk about it hear. I recommend reading her books, listening to her speak, and joining and-or contributing to her Charter for Compassion, affiliated with TED. Email info@charterforcompassion.org.

Here are her books, from Wikipedia.

* Through the Narrow Gate (1982)
* The First Christian: Saint Paul's Impact on Christianity (1983)
* Beginning the World (1983)
* Tongues of Fire: An Anthology of Religious and Poetic Experience (1985)
* The Gospel According to Woman: Christianity's Creation of the Sex War in the West (1986)
* Holy War: The Crusades and their Impact on Today's World (1988)
* Muhammad: A Biography of the Prophet (1991)
* The English Mystics of the Fourteenth Century (1991)
* The End of Silence: Women and the Priesthood (1993)
* A History of God (1993)
* Jerusalem: One City, Three Faiths (1996)
* In the Beginning: A New Interpretation of Genesis (1996)
* Islam: A Short History (2000)
* The Battle for God: Fundamentalism in Judaism, Christianity and Islam (2000)
* Buddha (2001)
* Faith After September 11 (2002)
* The Spiral Staircase (2004)
* A Short History of Myth (2005)
* Muhammad: A Prophet For Our Time (2006)
* The Great Transformation: The Beginning of Our Religious Traditions (2006) ISBN 978-037-541317-9
* The Bible: A Biography (2007)
* The Case for God (2009)[23]
* Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life (2010) ISBN 978-0307595591

From Last Two paragraphs of Man and His Symbols, Edited by Carl Jung

Paradox: Although one may be sure Jesus Christ is the Lord our God, or any other truth, this is also true, and art very much shows us:

"Therefore, what might at first sight strike the reader as a certain vagueness in his ideas comes in fact from this scientific attitude of intellectual modesty -- an attitude that does not exclude (by rash, superficial pseudo-explanations and oversimplifications) new possible discoveries, and that respects the complexity of the phenomenon of life. For this phenomenon was always an exciting mystery to Jung. it was never, as it is for people with closed minds, an 'explained' reality about which it can be assume that we know everything.

Creative ideas, in my opinion, show their value in that, like keys, they help to 'unlock' hitherto unintelligible connections of facts and thus enable man to penetrate deeper in to the mystery of life. I am convinced that Jung's ideas can serve in this way to find and interpret new facts in many fields of science 9and also of everyday life) simultaneously leading the individual to a more balanced, mroe ethical, and wider conscious outlook. if the reader should fee stimulated to work further on the investigation and assimilation of the unconscious--which always begins by working on oneself--teh puropose fo this introductory book would
be fulfilled."

These paragraphs are from the last chapter, by by Marie-Louise Franz
Today I saw a college-age woman with the punk rock meets granny look. She had white, blond purple hair with a long dress and modern jewelry. Bravo.

NOVA Bible Special

This got me to thinking: Who were the Bible's editors?

http://video.pbs.org/video/1051895565

Jung and Religious Symbols

I am reading Man and Symbols by Carl Jung. Although I am in agreement with a lot, I am not sure about all of it. For instance, I am not that much into dreams.
One thing Marie-Louise Franz writes in her chapter at around page 248 is that most religions started with a symbol from the collective unconscious. Many of these symbols existed from many years ago. [She claims that] he thinks that religious symbols at first came from the unconscious, not a revelation, which most religious leaders will not second, of course. I am not sure if the Christian cross existed before Jesus Christ. I would not think so.

On page 253, she writes that he does not believe there is a religious truth aside from human consciousness. I don’t think I agree. But I do agree that people need to experience for themselves from medication to mistakes instead of only taking what elders tell them. That would be total “crystallization”, as she says, of their faith.

She does comment brilliantly on a painting showing the Holy Spirit as a spiral, as he says it often is portrayed. Curiously, in this painting, it is portrayed as spiraling into the paper. She interpreted this as meaning that further evolution will lead not to higher or lower ground, but just to a different dimension. Those who experience this in meditation, synchronicities, communicating with one who is not there, and more, know what I mean. That observation or interpretation was brilliant.

She goes on to write about how Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle says we cannot always know the Truth. Many religious leaders will say this is the basis of post-modernism and threatens them. However, most Christians, for instance, think we can’t know God fully. Jung also writes that language cannot explain it all. This would include Holy Books. This is true. As always, I am in the middle, somewhere in that yin/yang “line” that fluctuates in different times or situations. His individuation, which I may understand, if it is what I think I have been doing for years, is a whole from parts such as light and dark and what they symbolize.

Greek Orthodox Distinctions on the Virgin Mary

On Friday night, after the church service to honor the Virgin Mary before Easter, a theological Ph.D. student and priest gave a lecture about it. The writing needs to be reworked and he missed the major point I knew since a child about her: What is most precious about her is that she was 100% good and humble, what I think no one has or will be in her like again, certainly not me. (It's not my fault; there are just too many idiots everywhere.:)) Now, part of me is a doubting Thomas, but, even if by some slim chance we find out she is not what we all think, was mean at times, etc., it helps to have faith.

In the ways I imagine her, she was all good for everyone all the time. This was affirmed by a senior priest, helping the younger one answer a man who wanted to caution us that she did not co-create with God. Now, I don't know him, but he may be a male chauvinist piglet. In any case, the senior priest said that she was the chosen one to receive God, the most blessed person, above all Saints, and that is why she is exalted. I second that. She was humble, as he said, and completely aligned with the Will of God. he said this was her virginity, not the physical kind. (I think the official policy of the Greek Orthodox Church is that she stayed a virgin throughout her lifetime.) I love this part: We stress who she was a person more than if she was a physical virgin or not, something most people do not know that we do.

The younger priest said we cannot praise her too much, but of course cannot treat her like God. We are to take her as an example. Who follows the Lord's prayer of "Thy Will be done" and forgiving at a high rate? I don't. I love my religion, when it is explored for all it is, and taken in a spiritual and mystical manner it is meant, not fundamentalist.

I was thinking about this more today for a while and let me add: Perhaps she was the co-creator because somewhere in her subconscious (perhaps she was too humble for it to be in her conscious, she held the Possibility of All Possibilities, and did not even need to try. (This kind of thinking is in line with the Law of Attraction, the Secret, being, being a space for and more.) And, as a woman, she miraculously (science cannot explain all of the processes) Co-Created with her blood and body, as mothers do. God could have plopped Jesus Christ on the Earth, descending from the sky, or a wave, but used a woman, who usually have more of a Source or yin energy to them. That's it for now.