World Peace Day 2006-2100
Skyladder route up Mount Andromedia...above Columbia Glacier Icefield, hydrographic center of Canada and source of a River of Peaceful Life, that is known as the "Columbia River".
Be Still and Know that Our God is inside of Us. Be Still and know that He and She is One.
It is a deep Yogic mystery that the purpose of life is to help others, but in order to do this you must first loveyourself. How do we do it?
How do we love ourself? We must know the Truth that sets us free..that we love ourself by seeing Jesus Christ, God's only Son in it.
Prayer to the Father:
Our Father who art in Heaven, Hallowed be Thy Name,
Thy Kingdom Come, Thy Will be done,
on earth, as it is in Heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And, forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive those who trespass against us:
And, lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil. Amen
12/8/2017 Pope,Saint Francis has suggested we change the phrasing of this prayer
by taking out the "lead us not into temptation" part.
Some thoughts on that suggestion:
Prayer to the Son:
Dear Lord, help us to make the United States of America an instrument of thy peace.
[make us an instrument of thy peace]
Wherever there is darkness may there be light.
Wherever doubt, faith.
Wherever sadness,joy.
Wherever injury, pardon.
Wherever there is despair, hope.
Wherever there is hatred and anger, forgiveness.
[love]
Lord grant that we may not seek to be forgiven so much as to forgive.
[to be forgiven as we forgive].
To be understood, as to understand.
Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console.
Lord grant that we may not seek to be loved so much as to love...
[to be loved as to love]
For it is in giving that we receive.
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned:
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi
[Some thoughts added 8 years later to this blog.
I have been praying this prayer for about 30 years now. If there were two more versicles that I would add to St. Francis' intentions, that he may have unintentionally left out it would be:
Lord, wherever there is illusion, let it be transformed into what is good in our live's experiences, let there be what is real.
And, wherever there is untruth (in our live's experiences), let there be truth. For it is in this way that we with un-veiled faces allow our Lord's glory to transform His image in us II Corinthians 3;18]]
Prayer to the Holy Spirit:
The Lord is my Shepherd;
I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures:
He leaders me in the path of righteousness for His name's sake.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil; for thou art with me.
Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me.
Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of my enemies:
You are the first and the last.
You place on my head,
the mountaintop of my soul, a crown of glory,
filled with the oil of gladness.
thou anointest my head with your oil of loving kindness, compassion, joy, equanimity;
my cup runneth over.
Surely, goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life:
And, I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.
Prayer to God's wife, Mary, wife of God, the Name of God,
YHWH YHWH El Shaddai, Sabaoth
Remember most gracious Virgin Mary that never was it known that
anyone who fled to Thy protection, implored Thy help, and sought
Thy intercession was left unaided.
Inspired with this confidence, I fly unto Thee, O Virgin of virgins, My Mother!
To Thee I come; Before Thee I stand, sinful and sorrowful.
Oh Mother of the Word incarnate!
Despise not my petitions, but, in Thy mercy, hear and answer me. Amen
We do not believe that prayers should be "sacrifices". This implies they will be perfunctorily listened to, then thrown away or burned and forgotten, left for what is said to be for God to fulfill, but actually tossing them away who knows where before you have to keep faith with them.
To improve the performance of us all, with God helping us, in this situation we have created a prayer posting website so we can post prayer intentions together to be keep there until they are answered, and then be able to meditate on them, think about later how time has changed our desires about having them answered, and later if we still believe we need to have them answered, use what we have already understood about them to revisit them with our renewed continued thoughts and requests. A computer database program can help us with this, not as much as God can, but still to some greater extent.
cf. http://www.yhwhschofchrist.org/prayers/index.cgi
Blessed, happy, filled with the riches of Christ are the poor in spirit.
Blessed, happy, joyful are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.
Blessed, happy, joyful are the meek, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.
Blessed, enviably happy, filled with the riches of Christ with the joy and contentment
of a satisfied eternal life are those who make and maintain God's Peace in Us.
For they shall be called God's Son.
Jesus Christ
Jesus Christ, if your Father in Heaven cares about what happens to the little young sparrows outside His House in the yard, He certainly cares enough about the prayers offered by You and others in Your Name to post them, to reply to them in a semi-public forum and others who are praying with you and Him about them and keep them in order to allow us all to comment about how they have been answered or not on His website.
GOD’S ETERNAL TREE OF LIFE
There is a Tree of Life. It is a steadily growing Eternal Vine. Spiritual God is the Vine and we material humans are its branches. The Eternal Life Blood of Jesus Christ flows in and through this Vine. If we remain in it , by studying those of God’s Words which creates it we can live our lives as a part of it, for its benefit and ours. This happens because this tree’s structure is from the top down, vertically from God inward and outward unto us. But, also it works because it is formed from the bottom up, horizontally through its structure in us and the World around us. Because it is formed in both of these ways, the Name of God [as the Concept of a Concept] as it forms us also controls the life that flows through its roots.
If we cultivate this tree of eternal life and let it grow inside of us, then it will produce the good fruit of our needs and wants expressed as a part of God’s plans. The fruit is good, because God in us is good and because he is what gives the tree its life.
Because the Lord Jesus Christ is a real person alive today... He lives in this eternal tree dwelling in us and lives and reigns within the hearts and minds of those who call upon him.
He and His Father along with their Holy Spirit dwelling in us are in it in us. If we let God’s Son shine Himself in us, through the leaves and branches in us in which he dwell. This nourishes the whole tree and helps it to grow and increase in size in us and around us.
As we mentioned God Himself, as the name of three individual persons in One, is the root of this tree. Its roots are firmly fixed upward and downward into the earth itself. For God is the One who has created the heavens, the air which we breathe and the ground on which we stand. As this grows in us, as when a tree is firmly rooted in the ground and remains fixed in the earth in which it was planted. If we live by God’s laws and meditate on his will and honor his name so it will grow and send leaves and new branches outward and upward.
Those of us and the parts of us which believe in Jesus Christ but live in the World and have their hearts and minds in the World will be born again in him and recreated in him first from the top down and then from the bottom up . Some of us and some parts of us live in Jesus Christ and get their nourishment and support and guidance from the Word of God and the Love of Christ. These parts of us are eternal seeds of Truth growing forever and will never die nor pass away until they reach the goal and the good that God has planned for them.
PARABLE OF THE TWO BIRDS IN THE TREE
There were two song birds who lived in God’s Tree of Life. One was a male and one a female. And,
Inside of this eternal life of life of God’s Holy Spirit as it dwells in us there are two parts in our soul. There are two parts that exist there like two birds in a tree. The female bird’s song expresses her faithful hopes for a better life, the male listen’s to her and acts accordingly to her hopes and faith. Although, sometimes things get out of order, most of the time they have a very happy life.
One day, as they happened to look upward, an eagle was circling above them and seemed prepared to swoop down. As they looked to the ground a hunter was walking along with his rifle pointed in their direction. The two birds froze in fear.
However, just as the hunter was getting ready to pull the trigger and shoot them, a snake bit his leg. His arm jerked and the bullet hit the eagle which was coming down to attack them. The hunter then turned and shot the snake. But, it was too late for the hunter for he was killed by the snake’s bit. The two birds stayed there a while. And, then they flew away, as birds do all day long, but this time didn’t come back and made their nest elsewhere. And, their souls became a seed of truth in God’s Kingdom of Heaven. Their souls are a seed that is living but was dead, a seed of goodness that is living but was dead.
The key to the explanation of this parable is that the female bird is God’s faith in us and us in Him [inasmuch as faith is concerned with form or things seen]. Faith comes from hearing as Saint Paul has explained to us in the 1st chapter of the Book of Romans. And, our hopes are based on beliefs in the certainty of God’s Truth. The male bird is God’s hope in us and us in Him [inasmuch as we can expect it rationally]. Looking a little closer and deeper we can understand that the two birds represent God twofold presence and power dwelling in us. The male bird is the “dwelling place of God”. He is omnipresent Presence and emptiness inside of Presence as Divine Truth[from which follows His omniscience and also His omnipotence]. These two parts in the male bird are the two parts of God's Name of four primary parts, the other two being Divine Light and Divine Love. The female bird is It and Her expression of His and Her Truth in words and song. *
One interpretation of this parable in accord with Eastern thought where you hear it told often**, is that if the two birds (us) are the two good, divine parts of our human soul they can just do nothing and things will work out. For whatever happens it is the same in the larger eternal scheme of things. The male bird is the good acquisitive part of us which provides the necessities for the contemplative female part of us. He listens and does something. She listens and does nothing. The hunter who shoots at the birds is the acquisitive human part of our nature. The Eagle is the individual human part of the contemplative side of our nature. The snake is bad part of the unintelligent and random energy our human being. It is only bad in as much as it is purpose-less and uncontrolled by Divine Intelligence. He is all that remains after the personal parts of our individual identities have been destroyed.
If we eat on earth of the tree of life, then we become like the hunter, killing what is divine in order to make a living. Then, the snake will bite us (actually this part of our own nature will bite itself; him or her or us). And, we will have to crawl around on the earth in order to earn our living by sweat and toil. This is just what happened to Cain who couldn’t control his anger, hatred and killed his brother Able. Then, afterwards, he was punished for it by God.
*
God’s Son, Jesus Christ, is neither necessarily male or female. He and She, or He and She, is both the Logical Truth [male] in God’s Presence and also its expression in prophetic and factual words in us [female]. These are the two parts of what we call in metaphysical philosophy the “Logos”.
** eg. The Mundaka Upanishad, an Upanishad to help monks and nuns, unmarried people, or older people later in life understand both the female and male creative parts of their souls and spirits.
When the human part of our soul fires its intentions and its will (its weapon) at the divine part it aims at what it hears,sees,understands. But, often what it hits, if we don't repent enough before trying, is not the divine part, but the Eagle, the human part of our contemplative nature. Then if we are fortunate enough, through God’s grace we repent of our mistakes. It then that we discover that we have inside our self God’s seed of Life, which is in fact this part of our souls.
There are actually two more ways of looking at this parable.
1) The importance of non-resistance to divine will,
2) The importance of doing our part to resist what is bad in our human wills,
3) How to realize we shouldn’t involve our ego in making a decision about which of the first two ways of dealing with the situation we will choose, only denying that there is anything to be afraid of. The correct way of doing is to depend more on God and less on ourselves.
The second other way of looking at things come from considering what can often happen to either of the two birds if they do nothing:
Consider what might happen if the two birds had made their nest near a house, where someone lived. One day the door to the house would be open and one of the birds (the female) fly in, out of curiosity, and get trapped inside of the house. The house is a house of prayer, meditation, and Bible study, not the normal place for a young sparrow to live. The owner of the house could try to let the little bird out but she would evade his attempts to help out. How could he help her find her way out? Each time he tries to point out the right direction for her to go she becomes frightened and hides behind a piece of furniture. When she flies from one room to another the next room would be toward the interior of the house and not the outside. Finally, he would figure out the solution. Close all the doors in the room except the series of doors which led to the correct path to the outside. Then take a broom and get behind the bird and rile it.
This other way of looking at the parable of the two birds also relates to trying to decide what to do in a situation in which the birds could die. But, this time there is another person trying to help (God). And, the problem of what to do gets transferred partly to the other person this time. Are we all only responsible for our own salvation? Does one group of people not need to help another escape the problems they find themselves in? One of the birds got caught in the house. What she had been told before was to do nothing.
But, the way out of the house was too complicated for a little bird to figure out. Even, if she tried to take this course or even try on her own. Some people wouldn’t take the time to try and figure out how to help a small bird in this situation. But, the owner, believing in God, and the value of all life, did. And, in this case there was a solution if both the owner of the house (God) and the bird worked together.
A third way that we may choose of dealing with situations deals with a middle way, This way, taking two opposite viewpoints into account, doing nothing and trying to do everything yourself, depends on a higher power for help. After the too quick to shoot hunter in us has been defeated, the question is how do we use this “twofold” approach to catch the snake in the parable****. The snake corresponds to the sense impression energy in the egos of all of us thinking together as humans without God’s help and guidance. Left to ourselves we tend to reason empirically and practically only without reference to respect for or guidance from any final causes. We seek our own highest good as defined only by the total good in each of us or all of us, not both together. But, we all have a higher calling and duty to honor and bless God’s name also first in order to achieve our own individual and collective highest good. Trying to catch and sublimate the energy of the snake by our own will is like trying to catch a snake in a hole by sticking your own hand first in the hole [even not knowing what you will find inside].
**** see "Thundering Silence: Sutra on Knowing the Better Way to Catch a Snake" by Thich Nhat Hanh, Parallax Press for more on this.
But, if we ask God first through knowledgeable [twofold meditative] prayer and through spending some of our time developing good habits ahead of time, what he wants us to do, before we act, then we are more likely to be successful. Thus the third and best way of dealing with problems often requires a lot of time and patience. It is twofold meditatively, but One-fold in terms for the need for use to honor God and Truth as our help. But, doing it this way, we will often find we have more than one set of options to deal with the problem at hand. Then, like a wise military commander, with several different plans to use in a campaign, depending of what happens along the way… we don’t have to stick our hand unprotected into a hole. We can, depending on our knowledge that God exists and he has our salvation in His hands, hold a forked stick in our hands extending God hands and push it deep into the hole towards the snake without any fear of what the snake can in terms of biting our hands.
He, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and His Apostles and the angels and archangels that over watch us all and follow along with them are real persons alive eternally as important parts and parcels of our humanity that live on this earth today… both in a pre-millennial theological sense…and in a post millennial sense. In a pre-millennial sense He and it are the Eternal Light of the One increasing inside of our eternal souls. In a post millennial sense He and it are the Eternal Light of the One without a second in our souls and spirits. When we study and worship the different details of how God [His Holy Spirit] dwells inside of all of us instead of just one of us we are putting on the full theological armor of God’s own Holy Spirit instead of just wearing part of it. Instead of their just being One Truth to study and follow that sets us free, there is One Truth inside of many Truths to study that can set us free. The female bird is God’s power which is named Christ the Messiah who is the power of salvation we receive from our own individual mind inside of the Mind of God [also called VeH as a part of the name YaHWeH]. The male bird [also called JaH as part of the name YaHWeH] is God’s Presence or place of dwelling in us.
Our knowledge of God has to be both a Power and a Presence in order to be self-existent eternally and personally. He is a discrete Presence more precisely mathematically and logically as He is the discrete element of form, the number which is number One faith, the set which has no elements in it. And, He is the successor function that defines the number Two in terms of the number One set. He is the Number Three which we define in terms of both a successor function to the next number and a predecessor function referencing the number which comes before it. And, after these discrete logical elements have been defined in our Tree of Life He is the continuous limit their infinite continuation in the material time realm. He is a Unity in a Diversity. He is both a One Presence and One Power, and a One Realized and Manifested or Incarnated Spiritually, Logically, Truthfully, and Physically. He and She have come to us all both in the outward worldly catastrophic sense as foretold in the Book of Revelations and also in a more subtle and easier to miss sense of His Holy Spirit dwelling as a presence inside of your own spirit and soul.
This is my argument and teaching told by means of a parable interpreted three ways that justifies my arguments for the need of being a liberal Protestant. If you haven’t found Jesus Christ yet or already found Him and have missed Him later somewhere along the way ,I believe the best way for you to find Him again [or for the first time] is by us all studying and meditating together and helping each other. Studying not as a special chosen people, or using one particular book or scripture only, or respecting only one particular special group of priests or teachers, but along with all of us and meditating not only by yourself but along with all of us on his ever-present, ever-self-renewing and self-completing Spoken Truth… His Gospel Words inside of all of us and you together. May God Bless us all eternally through these teachings. Amen … Hal-le-lu Jah Amen.
