My Minister wrote:
The first Sunday of each month, we ask a member of the Unitarian Universalist congregation to share something of their spiritual journey with the congregation. This is a 3-5 minute talk about your faith journey.
Since October 1 is Erev Yom Kippur, and the Sunday service is on Tikkun, I thought it might be meaningful for you to share.
I'm not one to believe in a deity that takes a personal interest in me; unlike the house painter who cheated by watering down the paint. He repented and heard a voice from above calling, “repaint, repaint and thin no more.”
As a kid, I was pretty much able to confirm that I had 9 or more lives as I lived through two drowning incidents including one where my life just tunneled in front of me and an airline near-crash. These and some other events proved the point to me in early life.
Only when two of my children’s lives were *threatened did I find that helplessness that yearns for meaning. The local police assigned special security, the city put up additional street lighting and the clandestine world of secret police squads operating in Rhode Island was opened up to us. Yet, no one had control of the future. With these safeguards, my children’s lives were still at risk for at least 3 months.
The black door of pure evil appeared and opened and then insidiously closed. I was left with a taste of evil. I realized that evil was a real force not measurable by physics but by a weight in my own heart.
If there was evil, I figured; then there had to be good. My mind needed to know how these forces were related. Where they opposite sides of the same coin or balanced in nature, or what?
My personal faith comes from this question. I learned that the answer was what was under my control. I chose to believe that most of humanity is good. I tend to think sometimes that I’ve cornered the market on knowing the difference. I don’t. I’ve learned to favor good because that’s a happier choice.
Does God care about me, Myron? I doubt it. He gave me the gift of being an alive human. The navigation is up to me.
* Note: This occurred many years ago when my children were ages 6 and 7.
The first Sunday of each month, we ask a member of the Unitarian Universalist congregation to share something of their spiritual journey with the congregation. This is a 3-5 minute talk about your faith journey.
Since October 1 is Erev Yom Kippur, and the Sunday service is on Tikkun, I thought it might be meaningful for you to share.
I'm not one to believe in a deity that takes a personal interest in me; unlike the house painter who cheated by watering down the paint. He repented and heard a voice from above calling, “repaint, repaint and thin no more.”
As a kid, I was pretty much able to confirm that I had 9 or more lives as I lived through two drowning incidents including one where my life just tunneled in front of me and an airline near-crash. These and some other events proved the point to me in early life.
Only when two of my children’s lives were *threatened did I find that helplessness that yearns for meaning. The local police assigned special security, the city put up additional street lighting and the clandestine world of secret police squads operating in Rhode Island was opened up to us. Yet, no one had control of the future. With these safeguards, my children’s lives were still at risk for at least 3 months.
The black door of pure evil appeared and opened and then insidiously closed. I was left with a taste of evil. I realized that evil was a real force not measurable by physics but by a weight in my own heart.
If there was evil, I figured; then there had to be good. My mind needed to know how these forces were related. Where they opposite sides of the same coin or balanced in nature, or what?
My personal faith comes from this question. I learned that the answer was what was under my control. I chose to believe that most of humanity is good. I tend to think sometimes that I’ve cornered the market on knowing the difference. I don’t. I’ve learned to favor good because that’s a happier choice.
Does God care about me, Myron? I doubt it. He gave me the gift of being an alive human. The navigation is up to me.
* Note: This occurred many years ago when my children were ages 6 and 7.
Labels: god, UU Unitarian Universalist, yom kippur
posted by Myron at
9:47 PM
1 Comments:
hi. i dont agree with the statement that your life is under your own control. through my faith and experiences, i realized that it's all up to God. if we try and lean on ourselves, on our own strength, then we cannot fathom the strength that God gives us when we are destitute.
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Anonymous, at 3:30 PM
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