Real Reality – Doubts, Posers and Agnosticism

“…a man may be haunted with doubts, and only grow thereby in faith. Doubts are the messengers of the Living One to the honest.
(Doubts) are the first knock at our door of things that are not yet but have to be understood…Doubt must precede every deeper assurance; for uncertainties are what we see when we look into a region hitherto unknown, unexplored, unannexed.”
– George MacDonald
There are religious believers who remind me of some a kind of “poser” for an advanced rock climbers but who are “top-roping” — trusting the ropes and their pals to make sure he’s hauled to the top in case of a slip up.  He’s cockily assured he’s always tethered, for him, checking his toe holds are of little importance.  In contrast, true “advanced” climbers are the ones who check, but climb, and climb higher.  And sometimes choose the wrong toe holds: There will be periods of hardship and crushing difficulties and sometimes the greatest saint will doubt.  After all, he is a human.  Ironically, doubt wears the disguise of piety in times of great personal success.
There is a great group below–the agnostics –who stand on the ground looking up at the climb. Perhaps they’d been tethered and top-roped for a while, but they’re just earthbound now. These doubters are the “Thomases.” (John 20:24-29) One would wish them all to be honest men, who ask only to put their fingers into His scarred hands, and thrust their hands into His sides.  Sometimes they seek a faith if only to quiet the gong of small gods and the clang of the corruptible, unresurrected creation.  Granted, a “Thomas” hasn’t yet figured it out and maybe he’s still seeking.  As long as he has the will (or is it the courage?) to admit that he has been unable to find anything durable but is still actively searching, he deserves and will receive an answer.  “Cookie-cutter” statements and pat answers don’t solve the doubter’s dilemma.  They are better persuaded by the reasons which they have themselves discovered than by those which have come into the mind of others.  Whether an earthbound Thomas or an advanced climber, we all have our own tree to cut down:

In winter in the woods alone
Against the trees I go.
I mark a maple for my own
And lay the maple low.

At four o’clock I shoulder ax,
And in the afterglow
I link a line of shadowy tracks
Across the tinted snow.

I see for Nature no defeat
In one tree’s overthrow
Or for myself in my retreat
For yet another blow

In Winter In The Woods – by Robert Frost

Winter is the Childhood of the Year

The winter is the childhood of the year.
Into this childhood of the year came the child Jesus; and into this childhood of the year must we all descend.
It is as if God spoke to each of us according to our need.
My son, my daughter, you are growing old and cunning; you must grow a child again, with my son, this blessed birth-time.
You are growing old and careful; you must become a child.
You are growing old and distrustful; you must become a child.
You are growing old and petty, and weak and foolish; you must become a child --- my child, like the baby there, that strong sunrise of faith and hope and love, lying in his mother's arms in the stable.

Adela Cathcart - by George MacDonald

Sacred Stillness

…work is not always required of a man. There is such a thing as a sacred idleness—the cultivation of which is now fearfully neglected. – George MacDonald

The cultivation of sacred idleness. Do we know what that means? What use is it? We probably have a low view of the value silence and stillness (especially in December!).
I imagine that the strategic value of “fallow ground” not understood by many people. When you cultivate a garden and produce crops, you need to let the ground “rest.” The method adopted varies, depending on the location: whether you live where winter forces you to stop cultivation, or in the tropics (where a different method is adopted.)
With our brains, when we allow ourselves a long stretch of time not given over to problem-solving, information-gathering, working and producing, gaining new information and skills may seem like a waste. But, when you take time to be silent, and use the quiet time to listen, to ponder what one has already taken in, you may be surprised at the results. Besides deeper contentment, you may find strength, courage, new understandings, ideas, and alternative solutions to sticky problems. Artists and musicians have long known that stillness is the well from which robust production springs.
Try to take time…

The World is Too Much with Us

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
The Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not–

“The World is too Much with Us” partial – by William Wordsworth

Christ - close, closer & closest

APPROACHES

When thou turn’st away from ill,
Christ is this side of thy hill.

When thou turnest toward good,
Christ is walking in thy wood.

When thy heart says, ‘Father, pardon!’
Then the Lord is in thy garden.

When stern Duty wakes to watch,
Then His hand is on the latch.

But when Hope thy song doth rouse,
Then the Lord is in the house.

When to love is all thy wit,
Christ doth at thy table sit.

When God’s will is thy heart’s pole,
Then is Christ thy very soul.

• George Mac Donald

Lost And Found

LOST AND FOUND
I missed him when the sun began to bend;
I found him not when I had lost his rim;
With many tears I went in search of him,
Climbing high mountains which did still ascend,
And gave me echoes when I called my friend;
Through cities vast and charnel-houses grim,
And high cathedrals where the light was dim,
Through books and arts and works without an end,

But found him not—the friend whom I had lost.
And yet I found him—as I found the lark,
A sound in fields I heard but could not mark;
I found him nearest when I missed him most;
I found him in my heart, a life in frost,
A light I knew not till my soul was dark.

• George MacDonald

The 4-Letter Word Most People Hate—or Hate to Hear

P-R-A-Y.
What is it about prayer? If I talk about it, the conversation either begins and ends talking ABOUT it (as, you see, talking about prayer is ok, just, please, don’t do it) or it ends (people don’t want to talk about it, it’s too personal or some such). But it’s there—from youth to old age, prayer keeps returning.
So, why do we pray?--- I am not speaking of the “transactional” prayers in which types of prayers and sacrifices function as part of the economy of “bargaining” for a divine favor or good fortune from some spirit-god, as shamans, witchdoctors and other “spirit-guides” do.
I am speaking of the appeal that we--finite, mortal and flawed people--make to all-powerful and all-knowing, creator and sustainer God. What is our unspoken or assumed expectation of prayer? I sense it is often not simply petitioning the Almighty, but also, a desire to experience His immanence in our (little) lives. Yes, we may pray because we seek help, but we wish for transcendence.
What is the thing least understood thing about prayer, particularly petition (request) prayers? People are surprised and/or disappointed that they don’t get what they pray for just because they prayed for it – at least not every time. Which is rather curious, if God is who He is and we are who we are, then we should be okay with it.
There is a group of people who refuse to pray because “if God is really a beneficent and all-knowing, then I need not pray. Without even asking, He’s rushing to bestow on me what I wish, which makes prayer unnecessary.” I am not sure if this is challenging God, or pride, or laziness, or mere disbelief—or a combination, but it sounds like the person thinking this way is the Boss of the World. I would think that if my teenager needs and wants breakfast before school, then he should move to the kitchen where the breakfast food is—he’ll not get it lying in bed. (-Charity Johnson)
George MacDonald addresses it further:
“But if God is so good as you represent Him [to be], and if He knows all that we need, and far better than we do ourselves, why [is] it necessary to ask Him for anything?”
I answer,
“What if He knows prayer to be the thing we need first and most? What if the main object in God’s idea of prayer [is] the supplying of our great, our endless need—the need of Himself?
Hunger may drive the runaway child [back] home, and he may or may not be fed at once, but he needs his mother more than his dinner.
Communion with God is the one need of the soul beyond all other need:prayer is the beginning of that communion, [there is] some need that is the motive of that prayer.
So begins a communion, a taking up with God, a coming-to-one with Him. [This] is the sole end of prayer, [even] of existence itself in its infinite phases.
We must ask that we may receive:[however] it is not God’s end in having us pray to receive with respect to our lower needs [since] He could give us everything without that.
[God would] bring us to His knee… [He] withholds [so] that we may ask."

---
from George MacDonald, 365 Readings, edited by CS Lewis (language updated)
Collier Books, Macmillan Publishing Company, New York

Deadlock

Man finds it hard to get what he wants, because he does not want the best; God finds it hard to give because He would give the best, and man will not take it.

• George MacDonald

Motivation Enough for Mercy

Pity the human who believes himself to be an island--dispensing little or no real kindness and mercy. Even in the here and now, that person is bound to shrink-the incredible shrinking of his soul happens without him perceiving it.
"The demand for mercy is far from being for the sake only of the man who needs his neighbour's mercy; it is greatly more for the sake of the man who must show the mercy. It is a small thing to a man whether or not his neighbour be merciful to him; it is life or death to him whether or not he be merciful to his neighbour. . .
The reward of the merciful is, that by their mercy they are rendered capable of receiving the mercy of God -- yea, God himself, who is Mercy."

• George MacDonald

But It Doesn't Seem Like Good News....

And all the time it was God near her that was making her unhappy. For as the Son of Man came not to send peace on earth but a sword, so the first visit of God to the human soul is generally in a cloud of fear and doubt, rising from the soul itself at His approach.
The sun is the cloud dispeller, yet often he must look through a fog if he would visit the earth at all.

• George MacDonald, "365 Readings of George MacDonald" by CS Lewis

Real Wealth

"Did you ever think the origin of the word avarice?" "No." "It comes, at least it seems to me to come, from the same root as the verb have. It is the desire to call things ours. We call the holding in the hand, or the house, or the pocket, or the power, [as] having:
but things so held cannot really be had; having is but an illusion in regard to things.
It is only what we can be with that we really possess--what is of our kind, from God to the lowest animal partaking of humanity.

• George MacDonald, "365 Readings of George MacDonald" by CS Lewis.

Coming to the Light When You are Wrong

We have (I include myself) done and said and thought many things wrong in our lives. That is what it means to live another day: successes, maybe; mistakes, sins, and errors are guaranteed--we are still earthbound. And while some doubters might think from the previous post that they got a "Get-Out-of-Jail-Free" Pass from George MacDonald, that is not at all correct: they overlooked the critically important qualifier “honest” before the word "doubter."
MacDonald deals with our laziness and tendency towards self-deceit:

“No man is condemned for anything he has done: he is condemned for continuing to do wrong once he knows better-and has an avenue; out of his wrongdoing. But [if he chooses differently], he is condemned for not coming out of the darkness; for not coming to the light.”

• George MacDonald

Meanwhile....Back to the Honest Doubters

I spent a couple days browsing the web looking for good Christian websites or blogs--I haven’t found too many. I know I am picky: my standards are strict for both the appearance and the content. As I read the blogs/websites, I tried put myself in the shoes of an agnostic, if there really is such as thing. I was looking for a broad view on the spiritual landscape. Eventually, I returned to hard copies for the best, most probing pieces. I agree with C S Lewis that George MacDonald is one of the best original Christian thinkers of the past 200 years. MacDonald pointedly deals with covert doubts that people harbor, and even leans towards celebrating honest doubters but without sacrificing the Truth of Christ. True to Christ whom he loves, MacDonald has a penchant for condemning false religion (going through the motions). No wonder he was an ostracized minister in his lifetime.
(I have updated his language) –
Honesty Before God, Honest Ignorance vs Going Along to Get Along
“Don’t let your cowardice agree that a word is ‘light’ because another calls it ‘light,’ [if] it looks to you [like] darkness. Either say the thing is not what is seems, or that God never said or did it.
But it is wrong to misinterpret what God does and then say the thing, as [someone has represented it to you], must be right because God did it. No, that is of the devil. But, on the other hand, do not try to believe anything that affects you as darkness.
Still, even if you [make] a mistake and refuse to believe something is true, you will have done less wrong to Christ by your refusal than if you had initially accepted [believed] something to be of Him while it really seemed to be darkness to you. 
 [It is better in practice to ] Let your words be few, so as to prevent yourself from saying anything which later you’ll regret in your heart.”
 - George MacDonald

God Would Bring Us To His Knee

What is it about prayer? It is a Life Question that we can’t shake. From the time a child first learns about it (whether formally taught or not) until to his final years, prayer is a recycled Life Theme. Granted, some seek to be rid of it but typically it rears its head again, usually unbidden.
Why do we pray?- I am not speaking of the “transactional” prayers in which types of prayers and sacrifices function as part of the economy of “bargaining” for a divine favor or good fortune from some spirit-god, as shamans, witchdoctors and other “spirit-guides” do.
I am speaking of the appeal that we, finite, mortal and flawed people make to all-powerful and all-knowing, creator and sustainer God.
Back to the question: what is our unspoken or assumed expectation of prayer? I believe it is not only our petition we seek but also by means of the prayer interaction, we wish to experience His immanence in our (little) lives. Yes, we may pray because we seek help, but we also wish for contact with the transcendent—
I have found that the thing most people least understand about prayer is the part about RESULTS. Prayer is efficacious (having the desired result), but beware, in every other pursuit we have a way to measure the desired result. The problem with the efficaciousness of prayer is that God has the measuring stick. If we're using ours (my will, my desired outcome), then the results will appear to be flawed. That should be more than okay with us if God is who He is and we are who we are.
I have had many former church-goers and “universalists” tell me they do not pray because they do not need to. They have a reason: "God is both beneficent and all-knowing, I do not need to pray-without me breathing a prayer, God has read my thoughts and desires and answered them." Theologically this is belief has no legs. But, at its root it’s a problem of pride and laziness (I suspect some people cringe at the humility of prayer). A simple analogy will do to illustrate: both my teenager (and I) know that he needs and wants breakfast before school. Shouldn’t he come to the kitchen for it? If the parent has provided but the child is too lazy to make a move, he’s cutting himself off from the source and will be famihed by lunchtime.
George MacDonald addresses it further in: "Why Should It Be Necessary?”
“But if God is so good as you represent Him [to be], and if He knows all that we need, and far better than we do ourselves, why [is] it necessary to ask Him for anything?”
I answer,
“What if He knows prayer to be the thing we need first and most? What if the main object in God’s idea of prayer [is] the supplying of our great, our endless need—the need of Himself?
Hunger may drive the runaway child [back] home, and he may or may not be fed at once, but he needs his mother more than his dinner.
Communion with God is the one need of the soul beyond all other need:
prayer is the beginning of that communion, [there is] some need that is the motive of that prayer.
So begins a communion, a taking up with God, a coming-to-one with Him. [This] is the sole end of prayer, [even] of existence itself in its infinite phases.
We must ask that we may receive:[however] it is not God’s end in having us pray to receive with respect to our lower needs [since] He could give us everything without that. [God would] bring us to His knee… [He] withholds [so] that we may ask."

• from George MacDonald, 365 Readings, edited by CS Lewis (language updated) Collier Books, Macmillan Publishing Company, New York.

Silence is Still Golden.

...work is not always required of a man.
There is such a thing as a sacred idleness—the cultivation of which is now fearfully neglected.

• George MacDonald

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Far too often we have a low view of the fullness of silence and stillness. I think perhaps this is because the concept of "fallow ground" is something that is foreign to many people. To devote any lengthy period of time not given over to problem-solving, information-gathering, working and producing, exchanging ideas, gaining new information and skills seems like a waste. And yet, if one takes time to be silent, to use the quiet time to listen and ponder what one has already taken in and absorbed, it can actually produce an abundant yield of new understanding. One might even have some highly innovative ideas or synthesize previously disparate concepts. We often learn most when we try least.

It's A Short Winter...

IV.

The night is damp and warm and still,
And full of summer-dreams;
The buds are bursting at their will,
And soft the half moon gleams.

My soul is cool, as bathed within
By dews that silent weep;
Like child that has confessed his sin,
And now will go to sleep.

A childhood new, Lord, thou dost set,
Each season for a sign;
Lest, old in this world, we forget
That we are young in thine.

A child, Lord, make me ever more;
Let years fresh sonship bring,
Till, out of age's winter sore,
I pass into thy spring.

• George MacDonald, Section IV of "Songs of the Days and Nights" in The Disciple and Other Poems