SEASONED

                                               


                                             This week's offering is rather full.

                                              That's because it both addresses

                                              the context and conditioning

                                              of our individual spiritual lives

                                              and also that of our current shared one.

                                              It would be best to work through

                                              the material prayerfully and slowly

                                              over a period of days.




Hi There !

So, how do you do with change?

Like it?

Hate it?

Just go with it?

Resist it?


Paradoxically,

react as we will,

change is a constant.

Change runs

from fresh sheets every Friday to a new job,

from growing up in the Bronx

and moving to Bardstown Kentucky,

from unawareness to enlightenment,

from birth to death.


Where I live on the east coast of the U.S.,

autumn this year was an unusually warm and extended season

that just plain took its sweet time

shedding leaves and changing into the denuded and cold atmosphere of late fall,

but change it finally did.



Perhaps the change of seasons can show us

a thing or three about life/soul change.

       
                                                         We live in place.


                                            Seasons are the atmosphere of place.



Seasons change life in its particular place.

That is certainly so with  Soul Seasons.


                                                       
                                                     
                                                        SOUL SEASONS

                                          
                                     
                                          Soul Spring delights with a freeing

                                          into spacious fields of budding promise.


                                         Soul Summer sweats and labors,

                                         growing to abundance and  fruitfulness.


                                         Soul Autumn harvests and shares

                                         ripened richness.


                                         Soul Winter diminishes what was

                                         and waits for what will be

                                         with a new Spring.

Atmospheres of  our soul place.



                                                     LIFE SEASONS

                                                                              SOUL LIFE


                                Please take some time here and allow for ease of reflection.

                                It would be best to move from top to bottom,

                                then across from side to side

                                Doing so, what is your Soul Season just now?

                                How are you with that?



                   Spring    - warm  - start       - birth          - child  - dependence

                   Summer - hot      - grow      - work         - adult   - strength  

                   Autumn - cool    - mature    - diminish   - elder   - limits

                   Winter   - cold    - complete - death        - sage   - dependence

                                                                                                  ( and Depends!!)



Our spiritual lives certainly are seasoned

with all sorts of change.

At times we are awash in consolation and euphoria.

Then there are those seasons when everything is arid

and nothing feels good.


Jesus share that holiness ( wholeness )

means being profoundly in love,

love of God, neighbor and self.

A trinity of oneness.

In our changing spiritual seasons,

we at times over/under do

one or more dimensions/spheres of this "triunity."

That throws us into a season of unbalanced climate change.



John Wesley sees three seasons of spiritual growth and change:

                             Prevenient Grace  - prepares us for God

                             Justifying Grace   - sets us right with God

                             Sanctifying Grace - unites us with God.


The description of three seasons of spiritual change and growth

 by church fathers/mothers and theologians

goes all the way back to Pseudo Dionysius ( c. 550A.D. ).

They are typically named:

                               The Purgative Way    

                                                        - freeing from sin

                               The Illuminative Way

                                                         - enlightenment by grace and contemplation

                                The Unitive Way

                                                          - mystical oneness with God.



                                                        SEASONED CHANGE

                         

                           Again and more, lets take time and allow for ease of reflection.

                           What time, what Soul Season, is it just now for each of us,

                           and for our cultural l context,

                           and how goes that ?




                                                There is a time for everything,

                                       a season for every activity under the heavens:

                                                 a time to be born

                                                                     and a time to die

                                                 a time to plant

                                                                     and a time to uproot

                                                 a time to kill

                                                                     and a time to heal

                                                a time to tear down

                                                                     and a time to build

                                                a time to weep

                                                                     and a time to laugh

                                                a time to mourn

                                                                     and a time to dance

                                                a time to scatter stones

                                                                     and a time to gather them

                                                a time to embrace

                                                                     and a time to refrain from embracing

                                                a time to search

                                                                     and a time to give up

                                                a time to keep

                                                                     and a time to throw away

                                                a time to tear

                                                                    and a time to mend

                                                a time to be silent

                                                                    and a time to speak

                                                a time to love

                                                                    and a time to hate

                                                 a time for war

                                                                    and a time for peace.

                                                                                                  Ecclesiastes 3:1-8



Yes, "The times they are a-changing."

"There's a time for everything,

a season for every activity under the heavens."

The sheets get changed,

and so do jobs, addresses, awareness,

indeed, life itself gets changed.

Our Soul Sojourn

across the years

threads through 

many seasons of change.



Here's a prayer that we all may be

        WELL SEASONED.

It's a joy to welcome new folks from Germany to our little sharing here each week.

Thanks to those who sent along their responses to last week's request.

See you all  next week.

Holding each and all in

God's Dear Love,

     John Frank


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                                                      POSTSCRIPT


In just about everything we can get rather theoretical and removed from the actuality of

how it really is out here on the street of for real, everyday living.

We can collect  baseball cards and never go to a baseball game.

That is certainly true of spirituality.

It can become an indoor sport rather than a sweaty, lived experience.

What follows here is an effort to apply and actualize what was treated above about

                                             LIFE SEASONS

                                                                   SOUL LIFE

to what's going on with us right now, right here in our place this season..

Let's give it a go.


                                              **********************


                                       
                     

Right now those of us who live in the U.S.A.

are suffering a season of sadness, indeed,

a season  of  social and individual threat.

It is compounded and doubly dangerous

because so many of us just do not see it,

even will not see it.

There are tragic parallels in other lands.



For all the blessings of our dear country,

we  here in the U.S.A.

are captive to a season of national

                                                 
                                                    SOUL SICKNESS:


blatant disregard for truth, incivility, abandonment of a dedication to the common good,

rampant materialism, excessive self centeredness, ever expanding militarism,

soul sucking consumerism, inequality, media distraction and distortion, addictions, racism,

deep and seething anger, ecological and environmental degradation,

and a many headed monster of violence.

All are plunging us into peril.

We have suffered four  mass murder in two months.

Sexual harassment and abuse abound

and are being "outed' daily..

Our best scientist say and prove that we are destroying the earth and its environment.

We tolerate college students abusing and killing neophytes.

Huge athletic industries make millions upon million in body violence that literally destroys brains.

We are living our spirituality here on the street of everyday living,

and it has become a difficult, dangerous, mean street.

Given  worldwide interconnectedness,

our self destructive drive collides  with people on streets other than ours.

It's getting to be quite a pile up, a demolition derby.

This is not the time to be quiet about it.



This whole peril is because of a

                                         
                            LACK OF LOVE.


That's not some sort of a soft, wimpy platitude.

At issue is a foundational sink hole.

As we saw  above,

Jesus shares that holiness

( wholeness, as in holding a person or a world together )

means being profoundly in love,

love of God, neighbor, self.

Reality is  Love.

Love is Reality

It's the fundamentum of existence,

the bedrock of our being,

the energy of the universe

and whatever is beyond that.

It's the core of everything from

 molecules to Mozart,

psyche to sunshine.

And that core, that Love, is divine.


"God is love."
      
                   ( 1 John 4:8 ).

To be real,

to be healthy,

is

      to

       "BE"

                 in

                     Love,

                              to

                               "BE"

                                       in

                                          God.

Will we ?

             Will we get

                             "REAL"?

                                         Really in Love?

"To (BE) or not to (BE)

( profoundly, delightfully, unequivocally in Love, in God ),

that is the question" for sure.

It's not primarily a matter of politics, government, finance or social ordering.

It is a matter of foundational Reality.

Will you and I get real, and profoundly love God, neighbor and self.?

It means getting off the couch of

               "as is and usual,"

and get going to

             "as can be and needs to BE."

Will we actually move on from religion to what religion should encourage,

to letting God love us to life?

Profound, personal, actual "Spirit-inter-course."

That's where it starts,

and without it there is no start

to redirecting our drive to  disintegration.

So, how about it?

Will we accept and embrace a season of refreshment and renewal?

That will mean a lot of change in the atmosphere of our place here and now.

Will we actually, personally, and collectively let God love us through

                                The Purgative Way

                                The Illuminative Way

                                The Unitive Way?

Will we allow ourselves to be radically loved and thus radically changed?

 Will we let go of any kind of cautious, tentative, play it safe and be comfortable spirituality?

Will we let ourselves be completely absorbed into the Sun of Love ?

If you do, and I do, and many of us do,

then social ordering and shared life

will be refreshed, redeemed and renewed as we are

into a new season/atmosphere of goodness (Godness)

out here on the street of everyday living.

This seasonal change is nothing less than a radicalization to

                                    Right and Real

                                    Foundational Love

                                          God.

No matter how you do with change,

change is happening.

Currently we  are being changed into a terribly sick and sinful way as a people,

plagued by a season of

                                     Soul Sickness.

Will we accept a change literally for the better?

As in all human love, this change means letting go of how we are

and letting The Lover God

have every bit and all of who we are.

It means surrendering self interest and  control.

It means having the socks loved off us.

It means being divinized.



                              To borrow from  Gandhi,

               Be changed and be the change that will change.


That requires a seasonal change for starters.


Thank you for staying with all this!!

Holding one and all in

         God's Dear Love,

              John Frank

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