Thursday, September 26, 2019
COSMIC CONSEQUENCE
Dear All of Us,
"Cosmic Consequence"???
What the heck is coming down here?
Just how "far out" is this blog going to go?
Does it signal that I am now certifiably "spaced out"?
Well, let's find out.
You decide for yourself about the "spaced out" question.
As for me, I'd like to use this space to sense
the sacredness and expanse of small good things,
supposed simple things,
things that are far, far from that.
These supposed simple things are as far from simple
as Topeka is from the galaxy MACSO647-RD.
That's 13.3 billion light years away.
Now that's a lot of far.
In fact, these simple good "small things" have cosmic reach and effect.
They are integral to the wholeness of creation,
the unity and vitality of the universe.
As such they are as well very much a part of our spiritual living
out here on the street of everyday life.
What a stretch - street to stars.!
Cosmic!
So, come on now!
Be adventuresome!
Be a sport and slug through this next paragraph.
It's important.
And it's a challenge for sure.
Hoping you're still there, here goes!!
Physicists, noetic and neuro scientist among others tell us
that absolutely every movement, mood, motion of ours
actually has an impact to the farthest reaches of the cosmos.
Those movements, moods, motions of ours
are energy let lose in the union that is us
in this sphere of existence we share.
They are universal.
Some cosmic peeks to ponder:
- "Consciousness is somehow linked into
the behavior of the quantum world."
Dean Radin, Ph.D.
Senior Scientist,
Institute of Noetic Science.
- Speaking of the universe as an energy field -
"The field is the only reality."
Albert Einstein
- "This is a participatory universe.
Everything we do is changing it."
Elizabet Sahtouri
Evolutionary Biologist
- "Reality isn't an it.
It is a relationship between the parts.
It only takes form when relationship happens."
Marilyn Schlitz
President, CEO
Institute of Noetic Science
- Scientists reference:
- quantum entanglement
- nothing and no one are fundamentally separate
- that we and everything are connected at all times
- that what we do at the immediate, local level
really does effect the global
as well as the cosmic environment
- the primordial mind matter interaction.
- for a fine and fuller treatment of all this please see below for
I Am
it's a lot more interesting and much clearer than I just made it!!
- by the way, the mystic have been on to all this for centuries.
They just used a different think/talk manner.
We are beginning to notice some big badconsequences in our shared sphere:
climate change, conflicted migration, social inequality and instability,
space junk and armament.
It's critical to take such notice.
Just as critical is it to notice
the supposed simple good little things
that really aren't simple or little at all.
They are profoundly and powerfully good.
They have a telling effect on our here and now
and all the way out as far as far goes.
They are energy let loose
in the vastness of cosmic all togetherness.
Our hyped media blitz,
and too much of our educational establishment, miss that.
We don't dare.
These simple things are part of the swirl that holds us together.
These simple good things are like spirit sinews
that unite and energize us in space place.
They are energies of being, indeed of Being.
They are The Love Who Is God happening, bonding, energizing
out here on the street of everyday living
and right on out to all that is.
The effect is here and now.
It's also "far out."
These supposed simple good little things are
Love let loose and gone cosmic.
They are part of our endless energy field.
No limit or telling its reach and effect.
It is more commonly called God.
These simple good little things that are so vital
are also ever so immediate, personal, and practical.
They can happen in the supermarket, driving, at work, on the weekends,
in our families, at a restaurant, walking on the street, at the library -
anywhere anytime.
They become part of everywhere all the time -
part of the vastness of our shared ONENESS.
Yes, spins the head for sure.
So let's be a bit more local, personal and practical.
These simple sacred things are like this:
- You're on line at the supermarket - it was a hell of a day at work -
you have a full cart to be checked out - you're tired and stressed -
you just want to get home and crash/chill - there's this fat, ugly
"poor thing" behind you on line with a loaf of bread and some milk
to check out - in "for real" love you say, simply and sensitively:
"Hey, you go first. I've got a lot to check out. It's going to take a while" -
Positive energy let loose in the universe.
No "small thing."
- There's a dirty, odd ball, homeless young man sitting on the sidewalk
staring into space. You go get him a pizza -
Positive energy let loose in the universe.
No "small thing."
- Your spouse, partner, kid is over the top and totally illogical.
Instead of pointing that out you listen and listen and just stay tuned.
Positive energy let loose in the universe.
No "small thing."
- Your libido is on a rampage - you see the perfect answer
to its pulsations walking down the street - instead of a fantasy bedding
you embrace that person in you heart
with the pure enfoldment of God's Love.
Positive energy let loose in the universe.
No "small thing."
- You go vegetarian and eat only local, in-season foods -
nothing beyond staples shipped in from another growing zone -
that means strawberries only in season where you live.
Positive energy let loose in the universe.
No "small thing."
- You see a couple with a gorgeous little baby and tell them so.
Positive energy let loose in the universe.
No "small thing."
- You refuse to let going to your in-laws for Sunday dinner
drag you into a bad mood and so you mood move yourself
to friendly mellow.
Positive energy let loose in the universe.
No small thing.
- Instead of watching Unreality TV, you let The Spirit draw you
into quiet, deepest Reality.
Positive energy let loose in the universe.
No "small thing."
All these simple good "small things" weave energy fibers
into a fabric if goodness
far beyond the just now, just here.
It's so grace!
It's so Godly!
In the very best sense of things they are wholly, truly holy.
They sure as the heavens make for a positive
COSMIC CONSEQUENCE.
Great to do this little bit of cosmic travel together.
Thanks for the good and patient company,
especially with paragraph four!!!.
Thanks for your willingness to "space out"
in the Energy Field That Is God's Love,
John Frank
*****
REFERENCE AND RECOMMENDATION
Three excellent DVD's for prayer pondering
on
COSMIC CONSEQUENCE
- Christ Cosmology and Consciousness
- a reframing of how we see
Richard Rohr
Center for Action and Contemplation
- The Human Experience
www.grassrootsfilms.com
- I Am
Tom Shadyac
available in libraries and on ebay
This DVD is truly exceptional.
It will rock your boat!!
It will touch your soul.
It will move you right to Real.
*****
Welcome to those joining in here for the first time.
You are a blessing.
Hopefully our weekly sharing here is that to you.
New postings go online
Thursday evenings
east coast USA time.
*****
See you next week!
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Thursday, September 19, 2019
"ALL TOGETHER "
Dear All Of Us,
It's great that each week we are "All Together" here at "frankly speaking".
We come from many lands, ethnicities, cultures, religions.
For all our variants, we are quite genuinely all together here,
focused on our spiritual lives.
More properly put, we are focused on living spiritually.
The limits of language!
Actually there is no such thing as our "spiritual life," something apart,
something occasional and distinct from good old garden variety everyday life.
The spiritual is the energy of our living.
The Latin "spiritus" means breathing, breath, breeze.
The spiritual is what animates, moves.
Take it way and you have a corpse.
Minimize it and you have a stalled soul.
Sure, there are spiritual practices - meditation, prayer, worship,
lectio divina, fasting, alms giving, spiritual direction.
They are times and activities to focus, refresh, guide our living spiritually.
So, let's take a closer look as we open ever more
to the delight, indeed, divinity, yet often difficulty,
of living spiritually and that
All Together.
For better or worse - aware our unaware - at our core and
all the way up to the surface and immediacy of right now, right here,
to our sweaty/sweet living on the street of everyday life, we are all together.
The fact that too many are not aware of this basic all togetherness
is the root of so much of the loneliness, alienation
and hostility that haunts our streets.
See a spectrum, center to surface, as well as across our living:
pain to delight, limit to wide open,
minimal to full bore, evil to good,
but see us always in life all together.
Examples::
- auto accident, man pinned under a car, group gathers to lift the car and
free the man - leader shouts "All Together!" - man saved.
- Great Grandma is turning ninety - the whole "famdamally"
from Topeka to Hoboken and Albuquerque is at the ready
as she enters to shouts of "All Together"
and the singing sores: "Happy Birthday To You!"
- us seeing through the immediacies of pain, ugliness, evil, hurt,
joy, creativity, generosity, integrity, to our foundational unity.
- on the streets of Chicago gangs shooting to pieces community efforts at
living peacefully and safely all together.
- the coalitions working to erase not so subtle segregation
in the school system.
- all sorts, healthy to sick, living together at The Catholic Worker House.
- around our planet far right nationalist working in concert (dissonance)
to resist and stymie diverse peoples from living together cooperatively.
- the congregation struggling all together to keep its inner city school open
for the newly arrived and marginalized.
- fifty men going out to the desert of New Mexico
for a week of retreat and grounding in male spirituality.
- farmers across the heartland laboring wheat for our tables and living.
- cloistered monks/nuns supporting souls in a life of solidarity with us
and love prayer for us
- young people catching on to humanity's all togertherness underneath
our many cultural costumes.
- ourselves realizing that the only thing strange about strangers is
our estrangement.
See it or not, know it or don't want to know it, embrace it or fight it,
we are basically, fundamentally, organically, ontologically all together.
We are One in diverse forms.
We all together spring from the same source.
"In him WE live, and move and have OUR being." (Acts 17:28)
The same life flows through us all together.
The same Spirit vivifies us all together.
Our living, our planet, prospers or pains in proportion
to our embrace of being and living all together.
To be alive and growing spiritually is to embrace all people and creation
as us in pluriform - unique, diverse, one - the power and paradox
of being basically all together.
But all is not well out here on the streets of Center City,
and that is where we live spiritually.
Our spiritual living is effected and effects.
World-wide all sorts of systems separate - governments, religions,
hate groups, political parties, mass media, corporations.
All sorts of persons militate to separate - politicians, media moguls,
financial and corporate leaders, religious and ethnic terrorists.
It is toxic.
We need to come up for air, some fresh, clean, invigorating air,that of
The Holy Spiritus, The Holy Breathing, The Holy Breath,The Holy Breeze .
Let's open the windows and let the Holy Breeze blow through us,
cleanse and purify our awareness, give us the runner's second wind.
Feel it in these breaths of fresh air:
- "The love of God creates in us such a oneing
that when it is truly seen,
no person can separate themselves
from another person."
- "In the sight of God all humans are oned,
and one person is all people
and all people are in one person."
- "By myself I am nothing at all,
but in general,
I AM the oneing of Love.
for it is in this oneing
that the life of all people exist."
Julian of Norwich
Medieval English mystic
- "...so we, who are many,
are one body in Christ,
and individually we are members
one of another."
Romans 12;5
- "Effortlessly,
Love flows from God into us
Like a bird
Who rivers the air
Without moving her wings.
… Thus we move in God's world
One in body and soul...
Though outwardly separate in form.
As the Source strikes the note,
Humanity sings -
The Holy Spirit is our harpist,
And all strings
Which are touched in Love
Must sound.
Mechthild of Magdeburg
Medieval Mystic
So, OK. If we all are fundamentally one and I try to live it out,
say by trying to hug every passenger boarding my flight to Huston,
the TSA people would likely hold me for observation.
Hopefully that kind of oneness will one day
be cleared for take off.
Between now and when, how do we see and live
the oneness we are with all others?
In our prayer and reflection this week let's really open our windows,
invoke and invite The Holy Breeze, ponder and pray over:
- what systems separate me from others -
my social circle, employment, family systems,
religious affiliations, politics, my thinking/feeling patterns,
the places where I go for shopping, education, recreation ?
- what people in my life militate to separate me from others:
family members, friends, my social media contacts,
authors, "talking heads," entertainers, the politicians
I support and follow, people at work?
- what sort of estrangement makes others strangers to me?
- now let's go back over the above three and detail to positive -
name names!! - what and who draw me closer
to realizing and living out our basic all togetherness?
- Let's take time with each of the quotes above from
Julian of Norwich
Romans 12:5
Mechthild of Magdeburg
What does The Spirit say through them to our spirit?
What insight is given?
What corrective is there?
What encouragement is offered?
What widening and deepening is invited?
be as specific as
your local librarian,
or a data analysist.
- draw all of the above into a prayerful love embrace
- jot down an action plan for the next week -
- what will I do this week to deal with systemic,
separating systems?
- what will I do this week to deal with the people
who militate to separate me from others?
- conversely and positively what systems can I embrace
and support that sustain and strengthen our togetherness?
- what can I do this week to connect with people
who live and nurture our togetherness?
All the best at being All Together.
Thanks for this chance to be just that.
Welcome to those joining in with us for the first time.
"How good and pleasant it is when God's people
live together in unity."
Psalm 133:1
See you next week.
Holding us all together in
God's Dear Love,
John Frank
*****
"frankly speaking"
- is posted online each Thursday evening
east coast USA time at
johnfrankshares.blogspot.com
and can be bookmarked for ready access
- is available by automatic email each Friday -
the sign up is top right online
- past postings are available at
Blog Archive
right column online.
Thank You!!
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Thursday, September 12, 2019
LOVE - MISCHIEF
Dear All Of Us,
So, spiritually what gives,
what's going on?
What's coming down and across?
Are we having one heck of a good time?
Does our spirit have some sparkle to it?
Do we have a twinkle in our soul?
Do the other kids out here
on the playground of life want in on it?
Are we down right and contagiously joyful
because we have taken Jesus at his word:
"I have said these things to you
so that my joy may be in you,
and your joy may be complete"?
Are we hot wired for flat out, outrageous liveliness
because we have taken Jesus up on his offer:
"I have come that you might have life
and have it to the full"?
Have we bought in with old Irenaeus:
"The glory of God is a person fully alive"?
Are we banging it out on all eight cylinders?
Have we let God brake open the seed of self,
freeing us for abundance?
Have we wised up, set down, outgrown
the so sober, serious, stiffy, stuffy
moralistic, up tight, merit badge religion
of too many churches?
Are we tag teaming it with God
and having a blow out of delightful
"LOVE - MISCHIEF"
FOR OUR WORLD?
Tell you what.
This week how about we spend time
and huddle with good old Hafiz?
He's really one of the best at all this.
Here's a page from his playbook:
"It used to be
That when I would wake up in the morning
I could with confidence say,"What am "I" going to do?"
That was before the seed cracked open.
Now Hafiz is certain:
There are two of us housed in this body
Doing the shopping together in the market and
Tickling each other while fixing the evening's food.
Now when I awake all the internal instruments
Play the same music:
"God, what love-mischief can
we do for the world today?"
That's more than a week's worth of prayerful wondering.
In that holy wondering:
Let's see all the way inside ourselves
and check out who's in there with us
(better yet, within whom we are).
Let's see all the way inside ourselves
and ask God to crack open the seed of self,
opening us to to abundance
Let's see all the way inside ourselves
and accept God's loving enfoldment there
Let's listen all the way inside ourselves
and hear the internal instruments play
"God, what love-mischief
can we do for the world today?"
and then have one heck of a time
with God at making
Love - Mischief for the World.
So, spiritually what gives, what's going on?
Well, what's coming down is
that we get to lighten up
and make
LOVE - MISCHIEF
FOR THE WORLD
with God and getting one heaven
of a tickle out of it!!
Glad we can have
these Holy Huddles
here each week.
.
John Frank
*****
References:
- John 15:11
- John 10:10
- St. Irenaeus of Lyon,
Against Heresies, 185 AD
- Hafiz Sufi Mystic,
The Gift, translated by
Daniel Ladinsky
*****
Thanks to all who share word of
"frankly speaking"
and invite others to join in.
A new posting goes online each Thursday evening
east coast USA time at
johnfrankshares@blogspot.com
*****
Welcome to the Love-Mischief-Makers
who are new here this week.
A special happiness at first time participation
from Belize and a substantial number
of first timers from Russia.
We're tickled to be together!
*****
SEE YOU NEXT WEEK!
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