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Why Marbles My 1st blog attempt Was an answer to a promise I made to my eldest son when I handed him a jar full of marbles. The marbles were from a collection saved by my mother over the years of my childhood, and I must admit that if left to me I would have already lost all of my marbles. My son asked if I could jot down some of the ways these marbles were used I told him I would write down as much as I could remember and send it to him later. I am the supreme procrastinator of all time which resulted in him sending me a reminder at which time he promised not to lose my marbles and I reassured him that I would get busy and tell him and his children how the beautiful round bits of glass and minerals were used for amusement and competition. My Response2 blog arose out of frustration with the attitudes and lack of respect for our country, our traditional ethics, and educational system. Rons Lyrics and Poetry started just because my scribbles needed a place to rest.

Tuesday, September 17, 2013

ME AND GOD (2)

  Part 2  Just a side note
A lot of things may have been different in my spiritual trek, if Christ’s emissaries (the priests) had been the only stumbling stone.  Unfortunately the path has been filled with more rocks than exist in a gravel pit.  In retrospect my foundations that were expected to support a belief in God were not built of rock but of sand. 

I know now that both God and Satan are truly in existence.  God gives us choices in how we decide to live our lives.  Satan on the other hand, seeks to control our destiny through a very devious method.  The use of doubt, fear and deceit are very effective.  I believe that God gave us the grace of salvation through Christ because He knew mankind could not withstand all the temptations of evil.  This is even truer when Satan’s ability to deceive us and to cloud truth is part of the equation.
One might think that doubt is the first step toward disbelief but it’s not.  The first step is actually the improper construction of beliefs in the first place.  We don’t come into the world with an understanding of our nature, but we do arrive in a state of neediness.  We are totally dependent and when our needs are met (even in a sporadic way) we have a kind of growing faith in our providers.  That faith spreads from our basic needs being cared for to believing what our providers choose to teach us.  We tend to believe what we are taught and what we see in front of us.  When it comes to my own personal spiritual growth most of what I was being taught was from a negative outlook.  I don’t mean I was taught that bad was good but being taught that doing “bad” would have terrible consequence.  Making choices in life because of a fear is not a very sound building block.  It’s quite difficult to build a close personal relationship with a God you believe will eventually burn your soul for eternity.  At the very least this created a weakness in my foundation that would eventually lead to some ungodly turns in my life.  My belief system abounded in fear.  Fear is first as it makes for a very unstable footing and opens the door for doubt to enter.
I can’t really blame anyone else for my round about spiritual journey because it was I who made those choices: but one does the best by what he believes.  Fact, fiction, truth and error were there in varying amounts and my nature was to find “soul”utions to make sense of things.  My search for reasons and direction yielded very little means to hold my foundation together. 
My folks had done a great job of teaching me the difference between right and wrong and that ethical sense was strengthened throughout my Catholic education in high school and in college.  Ethics alone will not necessarily build a personal relationship but it is a good component.  I did have a good sense of how I was “supposed” to conduct myself by not doing bad things and by doing good things.  By the time I went to the college I had a head full of doubts fueled by a fear of punishment. I had not found any real answers in my ignorance.  I knew how to behave in life, but I had no real answer as to why I should.  I did believe in punishment as a deserved result of wrong action, improper thoughts and desires.  At the same time experience had proven my inability to escape the ultimate punishment of Hell fires. 

I had invited the demolition crews to pound my foundation into the ground.  Doubt and fear were in a very subtle attack mode and the strength of my defense (my belief system) was based on what I had been taught.  The answer to all my questions and doubts came down to one word.  Because.

Part two
My spiritual foundation was built on the sound ground of “Because” and was constructed using the tools of Fear.  

I was ready to enter young adulthood.  I went off to college in a better place than a lot of students, thanks to four years boarding at the all-boys high school.  I knew what it was like to live outside the safety of my family and my home so I had already grown out of the despairs of loneliness that some would suffer.  I was however not quite prepared for the freedom from being out from under the thumb of control.  I remember the day I left home for college. I remember promising that I would not misuse alcohol until I was at least 21 years old.  When I arrived and had gotten settled into my room a friend from my hometown met up with me.  He commenced to show me the new ropes of freedom, and long before sundown, I found myself totally drunk and hoping my bed would stop spinning.  So much for my being faithful a promise.

My relationship with God continued to create more questions than answers.  I prayed, went to church, practiced my religion but continued in my inability to be sinless.  I tried to find answers in my studies of religion and ethics but the resounding sound of “because” drowned out any possibility of logic.  My definition of faith continued to grow.  Fear of the Lord and the fires of Hell defined my spirituality or lack thereof.  To that point in time Christ’s purpose had not seeped into my thinking.   I don’t know if it had never been presented or my ears and mind had been so closed off, I couldn’t perceive forgiveness and grace.  I simply had no faith other than a belief in negative results.  Regardless of cause, my spiritual relationship with God seemed to remain in a growing state of unimportance.  Within me was a growing state of futility.  The fears of damnation still existed but it was no longer possible to believe that I would ever be able to escape that inevitable end.  I would have to rely on the Church’s perks of plenary indulgences that had been offered throughout my high school and college religious involvement.  First Friday communions, Scapular medals, and devotions to the Blessed Mother Mary, were my only chances of salvation, since there was little or no probability of timing my confessions to my unknown time of death.  All in all, I was confronted with a pretty pessimistic outcome for eternity.  My awareness of this situation was completely absent and I continued acting out my religion, fueled by a fear of reprisal. 
(Please be aware that most of my insights presented are long after the fact.)

My first three years in college had no apparent changes and throughout the next few years I remained oblivious to the existence of a spiritual side to man’s nature.  The meaning of the words, “created in Gods image” had no real relevancy in my day to day life and I slowly meandered into a complete separation from God.  The only connection I had with that side of existence was the belief that God was real and He would eventually condemn me to an eternity of the “gnashing of teeth” and there was little or nothing that could prevent that from happening.  How in the world is it possible to love in the face of fear of an ultimate and inescapable punishment?  How a God could that supposedly loved me, who was all knowing, create me just to burn me in eternal fire?  


(These thoughts were not in the realm of my awareness at the time, but they surely controlled much of my denial and lack of urgency.)

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