MY VISIT TO THE DEVINE TRINITY – Don Hanley’s blog #75

Last night, I had a delightful experience meeting with the Devine, at least audibly, as often displayed by many 21st-century believers. And now I want to share it with my Nazarene friends:

First, I heard a voice say, “Don, we’re trying to get your attention with what we hoped would be an adventurous trip to enlightenment. We're not sure you were getting it, so we decided to find out if you would hear our words. So . . . ”

I interrupted the voice, “I hear you. or at least a voice. Who is the ‘we’?”

“Perhaps ‘we’ is misleading as we are truly just one, and I’ll name them God, Allah, and Yahweh. Or perhaps you would prefer Spirit or Holy Spirit. We have been ‘in’ and ‘with’ you and all of creation forever. Only recently have you humans had the gift of mindful thinking and reflection on all that is. Think of us; we’re calling ourselves a Trinity, as the divine Spirit that enriches and enlightens all of creation – we are the Council of All That Is. Some of your more semi-enlightened humans managed to minimize us as small-minded gods that must be worshiped and adored. We desire to manifest our loving power in all our creation. “  

I continued, puzzled, “I thought I was doing that over the last ten years. Am I failing to get it done?”

I thought I heard a bit of chuckling and then, “Well, Don, we like this blog thing you are doing, and you’re telling everyone about your visiting Jesus’s Mom, Mary, and the apostle John, and that delightful young couple, Joshua and Ruth, but we fear that people will think they are just the ramblings of a doddering old man.

Be more forceful about the so-called Holy Trinity – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Of course, you say that God is the Father, but the Son, Jesus, is Our Son, just as you are – and every other human male and all the human females are our Daughters. And we do not care what you call us – and it is horrible that you humans fight, wage war, and even kill one another over which group is saying and shouting the correct thing. Perhaps we were wrong to tell you that we -Allah, God, and Yahweh - are the Trinity. Jesus, while he was walking on earth, was one of our greatest and most enlightened teachers and messengers. Look what happened to Him! He was murdered at the insistence of a faction of his so-called people!” The voice stopped, I think, to make sure I had time to let it sink in.

Then the voice of my ‘new’ Trinity continued: “There have been many other very enlightened messengers. There were Mohandas Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Albert Einstein, Carl Jung, and others in your own time. Many others mixed up their organization with our message that we wish for everyone everywhere to be loving and connecting beings caring for one another. Don, do you get this?”

Of course, I said, “Yes!”.

My Nazarene family stayed awake while I read my notes about this entire interview, and I asked, “Mary and John, would Jesus agree with all of this?” They nodded, and John and Mary said, “Definitely—that is Jesus’s message!” And I joyously disappeared. 

Please open your heart and mind and love everyone. Don’t eat the menu; participate in the banquet of life!

GOD DID NOT SCREW UP BY CREATING LGBT FOLKS - Don Hanley’s blog #66

As I looked forward to my next visit to Nazareth, I've been jolted out of my sense of optimism and hope by my American election of a very non-Jesus fellow who has been elected to be our leader - our president. I am sure there are some, maybe a majority of my fellow citizens who will sat that it is God's will but I still hold on to my belief that God does not micro-manage the world, nor our minds and hearts. I can't talk with Mary and John and others in Nazareth about my sadness and dismay because it would take too much time. So I will only give them a small bit of information about why I am so damn sad. 

The God I got to know while eating my pancakes created ALL THAT IS! And that means that I don’t know how He (or She) operates at all. I only know Him, or maybe Her, from studying His/her creatures, i.e., everything. Every person, like everything, is a bit different from every other thing that is most like him/her/it. So, God, I believe, created everything, and everything tumbled out perfect and imperfect, and “it was good” or “it is good.” I like the Zen thought that “I don’t know.” IS a kind of prayer. It means we are part of a vast and unknowable universe that we cannot know all about. I DON’T KNOW, AND THAT IS OK.

John, of my Nazarene family, asked me what 21^st-century Christians thought of homosexuality. I was not able to answer him because I suddenly vanished. But I have given it a lot of thought.  As far as he knew, John had said that Jesus never mentioned it. So that he was not going to be of help to me, he did say that Jesus indicated that God, or Yahweh, was not like a giant human who was creating everything in His imagination and sending each creation down to earth. Jesus, as far as John knew, said God created a tremendously powerful force that evolved into many different kinds of creations. So, humans came in different sizes, colors, levels of intelligence, dexterity, and all other possible combinations – and Jesus insisted that one version, like color, was not better than another. He insisted that it was wrong for one variation work to ‘lord’ it another version of humans. The most common wrong was the color of one’s skin. White was not better than brown or black. Jesus sought that all humans will accept and work with others to be co-creators and caregivers of all creation and never to destroy anyone or anything.

We had been talking about all of this, and I was glad that Mary shared with us that she was always pleased when Jesus, even at a young age, delighted to see a handicapped or crippled person smile and seem to love being alive. Also, her Son would disapprove of those who would say that the Father did not love those who were disfigured or handicapped from birth. We must learn to accept ourselves as we are, no matter how gifted or handicapped we are from birth. And we must work to help those less intelligent, strong, and all. He often said that no one is more pleasing to God than another person.

I asked John why God created some people as homosexuals. After all, they did not want or could not have children - and wasn’t that the reason He created humans as women or men? Some Christians even claimed that these people were simply going against the will of God. Again, John said that he heard people say that and that Jesus had responded that these people were simply being themselves. John hesitated a minute and then, in a near whisper, said, “We had two homosexuals among our twelve apostles, and Jesus insisted that they were equal to the rest of us. I wish that that had been repeated more often among the followers.”

I asked, “Is that the reason you are speaking in a near whisper?”

“Yes, I guess it is. It is a sad and troublesome issue, so I won’t tell you who they are. They are wonderful men, and I am proud to be among their friends. They are being who they are, and that is okay.” Mary, Ruth, and Joshua clapped and nodded, and I joined them.

I said, “Thank you, John. Our Christian world has been very slow in realizing that homosexuality is just a natural way of being in the world and in my country, the United States, and in Europe, nearer you, it is now considered normal and even now realizing that some folks have found that they are homosexual but in the body of the opposite gender - we call them 'transexual'. Now I know many in my century talk and think like you do, and I am one of them.”

Now, please keep an open heart and mind, don’t eat the menu, and keep co-creating all that is! AND PLEASE COMMENT.