{"id":1945,"date":"2011-10-08T11:09:06","date_gmt":"2011-10-08T15:09:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/?p=1945"},"modified":"2011-12-24T19:59:14","modified_gmt":"2011-12-25T00:59:14","slug":"trying-to-connect-with-god-revisited","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/?p=1945","title":{"rendered":"Trying to Connect with God, Revisited"},"content":{"rendered":"

Got a comment on my post called \u201cTrying to Connect with God<\/a>\u201d which was posted November 28, 2010.\u00a0 I was really inspired to reply, I\u2019ve been on the same path, struggling to make sense of a god who apparently allows so much suffering to happen.\u00a0 My reply got so long, and I still had another story to tell, so I thought I might as well post a lot of it here as well.
\nI do not believe that god is \u201che\u201d, I tend to use a blend of pronouns \u201che\/she\/it\/they\u201d, and am more likely to use the word \u201cspirit\u201d when trying to talk about the divine. I think the first time I started to connect with the divine was when I began to do Buddhist sitting practice. I found the Bodhisattva of Compassion a presence I could relate to. The statue of Kannon at the Rochester Zen Center was a lovely androgynous being with a compassionate face. I also went on a trip to Europe, and in Brittany saw a sculpture of Jesus with the most compassionate face I\u2019ve ever seen. He was bending over a large fish with little tiny figures in his open mouth, and I was told that these were the beings in Hell being rescued by Jesus. I thought that to see that compassionate face looking down at you would bring anyone out of hell. I began to get it that Jesus was an incarnation of the Bodhisattva of Compassion.
\nI have a favorite story about Jesus and the Bodhisattva.\u00a0 When the Christian missionaries came to Bhutan (I think it was Bhutan, it might have been Sikkim, one of those tiny Himalyan kingdoms anyway) and told the people\u00a0 stories about the man who taught forgiveness and died for the people, the Bhutanese replied \u201cThat\u2019s a good one, we\u2019ll put it in the list of stories we have about Padmasambhava\u2019s many lives.\u201d\u00a0 The Christians said \u201cO no it happened only once!\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 The Bhutanese said \u201cWe know that being.\u201d\u00a0 I\u2019ve forgotten the source of this story, so the names may not be correct.\u00a0 I expect the essence remains the same.
\nI also think about the story in the last of the Narnia tales, The Last Battle.\u00a0 Aslan, the great Lion who dies and lives again in the first tale is clearly a Christ figure.\u00a0 In the last tale the Calormenes invade and conquer Narnia.\u00a0 Their God is judgmental and cruel.\u00a0 Aslan says: \u201cI and [Tash] are of such different kinds that no service which is vile can be done to me, and none which is not vile can be done to him.\u00a0 Therefore if any man swear by Tash and keep his oath for the oath\u2019s sake, it is by me that he has truly sworn, though he know it not, and it is I who reward him.\u00a0 And if any man do a cruelty in my name, then, though he says the name Aslan, it is Tash whom he serves and by Tash his deed is accepted.\u201d A similar notion to \u201cBy their fruits shall ye know them.\u201d\u00a0 (Sorry I can\u2019t provide the Biblical references.\u00a0 You can perhaps tell that I grew up Episcopalian, and it\u2019s the King James version that comes to mind.)
\nI also think of Jesus saying \u201cInasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these, ye have done it also to me.\u201d\u00a0 That God is saying that people who exploit and abuse others are doing it to God. I think that God cares very much about what happens to people. That God also FEELS everything that is done to any one. The fact that he\/she\/it\/they doesn\u2019t always interfere is a mystery. I\u2019ve had amazing responses to direct prayer, and also complete lack of response.\u00a0 Some say it\u2019s not that God didn\u2019t respond, it\u2019s that he\/she\/it\/they didn\u2019t respond in the way we wanted or a way we can see.<\/p>\n

People who are interested in this topic might like to read my post on \u201cGod Image.\u201d
\n<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Got a comment on my post called \u201cTrying to Connect with God\u201d which was posted November 28, 2010.\u00a0 I was really inspired to reply, I\u2019ve been on the same path, struggling to make sense of a god who apparently allows … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,11,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1945","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-healing","category-present-day","category-spirit"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1945","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1945"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1945\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1945"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1945"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1945"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}