{"id":6149,"date":"2019-06-06T14:21:40","date_gmt":"2019-06-06T18:21:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/?p=6149"},"modified":"2019-07-04T15:30:28","modified_gmt":"2019-07-04T19:30:28","slug":"goodness-beyond-goodness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/?p=6149","title":{"rendered":"Goodness Beyond Goodness"},"content":{"rendered":"

From my journal for January 27<\/p>\n

Quaker meeting here at Kendal.\u00a0Lots and lots of thoughts.\u00a0The idea of opening the definition of \u201clove,\u201d along with Erica\u2019s assignment of \u201cfacets of love,\u201d exploded my brain, but like a soap bubble, not a bomb.<\/p>\n

Sitting there, I tried to listen to \u201cGod\u2019s voice.\u201d\u00a0But I was listening for something out there.\u00a0So I moved my intention and attention to a place under my heart, and suddenly I had such a sense of goodness, of goodness deep and tender, far beyond any idea of goodness that\u2019s possible.\u00a0I understood that that\u2019s who I am, the seed of god in me.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Erica’s assignment of “facets of love” was to help me see that I’m not as unloving as I think I am.<\/p>\n

The Quakers teach that “God” is inside us as a voice of guidance, the “Inner Teacher.”<\/p>\n

February 9<\/p>\n

Thinking about that goodness that\u2019s so huge I have no name for it.\u00a0 <\/span>Perhaps it has to be God. It\u2019s good, like good bread, or good weather.\u00a0 <\/span>Not like good & evil, it\u2019s bigger and includes both. in some higher dimension.\u00a0 <\/span>So many dimensions above\/beyond the one we live in.\u00a0 <\/span>That goodness \u2014 it\u2019s the source of all, and it holds all.\u00a0 <\/span>Way beyond even the concept of god.<\/p>\n

February 26<\/p>\n

I periodically think about my sense of goodness and its qualities.\u00a0 <\/span>Reading about Sister Helen\u2019s powerful, loving force, I see something quite different.\u00a0 <\/span>My goodness is like a star.\u00a0 <\/span>It\u2019s powerful, it radiates, but it doesn\u2019t move and flow.\u00a0 <\/span>It can inspire, but it doesn\u2019t actually do anything in the world.\u00a0 <\/span>What Sister Helen is describing is a force that\u2019s active in the world, although it can only act through human beings who have been willing to be its instrument. \u00a0<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

[typing this up, I see that I say \u201cmy goodness\u201d as though I were that good, not just perceiving it.\u00a0 <\/span>Some part of me says \u201cWell, maybe that\u2019s true.\u00a0 <\/span>Maybe I really am good in that way.\u201d]<\/p>\n

“Sister Helen Prejean” is one of the women Carol Lee Flinders talks about in Enduring Lives<\/a>. \u00a0She works with men condemned to death<\/a>, and advocates against the death penalty. Her experience of God is bigger than mine. \u00a0She says of her childhood: “We were loved more than the law allows.” \u00a0Enduring Lives, p268<\/p>\n

February 28<\/p>\n

In the Dark Night of the Soul<\/a>, he talks about having to let go of all attachments and rest only in the \u201clove of God.\u201d I seem to be letting go of a lot.\u00a0But I have a problem with \u201cloving God.\u201d\u00a0The word carries too much judgement.\u00a0I can\u2019t imagine loving a God that I\u2019m not convinced is good.\u00a0I don\u2019t see anything to \u201clove\u201d in the goodness that I perceived, though maybe my definition of love is too limited. I wonder if I could say I \u201clove\u201d the immense, complex, creative, beautiful universe<\/a> that I saw in a vision a while back?\u00a0I love the earth \u2014 no question \u2014 and what is that Universe if not the source of the planet Earth?<\/p>\n

At the end of May, I wrote: \u201cThat goodness beyond goodness, that I touched once, is bearing the pain too.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It looks like I never did write the original story of that vision of the Universe. \u00a0It must have been in 2013, before the posts about it. \u00a0Nowadays we find the use of the term “Big Bang” as though it were a proven truth. \u00a0But I was thinking about the Big Bang and Steady State theories that were both being considered when I got my degree in the 60’s. \u00a0I thought that they were both simplistic, that the real universe must be more complex than that. \u00a0Suddenly I saw a huge multidimensional, multicolored image of something that contained lots of points of light in swirls and feathers and bubbles expanding and bursting… \u00a0and I got a “felt sense<\/a>” of the reality it was trying to illustrate, its capacity of being beyond anything we could imagine.<\/p>\n

My blog post about my own experience of the felt sense.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From my journal for January 27 Quaker meeting here at Kendal.\u00a0Lots and lots of thoughts.\u00a0The idea of opening the definition of \u201clove,\u201d along with Erica\u2019s assignment of \u201cfacets of love,\u201d exploded my brain, but like a soap bubble, not a … 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":[3,9,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6149","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-guidance","category-journal","category-present-day"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6149","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=6149"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6149\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}