I SEE YOU! BUT WHO CAN SEE GOD IN YOU?

- igman, mysteriousvibe@yahoo.com

(mite, a small coin minted by Alexander Jannaeus, King of Judaea, 103 - 76 B.C.)

Something is troubling me about today's times; perhaps it also troubles you.

Yesterday, during the heated day, as I left the grocery store with a very few items, an old lady and a young boy in a tattered car stopped me to ask for some monetary help because they were hungry. Immediately compassion came upon me. I’m sure you’ve felt that way also. I seemed to have noticed all-at-once the old lady, the sad face of the boy, the car, the trash in the car, her eyes, the tracheotomy hole in her neck, and a heaviness of their condition. These people were members of the predominant racial group in American society, but they were also poor.  Poverty knows no bounds.

I was also aware of my own diminished and limited funds, having only one $20 bill tucked away in my wallet to get me through for awhile. I told her I would go back into the store to get some change. As I loaded the items in the trunk of my car, I thought about the widow’s mite who gave all she had into the temple treasury. I thought also of my own financial troubles. The lady and the boy’s troubles were far worse than mine. I reached into my wallet and gave her my last $20. Her eyes were a blessing to my Awakened soul. As I drove away, my emotion overcame me and I wept and prayed for the poor, the down-trodden, and the hungry at the same time. I also prayed for me. So many people are hurting and hungry today, all over the world.

Yet the rich are getting richer, as indicated by the wealth gap, and the poor are getting more poor. The middle class seem aligned with the rich, though they are falling into the underclass at alarming rates. The political state is divided between the haves, the want to have but sinking, and the poor. Who is to care for the poor? What has become of our compassion, especially as Christians? I am unctioned to write the following as the outpouring of my eternal soul.

So What Would Jesus Say (WWJS) and What Would Jesus Do (WWJD) today in if He were walking the streets of America? I recall a scripture in John 21:1- where one of the manifestations of The Risen Christ said to Simon Peter three times “Feed my sheep.”

They (Christ and disciples) had sat down to dine and afterward Jesus asked him if he loved him; Peter said, he did; then Christ said “Feed my Sheep.” He went on to call special attention of making His point with Simon Peter, causing him to be irritated with a painful sorrow about Jesus stressing the point after he had answered affirmatively. Christ went on to instruct how Peter should glorify God until his death and then said “Follow me.” Why was Jesus so adamant with this line of questioning and subsequent associative conversation?

Edgar Guest sagely wrote, “I’d rather see a sermon than hear one any day.” What sermons are we demonstrating from the teaching of our faith today? Faith alone is not enough. Are we following the Hupogrammos (copy; example set before one) of Christ as Christians today? What sermon are others seeing in our example?

There are many who would discuss to no end that Christ was speaking about feeding God’s Word to His followers in the aforementioned scripture reference. Yet He had no sooner fed them with food than He began to discuss loving Him, feeding His sheep, and glorifying God. The Risen Christ we know and love is constantly speaking about “the plight of the poor” and always showed His concern to physically feeding the masses as he preached and taught. Wasn’t He feeding them with The Word as He fed them with loaves of bread and a few fishes back then? Why didn’t He leave well-enough alone, since He had already spiritually fed them? Because He knew it wasn’t enough if their bellies were empty and they hungered.

I suggest He knew of the difficulty of concentrating on spiritual matter and doing or practicing The Word of God when their minds are focused on their hunger. I tell you today, in America and around the world, people are hungry; even starving; yet are we as concerned about them as Christ is about them? Are we giving them words alone and not feeding them? Are we sounding our voices, lifting them up to God without corresponding actions of faith made visible? This is how faith works through us.

Did you see the blockbuster movie Avatar? In it the phrase "I see you" was said by the character Neytiri to Jake. And have you heard Indie Arie sing the song "I See God In You?" They each allude to “seeing love” visibly as an insight of true knowledge awareness; "seeing truth reality" beyond the artificial outward appearance and into the inward awareness of what is beyond form and pure of any appearance of personage between them; "God in you and God in me greet each other." The perception of our Godly character demonstration is seen by what the perceiver sees us actively doing or actively reflecting.

It is a reference to and a term of endearment of The Divine Reflection Of God that we call The Light Of God in us. This is the very same Light that Lighted Christ. I've learned to refer to it as ChristVision: "Seeing as Empowered through The Light of Love; Enlightenment." 

Are we not to be The Divine Reflection Of God through Christ Jesus, reflected through us? If so, then what are we reflecting today as we face difficult economic times and great despair across the land? What is the body of Christ, the ecumenical Christian body which is called The Christian Church doing today for the plight of the increasing poor among us? Of course, many are doing what Christ directed us to do, not only through our churches but through our daily activity.

What has happen to our Christian faith beyond our churches? How silent has its’ activity become amongst the people? Are the sheep being fed only in the pews of the massive temples of today, leaving it there and not set free amongst the people to bear fruit to feed the belly as well as the spirit? What kind of faith is that which does not bear the fruit of faith as well as the fruit of the horn of plenty?

Certainly not the fruit of faith of Christ that lives in our heartmind and the heartmind of many, many others throughout the land. Has it (our faith) been hijacked through some narrowly defined context that extracts our heart, leaving only our head to manifest Christ in us?  What is our mission as Christians today? What have we become in this land of plenty? Oh what a hollow faith this is becoming as we are misled away from our mission to be concerned with the plight of the increasing poor?

Our politics in America today wreaks of ineffective governing bodies that narrowly define and confine our elected representatives to pledges made for some ideological cause, rendering the politician a hostage of that pledge and to constituents who'd rather see our government fail, than exercise democratic principles to compromise for the common good.  It was just a short time ago that these voters called themselves patriots and adopted the "Tea Party" metaphor to represent them.  But they are no patriots and I don't know if they truly understand our Constitution.  Pledge?  I know but one pledge for an American - The Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag, of The United States of America.  Now who truly expresses the actions of Benedict Arnold?  I believe history called him a traitor.

And what do we make of calling ourselves “the Christian Fiscal Conservative Right or the Christian Social Conservative Right?” Would Jesus be called “conservative anything” as He demonstrated The Gospel of The Good News? Jesus preached and taught a profoundly social gospel that had not been taught prior to his ministry; it was for the benefit of the poor amongst us. This was His yoke. He demonstrated many examples of how the rich could also follow Him; by sharing and caring for the poor.

Are we seeing the lack of works of the faith today that James spoke of as he clearly instructed, saying faith alone is not enough, and that we should visibly see our faith through our works. That is how God is seen in us; not welled up inside us; not en masse but in action beyond words.

What are we to make of Christians who gather with politicians today, calling themselves and others to prayer and worshiping in stadiums, drawing attention to themselves? Does God have need to see them en masse, or does God hear better when we are gathered in public assembly and amplify our prayer, or does God see and hear evenly beyond the shout of the stadium and into squalor of the darkest room? I suggest these people who do this, separating themselves beyond faith to faith, are misled by conspicuous tongues and the wiles of perverse thought, causing them to truly become the “Christian Conservative gone WRONG.”

“Feed My Sheep” said The Master.” He was also The Master Rhetorician. I believe He meant literally as well as figuratively about feeding His Sheep. And He also had something to say in Matthew 6: 5-6 about worshipers who demonstrate their faith for the public to see:

When thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward. But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.

Who are these people who call themselves Christian? And who is teaching them this profane doctrine of the fringe? Jesus warned us of them and about the future in Matthew 7:15 saying,

“Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.

Buddhists acknowledge one another today as they say, Namaste' - God in me greets God in you. Does that not reflect a beautiful thought expression between people? Would that not then reflect heaven on earth if we were to see ourselves like that and to live like that? Is this perspective limited to Buddhists or Christians alone? I think not.

So what do we do when we seek to gain Divine Reflective Knowledge? I'd like to postulate placing our mind on Godliness and the Compassion of Christ Jesus, without thought of form or specific discipline. It sort of allows us to seek a void mind, free of personal and impersonal influence. Though this is at first very difficult to achieve, primarily because we are imbued with so many influential imaginative images, it is well worth the effort to be free in thought and open Revelation. We then allow the freedom of the contemplative state of mind for whatever we desire of Our Heavenly Father. I call this prayer; don’t you?

In faith, the state of contemplative awareness is the human attempt to understand God and the sacred knowledge [through sudden insight of Knowingness]; then later to humanly attempt to explain the interpretations of visions of God's activities as God would have us do. It could be called a theurgy; a tapping of the divine power that enables us to briefly ascend to GodAwareness or GodPresence. God works through God’s People. We are to become the workers of God’s Activity in the earth. Isn’t that what Christ Jesus was saying to us as His Followers? “Come, Follow me.”

Theurgy means divine intervention into human affairs. It is a method to stop us from thinking; to leave behind us all of our conceptions of the divine in order to experience the Divine. God has showed The Divine Example through many manifestations of Truth from faith to faith in how we should express love to God and to OneAnother, by seeking God and doing as God’s Example did. Christ is The Example for those of us who are called by the name of Christian.

Following Christ can lead to "the Awakening of the Eternal Soul in each of us." We are awakened for the purpose of “doing as the Rabbi was doing as he called us to,” Feed My Sheep."  Christians?  You will know them by their Love.

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"I'd rather see a sermon than hear one any day."

I'd rather see a sermon than hear one any day;

I'd rather one should walk with me than merely tell the way.

The eye is a better pupil, more willing than the ear;

Fine counsel is confusing, but example is always clear,

And the best of all the preachers are the men who live their creeds,

For to see a good put in action is what everybody needs.

I can soon learn how to do it if you will let me see it done;
I can watch your hand in action, but your tongue too fast may run.
And the lectures you deliver may be very wise and true,
But I'd rather get my lesson by observing what you do.
For I may misunderstand you and the high advice you give,
But there is no misunderstanding how you act and how you live.

When I see a deed of kindness, I am eager to be kind.
When a weaker brother stumbles, and a strong man stands behind
Just to see if he can help him, then the wish grows strong in me
To become as big and thoughtful as I know that friend to be.
And all travelers can witness that the best of guides today
Is not the one who tells them, but the one who shows the way.

One good man teaches many; men believe what they behold;

One deed of kindness noted is worth forty that are told.

Who stands with men of honor learns to hold his honor dear,

For right living speaks a language which to everyone is clear.

Though an able speaker charms me with his eloquence, I say,

I'd rather see a sermon than hear one any day.

poetry of Edgar A. Guest