Preamble

This is a story of reconciliation.  A coming to terms with God, a concept that powerfully haunted my early life, periodically visited during middle years, and re-established permanent residency over the past decade.

This collection offers a different way of thinking about God, suitable for inquisitive spirits pondering life’s meaning and interested in a relationship with a greater self.  

For those whose faith already provides a failsafe explanation of life’s purpose – dismissing what follows may be prudent.  The ideas in this story could irritate rather than resonate, offend rather than inspire.

For those still searching and open to other views – you are invited to examine this collection as you fine tune your individual path.  Take what fits, bypass the rest.

Given its human origin and continually evolving state, this story is imperfect and benefits from critical review and fresh insight. 

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Snow Makes Fire

Christmas 2013 brought an unexpected reminder of life’s impermanence.  I was skiing alone in a backcountry pristine alpine bowl under a continental crest and blue sky.  Descending s-curves behind and an untouched white slope ahead. 

A crack, a whoosh, and within twenty seconds, swallowed by an avalanche -- buried beneath five feet of snow.  Within ten minutes, unconscious and blue.  Yet inexplicably rescued by chance and a noble stranger.  The experience influenced this story but remains a different story.  Nevertheless, this event provided a definite nudge for the narrative that follows.

The death rehearsal served as a compelling wakeup call.  My end accepted, peace made, mentally signing off.   Then rescued, resurrected -- an unexpected lottery win, a fortuitous extension.

So how should I apply this unearned time?  What unrealized aspirations might generate regret for never having seen the light of day?

The impact sparked internal urgency, a fire in my soul.  A desire to materialize thoughts that had been percolating for a long while, most of a life.  Questions asked as a child.  Answers restlessly searched as an adolescent.  Belief systems visited in adulthood.  Meanwhile, tentative conclusions had been getting organized through study and writings over years.  A process of starting and stopping, in perpetual development, was ready for a conclusion.

One prominent idea kept surfacing -- understanding the purpose if any of our being here.  This proposition intrigued me but equally intimidated.  My new mission became formalizing answers to the recurring questions that lurked in the background.  At various points in life, and now again, these ideas surged to the foreground in concrete ways that were difficult to ignore.

Bottom line, my primary road map on how to live, absorbed in childhood, had been eroding for some time.  It no longer offered confidence.  I wanted something more believable, more fulfilling, more instructive on how to live a life - a better map.  In so pursuing, helpful discoveries and experiences presented over the years.  These included writings from others, critiques of existing faiths, science breakthroughs on universal order and our existence, and clues from various cultures.  Fluid attempts to assemble findings and draft a different map began to solidify.   What follows is a collection of stories, allegories, meditations, and musings to articulate this view -- all centered around the central theme of reconciling the God concept.

At this point, my hope is to share ideas that have inspired, invite feedback, and refine a story that will continue to breathe.

Anthology on Being, Begins

Lightning cracks, mountain quakes.  Majestic green lodgepoles vibrate yellow and orange then vaporize into nothing, leaving only white smoke.  Orange banshees dance a wild jig, jumping from tree to tree.  The whole forest quickly ignites, trees falling like dominos.  A furious chorus roars and moans.  Within minutes, the mountain’s evergreen hair becomes charcoal along with everything of carbon origin.

Not until such raging heat scours the forest will the next generation of pinecone seeds open.  As the hellish flames create a blackened wasteland, searing heat liberates frozen cones.  The landscape cools and tiny seeds activate their genetic program.  “Give me dark rich earth to root within, give me light and warmth to entice me upward, give me water to feed my soul, give me air to free my limbs.”   Over time, the wasted landscape regenerates and a revitalized forest emerges.

Trying circumstances are required to clear the stage, like a devastating fire or a smothering avalanche.  While small-unsung changes unfold daily, the elements for grand scale reformation accumulate over years.  Eventually, when the collective factors reach a tipping point, even small sparks may trigger such sea change.  

Meanwhile, other forests in earlier stages of development produce cones whose seed-bearing pods sit idle, biding their time, waiting for an opening.

This story, God, Being Human, Reconciling Being G[1], speaks of another forest, one of overgrown religious timber.  More accurately, it speaks of time worn belief systems binding thoughts to legacy world views and our place within.   Once important guidance is now arguably outdated.  Notwithstanding that some lessons of the past still contain influential ideas on how to act and what to believe.  

Ancient belief systems may sustain our spirits and equally suffocate.  When a belief system has outlived its original value, it becomes like the overgrown forest choking on its own previous verdant success.  Ripe for nature’s reset.

This narrative describes a search, incorporating views from a variety of voices.  A travel journal of the spirit.  It relies on elements from legacy beliefs and current streams of thought to create a viable guide for today.  In the end, sharing pinecones for souls touched by fire.

It is written based on an ordinary person’s experience -- one who felt stifled more than sustained by ritualized faiths, seeking a different way.  Based on discoveries from this exploration, an alternative path emerges for consideration, a new direction for understanding and creating a relationship with G.[2]

Taking current context into account, this work attempts to make sense of living on planet Earth in a local solar system of the Milky Way galaxy, framed in twentieth and twenty-first century Earth created time.  It is heavily steeped in images of a Judeo/Christian upbringing which provided a first map to start the journey.

Such a revised map will have selective appeal.  A rider on New York’s subway system does not need a map of Amazon tributaries to navigate Manhattan transit lines.   Nor does the naturalist searching for new species in the Amazon Forest need a New York City subway map to locate river basin waterways suitable for canoes.  Maps work best that fit an individual’s need and an environment’s context.

Maps are not reality.  Not the land and not the end goal.  Maps are symbolic overlays to guide movement on the land.  

Sacred scriptures have served as life maps, instructions on how we might conduct our life actions.   Sacred scriptures are not life, but instead are symbolic representations of how life should be lived.  They are one step removed.  The power resides not in the paper, but in how one applies the ideas contained within the paper in live action.   As knowledge evolves, maps change.  

At the end of the day, a story, a new map such as this risks being thought pretentious folly, irrelevant or better suited for another time and place.   Nevertheless, presenting these ideas is deemed a risk worth taking, a journey worth exploring.

Navigating the Pages

The crux of this story is a few pages in length.  All else is an appendage.

The collection starts with a conclusion.  The closing section of the collection describes the initial journey’s launch leading to this conclusion.  In between, pathways intersect, learnings accumulate.  Each piece attempts to represent a select viewpoint supporting the premise of God being human, with related ideas regarding life and meaning.  Central concepts repeat like a song’s central chords throughout this work. 

If the crux proves of interest, the balance of the work provides background on how this destination developed and how its co-created meaning might be considered while living one’s life.

Conversely, if the first offering fails to connect, further time may be spent elsewhere.

While the collective viewpoints relate, the compilation is more of a map than a narrative book.  It is a landscape with points of interest and a web of connected byways.  This story does not follow a linear path, nor is it meant to be read from the first page to the end.  Nor is it meant to be read in large chunks, rather a few pages at a time.  Each vignette reflects elements of the whole, like hologram fragments.  The reader is advised to explore content based on interest and whim.  Hopefully, as found in the Good Book, useful kernels emerge from chaff, solid nuggets surface within the mind tailings along the way.   

Related pieces are grouped within overlapping themes: 

• • Destination – arriving, heading back, a summary explanation of the journey and conclusions

  • Co-creations - constructing new G stories, retelling old – allegories, parables, and metaphors[3]  to present concepts in an indirect manner, engaging various parts of the perceiving brain

  • Observations - watching and conjecturing on social interactions, proffering hypothetical explanations regarding the why and so what from a G vantage point

  • Speculations – more fanciful leaps, less grounded attempts to wonder and imagine about meaning and the nature of G

  • Correlations - observing patterns in the natural world, extrapolating meaning

  • Contemplations – shorter pieces to anchor a sense of self, aligning with G, using expanded meditations

  • Variations – early attempts to formalize a summary description, formulate the map to explain a process for G reconciliation

  • Meditations – additional briefs to quiet the mind, connect with G, our greater self

  • Ruminations - pondering discrepancies, sifting through earliest clues that reality narratives might contain more to the G story than was being told

  • Instigations - growing restless, attempting to channel an agitated spirit onto a constructive path  

  • Reformulations - reconsidering scriptures, based on an evolving sense of a different story, how might legacy stories within sacred books be retold from a new perspective

[1] Historically referred to as ‘God’, one of the preferred legacy labels for referring to a supreme being.  This revised identifier, ‘G,’ represents aspects of the legacy God definitions, but introduces a modified view in this story, a short cut reference for a Greater Self.  When referring to the historical view of this entity, ‘God’ will be used; otherwise ‘G’ serves as the term of choice.

[2] See footnote #1

[3] Disclaimer: All allegories, parables, and metaphors contained in this collection are not intended for literal interpretation.  Any resemblance to commonly held beliefs regarding reality or imagined alternate realties is largely coincidental, albeit partly intentional.  These excerpts utilize standard writing conventions to convey unconventional ideas, using known concepts to bridge the less familiar.