Spiritual growth

Our World Needs Hands

/ Norwegian / 4 Comments

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I have been writing a lot of poetry lately, being in this really creative phase. Yet, I do think the world can’t heal from poetry alone, our suffering world needs hands and feet too. Partly, because a lot of people don’t read or enjoy poetry, and partly because there is no healthy contemplation without action too.

My blog is not political and divisive, but it hopes to be contemplative, unifying and inspiring. Inspiration for more contemplation, but also for a lot more action for the good and healing of this world. My attitude is that we know very little about an eternity after death, and what really counts is our living right now. So, let’s make our living true and worthwhile. With that I mean, a life without love for your neighbor, and even your “enemy” or stranger is not a real life, or not real, worthwhile living.

Watching the news it seems a lot of today’s leaders think the enemy is outside. There is a lot of terrifying projections going on. If only more and more people, and in particular people in high office, could realize that their real enemies are themselves, their own egos or false selves! Loving your enemy means really you need to start loving yourself deeply, facing your own enmity towards your own true light and even your own darkness.

When I say the world needs hands (and feet) I mean the world needs good deeds and action for the common good and for the ending of wars. The right and left blaming each other will not bring this about. Only a hard look into our own individual hearts will really be of help. First then when we face the “devil”, “sin” and shadow within us and when we integrate and grow into wholeness individually, can we also change and help the world.

The call for hands is not just a call for individual change, but also for structural changes in our world. We need to break the unhealthy structures that are not very helpful to us in general, no matter how much income they generate for the few and the elite. And by the way, the real elite, is the people waking up, and get on with the job healing their inner life so they can become healers to the world they live in.

Do you understand the message? Do you hear the call? Will the world be finding healing and help by your hands? World healing and actually a world individuation must start with us, and it starts with each and everyone’s integration, healthy selflove, and responsible action. Let’s keep becoming mystics, keep growing in self acceptance, integration and selflove – so this love can flow from within to the outside in desperate need for real and love inspired action. Right meditation does not end in non-action, but true contemplation and divine infusion can only lead to love for you neighbor, love for your sleeping enemy and love for the world gifted to us.

Finally, the “easy” keys are, you must grow in love and self acceptance, in order for us, the world at large, to grow and find peace. I believe in true world peace, but a lot need to balance itself out. The world today is in a very reactive and projected state. We need to integrate, find the balance and the union within, only then can we see how we can go about doing the right things in the world, a world deeply reactive and out of balance. I think Jung would have agreed that the world needs individuation too, integration and balance. But it must start with us, you and me, and the leaders of today. Please take a step, do you part!

Peace!

PS! I would love hearing from the readers how you go about living your life in ways that heal suffering and benefit the world for us all today. Please share. Start the talk, it may bring about the walk!

Burning Face

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I have a burning face now
It is almost painful
Also distressing
What is this burning
in my face

My face is burning
I sense it comes from
a yearning
Is this yearning mine or
is it Divine

I remember the story
of the Burning Bush
Moses stood on Holy Ground
He had to take off his shoes to
thread gently on the soil

What is this burning
I have a Burning Bush
of life in my inner being
Is it a Holy Fire
I do need to admire

It is so easy to mix
this Fire with desire
Too quickly I try to satisfy
this hunger within
Yet for something deeper I must wait

The waiting is agonizing
It almost stretches my bones
I think something is ready
to be bye-gones
A New River

May it come
May it flow
May it be free

A Reconstructed Faith – Part One

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I am now in my fiftieth year of life and I think that my journey of faith so far, while not a sensational story nor very special, is still a story worth sharing. And I share it here because I hope that my story might perhaps support, alleviate, or inspire the believer or doubter who reads it.

My background and upbringing are in the Pentecostal movement. I was, you could say, born into this movement through my two parents who were Pentecostals, who themselves were also raised in the Pentecostal movement. Until recently, I was also a member of a Pentecostal congregation, which means I have sought spiritual fellowship and friendship in Pentecostal contexts for many years.

As a teenager, I had a rather challenging emotional life and struggled with inner turmoil and also my sincere faith in God. From an early age, I was a seeker of truth, and someone who took my faith seriously, who wanted to share it with others and who wanted to serve wholeheartedly the God I believed in.

From my youth, I have few strong spiritual experiences, but as a student, I had a period where I experienced a great joy based on the belief in and experience of a God who was love and that God loved me. It was an important experience. I remember the challenging time in military service where I read 1 Corinthians 13 repeatedly and where I learned to replace the word “love” in the text with “God”, so that the beautiful description of love became a story of my God’s unconditional love that endured everything. Now it became a story of a God who loves, and I was included.

I have many experiences at Christian camps and meetings where I remember longing for an experience of God and his love. I remember how I struggled with my own thoughts about myself. I wrestled with big questions, including the question of whether I was fundamentally good or evil. It was very serious for me, and it was quite challenging. I would actually be convinced of my own wickedness if it was the truth, rather than to live in falsehood or in a lie, as long as I could also breathe more freely in life.

This is not the story of a saint, but of a teenager and man who struggled with emotions, his faith, and longing for an experience of God. In the midst of these difficult thoughts and uncertainties, I also partially have experienced a preaching that said we are all “zeroes”, but with Jesus in front as number one, we become like a million. And when God sees you, he doesn’t see you, but he sees Jesus. He loves you (but only) through and because of Jesus. At the same time I also heard that God loved us even while we were still sinners, but in my struggle the more uplifting message drowned early on. In my longing and in my strong desire to experience love and also to serve the true God, I rather experienced fighting with myself and my own self-contempt than being too convinced of my own high value.

I cannot blame my upbringing, the preaching, or the Pentecostal movement alone for my challenges and struggles. But it is clear that this had great significance. Perhaps helped by being highly sensitive and vulnerable from the start, and not one of the strong, cool guys. In my younger days I often felt excluded and lonely. And perhaps it is precisely this loneliness that today has given me the motivation to, for example, stand on the side of gay people and demand that we include everyone, that everyone must be allowed to serve God and the Christian community, regardless of their orientation.

So far, this is certainly not a unique or very special story. But I choose to share it now in a few simple sentences. Perhaps these words can reach some of those who need to find strength either in a somewhat challenging youth life with a strong longing for God, or strengthen an adult who is in the middle of life and who no longer feels to sure of the answers to life’s questions. Furthermore, my story is a story of reconstruction, a development in and of faith.

I chose to use the word reconstructed in the title. It was entirely intentional, because it resonated positively. It tells of something being rebuilt, and something being created and developed. It also speaks of a faith in my life that has been in crisis for much of my life, from my teenage years and several years thereafter. But as is well known, a crisis is truly an opportunity to find a stronger foundation to build your life on. It’s about finding something trustworthy and valued without having answers to all of questions of life.

To be continued…

Translated from Norwegian to English by the help of ChatGPT.

Times of Transformation

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Butterfly

Keeping a journal can be a good thing, both as a helpful tool in your own processes and also as words and sentences to reread later, when you have moved on, and understand your writing from a new and different perspective.

In rereading my own journals I some times find nuggets of wisdom and also description of a life I later see that I have grown through.

In particularly difficult times when the road ahead is very unclear, when the struggle in a day is almost to hard to bear, that’s when I become poetic. I guess it’s because poetic language is open, there is more of of imagination and feelings than clarity of mind.

Later, in rereading some of these more poetic reflections and wanderings, I find glimpses of poems, words and sentences that now speak to me in another, deeper and also clearer way. What I earlier only got in glimpses and wrote in imaginative and poetic language, I am now more able to describe in precise prose.

The reason it’s a different experience looking back and reread old words and poems journaled in dark times, is because life now tells me I made it through. What a blessing that is, when you see that the dark times, no matter how dark they were, brought forth new light in your life! This is because the difficult days were times of transformation.

The next few poems and posts that I will share in the days to come, will be some glimpses from some of these darker times. I share them in the hope they may speak to your heart as well, since in being human we often share the same or similar experience.

It would warm my heart if you would share at times which words express something you are going through or have experienced. I would love to hear from some of my readers in the days to come. And please, if there is something in particular you find to your liking, please share the post with some of your friends. I hope the future posts will be small blessings to some people out there, in the big and often lonely world we all live in. Be blessed.

In order to experience the joy

you need to accept the sadness

In order to be filled you need

to know you are empty