{"id":1060,"date":"2012-09-19T11:53:31","date_gmt":"2012-09-19T15:53:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jenniferthomas.ca\/?p=1060"},"modified":"2016-12-01T14:52:27","modified_gmt":"2016-12-01T19:52:27","slug":"walking-on-water","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jenniferthomas.ca\/?p=1060","title":{"rendered":"RS34: Walking on Water"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"St.<\/a>

St. Paul’s Harbour, Rhodes (c) JAT 2001<\/p><\/div>\n

Jen has reminded me I haven’t written a solo post here, so I’m going to do that today.\u00a0 I’m going to talk about what it feels like to walk on water.<\/p>\n

I don’t mean that I or any human being has ever been able to literally walk on water.\u00a0 When my great-nephew wrote about “walking on water” in the Gospel of Mark, he didn’t mean it literally.\u00a0 He meant it metaphorically.\u00a0 He was trying to describe what it feels like when a person has entered into the Kingdom state of fullness of heart.<\/p>\n

He chose the image of water carefully.\u00a0 In Second Temple Judaism, water was a powerful and frequent symbol in Jewish texts.\u00a0 Often it meant blessings from God.\u00a0 In an arid region, rainfall is a blessing, and most of ancient Judea was arid.\u00a0 But there was a parallel understanding of water, too, as the primal force of chaos, the place where uncontrollable monsters lived. Where female<\/em> monsters lived.<\/p>\n

The Book of Genesis starts out with the assumption that water has to be pushed back by God and held in place before the Garden of Eden can be planted.\u00a0 The sea is seen as a dangerous place.\u00a0 An unpredictable place.\u00a0 A deep place which is formless and dark, with no knowledge in it.\u00a0 God fixes this problem by first bringing light (knowledge of order and symmetry) onto the scene.\u00a0 He calls the light Day and the darkness Night, but he hasn’t created the Sun or the Moon yet, so the light he brings to Planet Earth isn’t sunlight.\u00a0 It’s the light of knowledge.<\/p>\n

The men who wrote the Book of Genesis emphasize again and again that you should want<\/em> to have order in your life.\u00a0 Order is good.\u00a0 Chaos is bad.\u00a0 There’s knowledge, and God saw that it was good.\u00a0 There’s careful separation of all major “elements” into their proper places, and God saw that it was good.\u00a0 There’s careful naming of all creations, large and small, and God saw that it was good.\u00a0 The earth itself (adam<\/em> in Hebrew) is separated into two aspects — male and female — and given the breath of life.\u00a0 The resulting creations, man and woman, who are made in the image of God, are God’s representatives on Earth and through them God can impose the law of hierarchy upon all other kingdoms in creation (kingdoms in a biological sense, that is).\u00a0 And God saw that it was good.\u00a0 By the seventh “day,” God has put a big, fat leash on all that watery chaos stuff and firmly imposed the Law of Cause and Effect upon Planet Earth, and it’s so darned good that God calls for a day of rest to honour his accomplishments.<\/p>\n

And what is Elohim’s greatest accomplishment?\u00a0 The greatest accomplishment of Elohim (“the gods” in Hebrew) is to whip that dark, watery, feminine principle into shape and force it to obey the male principles of order, knowledge, law, and hierarchy.\u00a0 When Elohim creates humankind — adam<\/em> — he creates adam<\/em> entirely out of strong, orderly, procreative, male earth.\u00a0 No water in sight.\u00a0 Elohim adds the breath of life (by inference from Gen. 1:30) to his new creations, but he’s very careful not to include any of that chaotic water stuff in his perfect new creations.\u00a0 Water’s okay when it’s in its proper place, but let it loose, and there’s no describing the destruction that will occur.<\/p>\n

Oh wait!\u00a0 There is<\/em> a description!\u00a0 Let me see now . . . of yes, that would be the Great Flood story.\u00a0 The Great Flood story reminds you (just in case you need reminding) what happens when bits and pieces of the Divine Order fall out of their proper places and start to misbehave (Gen. 6:1-7) and why God’s creation of order and hierarchy is a good thing!\u00a0 A good thing you really, really want!<\/p>\n

Still, even the bad behaviour of the Nephilim was nothing compared to the fall of the Feminine Principle.\u00a0 When the Feminine Principle fell out of her proper place in the heavens and coalesced into the dark, formless, watery depths that existed before God came to rescue her with his light of knowledge an’ all\u00a0 . . . well, that was a real<\/em> mess.\u00a0 A mess that still needs fixing.\u00a0 Occasionally, if things get really bad on Earth, God unleashes her and lets the monsters out, which is exactly why you need to put a Molten Sea in front of your big temple (1 Kings 7:23-26).\u00a0 You need to remind your people that God has given you power over the forces of chaos by proxy.<\/p>\n

This power by proxy comes in the form of ritual bathing in water that has been tamed<\/em>.\u00a0 Fresh water — including rainfall — is water that has been properly tamed by God.\u00a0 Restored to its true state of purity.\u00a0 Immersion in purified water allows you to share in God’s purification process.\u00a0 (It also happens to make you cleaner, and therefore healthier and happier, but this is a separate question.)<\/p>\n

Mark, a trained scholar, had all these traditions about water in mind when he chose to show me “walking on water” in the middle of his Parable of the Idol Bread (Mark 6:47-51).\u00a0 He’s turned the traditional meaning of water on its head.\u00a0 It’s a new relationship with water.\u00a0 Nobody commands the waters of Lake Tiberias to part so Jesus can walk across on dry land.\u00a0 Nobody immerses themselves in the waters in baptism.\u00a0 Nobody puts the waters in big jars or little jars or cauldrons or ritual baths.\u00a0 The lake is the lake, the way it’s always been the lake.\u00a0 And Jesus is Jesus, the way he’s always been Jesus.\u00a0 And the lake and Jesus seem to be getting along!\u00a0 No fighting with the lake, no thrashing with monsters in the lake, no prayer rituals to calm the lake.\u00a0 Jesus starts walking towards his companions (who are struggling with questions of understanding and true faith) and the lake suddenly calms down as if maybe the waters (the Feminine Principle) and Jesus are working together and aren’t in conflict with each other.\u00a0 As if maybe the waters are comfortable supporting Jesus because he has already “taken heart and stopped being afraid.”\u00a0 As if maybe the waters are not and never have<\/em> been the problem.<\/p>\n

The problem is written down in black and white as plain as you can get in Chapter 7 of Mark.\u00a0 The problem is not what you touch on the outside of your body.\u00a0 The problem is not the water itself or what you do with the water.\u00a0 The problem is what you choose to do on the inside<\/em> of your body.\u00a0 The problem is what you choose to do with your own free will.<\/p>\n

The journey to know your own free will, as I said last time in conversation with Jen, is very much a journey that resembles the stages of grief.\u00a0 All people must wrestle with what it means to have free will.\u00a0 They must question it, be confused by it, be angry at it, reject it, and finally come to terms with it.\u00a0 As the character Job once did.\u00a0 As I did as Jesus son of Joseph two millennia ago.<\/p>\n

There’s a reason for this, a reason that has nothing to do with sin or salvation or sacraments or separation from God.\u00a0 The reason for this painful journey is that God trusts you.<\/p>\n

Human beings often wonder why they’re here and why it has to hurt so much.\u00a0 Many reasons have been offered over the centuries by different religious leaders.\u00a0 In the tradition of Occam’s razor, I offer this: you are here to learn how God the Mother and God the Father discovered together how to walk on water.\u00a0 You’re here so you can experience firsthand what it means to use your free will in every permutation possible in the service of Divine Love.<\/p>\n

Put that way, it sounds simple, doesn’t it?\u00a0 But it’s not.\u00a0 You know that and I know that.\u00a0 It’s damned hard to work your way through the stages of knowing what free will means.\u00a0 Not what you, as a human being, think it means, but what God the Mother and God the Father think it means.<\/p>\n

To live from a place of pure free will is, as you may imagine, the very opposite of living in a world of pure cause and effect.\u00a0 But once, long ago, long before the event called the Big Bang took place, the universe was not as we know it today, and the laws of cause and effect held much more sway than they do today.\u00a0 This is hard — beyond hard — for most angels to understand, so some of us decide to incarnate here to see what this kind of existence must have felt like.\u00a0 Our Divine Parents let us do this because they trust us.<\/p>\n

When souls decide to incarnate here as human beings, they know it’s going to be hard, but when they get here they find out it’s even harder than they could have imagined.\u00a0 They do it anyway, though, because they’re experiencing something important, something that’s part of their history, their past.\u00a0 They want to understand their relationships with everyone at a much deeper level, and this crazy journey called “life as a human being” helps them do it.<\/p>\n

Not every soul chooses to do this.\u00a0 But the ones who do, do so voluntarily.\u00a0 These are the souls who are primarily kinesthetic learners at a deep soul level.\u00a0 They learn best by experiencing something firsthand, by walking a mile in somebody else’s shoes so they really “get” what it feels like.<\/p>\n

If you’re reading this, it means you wanted to come to Planet Earth for a while so you can walk in your Divine Parents’ shoes and see for yourself what it felt like for them to work together to overturn the rule of “cause and effect” and replace it with something infinitely more powerful and mysterious: Divine Love (a.k.a. quantum physics).<\/p>\n

The human brain (unlike other mammalian brains) has an annoying habit of trying to shed its own emotions and slip into the unloving habits of cause and effect.\u00a0 (As your cats and dogs like to remind you.)\u00a0 So the human brain is ideally suited to this particular journey of discovery.\u00a0 It has both a great potential for learning and a great potential for un<\/em>learning.\u00a0 So to state your brain gives you the option to explore every possible nook and cranny of free will would be an understatement.<\/p>\n

I know you can think of a thousand examples of people who didn’t use their free will in loving and trusting ways.\u00a0 But what about the people who have<\/em> come to terms with their own free will?\u00a0 Who are they and what do their lives look like?\u00a0 More important, are these people “special,” or can anyone on Planet Earth find this experience of redemption?<\/p>\n

We’ve often used the term “redemption” on this site in contradistinction to religious salvation, and I’d like to talk about this a bit more.\u00a0 Any human being — regardless of gender, sexual orientation, age, culture, time, place, or religion — who has worked through the grief stages of free will is a person who has experienced redemption in the way that I experienced it.\u00a0 Redemption is the emotional insight that fills up a person’s entire heart and mind with the knowledge that it’s okay to never fear the Truth.<\/p>\n

There’s Truth in the universe and there’s Divine Love.\u00a0 They’re not the same thing.\u00a0 Truth exists in the absence of consciousness.\u00a0 Divine Love is the choice of consciousness to never hide from the Truth, to always be transparent to the Truth, to fully embrace whatever is true about another being without<\/em> losing the truth of oneself.\u00a0 What does this mean?\u00a0 It means that Divine Love always respects the right of another person to be<\/em> another person and not a mere extension of one vast cloud of self.<\/p>\n

A human being who understands that free will holds the key to Divine Love, forgiveness, passionate creativity, and committed relationships (devotion) is a human being who has found redemption.<\/p>\n

Such a person can be found anywhere.\u00a0 And, indeed, such individuals are found in all cultures.\u00a0 They are the people who simply won’t back down from the idea that all beings are worthy of respect, fair treatment, compassion, kindness, and encouragement.\u00a0 They are the people who believe in social justice and due process, in democracies rather than republics or empires, in transparency in government and accountability for intentional harms.\u00a0 They are the people who treat women with as much respect as men, who treat the planet with as much respect as they treat other human beings.\u00a0 They are the people who treat their children as souls in need of education, guidance, mentorship, and respect instead of as property to be bartered for status or personal gratification.\u00a0 They are the people who don’t whine and complain and blame God for all the travails they’ve chosen themselves.\u00a0 Most of all, they’re the people who have the courage to see their neighbours as worthy human beings, not as objects of hatred, contempt, and violence.<\/p>\n

When you really “get it” — when you understand that your ability to choose your path does not make you separate<\/em> from the rest of Creation but is in the fact the very glue that holds God’s family together as a loving, trusting group — the world no longer feels to you like a place where good is fighting evil or light is fighting dark or order is fighting chaos. \u00a0 It doesn’t feel like a fight any longer, but neither does it feel like mere acceptance of the way things are (which is often just resignation in disguise).\u00a0 It’s not obedience.\u00a0 It’s not piety.\u00a0 It’s not subjugation.\u00a0 It’s not anomie.\u00a0 It’s not cynicism.\u00a0 It’s not apathy.\u00a0 It’s not depression.\u00a0 It’s not escapism.\u00a0 It’s just\u00a0 . . . honesty.\u00a0 The heart’s honesty.\u00a0 The heart’s willingness to see things as they really are and, despite that, to dig deeper, ever deeper — or maybe higher, ever higher — into empathy for another person’s Truth.<\/p>\n

There is no adequate word for this emotion in English.\u00a0 “Trust” would come closest.<\/p>\n

When you have this sense of trust, it feels as if you’re holding God’s hand and God is guiding you through the storms and worries of daily life.<\/p>\n

It feels as if you’re walking on water.<\/p>\n

Blessings to all,<\/p>\n

Love Jesus<\/p>\n

September 19, 2012<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

-2<\/span><\/a><\/div> <\/div>
<\/div><\/div>
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Jen has reminded me I haven’t written a solo post here, so I’m going to do that today.\u00a0 I’m going to talk about what it feels like to walk on water. I don’t mean that I or any human being has ever been able to literally walk on water.\u00a0 When my great-nephew wrote about “walking […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1381,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53,9,160,24,244,55,28,120,27,59,7,167,117],"tags":[289],"class_list":["post-1060","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-4-ss","category-bible","category-cause-effect","category-divine-love","category-favourite-posts","category-free-will","category-jesus-teachings","category-law-nomos","category-mother-god","category-realspiritik","category-redemption","category-theodicy","category-trust","tag-kingdom-teachings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jenniferthomas.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1060","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jenniferthomas.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jenniferthomas.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jenniferthomas.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jenniferthomas.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1060"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/jenniferthomas.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1060\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1931,"href":"https:\/\/jenniferthomas.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1060\/revisions\/1931"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jenniferthomas.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1381"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jenniferthomas.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1060"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jenniferthomas.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1060"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jenniferthomas.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1060"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}