Thoughts of a Wo/anderer

View through keyhole-by Janek Sedler

God is the totality of human beings and the totality of the humanity is God. Each and every human being is a speck of God or has a bit of God in him or her. I dare say, God is even more than the totality of the human race.

Each human being realizes the giant of a potential if he or she finds the God in him or her. God is locked in us, and life’s purpose, life’s journey and destination is to find the God locked inside. It is this speck that when discovered would set the ‘world on fire’ (as the Archbishop of London said rightly). This speck that would reach out to you and the rest of humanity in astounding, inhuman ways. Inhuman, because  there is the ordinary human, already a wonderful masterpiece for being a creation from the hands of God. However, this creation is simply designed dust, a beautiful frame without a picture in it, a delicately woven basket just placed on display. Then there is God in the human; the animation of the empty frame and basket, that which breathes life into the formation of dust.

There have been humans throughout the generations who found the ‘God’ in them and have done great, virtually inhuman things that reverberate throughout the generations: Jesus Christ, Mohammed, Buddha, these are people of the very first level. Then we have the second level made up of people like Galileo, Einstein, Leonardo Da Vinci, Newton. Then there are people like Mother Theresa, Kwame Nkrumah of the third level. All these people in whichever level, did things so outstanding to their generation of humans that they drew and still draw followers, at times worshippers from generations that follow.

Imagine if every human being was to unleash the bit of God in them for the benefit of humanity! 

Going to church, praying fervently, reaching out to the ‘man of God’ for him to ‘unlock your blessings’ is clutching at straws and, in a reverse way, is further locking, placing in a tomb, sealing and then throwing out the key of the speck of God in you. I went to a church once, when the ‘man of God’ delivered a sermon on the importance of tokens. He begins by telling a bible story of the imminent destruction of Jericho and how a prostitute was saved because she had sheltered the two men sent to scout in the city. The ‘man of God’ (I forget if he was a pastor, or reverend. The right title is important!), stresses on the part of the story where Rahab, the prostitute, asks for a guarantee of her safety in the imminent war, a ‘token’. The men guaranteed/ swore on their lives for her safety and told her to leave the scarlet rope from which they escaped, hanging from her window. It later served as a signal that no one in that house was to be destroyed.

The ‘man of God’ then twists the story of tokens and concludes that we must then give (in money) to God for God to give back to us! I really don’t remember how he linked it but this was the manipulation of lies, reasoning and the Bible he used to prove to people why they should give money. And was he successful! There were crowds of people (without exaggeration) around him collecting envelopes to put their money in. Some were very huge amounts. If they could not give instantly they could bring their money at the next service or at the end of the week. This then drew, if not the whole church, almost all of it. What really ticked me off was him repeatedly saying, “It’s not about the money. I want God to do something for you. It is a point of contact for God to bless you.”

I can’t begin to point the number of things very wrong with this argument. First of all, why would God need you to give something before your blessings can be released unto you? What can you possibly have materially that God needs? Secondly, if it is truly as a point of contact, then money is the most impersonal thing to a human. It is a material thing foreign to the body and mind. It has passed many hands and would still keep passing more hands because that is the purpose of money: for barter. The most powerful point of contact, if the ‘man of God’ was really looking for one, is the human body, direct from the hands of God.

It is people like these, churches like these that create the eternal damage and further lock God inside the human. He or she loses, in a roundabout way, self-knowledge, and understanding of the power of Self. This is only because, one has been brainwashed and manipulated to become dependent: dependent on the ‘man of God’, dependent on a heaven where life would be as good as you cannot make it here on earth, dependent on your ‘reward in heaven’.  We search and search for a miracle, pray, fast, day in and day out for ‘the hand of God to touch my life’, but it is already there! In you! It has been there even before you were born and would continue to be there just because we are God’s creation, made ‘from God’s very fingers’.  This is such a remarkable thing that even a part of creation has been left to us in the phenomenon of reproduction. The woman gives birth to a creation formed by the fusion of man and woman. This is proof, in my eyes that God has left a bit of herself or himself, rather the sexless Self, in us. Humankind was created in God’s very image, and made masters of all life. How can designed dust be that important without its animation? How can humankind be masters if they did not have God?

A very good friend of mine points out that physical proof of God already in us is our breath. Up and down our lungs go, inhaling and exhaling that which cannot be seen and yet inhabits the whole earth. 

Why do we flock to, admire, look up to, want to be like, respect, are in awe of and even worship certain people? It’s because our connection as humanity makes us naturally sense the brilliance of their speck of God which they have unlocked, and want to draw even closer because, we want to draw closer to God. This is mostly an unconscious act. It is like a blind puppy finding its way to its mother’s teats when it is hungry. Human has a magnet reaction to God.

The Ideal speck of God unleashed is a force that benefits humanity and life in the universe as a whole. There is an undeniable connection between everything in creation: trees to human, human to trees, to animals, to the earth, to the sea, even to the cosmos. This is the phenomenon of the circle of life, the interdependence whose totality is God. It is the eternity we seek in ‘heaven’, of giving to, to be received of to be given for and received of so that life continues its remarkable process of evolution.

POOR ISAAC!

                           

He runs outside the camp using his stick to chase the elusive reptile. He stops to fix his turban which was threatening to free itself in the dusty wind. It took only a few seconds but the confounded reptile slipped away to a place unknown. Isaac stood still, right hand on turban and crouching low, watching the ground carefully to see where it would emerge. The suspense built as he waited knowing for certain it would have to rush past his feet if it wanted to be free. His stick was ready.

Suddenly there was an abrupt movement, an opening of a tent flap and the lizard scurried past in a frenzied hurry. He jumped straight at it to hit it with the stick but collided into the fully robed figure of his father. He looked up sheepishly, expecting his father to nuzzle his head like he always does. But the look on his father’s face made him freeze in alarm. His father looked like death. His eyes were staring so intently into his, Isaac looked away to breathe again.

“Let us go and make an offering to the Lord,” his father spoke in a voice devoid of everything. Isaac had the vague impression of a black, yawning hole when he heard his father speak. They had done this several times before. But father seemed different today, why?

He joined his father and the two servants. He was carried onto his father’s donkey and they set off. He would have liked to ask many questions like, why do lizards crawl on their bellies? Why were they so jumpy all the time? Why…? But father was different. They were sitting on the same donkey but it felt as though he were sitting alone. The journey took three days, in between rest periods of water and food, and protecting against the furious glare of the sun when it became too hot to walk in. Finally the destination was reached.

Father asked the two servants to stay with the donkey while he went with Isaac to go and worship the Lord. Father placed the wood on Isaac’s shoulders. Isaac was happy. It made him feel like a grown man. Father himself carried the fire and the knife and they set off. Isaac was baffled. They had the wood, fire and the knife but there was no lamb or ram or any animal for the sacrifice to the Lord. He remained silent though, for Father was not in the mood. But after a few more steps, the flame of curiosity so burned in him he blurted out his bafflement.

“God Himself would provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son,” his father answered gravely.

His curiosity thus satisfied, Isaac continued on, once again relishing the manly burden on his shoulders. Father had always let the servants carry it. Now, he was a man.

Father then stopped. They had come to the place of sacrifice. His father began to build an altar as Isaac put his load down. It was heavier than he cared to admit. He then rushed to help his father finish the altar and arrange the wood on it. Isaac began to look around for the lamb that God was going to provide.

Then he felt his father grab his hands gently but firmly behind his back. He looked around, smiling at the first playfulness his father had shown since they had set off. But the lifeless look in his father’s eyes made him want to let his bladder flow. Father’s eyes had become a deep non-ending abyss of black. It went on and on, Isaac almost got lost in its depths. The black was blacker than anything black, especially against his father’s now colorless skin. Father looked like one of those walking corpses he had been told horror stories about.

A jerk and sharp pain shook him from his trance to see that his father had tied his hands behind his back. Isaac was now bewildered. He wriggled his hands and found the binds as secure as a rock. He looked in his father’s face again, a questioning look in his eyes. Fear was creeping into his childish heart. It clutched at his chest and shoved hard against till he was out of breath and in pain. His father lifted him up and placed him on the altar. Isaac was in such an agonizing shock that the cry choked in his throat and came out as an infertile gust of air. He looked frantically at his father trying to stare the questions his voice had failed to do for him. But his eyes were put in darkness with a piece of cloth and tied securely behind his head. Isaac was frozen from limb to limb in fear, anguish, and confusion. The world had gone wrong. The laws of nature… Father! Father?

He could see nothing, and hear nothing but the heavy breathing of this man who had loved him as a father. He lay there wondering how it would feel when the knife cut through his soft flesh. Would he squirm in bleating agony like the many lambs he had seen his father sacrifice? He wanted to call for help. He would call for Father to save him. Yes, that is what he would do. He filled his lungs and prepared to scream with all his strength but it pushed out in an infertile gust of hot air. Scream for Father..?!?! Fiery hot, blinding salty tears soaked the cloth on his eyes. He felt a darkness creeping slowly into his being. Something died. Something was lost and gone forever as he began to slip away to that black darkness. That darkness that would forever be warmer than what he had seen in his life’s light…

Then he felt hands frantically tearing the cloth on his eyes apart and he looked into the face of his father once more, now delirious in joy. The smiling face swam for a moment between his eyes before he fell in a faint.

When he recovered, he was in his father’s arms, held gently and protected against the sun. He felt his father’s lips on his face as he kissed him over and over again. He closed his eyes once more and held them tight to prevent the tears from falling. He was afraid.

Something had died inside him. The world is no longer what it had been. Perhaps it never was what he had thought it was. Love is an illusion. Father is evil. God does not exist.