Blue Sunshine Christians

But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me.

-- 2 Corinthians 12:9 (New International Version)

Do you think Christians are always sunshiny beings that never feel discouraged or depressed? I'm not talking about feeling discouraged or depressed on account of their Christian struggle, though failing in that arena may well contribute to general discouragement or related depression. Do non-Christians get less depressed than Christians or is it about the same?

Non-Christians have easier access to instant gratification while the Christian with faults or temptations can't just find a quick and easy solution in the way that a non-Christian can. Sometimes this makes for frustration, stress and depression. Are Christians more frustrated than non-Christians?

Of course, the other side is also true. With almost no limits in mind, the non-Christian is able to access too many options and some of these lead to frustration, stress and depression as well. In some ways then, the Christian is safer from certain frustrations, stresses and depressions. A Christian doesn't have to feel the non-stop compulsion to keep up with the ever richer and more successful and more popular Joneses. He or she, may have, though, Christian Joneses to keep up with that measure success in different ways that have nothing to do with money, position and other types of worldly success.

Finally, some Christians, like some non-Christians have serious genetic dispositions to not being always happy, smiling people. Yes, they may, in fact, be more depressed than is normal for another person. Therapy and medication may help, but at times, the only solution is to look to Christ and ask him to mercifully draw nearer and heal and comfort them when they are not the Endless Sunshine Christians of all the mission stories one reads about, but rather, when they are very real, painfully real, Blue Sunshine Christians. There is hope in sight for even a Blue Sun eventually sets.

Other Solutions for the Unrepentant

The hosts of light are safely inside the Transparent City.
The confederacy of darkness surrounds the victorious city.
Beyond them, in an outer circle, an almost perfect circle, stand the mysterious people of the Fields of Colored Light.
They never imagined this could happen to them.
They wanted to be inside the City of Light. Instead, they stand far apart from those making war against the Rulers of Light and the victorious city.
Having made the wrong decision, they could not be allowed entrance into the City of Light.
However, neither do they find themselves capable of fighting against the brilliant city.

They are all gradually transported to an alternate universe of life.
As they traverse each of the known seven dimensions, they glow with the strange hues of the Fields of Colored Light.
With unfathomable and perplexing joy, they worship the all-understanding, all mysterious God of the central universe of light.
Again, they never imagined this could happen to them.
He waited till the end to let them know He had foreseen the second mysterious principle.
Not evil, but not immaculate righteousness either.
It was a nameless principle at the end of the Eighth Universe.
There they would wait for a new solution, a revelation, if there would ever be one.
Or there they would worship the eternal God within the Fields of Colored Light He had foreseen though had kept secret.

The children of the Eighth Universe would never be like those of light, nor of darkness.
Their ways would forever be a mystery, though not a threat.
Their culture would not equal that of Light; neither would it be greatly inferior.
They would exist on a plane a little lower than those of Light.

These Others, those of the Eighth Universe, would ever remember who they had been on Earth.
All the culture of Earth that was worth preserving they would perpetuate on Earth III.

Every eighth day they would come before God to worship the all encompassing being.

December 29, 1979, Saturday, 12:30 a.m.

Yes, I know much of this piece is unbiblical. It is a kind of partial universalism. If only for its idealism or conceptual beauty or wonder, I thought it curious to post here. I had totally forgotten that I had written this piece at age 24.

For related or more biblical versions of this Third Road or option, please see the following links:

http://realjesuscristo.blogspot.com/2006/07/never-ending-perfect-day.html
http://perfectfuturo.blogspot.com/2006/06/third-road-even-narrower-one.html
www.perfectfuturo.com/Eighth.html

Enter the Dimension of the Spirit of God

When I was young none of what I'm about to talk about had any meaning. Or it had meaning, but I just didn't get it or was unable to appreciate it. Whenever I sang about being filled or blessed by the Holy Spirit it never dawned on me what I was really singing about. If people talked a lot about the Holy Spirit, which I know they did, the words were pleasant but they just did not register the way they do now.

For years I was afraid of offending the Holy Spirit and thus being at risk of committing the unpardonable sin. I thought it best not even to speak of the Holy Spirit, less I say something wrong or inappropriate. I had been told, thankfully, that it was hard to commit the unpardonable sin as it meant that you really could care less if you committed it or nor. That reassured me as I was deathly afraid of committing it so I felt sure that I was not close to that helpless state of being.

For years I claimed the promise found in Luke 11:13, "If you who are evil know how to give good things to your children, how much more will your Heavenly Father give you the Holy Spirit if you ask Him." I even claimed this promise when, as they say, I was very far from God, at least from what members of my immediate family would tell me. Although, I will admit I was into lots of strange "scenes" as they used to say in the 70s. I claimed this promise out of habit since I had probably been claiming it for over 15 or 20 years. Perhaps even 25 or 30 years. It's hard to say as the morning habit of claiming the promise of Luke 11:13 was built into my daily routine as brushing my teeth was every morning. If I didn't do it soon enough or correctly enough, I felt ill at ease.

Needless to say something unusual started happening in February of 2005, perhaps earlier. One day I went through my day & I realized that the promise had finally started to make sense and that something different was happening. Something beyond my control. Unfortunately, I can't be very objective about it all as I've always perceived reality, nature, music, books, experience, other people, in an eccentric fashion. I always assumed everyone else did so as well. It was when I read or heard a sermon that talked about truly believing the reality of spiritual states of being or awareness, that it occurred to me that how I perceived things, and yes, spiritual things, was slightly different from what most other people perceived. I'm happy to say that I've come across other people that have shared this otherworldly ability or perception, so I don't feel so alone.

For almost two years now, something, or better put, someone, has awakened me every morning at about the same time, 7:00 or 7:30 a.m. in the morning. Even if I'm still sleepy and try to fall asleep again, that force shakes me gently and encourages me to arise and spend at least 30 minutes or more with the bible and moments of prayer & meditation.

A few times during the last two years while still sleeping, I have heard a melodious voice that sounded faintly familiar address me by my boyhood name, Rauly. Perhaps it was my mother's voice calling out my name, though she is far away and living in another state. Or perhaps it was my own voice calling to me while I was still asleep. Or perhaps it was someone else's voice waking me up in as soothing a voice as I could accept while still in dreamland. At other times the voice was almost muffled or slightly groaning and seemed to say hello while I was halfway between the deepest sleep and the initial stages of wakefulness. One of the last times this voice-within-a-dream called to me, it wasn't even a speaking voice. It sang to me, or perhaps I sang to myself while still sleeping. The amazing thing was that the voice, or I myself as I slept, was singing a song that translated into English from the Spanish version I sang in church as a child was "The Shepherd loves his sheep, paternally and unlike no one else ... both the lost and those still in the sheepfold." ["Ama el pastor sus ovejas, con un amor paternal ... ama el pastor a las otras con un amor sin igual."] I had not sung this song in over 20 years. That I would sing it in my dream was so astonishing that it woke me up earlier than usual and got me to open my bible even more urgently than usual.

Having said all this, I still long and wait and study and pray for the full baptism of the Spirit of God, the Spirit of Christ, the Holy Spirit. Does one ever know for sure that one is Spirit-filled or is that life-altering knowledge kept from one mercifully?

God's Self Punishment: the Crucifixion

"But isn't that why the Creator Himself had to come here and die a tortuous death? It's the blood of His cross that reconciles all things to himself, in heaven and on earth." --Cameron, Spectrum Magazine Website Forum 10/22/2006

As I read this the strangest of thoughts came to me for the first time ever. Since Jesus and God the Father are one, was God punishing Himself for having created sinful man, by dying on the cross in the person of his son, Jesus Christ? Was Christ's sacrifice the ultimate in making amends for not creating a perfect being, or for that being and his mate not turning out as perfect as he planned originally? Lucifer sinned even earlier than Adam & Eve, so was Christ's death on the cross also a form of self-punishment, and suffering for the pain that was to follow and that follows to this day, for having allowed Lucifer:Satan to be created and to make his fateful rebellious decision to "be like the most high" and to "know good and evil"?

This in no way infers my disbelief in God's love and mercy. In a way it casts, at least for me, Christ's sacrifice in a different light, as a form of saying "I'm sorry for all the pain and suffering my creating Lucifer and Adam and Eve have caused and is still causing." God has suffered too and continues to suffer. And someday, it will all have been worthwhile or beside the point when He "makes all things new."

Visions of Heaven

end of the carbon cycle,
end of gender,
spiritual union with each other and the deity.

does free will mean that the whole controversy might begin again, or will it never start because free will will assume a different shape?

will time travel be the only way to personally document the reality of what rebellion against the systems of grace did to the universe, and to the Son of God? recorded realities will not be as convincing as witnessing the pain and the suffering in realtime which can be realized, if necessary, by traveling in time.

or will the inhabitants of eternity also accept by faith what others who lived and survived life in a sinful world, tell them about the nature of sin and its consequences?

Surrender to Christ vs. Guilt for Not Doing So

Dear brother Michael, I found your site via Adventist Pulpit and a comment you left there about reading Ellen White.

While I do look forward to your post about how to surrender, and while I'm pleased to see how on fire for the Lord you are in your blog, I am saddened that the obsession, if I may call it such, with 100% consecration, sometimes experiencing 99%, other times 90-95% consecration, sounds strangely out of synch with righteousness-by-faith in Jesus. If we look to Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, and keep on looking at him, what need of feeling guilty of holding back?

Guilt, especially in the Christian life, can be a destructive thing, that only leads you into depression and feelings of low self-esteem. Yes, it would be perfect to be 100% consecrated to Christ. When we're glorified at the 2nd coming, we will be 100% consecrated to him for sure, in the meantime, enjoy your life more. Avoid evil activities that keep you out of synch with Christ, but more importantly, live and enjoy your life to the fullest, less you come to the end of your Earthly life and realize that it was not always 100% consecrated to Christ and that your life was not all it could have been. Living for regrets, present or future, sounds like a truncated life, at best. May God bless you, and all who read this. Again, I look forward to your post about how to surrender. I have been trying to surrender to Christ more and more for all of my 51 years, and in the meantime, I fix my gaze on Christ and try to enjoy Him as well as all the blessings he sends my way.

World Trade Center 3001

Build a virtual time machine and travel back to September 10, 2001: the day before the twin towers fell. Take along with you a list of all the planes that crashed and the passenger lists. Underscore the names of the terrorists on each list. From the 101st floor of one of the towers, fax the list to major newspapers, radio stations, as well as the FBI, CIA and the White House. Cause all major airports to be shut down until the Towers are emptied and guarded.

When the Towers fail to fall on the following morning, go forward in time to September 11, 3001. Stand at the base of the Twin Towers and look straightProject Rebirth: Project Rebirth: up at the aging and abandoned towers that stand as a monument to your time traveling achievement.

Instead of documentaries about the destruction of the Twin Towers, only what-if movies will be filmed about what almost took place.

Nails of Peace

Buy a large nail or a spike like those used for constructing railroad tracks.
Dip it in gold, or silver, or copper or blood.

Engrave on it words of peace only.
Attach a harness and equip it with a small parachute.

Fly over a war-ravaged country.
Drop your emissary of peace out of your airplane.

Repeat until wars become a distant memory.

Electric Funeral Splits a Sabbath Morn

"Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed—in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed." I Corinthians 15:52 (NIV)

For days I had known that Saturday, my Sabbath day, was also Scottie's Funeral. All week long I felt unsure about whether to go only for the visitation on Friday night, attend the service at 10:00 a.m. on Saturday morning, but not the farewell get-together at a place known as Georgie's Alibi. I prayed and reflected on what would be the proper thing to do. If the tables had been turned would it have been acceptable for someone to skip out on my last day above-ground? When the decisive moment arrived whether to make the left turn that would take me to Sabbath School or continue going straight ahead for three more blocks to the funeral parlor, the old song from my youth, Electric Funeral, briefly flickered across my mind and I wondered what an electric funeral would be like. A few moments later I was being ushered in to where the service was being held. I arrived half an hour late. I noticed some folks from work. I assumed the music playing was some new age type of hymn. I had no idea what religious beliefs Scottie had, or didn't have. When I looked at the front of the room at the casket, I noticed a large wooden cross. The song playing over the sound system was from Elton John's Blue Moves. It seemed elegiac in a way that music from the early 70s can sound when contrasted to the contemporary rock heard on modern radio stations. Afterwards, Elton John's Goodbye Norma Jean, or is it Candle in the Wind?, his pean to Marilyn Monroe made, at least for me, for a very bittersweet moment. I had to hold back a tear when the phrase "She lived her life like a candle in the wind" was sung.

The minister said a few words, and I do mean few, in remembrance of Scottie's life. He asked that all who wished would accompany him in saying the Lord's prayer. We then passed by the casket and I briefly said to myself, or to him, "Scottie, I hope I see you again someday." The minister then said that the family wanted to spend the last half hour of the service saying their private farewells. He reminded everyone that the Alibi's event would be at 11:30, a few blocks down the street.

I had paid my respects to Scottie so I headed for church and caught the fading moments of Sabbath school. After sitting through the endless announcement period, the pre-doxology as well as the doxology gratified me. Hymns and music in general was what I enjoyed most in church. I felt very dissatisfied though, since I had spoken very little about Scottie with anyone at the funeral. They ushered us out so quickly. I turned to a Cuban lady who I always see in prayer meetings on Wednesdays and gave her my offering envelope, telling her that I had to go to a funeral.

I was the first to arrive at Georgie's Alibi and I ran into an octogenarian neighbor from my apartment building who said that beside his home, this was the only other place in which he felt safe. He asked me if I was there for the catered affair for the guy who died of AIDS. I told him I was and did he know him? He said he didn't but that his boyfriend's cousin had also recently died of AIDS. I wished him well and waited by others who had started to arrive.

Once inside I was able to meet mostly people from work and reminisce about Scottie and his life. I also saw someone I had only seen in pictures, his former partner, Kevin. I told him that I was sorry for his loss. He said that it had come as a surprise, as he didn't seem to be that sick.

This kind of event with food, and beverages and music playing can often dampen the reflectiveness of the occasion. I did my best to ask people I encountered about their memories of Scottie. Agnes, another neighbor of mine said she had gotten to know both Scottie and Kevin at their annual Christmas party that they invited everybody to. These were wonderful events as well as lavish ones. I told her I had not known Scottie well enough to have been invited. I had known him only through visits to libraries where he was stationed at, or sometimes standing outside of restaurants or boutiques in Wilton Manors, Florida.

The last thing I heard someone say at the actual service was "Scottie was such a lovable bear of a man," referring to his large, bearded appearance. I smiled at Mimi and concurred with her as we both went our separate ways.

I'm not 100% sure if I was supposed to have attended that post funeral service brunch with it's multiple video screens with 80s music videos flickering as the conversaton ebbed and flowed on a Sabbath morning, but I'm glad I went. It allowed me to say goodbye to a man that always was more interested in saying hello to me that I was to him. He smiled even when I didn't. He mentioned common acquaintances even when I tried to minimize them. Whenever he saw me he came to greet me and to make pleasant conversation. If only for his affability and natural good cheer, I felt I owed it to him to be at both the funeral service and the brunch at Georgie's Alibi, a place I hope I never have the need to visit again.

Diving Slowly into the Ocean of God's Word

"Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent." John 17:3 (New International Version)

Have you ever noticed that time operates differently while you pray or meditate on the Bible? Several times this year while devoting an hour to Bible-oriented meditation, it seemed that the enjoyable Bible meditation period existed not in this normal four-dimensional world, but in a fifth dimension, the dimension of one's spirit.

Modern physics speaks of four dimensions, the three spatial dimensions plus time. When you stand still without going anywhere at all for 20 minutes, say, you are traveling in time, sort of speaking, without traveling in the spatial dimensions of height, width and length. Sometimes when meditating, not always of course, something uncanny happens. The hour you spend meditating on the Word of God is somehow disjointed from the normal march of time. You meditate on a particular verse and after what seems like a very long and enjoyable meditative moment, you look at the clock and to to your surprise what seemed like half an hour to you is only 15 minutes. It's almost as if God is slowing down the march of time so your hour can seem almost eternal. Perhaps that meditative hour, with its sometimes altered sense of perception really is an intimation of eternity with its enhanced or peculiar sense of time, where a second is like a thousand years, and vice-versa.

Perhaps what I'm describing here is a kind of Bible-induced trance where you forget your surroundings and a clinical attention to time itself. Recent studies reported in the New York Times report that these altered sense of realities happen only in the mind not in the physical world. A long time ago I read that your spirit, or your spiritual nature, is in a certain region of your mind and that it is, in fact, a very small area of your mind. An altered sense of reality would, it follows, exist only in your mind's spirit. Time itself would, of course, proceed in the normal fashion, but your perception of it would be altered by the awareness or experience you perceive in your spirit. I am not speaking here in any sense of the immortality of the soul, but simply the mind's ability to process spiritual realities or experiences.

This does not only happen during Bible-induced mediation. During the 90s on three separate occasions I sat in a darkened room, with one of the following musical compositions or artists: Ravi Shankar's ragas, Yes' The Revealing Science of God from Tales of Topographic Oceans, and James Carter's In Carterian Fashion, and closed my eyes to enable me to focus on the music only. Without consciously accessing an alternate reality or experience, that 50 or 70 minute compact disc transferred me into an altered sense of reality. With my eyes closed, and my mind and spirit focused on the transcendence of these susurrous, and water-tinged pieces, I forgot I was in my bedroom, with the lights turned out. I even forgot for brief moments that my I was in my body. I felt I was inside the music, the music was inside me. Having seldom experienced an altered sense of reality I couldn't help but smile and enjoy the exquisite quality of the experience itself, hoping it would never end. With the ending of the 50 or 70 minute compact disc the experience slowly ebbed and flowed and I was once again in my room. Even though I knew the compact disc was either 50 or 70 mintues in length, the time I had spent during the experience seemd much longer, almost timeless and out-of-this-world. Mozart's Jupiter Symphony or Mahler's Resurrection Symphony would probably have induced a similar altered sense of reality had I selected those compositions, instead.

My body went no where, time marched on, but I had, in fact experienced another world, another dimension, sensation, and perception. Perhaps the Indian yogis or other spiritual men and women from different world traditions are able to enter and exit such exalted states of being at will.

I'm glad that sometimes I can experience such golden moments of enhanced reality by diving slowly into the ocean of God's word through prayer and meditation. It is an experience that in many ways is finer than any conscious, waking dream.