History

TUES., JUNE 11, 1996, 6:17 AM
FARM, STUDY

A present from a good friend and former student, Rick, is that essay on history from which you have quoted so often. Though this is not a time good for this kind of reading… for I do want you to complete Our Ruminations this week… it is still a subject I can and will speak to… if you will but listen, o son. Teachings are food for your spirit, and I don’t call for dieting where such food is readily available.

There are many kinds of histories. Most are secular, even as they may mention the Church and Christians who acted in certain ways. Some attempts at objectivity are sincere, but as Will and Ariel note, there can be no final objectivity, for events involve people, and people are not objects. And I, certainly, am not an object.

Oh, there are religious histories, and My Holy Scriptures can be called such, for they are the history of My relationship with a chosen people… and ( 6:31 / 6:33 ) of My Life as Jesus and of the beginning of My continuing Body here on earth, the Church. Yet does this history really tell you about Moses, about David, let alone about Nahum and Habakkuk? What were women like? What did children do? Were teenagers just young adults?

And, of course, there are other religious histories of which you are only vaguely aware. There is the history of Mohammed, another chosen servant of Mine, whose influence continues to grow in the earth. There are longer histories, of Hinduism and Buddhism, of Tao-Tsu, and of countless other spiritual traditions and experiences, in Africa and in the islands of the oceans.

Yet this day I tell you I am the God of all in this earth. I have devised, and I have allowed a wide range of experiences and histories of Me. Some of My Christian Scriptures trumpet, almost, that I, as Jesus, am the Way, the Truth, and the Life, the Only legitimate way. I call you to be a mainline Christian, not a seeker after other ways of knowing Me. So, historically, you are a functioning member of a Presbyterian Church, participating in a variety of ways. But I also call you, personally, to be a mystic in a tradition which cuts across religions and has various manifestations… and which is not valued, really, by most of your fellow Presbyterians.

You have considered, as a project for your retirement, a writing of your own history. Your thought has been to write a physical history, an intellectual one, a social history, an environmental panorama, and, finally, your spiritual history. (You feel little enthusiasm for an emotional history, but…) Each of these would overlap the others, and, perhaps, if you did finish such a “collection” you might bring forth some “lessons”, as Will and Ariel have done from their more secular and “objective” study of world history.

Histories do dovetail and overlap, but they also compete with each other. When histories seem to conflict then there tends to be competition. Remember that your Western way of thinking almost demands that if two observations truly seem to conflict and one is true, the other must be untrue. For example, if I am a God of Love I cannot be responsible for acts of cruelty and for premature deaths. Yet I tell you I can be any way I wish to be and need not be “consistent”, to fit your culture’s thinking style.

I am involved in all that happens in the earth, causing or allowing. I also am involved in all that doesn’t happen. If an airplane crashes I am involved. If several thousand airplanes fly successfully on the same day I also am involved, in a variety of ways.