Oh, What a Beautiful Morning

Good Morning My Confidants

Wow....

What a beautiful morning. The birds are singing, my wind chimes are making the most beautiful music, it's 56° with a breeze with just the tiniest chill--the kind that is embracing and reminds me how alive I am--and I'm drinking my fresh ground coffee and life...life is lovely.

And, OH! The sun just peeled over the roof of the house across the street and I feel like Nature has kissed me...!

I don't usually do these on a Sunday morning, but yesterday I was writing about how it was going to soon be the weather that I could sit on my wonderful front porch, and it quite suddenly occurred to me that this was the day.

This is the day the universe has given me and I'm going to rejoice and be glad in it.

That actually comes from a song we used to sing in Sunday school, and while I no longer of the Baptist faith, after sifting those teaching in my batea pan, the best/good parts are left, those nuggets that gave me a good "moral" foundation for my life.

Now I use "moral" to mean those qualities like love, and caring, and helping each other, being kind to each other, being there for each other. Take out the guilt and the sin, and there was/is love/gold.

The original song went.....

This is the day (this is the day)

That the Lord has made (that the Lord has made)

This is the day (this is the day)

That the Lord has made (that the Lord has made)

This is the day that the Lord has made

I will rejoice and be glad in it

This is the day (this is the day)

That the Lord has made

Shaking off the Mel Gibson, snuff-film version of the Lord, I can gladly embrace a "Lord" that whispered the Big Bang into motion, the Green Man, the Lord of Dance.

Interestingly enough, get rid of the idea of "God" as an old man on a Lincoln Memorial sized throne, leaning in with eyebrows furrowed, ready to dispense lightning bolts and Earthquakes as "justice," and luckily a male god did not scar me like it has so many of my friends, especially my female friends.

I obviously don't think that God is male at all, but when celebrating with my Pagan friends, I very much dig their version of the Sacred Male. The Green Man, as I've said above, the Stag, Herne, Cernunos, Lord of the Wilds, God of Wild Places......

Because as I've said before, I truly do believe that God wants some version of communion with us. As much as It can "want" anything that is. I mean It wants for nothing. It made Everything. The Big Bang was God willing Itself into Its creation!

But I think of my daughter. And I think of how much I love even the tiniest scrap of attention that she would give me. How much I love those moments when she says, "I love you too," instead of, "Ditto." I mean, "Ditto" was/is our "thing," but as a father it makes me so happy.

So does the same thing expressed to whatever our version of a Higher Power is, for those who have one, happen with God? Does it make "God" happy when I feel love and gratitude? I don't believe It gets angry. I don't believe gets jealous. I don't believe It wants vengeance. So why would I believe It loves?

I don't know.

It's a feeling....

Is that feeling real? Or something I was taught to feel? I mean, I shared recently that going to an Easter service really freaked me out ones because of all the people around me weeping and crying and both shame and joy that their Lord and Savior Jesus died on the cross for them. They were certainly feeling both, but shame and joy ....

And while I have cast off whatever feelings of shame concerning Whatever It Is that made me, I still feel something I can't explain.... When I take a walk in the woods, when I catch sight of a deer, when I swim in a lake, when I wake in the morning while camping and step outside my tent, when I sit here on my porch looking at the rising sun....

Well, I know what I know what I know what I know...and it matters not what others believe.

I know "God" in the sunlight on my face, the green shoots bursting from the soil in our garden, the breeze that stirs my wind chimes, the blooming tulips, the cardinals singing their hearts out, the ratta-tat-tat-tat of a woodpecker...and the intelligence shining from my dog's eyes, the love in the eyes of my husbands.

I know.

Does this "God"--that is something I cannot possibly understand, whose ways I cannot comprehend, that's Intelligence I cannot conceive--even know or care that I exist?

Well, if it is an Intelligence that I cannot possibly comprehend, then part of that Being's attributes--omnipresence, omniscience, omnipotence--could also include being able to love me.

The Original Source, the "Universe" (as I call it), in all that it perceives could also have the ability to perceive itty bitty, teeny tiny me.

The teacher Michael Beckwith has said that God wants only two things from us, and that is to be acknowledged, and expressed. And when the Bible says that we were made in God's image, what I think that means is that we are creators. That just is God reached out and created the Universe from Itself, when we write a story, or paint a painting, or plant and tend a garden, sing a new song into existence, and most important, love, then that what is meant by "the image of God."

I believe.

And it matters not what others believe.

I know what I know what I know what I know.....

And this morning?

This morning I am rejoicing in what the universe has given me, and I am glad in it.

Namasté,

BG "Gentle Ben" Thomas