In 2004 Curt Schilling the Red Sox pitcher was quoted in the Boston Globe saying about the Team "Why Not Us?" It became a catch phrase as the Sox went on to create my favorite moments in Baseball. His quote about his ability to allow himself to believe in God, and post his personal believes while those around him gave him flack relentlessly. God? You could be attacked in this city for believing. For being true to your faith. I've recieved a few emails from family Members and their e-mails citing God. "I was made this way" they say "Its natural, why change what is real and true? "My experience with God is up and down. I am Episcopalian and babtized by Family, and while raised by a Scientist (My Dad) and a true believer (My Mom) I fall strongly in between with a little more faith than most. I once spoke with a friend named Mary Beth in high school after she got really "into God" We had a intro to Guitar class and we were just teenagers. We were discussing lyrics to a band and I asked her about what religion meanto to her and why it was so important. Not be be intrusive but because I could see it truly meant something to her. "God = Love" was all she said with a content smile. I didn't need any other explanation, and I've never had to justify my relationship with religion or faith again. There are those who can challenge my own beliefs or tell me that what I am doing is wrong according to "God." I don't believe it though. I defend my right to interpret my personal beliefs and think I am entitled to have a relationship with it on my own terms. That I can prey for the things that I want and that when I truly need it, it will be there for me because I believe in a simple basic idea that it in fact exists. Let them judge. Let Props in CA grow and change and let us fight all the while letting my own truths to be solid. You are entitled to your opinion, and so am I.
I used to fight with my ex-girlfriend about who would minister our wedding. She was Jewish by birth and I wanted my childhood priest a friend of the Family up there at the alter. I've learned that religion has more to do with personal beliefs to help you through difficult times then listening to what others will interpret for you and it makes all the difference for me to make strides in something I am struggling with.
In Boston I ate a big brunch during my first year after moving from NH I had the time to sit around and read the Boston Sunday Globe and in it was an article the best I've ever read on something pertaining to religion by Pope John Paul II. In the article it was appearant his health was deteriorating which is maybe why his insight really hit home. "With all the different ways we have to communicate nowadays be it the phone, internet, text messaging, I wonder if it truly makes us better connected to one another. Are we all that much happier? Does it make us love more openly" he asks? I'd have to agree. In my generation which I live in unapologietically I am able to come out, be trans. Only a small percentage have ever really truly had the honesty to tell me what I am doing is wrong or goes against the grain and I respect that. I guess what I have to say is this, Mary Beth's words meant more to me than an explanation on why God meant so much to her. It was something I could grip onto for the rest of my life. I could move through it with time holding onto an idea that I didn't have to have a complicated debate or discussion on why God wouldn't condemn me to hell for loving women, or wanting the right to have a family. My relationship with him isn't negated due to my choices and its something I can stand by. It isn't greater to or less than its just equal too. The idea that love "conquers all" is so solid in its foundation that this is the only thing I ever need to remember and push me through difficult times.
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God is love! Oh Jean, I am so touched that you remembered this conversation, and I wish so much that we had had the chance to reconnect now, in our adulthood. What a dear person, that you would keep such an essential truth nestled in your heart for a lifetime, from one short conversation had when we were so young! 13 or 14? I, on the other hand, must've really taken Beginning Guitar very seriously, as I don't remember that particular exchange! :-) But for all of you who are reading Jean's blog entries, I'd love a chance to continue that conversation, here in the company her friends and loved ones, to talk of how great is the Father's love for us! How vast, how immeasureable! And how comforting that though we are mere dust, yet He is mindful of us.
ReplyDeleteGod is love! I am married now, with two young children, and every day I look for ways to impart this to my little ones. Here are some verses from the Bible that depict God's love in more glorious detail!
"But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." Romans 5:8
"If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved; for with the heart a person believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation. For the Scripture says, 'Whoever believes in Him will not be disappointed.'"
Lastly, the words of Jesus Christ, "'Do not let your heart be troubled; believe in God, believe also in Me. In My Father's house are many dwelling places; if it were not so, I would have told you; for I go to prepare a place for you. If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself, that where I am, there you may be also. And you know the way where I am going.' Thomas said to Him, 'Lord, we do not know the way where You are going, how do we know the way?' Jesus said to him, 'I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.'"
God bless you all, and please contact me if you care to talk more of God's love!