Front PageThe Kingdom of God Begins With a Seed
Submitted by bill on Thu, 03/13/2008 - 09:45. enlightenment Kingdom of God spirituality
The Kingdom of God1 begins as a tiny seed—a small aha!—and grows into a large tree joining the material with the ethereal. New Life begins with the fertilization of the seed or egg. The seed draws initial sustenance from its internal energy source until it can establish its roots in the material world and extend its foliage into the ethereal. Both are necessary for Life.
The sapling exchanges minerals with the material commons, and gases with the heavens. From the ground it drinks in life-giving water, and from the ethereal realm it gathers Light, and from this light comes its vigor. As it ascends into the ethereal, it remains grounded in the material commons, lest it be uprooted and fall to the earth and die.
In the spiritual commons it is also connected. For without spiritual exchange, it will eventually die of toxicity. Without light from the Light Giver, it will die and become food for other life. With adequate light, gas and mineral exchange, it will grow to its greatest potential, connecting the material with the spiritual realms. From seed to mighty tree it will grow.
Like a plant, the Kingdom (Life) bridges the material and spiritual worlds. It represents the highest level of humanity, the bridge between God and the animal instincts of mankind. It is Light, Enlightenment, Eternal Life.
Notes
1 The synoptic gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke use “Kingdom of God,” while John's gospel uses the term “Eternal Life” to describe the most precious and sought after treasure. Historically, this new Life was possible only through an enlightenment, sometimes described as philosophical, but usually it was spiritual.
Bookmark/Search this post with:
God everywhere
Submitted by K Prabhakar Rao on Thu, 03/13/2008 - 20:09.
Dear Mr Reido,
Your stataement, "Where does God live?" has been a truly perennial doubt and much sought question for generations and ages. You stated , "Now the time has come to realize that God lives everywhere". Very true. God is Omni present, omnipotent and infinite. Kindom of God has to be realised very much here as stated by by wisemen.Probably all of us have been stressing this point in our articles on the site.
Your post has been revealing.
Dr K Prabhakar Rao
» reply
Thanks for the comments
Submitted by bill on Mon, 03/24/2008 - 00:44.
Thank you for your thoughtful comments. I've been struggling with hosting providers and site issues for several weeks now, and rarely able to engage in continuing the conversation. I apologize for that, and hope to be more involved in the future.
For sure, FaithCommons has been robbed of traffic over the past year or so by hosting provider throttling. Amazingly, it took me this long to figure out how their unstated policy affected FC. But we shouldn't expect the provider to tell us these things. Discloser is not in the best interest of their business plan. It had not previously occurred to me that they would restrict their customers--a limiting that eventually limits them--but I was naive. They represent those who strive to squeeze all the blood they can out of a limited number of turnips, without considering the benefits of merely planting more.
The number of hourly visitors has been a suspicious constant and represents a ceiling that restricts all visitors beyond a prescribed count, or system load. I missed this clue by blaming myself for the lag. But just moving the site to another provider was not enough. This site is database intensive and requires some special handling and a lot of resources. Hopefully I have found that special handling, and we will no longer be stuck in the mud. Otherwise, I will need to make another change that is more costly, still. The big question is whether it is worthwhile. I hope that the answer is yes. We can make it so.
Celebrity was neither my aim, nor my current plan. Instead, I want to investigate and provide potential answers to some who seek spirituality in a postmodern world that is already saturated with needy "ministries" and "services." We live in an OpenSource world that rightly expects all good things to come from dedicated hackers, honing their craft for the good of all, and for the little bit of recognition that repays efforts well done."Dedicated hackers' in this case includes all studious writers who compile information for the benefit of others. This precludes all begging for money to support any stylized "great efforts" of FaithCommons.org. Many of us have seen too many of these presentations already in our lifetimes. Nevertheless, since I no longer have income of my own to throw at my hobbies, I must justify every hour that my over-worked wife puts in to the support of this effort. Quite frankly, I'm ready to put it aside now, if only to spare her the extra hour per month to support this operation. But she, recognizing in the very least my need to have a purpose to focus my pseudo-intellectual efforts on, insisted that I spend the extra money to make the site work correctly. And so here we are.
Is the effort worthwhile or not? Are there enough people who care enough about the purposes and goals to warrant maintaining the site? The stats indicate at least 2,000 "loyal" visitors who return at least 100 times per year, but what does that really mean? Even if my wife continues to pay for the necessary services and I'm willing to continue providing administration of it despite the pain, are these dedications worthwhile, or are they sadly misplaced?
Perhaps I'm being hyper focused here. But I need to know that others appreciate the efforts and expense that have been given up in the hope of being useful. Maybe I've had too much wine, or maybe I'm feeling extremely unappreciated. If the efforts are unappreciated, that is if they aren't useful, then we need to discontinue our misappropriation of time, effort and money. FaithCommons visitors will very quickly find other places to spend their time.
For my complaining I beg your forgiveness.But I've spent many weeks now wondering whether it is all worthwhile. Although I hesitate to to disappoint those who've contributed, my sense is that few care anyway.
bill
» reply
Exploration Versus Exploitatation
Submitted by reido on Mon, 03/24/2008 - 11:53.
Bill
Your concerns are well founded. My apologies for the hectic out-of-town schedule that I have been on for awhile. But, if I hear what you are saying, your interests lie in readership and contributive feedback, rather than regular input. I share your interest and feelings. Without feedback it is impossible to know whether our time is worthwhile. As you say, there is no real monetary motive, nor a power core to fuel.
One note on "Purpose" while we are touching on it, is that some while back when I was actively writing "A Church Without Walls", I was led to a different tack on this journey. Ideologically, I came to trust in a life more centered around the experiential (therefore, existential) pursuit of living. But there was no proof for me that this could go from potential to actual, so as an experiment of sorts, my life took a turn from being more of a teaching Yoda to a living, fumbling, and bungling Luke. The pursuit has not been without shortcomings, but overall it works for me. The challenge I have found remains that it is much more difficult to live a life that actualizes love for all things living than it is to teach thus and so. Well, that is not a wisened conclusion is it? But then, there's always the hope that a resurrection will come out of each failed attempt, and another season follows.
reido
reido
» reply
Living the Life interactively
Submitted by bill on Mon, 03/24/2008 - 15:57.
Reido,
First, thank you for your encouragement over the years. You've almost always offered a reply. I know that your work schedule makes participation difficult during the week, and when you're home you likely have more important, if not more interesting, things to catch up on.
Reido wrote: One note on "Purpose" while we are touching on it, is that some while back when I was actively writing "A Church Without Walls", I was led to a different tack on this journey. Ideologically, I came to trust in a life more centered around the experiential (therefore, existential) pursuit of living.
Yes, I think I'm having a similar revelation. I've learned a lot recently and I want to share it—but conversationally. Even as you said: experientially. But I don't get out much, unless my wife drives. So I'm mostly limited to this medium.
There is still much that one can learn by gathering thoughts and organizing them into some sort of essay or article. The process is useful enough to the writer, to do it even if there is no one at all to read the results. But I could more easily journal in private. I wouldn't struggle so much with organization. But I want conversation too. And I know from the website stats that many people would rather read discussion because they usually get the most traffic.
As I probably told you already, I'm planning to either add a more common forum system, or rewrite some of the code in the current system to look more like the bulletin board systems that people are used to. This is waiting on the system upgrade, which got sidelined with the hosting provider debacle. The later is in the past, now. So I can get on with the upgrade. But I'm tempted to merely unleash a BBS under a different name to get it started sooner.
The current obstacle is merging the two software systems so that visitors need only one login account. Two separate systems would force everyone to create an account on both sites. And they would seem like two separate sites.
However, another way of looking at this is that almost nobody uses an account on FC now. Only three of us regularly. It might be better to simply start up a new sub-site and let it take on its own life. It could be forum.faithcommons.org. Or something new.
BTW, the software I will likely use is phpBB. If you look under the Community menu, you can get an idea of the look & feel.
Back to your point: I agree, living the Life is the best teacher. That is what religion is supposed to be. Is it not? To “Know” really requires personal experience. Interestingly, the Latin root for “science” is related to “scire”. Adam “knew” Eve. But you probably knew that. As Marcus Borg said, religion has become too much of a “head thing.”
bill
» reply
The Bridge
Bill
In times past, I missed this necessary beginning -- all the while striving to maintain a level of works deserving of something as noble as the Kingdom of God. To a great extent, part of the problem was a misconstrued and misguided disjunctive dualism that separated heaven and Earth. One simply could not go to heaven without living a set apart life on Earth first.
Very easily, one might miss the import of the Kingdom of God being a bridge. Connection is the idea that carries. And once we learn to set aside the childish dependence on "place" as the locus of salvation, we can begin to see the Kingdom of God in a new light. That light being the natural connection between the Spiritual and the Physical via Life.
"Where does God live?" has been a perennial teaching tool for generations. Now the time has come to realize that God lives everywhere. Your observations are the essence of Life.
reido