Sol's Inner Vault

BS aside, the endless parades of words that pass thru our daily experience, and thru the larger culture- all our words are superfluous, after-the-fact, nearly irrelevant by comparison: before the ornaments of popular verbiage, our actions already define us, express our values, and most accurately summarise our truest priorities. You can hear or read every word I ever utter, and weigh those words this way and that, parsing the meanings, considering the context, etc. Or, you can simply watch what I do. My actions best describe my inner perspectives. Actions rarely deceive, while all words have built-in deceptions. BS aside- and so much of it everywhere one turns today- our acts all together become the candid mosaic of one's character, and may determine the quality of our life. 

An essay: Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism, Christianity, Islamism. Five faiths, five selected quotes, and some personal reflections. Buddha- "Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth."  First two are easy to recognize, the third is illusive, open to argument, strife, pain. Desire and suffering handcuffed for eternity, inseperable, bound to the seeking of truth's right path.  Lord Krishna- "Your birth is a mistake you'll take your whole life to correct." We stumble out into the world with so many decisions and choices already determined. Gender, parents, history, name, core self-identity, early influence, all determined before we're asked, before we have a say. Multiple lifetimes like a curing process, old traits purged over each new existance, the kiln of time. Moses- "Who am I that I should  go unto Pharoah, and that I should bring forth the children of Israel out of Egypt?" Self-doubt and an overwhelming burden of assi

My guess is that no human has ever known the nature of God. Every path, religion, philosophy, denomination, and belief system ever known is the same blind groping, the same earnest guessing, the same faithful hoping, the same human desire to be on the real path that is true and righteous. Yet, no one knows. Everyone is guessing about the mysterious and unknown, but no one wants to hear that! I know that I'm guessing, but God knows that too, and sees my doubts! Merely wondering about all that's beyond me is salvation enough to escape the banal and mundane, that which would deny possibility of spirit, or the grateful blessing and driving reverie of curiosity.

Moses awakened into a new day,  recalling his overwhelming task.  This was the way, he was certain now, no more wavering this time, no more self-doubt. Besides, no other way had worked for him, or had taken him anywhere good. All were dead ends until now, until this path of lasting promise.  He no longer looked without into the dark weakness of a fearful, stumbling human civilization, hot and restless with uncertainty. Instead, he looked within now to the primordial light illuminating his destiny, a perilous path back to God's enigmatic palace of pain and impermanence here on Earth, in this flesh, with a fresh resolve of higher recognition, a new and inclusive regard for all creation. Moses knew what he had to do.

The known and the unknown, certainty and uncertainty. Can we be certain of anything?  Recently, a fifth major law of physics was stumbled upon, a complete shock to befuddled researchers. Another team of scientists are now claiming there's hard evidence of sub-atomic particles traveling faster than the speed of light- if confirmed, a fundamentally impacting phenomenon that Einstein believed was impossible.  The entire universe constantly bubbles up new mystery, like an endlessly refilling cauldron of new tricks, cooked up to stymie our sense of knowing, and confounding our desire to feel safe. All known facts seem to stack upon shifting sands, amidst changing wind, or elusively possible mathematics, yet undiscovered angles and technologies to re-test long accepted assumptions. What is Dark Energy-Matter? Where's the proof or disproof of the substance of God? Does good-evil have an operating formula across the cosmos? Maybe? Unlikely?  The known and the unknown, we try to get thr

This is about the mind of God. Huh? What could that even mean? God is incomprehensible to us, permanently beyond our grasp. God is the mystery of glory and grace, we as humans have no chance of knowing God's mind.  True. All true. How can I, a sub-microscopic speck of momentary existance, here for but a nano-blink of time, how can I approach such unknowable thoughts as these? Yet, so many moments in a typically human day, it would be useful to know a higher perspective, What Would God Do, moments needing and then heeding a consistent moral clarity. Although a universe of light-years distant from God's knowing, should we not still imagine, never fully achieving it, but bettering ourselves by at least wondering? The broad, convenient grey areas humans have between wrong and right- God has no such grey area. The operative hypocrisy we all so imperfectly prove on mortal occasion- God has no such hypocrisy.

My weakest days of faith are few, but typically full of the usual suspects of doubt, confusion, too much unknown, resenting the mystery regarding the true nature of our intrinsic destiny.  Is it just ego vanity, wanting to know the purpose of reality? Like a mirror trying to lose its reflection, quite impossible? Faith and knowledge are eternally opposing forces, or are they? My weakest days, the evidence around me becomes the best case, the reason to reconsider the nihilism of our times.  The certainty we are subjects of a Creator is proven in relationships, first and foremost, the current of caring we feel between any pairings of love, be they human, animal, or in all of nature.  God lives in our common regard for each other, and thru selfless acts, this coming closest to wisdom- that must suffice for all our mortal curiosities.

(More new year notes to self.) Do the things propelled by happiness. Don't let my bliss become my abyss. Do kindness-mitzva hourly even better. Don't sweat the snarky mis-labelers. Do all things to support a child's hope. Don't confuse infernal with the eternal. Do cherish my lucky wealth of friends. Don't risk my soul for temporary bling. Do seek God's path to the right thing.

The stones simply learned to get along. Some stayed with their own, while others strayed afar. Each was different and beautiful, pulsing their softened inner glow against the morning's sea mists. Fresh from a child's new dreams, smooth as the shine of rounded hopes, each stone collected once and again in the mind's jar of keepers, each the inevitable masterwork placed as stray moment of time , or as spectrums of rainfall over shadowy greys, or over endless hues of cool amber.

Growing up white and Jewish in mostly black South Los Angeles, 50's and 60's, I remember understanding at a very early age how differently people experience this very same world, based on our respective family influence, and our own personal history. I am again reminded of that difference in perception today, as our enduring culture seems nearly cleaved apart, more divided and quarreling, with irresponsible, incendiary rhetoric coming from the highest places. America, 2017, is an increasingly insecure, disunited family of 330 million individuals.  The country was essentially assaulted and bruised by a viscerally soul-wrenching presidential election, with an unlikely, incompetent, and disasterously unstable Vanity Queen crowned the winner. Since January, it's been a nightmare of nightly news and daily embarrasments from the White House. Americans are already weary of the whiplash, and it's just been 200 days.  But thinking back, as a young boy and man, over half a centur

I've always thought of it as my "Here I am..." moment. Have to come up with a better name for it, it's so vitally important. Very difficult to put into words, what essentially is a feeling, an awareness. A frequently but briefly experienced 'state'. I am trying to describe certain moments I have most days, most of my.life, since childhood. It can happen anywhere, anytime, no matter what's happening within or about me. Happy, unhappy. Good times or bad. No recognizable pattern, this moment happens spontaneously, always a surprise, but also always welcome. What it always feels like physically...it's like an extra light switch is clicked on from somewhere, everything seeming brighter, more illuminated, clearer. My thoughts in fact seem crystal clear, in a way different from usual. Uncluttered, slower. At the same moment it feels like my entire mind is overrun with a particular awareness: here I am, in my life. In the light. An awareness of self from an ob

Although demonstrably imperfect on a daily, sometimes hourly basis, have hoped to generally think well of myself, just a guy, a good one, wanting to be. C ertainly don't feel worthy of the grace and good luck granted, so then where has it all come from? From the same source of all things known or unknown, real as hovering hummingbirds, mysterious as ghosts of souls. C ertainly don't feel able, qualified, or ready to claim any wisdom of inner working- have never felt so microscopic small, and the expanding cosmos more vastly incomprehensible. You'd think the clouds would clear after sixty-eight years of cover, but I'm not getting any smarter. There are new fears to face down, new puzzles to overcome, maybe even more grace or guidance for the time remaining.  

I don't know what I'm doing when I pray. Don't know if anyone is listening or cares. All I really know is what I want to be true, that there is a just God in charge, already knowing all of our prayers, always on the job, running the universe with order and purpose. Don't really know what praying does, or why I pray. But I pray. Who can ever figure out the future, thinking as much as we do about what hasn't happened yet, guessing outcomes as if we could? Why daydream and imagine, as if we really have any control? At night, my mind dreams on, but the future remains unknowable. So, don't really know why I dream. But I dream. The fears can be paralizing now, world exploding, cultures colliding, technology ruling, and we're raising a teen. The fears have no name or face sometimes, only something out there, coming who knows when. So, I don't really know why I fear. But I fear. Easier when we're younger, since everything is new, to be curious, full of quest

Burning eye of sunset, portal of last horizon, dying day falling away beneath the wash of lights, begin again cross-universe, rising in another star's realm before there was time, before the unfathomable distance between masses moving apart, yet God's mystery breath of consciousness become manifest, we're inexplicably here, mere specks of dust along for the journey.

From dozens of Bible scriptures referring to wisdom, I've chosen four here to consider the topic from different perspectives. Proverbs 3:7  "Do not be wise in your own eyes; fear the LORD and shun evil." This scripture says to me: be skeptical and challenging of my own preciously kept and ardently expressed views. Fear in this sense means two things: there is a moral structure to existence- Good and Evil- and, be humble because of all that no human may ever comprehend.  Job 12:12  "Wisdom belongs to the aged, and understanding to the old." Well, at 68, in that group, yet I understand less than ever. And, sometimes the innocent wisdom of the very young is also self-evident.  Proverbs 19:20  "Listen to advice and accept instruction, and in the end you will be wise." This is the hard part- self-reflection. Know thyself, especially regarding feedback you indignantly dispute. My own personal favorite verse on wisdom perhaps gives a glimpse of God's defi

The Sabbath, fourth Commandment, a Law of God. Who understands its meaning best, or, is there a single wisdom? In religious conversation with a few dear friends, it's often a chuckle seeing the reaction to my statement, "Jesus is definitely my favorite Jew."  But it's true, and there's no real contradiction at all. Growing up in a post-Holocaust, Jewish family, I didn't really learn much about who Jesus was. But later, for a few years, the subjects associated with the historical Jesus became a deep interest for me, an intriguing mystery with few clues, many angles and speculation, but scant sources for any consensus.  In the four Gospels we get glimpses. Brief, textual shadows of details, inconsistent, contradictory, hardly defining or clarifying the complicated times in Judea and Jeruselum. Who was Jesus? Of course, this is also where faith takes over. For billions of believers, His identity is divinely clear, and unequivocal. For me, whoever he is, whatever

In Galatians, 6:7 (NLT) it is written: "Don't be misled- you cannot mock the justice of God. You will always harvest what you plant."  To me, this means don't ignore the seemingly arbitrary but often strangely consistent nature of action and reaction.  Karma may not always seem a constant, or even a trustworthy notion in the short-term. But there is an irrefutable law that dynamically holds true, how good attracts good, and bad attracts more bad. It's true, we may reap what we sow. We may not hold the official scorecard, but the scripture reminds me that we cannot deny the magestic, mysterious forces of the natural world of pragmatic survival, nor should we dismiss the admittedly unpredictable, often logical, and always timeless physics of morality.

Have pondered this certain Jeremiah passage for a long time. There is no point, if there is not only a Creator, but also a universal order. Faith holds this to be true. Jeremiah 17:9-10  The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it? “I the Lord search the heart and examine the mind, to reward each person according to their conduct, according to what their deeds deserve.” The scripture is clear: distrust matters that are only of emotion. We're rewarded on both deed and motive. Doing the right thing for the right and selfless reason. Yet, we cannot know in what realm God's rewards are granted, as we witness good under attack, while evil buys the new Maserati. The multi-cultural principles of Karma seem equally imprecise, yet we observe over limited time. Justice and equity may play out over eons and even light-years. Faith means timeless- a trust that all ledgers will tally up by eternity.

Would we wish to know our exact number of days on this earth? Not I. Because, we prefer to measure time through memories, events, days that mark the milestones or crossroads collected over a long life. The Creator of the universe wouldn't measure time as such. The Psalm invites us to re-value the counted days of our precious consciousness, never knowing the exact moment it all ends. Yet, perhaps no final end- we'll know soon enough; or, vanish summarily. "Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom." Psalm 90:12

Who has known the scourge of depression, the vanquished spirit? However you think of a Higher Power, this timely scripture applies the same: "You are my refuge and my shield; I have put my hope in your word." Psalm 119:114 We may know both thru faith, an inviolable sanctuary of safety, and protection against illness of despair.

(From January) When hard pressed, I cried to the Lord; he brought me into a spacious place.  Psalm 118:5 Yes, new year, finally. The last was a long, slow train wreck that is still derailing, but here we are. What has changed beyond a number? A digit at the end that we'll now remember, what else, one day to the next, same world? Hope and fear arrive together, but that's okay, isn't it always that way?  This time, after a pandemic year of extremes more contrasted, worn out by a clinging, unclear crisis with little relief, have my few refuges changed? When I'm scared beyond reason I still reflexively turn to God. Where else to go, when my own sorting cannot calm to clarity? Prayer is the first and last antidote to fear, going forward, 2021.

The kindly Chaplain worked on the next sermon, considering his topic and points.  "Is human sorrow the mortar that bonds one to another? Is our common suffering also our oldest ancestor, holding the mortal family together thru memories of milleniums of tears?"  "As the wise in all cultures have asked, is pain the first parent of our worldly experience? These questions are addressed thru passages found both in earnest, and in anguish, as God's Word never wavers for those souls wounded by loss in their lives. Comfort sought is as near as scripture, never farther than the turned page." The Chaplain thought deeply on the Psalm: "Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted." Matthew 5:4. And, he thought of all the different forms of suffering on earth.

If faith can tolerate my mortal fear, count me in. If laws from wiser sources lead down a better road, stear me there. If my praying happens anyway with doubts and all, I'm on board. If faith in God's laws is a requisite for wisdom, humble my flawed heart that I may believe. "I have chosen the way of faithfulness; I have set my heart on your laws."   Psalm 119:30

"Be still. And know that I am God." This portion of the Psalm 46:10, does it also describe a truth about the nature of human understanding, how we may experience that some Higher Mind exists, how we may feel it for ourselves? Silence. Stillness. Could it be that God begins where thoughts, words end? Volume down the inner noise, filter out every other passing thought, become quiet, a heartbeat slowing on its own.  All may be known when "me" is gone. Exhale, inhale, behold the underground stream, anywhere God is found, there too we must be, inseperable for eternity. Finally, there's little else we may do:  Psalm 56:3, "When I am afraid, I put my trust in you."

How many reasons do I need to praise God? Woke up this morning, didn't I? You must have, too, to be reading this. The tendency to give thanks when great things happen, or disaster is avoided, misses the point of blessings.  They're already gifted before we count! Received before our own tally, and still we're not aware of all that is given us.  The whole world awakened with us this morning, didn't it? How many reasons do we need?