"By God's grace, I will strive mightily against sin and will do deeds of love and mercy." So goes one of the disciplines that I recite with my fellow spiritual formation group friends weekly at our meetings. It's easily said, but since I'm getting more and more into this reflection/dream analysis stuff, this "sin (and deeds of love and mercy)" has been sitting prominently in my head for a week or so.....
Sin - well, I know I must have it when I can't come up with a description of it!!! How about I cross against the "don't walk" sign occasionally? OR, I wrote my name once on the bidding line of a silent auction sheet 2 seconds after the bidding was closed. (That piece of art still bothers me in the house.) I intellectually and logically (oops there's logic from one of my earlier posts - "the understanding of logic does not necessarily guarantee the correct use of it":)??) grasp "that sinning is anything that lures me away from God."
So, upon reflection(s) I cannot/or will not - actually NAME the sin(s)here, I just think back to a time in my life where I feel sin was present - although as Satan would have it, it didn't feel so much like sin as like unadulterated fun and pleasure (a touch of St. Augustine's thought process I suspect) ......again, I have spent some time in reflection about that portion of my life and its possible/probable connection to sin, revisiting it, drawn back to the reflection even while busy with unrelated tasks.
So, here's where I think the reflection and the dreaming and the rubber hits the road part comes in. In a post last week, I recalled a recent, recurring dream - a pleasant non-threatening dream, as many of my dreams turn out to be. But my usual sweet dream, this week turned into a doozey of a nightmare - awful, bloody, scary dream, filled with persons from my past appearing in strange configurations changing the fun of the time into a really awful mess. I didn't awaken during the dream, only recalled it the next day.
Upon yet still more reflection, I believe that dream was my sin attempting to pass from my subconscious into my conscious mind. I am surprised at my recognition/deduction; I believe the dream was a purging; I pray it was forgiveness. I'm accepting that now as the interpretation - if you have other thoughts, please feel free to share with me.
Sin - well, I know I must have it when I can't come up with a description of it!!! How about I cross against the "don't walk" sign occasionally? OR, I wrote my name once on the bidding line of a silent auction sheet 2 seconds after the bidding was closed. (That piece of art still bothers me in the house.) I intellectually and logically (oops there's logic from one of my earlier posts - "the understanding of logic does not necessarily guarantee the correct use of it":)??) grasp "that sinning is anything that lures me away from God."
So, upon reflection(s) I cannot/or will not - actually NAME the sin(s)here, I just think back to a time in my life where I feel sin was present - although as Satan would have it, it didn't feel so much like sin as like unadulterated fun and pleasure (a touch of St. Augustine's thought process I suspect) ......again, I have spent some time in reflection about that portion of my life and its possible/probable connection to sin, revisiting it, drawn back to the reflection even while busy with unrelated tasks.
So, here's where I think the reflection and the dreaming and the rubber hits the road part comes in. In a post last week, I recalled a recent, recurring dream - a pleasant non-threatening dream, as many of my dreams turn out to be. But my usual sweet dream, this week turned into a doozey of a nightmare - awful, bloody, scary dream, filled with persons from my past appearing in strange configurations changing the fun of the time into a really awful mess. I didn't awaken during the dream, only recalled it the next day.
Upon yet still more reflection, I believe that dream was my sin attempting to pass from my subconscious into my conscious mind. I am surprised at my recognition/deduction; I believe the dream was a purging; I pray it was forgiveness. I'm accepting that now as the interpretation - if you have other thoughts, please feel free to share with me.
i will ponder this more, but for now i am once again struck by the similarities of where we are. sin and evil seem to be the two topics that keep popping up for me. not sure how to get my arms around it...not sure that i really want to...
ReplyDeletemy last week had such a contrast of good and evil that i find myself reeling a bit today.
It's me ... catching up through the wonders of Google Reader. I don't know much about dreams per se ... mine remain elusive even though I keep a dream journal by my bed to capture whatever I can upon waking, but sin and evil are issues that come up periodically when I write. Two thoughts occur here.
ReplyDeleteI once heard sin defined as an archery term meaning "missing the mark" ... and what sticks with me today is the idea that our "mistakes" (mis-takes? ... ie things we misunderstand) might be "sin" ... and once we see and understand, we can choose to do differently (perhaps better?)
The other is about "evil" ... which I note is "live" spelled backwards. Coming to "KNOW" God personally (and these days I think in terms of the feminine Spirit to include myself as a reflection of God) in all HER glory and wonder ... to recognize I'm NOT "in charge of the Universe" after all (a realization for which I am more grateful all the time) ... and to "walk and talk with Spirit" in our daily lives ... I perceive myself to be a tiny piece in a huge jigsaw puzzle (and so is everyone else). We each need to "show up" just as we are in order for the completed picture to appear ... and when we don't ... there are noticeable gaps (holes or spaces) no one else can fill.
Taking these two thoughts together (with my understanding of LOVE as exemplified by the life of Christ in the new testament as well as the spiritual examples of Buddha, Muhammed, Krishna, and other "enlightened" beings) ... I've come to believe the only real sin to worry about might be that of failing to live the lives we're meant to live and do the things we're meant to do while we're here on earth.
then again ... what do any of us really know about much of anything? All we can do is our best, and as Don Miguel Ruiz reminds us so graciously in THE FOUR AGREEMENTS, our best will vary on any given day. Living mindfully and being gentle & loving with ourselves and others makes everyone's life here on earth a bit better.
lucy and storyteller - you two may just get the MindSieve percolatin' sooner rather than later. Thanks for the comments!
ReplyDelete