The Gift of Seeing

About noon last Sunday I realized that I had been given a gift from God! I had been using this gift for many years, but it took a few words spoken at just the right time to open my eyes and make me realize the gift I had.
While listening to a speaker I heard him say that he had many beautiful places in his life that he wished he could return to. Up to then I had not given much thought to my way of thinking. I have had many beautiful places in my life, but then my only thought of returning to them was to share them with someone else. I gave thanks for being allowed to savor that beauty and then returned it to its owner.
I taught photography in the field for many years. And, being the selfish person I am, I always tried to choose the most beautiful places at the most beautiful time of the year for my classes. Then, I would go into that area several days before that class and pick the best teaching spots. That way I could show my class the most opportune photo spots for the time they had to spend in each class. It was back then that I first realized that finding beauty was exciting, but that beauty didn’t bloom until I was sharing it with others.
I looked upon all of those beautiful places as gifts to be used and then returned to its owner. I looked upon those places as memories to be filed on film or memory cards and then returned to the world for the next person.
At that time I started to realize our cameras were teaching tools, teaching us to see. Those cameras gave us an excuse for learning. Could it be that our God has given all of us gifts, but we have to find an excuse or a tool to realize what we have been given?
Sunday, yes the same Sunday but a few hours later, my cane and I were walking across a sandy lot when a weed in my path caught my eye. Atop that weed was a vibrant yellow flower no bigger than my thumb nail. Its brilliant yellow was breathtaking! I had to stop and admire it for a moment, because I knew it was put there just for me to see. Others had walked right past it!
You may have noticed that I said my cane and I. Today I find that I have used up most of the goody left in this body, but that doesn’t stop me from finding and enjoying the beauty in my world. My today’s world is much smaller; I can no longer travel to those most beautiful places of yesterday. Today I spend several hours each day sitting on the couch and looking out our large living room window. That window I look through looks out over one of the most beautiful places in the world. I see people, cats, dogs, squirrels, birds, especially humming birds, butterflies, not to mention all of those bright white clouds floating on that dark blue sky. And, many of those clouds form images of different animals! And yes, I know all of that beauty is put there just for me to see! I never have a desire to “go back” because I have already received those blessings. I just keep looking forward to find all those blessings yet to come! Of course I can look back on all of those beautiful memories, but they are just that memories, past memories. I have never wanted to look forward to the past, especially when I can always find my future so exciting!
With my gift I realize it is no longer necessary for me to travel to those exotic places, all I have to do is look around. I guess you could call me one of the richest persons in the world with all those gifts my God has given me. Each step I take finds me knee deep in beauty. All I have to do is open my eyes to find it!

Holy Places

Do we feel that we are closer to our God when we walk into our place of worship? If so, why do we? If we believe that God is always at our side, tell me why, we should feel that He is more receptive to our prayers or listens more carefully to those prayers in some places than in others?
I believe our entire world is one big holy place. I believe that God is our creator, the starter of all things. I do not believe God’s teachings and ideas stopped when the last period was placed on the last pages of all our holy books. I do believe that God continues His teaching and that He expects us to continue to learn throughout our lives. Why else would God give us all of the NEW learning tools we have today? We have been given more tools and the ability to learn from them than the creators of our father’s religions could have ever dreamed of.
Any person of today, with the help of just one sixty-four gig jump drive that can be can held between two fingers, can hold more knowledge than could be found in the head of the smartest person of old! But, we must also realize, that all knowledge is worthless to anyone that refuses to use it. The finest library in the world is useless to the person who can’t read. All the information in the world is useless to the person that CAN read, but can’t comprehend the meaning of those words.
Those religions that require their members to learn and recite pages of text without teaching those members understanding is like trying to teach someone to read in a dark room! Anything is nothing unless it is understood. All of the scriptures of old are worthless without learning and understanding their meanings in today’s world.
I have received hundreds of pages of answers from my God to questions I have asked. Probably people of old would have called them scriptures, but to me they are just my God’s answers to my questions. All of these answers have been easily understood by me and needed no interpretation to know their meaning. All of the essays that you read in these blogs are Bob’s words, not God’s words, but I know who is always guiding my hand. I’m sure God wants me to use many of the answers I have received from Him in these essays because my eyes are continually being opened to new ideas and ways to express them.
One last thought; how many of your blessings have you received in your place of worship, your holy place? Haven’t most of your blessings been one on one, away from any third party? Mine have, I’ve never found that I had to be in a “holy place” or that I needed a “holy person” to intervene for me to receive my blessings.

All About Me

Last Sunday I had a birthday party. It was my eighty-seventh. It was one of the best days of my life. It was a great wake-up call for me. It made me realize what I should do with what my God gave me to do with!
Please don’t cut me off until you read all of this. I want you to know that I know that I talk to my God and my God talks to me. It is up to you if you want to believe this or not. That is unimportant to me because I believe that I can and do.
For all of my life I and others have tried to set unreachable goals for me. Many were just unreachable for me with what God gave me to work with. Many of those goals left me unsure where I was headed and maybe a little unsure where I had been. Sometimes I felt as though I was trying to be a substitute for me. Looking back today, I find that sometimes I was only setting my failure as my goal.
There were many things in my life that I found hard for me to understand. My God told me He was giving me the gift of hearing. But, most of the time I need a hearing aid! I now realize that I hear many unspoken things from others. While sitting in a room with hundreds, as a solo is being played, I find that player and me alone in that room! My gift is the ability to hear with my heart.
My God told me He was giving me the gift of seeing. But, I have glaucoma in both eyes and I’m dependent on three types of expensive medication twice each day! Then, I realized that many times I can see the hurts and pains of others although never being told. Then, I thought about the many times that I see blessings and beauty put there for me to see, while others walk on past and never see those things. My gift is the ability to see with my heart.
My God gave me the gift of healing. Yet, each morning I wake with pain! Many times, just by putting my hand on someone’s shoulder, I recognize a problem, yet unknown to them, and I ask God’s Will to correct or heal that problem. My gift is the ability to recognize the problem and hand it to God for His will.
I’ve tried many different things in my life. Some that worked and some that did not. All things were looked upon as the will or forgiveness of God. In my many years I have learned that God’s things work on God’s time. My God waited until I had lost much of my body’s ability to do things before He told me to start this blog. And remember, when I ask Him what I should write, all I was told was “Put the pen to the paper and write!”
Many “religious” people will tell you that they know what God wants them to do. Then think about this; my God gave me the means and the start and then allows me to do this thing my way.

A Child of God

Many times in this blog I have mentioned “a child of God.” My belief is; each of us is a part of God’s Will. I believe we each started in eternity, and then at the time of our birth we entered our earth life. Upon the completion of our earth life we return to eternity. I believe we have existed in eternity forever! My reason for that belief is because on November 8, 2010 My Friend (My Father in Heaven) told me this; your inner spirit was created in my image. It is the same from eternity to birth to death, then through eternity. Your spirit is a perfect circle there is no beginning and no ending. Your spirit has always, and will always live with Me. Within that circle you will be given many talents. You must use them wisely and share them with many.
I believe that each of us is that “child of God!” I believe that every person is here because it is God’s will! I believe that each of us was created into and born into whatever religion His Will directed us to be. I believe that each of us (you and me) is a product of His Will. That it was the Will of God that determined who we would be, where we were to be born, when we were to be born, how long we would be here, who our parents would be, and even the color of our skin. Even though many mothers and fathers are surprised, God never is! I believe our entire “Book of Life” was written (from the first capital letter to the last period) long before we were born. I just don’t believe we have ever surprised God!
I believe many have tried but few have succeeded in talking and listening to God! I truly believe that I have the ability to talk to my God and to receive answers! For many years I have walked out of places of worship with more questions than answers. I found that many times, all I had to do was ask My Friend questions from my heart to receive my answers. We have had a question and answer relationship for many years. Over the years my God has helped me develop a “fire wall” for those answers. This prevents “hackers” from getting between Him and me!
I’m very careful with my questions because I don’t ask questions of Him that I don’t feel are important enough for me to have to ask my God for answers. Surprisingly some of my answers come to me before I can ask the questions!
I look upon each of our inner spirits as I would a piece of endless string that runs from all the way back to all the way forward. I look upon our earth life as just a knot in that string! In eternity there are no more wars, no arguments, no bickering, just love and good feelings. I think our earth lives are given to us so that when we get back we will know just how good we have it in eternity. In this life, it seems as though we keep building smaller and smaller boxes to house our ideals and limit our lives. In eternity there are NO boxes!
I’ll see all of you later back there in eternity. You’ll find me behind those outstretched arms waiting to give you your welcome home hug.

World's Greatest Weapons

No, it’s not a nuke! Not even a fully equipped army! It’s something most people in our world today have easy access to! It’s the TV, the cell-phone, and the home computer!
Since the beginning of time, fear and ignorance allowed a few to rule over their small worlds. Until recent times all worlds were small. Those worlds were nothing more than a family, a tribe, or an area you could see, in its entirety, while standing on a mountain!
All it took to rule one of those worlds was first a fist, then a club, then a soldier, then later an army. It seemed that to be able to rule those worlds, you had to be someone everyone else was afraid of! Later, people learned that they needed to band together and talk things over. That’s when languages were created. Suddenly people discovered that those from different worlds “talked different!” Quickly people learned that they were “RIGHT” and if “others” did not understand them, they must be “wrong”! We’ll use our armies to show them how wrong they are!
About that time people started to ask questions. They soon learned WHO to ask. If they ask the wrong person, they found themselves dead! They started noticing things; the sun came up on one side of their world and went down on the other at the end of the day. Then came the questions; was it a different sun each day? How did it get from one side of their world to the other?
That is when the learned ones started coming up with answers! They knew that something made it happen. They decided to call that something GOD! They decided to use this “God thing” to explain the many things they did not understand! And besides, that made them look smarter to those “others!”
Then one day, one of the leaders of one of those small worlds had a thought; I can use this “God thing” as a weapon! I can go right into the homes of my people and tell them that if they don’t believe in God, in my way, they’ll die and go to a bad place. We’ll call that bad place “HELL!” If that doesn’t work, there’s always the army! And, I can always send my armies into other worlds and teach “them” how to worship my God “my way.”
For thousands of years that is how things worked! From the beginning of time until the 1940s, that’s when TVs came into the world! Suddenly our world changed! We no longer lived in our safe little regional world! Now we realize that there were others living in “our world!” Billions of others! Most of them also had a God! Could it be the same God just called by different names?
The next shock came in the 1960s when we saw two men standing on another world looking back at our world! Didn’t you think that our world looked small from the moon? Did you wonder if the same God was up there too? Only two men on that entire world, but they had TV!
Before we had TV we could ask questions and receive local interpretations to our questions. With TV often we received those answers before we ask the question. But, with the coming of our home computers in the mid 80s, suddenly our doorway to the world opened! Our information age was here! And then, as the icing on our cake, along came our cell-phones. Suddenly our world was not only in our homes, but also in our pockets!
Never before, in the history of our world, has each person had the power and understanding that each of us have today! And, that power and information is there for all of us. We are able to find information that was available to a chosen few just several years ago! Those new weapons are some of the most feared by some of the world powers and even some of our religious leaders! It’s much harder for them to convince us today, that if we don’t do things their way, bad things will happen to us. Could it be that all of our new weapons are their Hell?

Normal

Are you normal? Am I normal? I hope not! Many times I’ve wondered who draws those lines that determine what is normal and what is not. As I started this essay, that one word suddenly shifted my thinking process into high gear! Just think of how the definition of that one word has changed in just the past decade. It’s hard for most of us to find “wiggle room” in that one word, yet all of us do! Our “normal” life style in today’s world makes walking a straight line, in each of our worlds, very difficult as most find that line changes with every step. Beside, who or what could you compare yourself to?
I feel that how far we allow others to judge us is determined by the size of the box that we allow those others to build for us and try to put us in. Most seem to want to build the boxes for others, but get up tight when they think others are trying to build boxes for them. Most put more guide lines on others, they are more judgmental of those “other people!”
My Grandma, my guiding light, used to judge everyone by her interpretation of how they “should” be acting. She had the highest standards of any person I have ever known and sadly everyone was judged by her standards! Many times I remember her pointing to someone and saying; what they are doing is not normal, or at times she would tell me I should learn to think more normal thoughts! She loved me, but in her mind she had a picture of a box she thought I should be living in. Of course the box that I pictured in my mind had a very different look. Much of Grandma’s normal had been established in horse and buggy days. My life style moved much faster!
Most of today’s religions were built on things that were considered normal back in those horse and buggy days, or even donkey days. Many expect us to live our lives as lives were lived a thousand or more years ago, the “though shall or shall not’s” days of old! Most are still trying to draw straight lines and boxes that they tell us we must use in our today’s world. But, many like me find it difficult to walk those narrow lines or live in those small boxes. Many of those teachers of religion today are finding that it is easier to tell someone else how they should be living their lives than living their teachings themselves.
I have found many things that effect our outlook on normality, the region we live in makes a big difference, as does our religion, our music, our neighbors, our belief in our self, that list goes on and on. I want you to think about this; if our God created each of us to be different, how can any of us be normal?
I truly believe that throughout our lives, we are continually being pushed one way or another by a world trying to make us over to its interpretation of normal. A world trying to keep us in a small box! After living all these many years, I have yet to meet that person I could look upon as normal, thinking back , not even as NEAR normal! I believe all that normal stuff is nothing more than an invisible, ever-changing goal that others set for us, but will never be reached by us as long as we are mortal!

Questions and Answers

If you expect to receive answers; first, you have to learn how to ask the question. Second, you must learn how to listen for those answers. Many try to have a rebuttal ready before they ask the question. Too many are thinking negative thoughts that make their understanding of the answer difficult. Others find those answers that are different from their teachings are easy to brand wrong. Right, wrong, or indifferent any answer deserves thought before being judged.
There needs to be a wide gap between an answer and an argument. If a person is subject to argue, they may learn that they are the subject to fewer questions. Questions are asked for knowledge; all knowledge is subject to interpretation. Just because something is written in stone, does not make it always right.
If we are asking for answers from Our Father in Heaven we must be willing to accept those answers. At times we may find those answers to be different from the way we were taught. It is important to accept those answers without questioning, qualifying, or trying to analyze. For those answers we have gone to the source, the starter of all things, and the highest of the high! I have always found those answers to be understandable. They are always in my language and the way I speak it today!
I believe God gives answers to all throughout our lives, but few have heard them or cared to listen. The answers are much like our many blessings, most walk through life never seeing or hearing them! All are present, but few are recognized!
The people that God speaks to are no different than everyone else. They’ve just learned to listen! We learn much more from the answers than the questions. Each of us must learn when to talk and when and how to listen.
Our talking with our God does not require special words or special places. I speak with Him as I would to any other good friend. I’ve heard words from Him in many places. I’ve heard His words; while driving down the highway at seventy, and also heard then in my bathroom while in the shower, and a multitude of other places as well!
I never tell Him what I expect of Him, but several times I’ve been told what has been expected of me. A time or two I have been told to do things that I normally could not do, but I tried, and found I could do them. I know that He knows me better than I do! It’s so great to have a friend like that!
I have no intention of telling you how to think. My goal is to hand you something to think about. I don’t expect you to agree with my every thought. I just want each of my essays to be a starting point in your thought process.