The previous post at this blog included my discussion with someone who had posted the meme below at the World Union of Deists Facebook group.
This post features discussion with someone else who joined that discussion.
Sloan BashinskyTop contributor
I am not a church person, and I’ve seen a whole lot of my prayers answered, sometimes very quickly, sometimes very dramatically.
Michael White
Sloan Bashinsky Yes. All my prayers have been answered over my 57+ years but some of them took a darn long time to be answered, and often they were in forms that I could never have imagined in a gazillion years. The churches are just buildings and infrastructures that have to be funded by money. Good honest people who are sincere about their prayers are answered. Prayer is desire. It has to be heartfelt. Unfortunately I was born to a mother without one. Peace
Sloan BashinskyTop contributor
Michael White the angels taught me to pray for God’s will to be done in whatever situation I prayed for.
Michael White
I pray the same...since 1989 when I put away childish things and became a man.
I just peeked at your profile, and I lived in Atlanta for quite a few years and my kids went to school there after we returned from living in Germany. You have my vote.😃
I am consciousness and memory. Only fear can prevent a human from realizing it. I walked thru my deepest carnal fear to reach enlightenment. It was a 56-year-long process of excruciating pain but equal and opposite beauty. Unconditional love. Cheers, and peace to you Randy. Thanks for sharing the post. Now back to work. I love every minute of this existence no matter what comes.
Sloan BashinskyTop contributor
Michael White heh, I don’t, but I get up each morning and start again.
Michael White
Sloan Bashinsky Same here, and as a child I quickly learned how to make lemonade out of lemons. Life throws a lot of lemons at me.
Sloan BashinskyTop contributor
Michael White few lemonades in my line of work, and few lemonades inside of me. It is what it is. The angels told me I would be pushed to my limits.
Michael White
Sloan Bashinsky That is very interesting. I have also had to push beyond all human limits in an incredible challenge to be free. That was one of my beautiful father's and my favorite movies when I was very young. We are the Acadians from Eastern Canada with MicMac in our blood as well. I do drink Country Time lemonade sometimes but I prefer orange Tang...like the astronauts. I knew what my name meant (The Holy One) as a child. Is Bashinsky Polish by chance? I'm not offended if you want to keep that private. Cheers. Snowing here right now...but I love the cold.
Sloan BashinskyTop contributor
I did not push beyond human limits, but was pushed there by angels and I hung on, and still am hanging on, for dear life. I can't imagine any person actually understanding that, who has not experienced it. Paul and Peter demonstrate that in Acts, or at least some of what they experienced. My father's grandfather Leopold was a Polish Jew, who came to America in the late 1800s, one of his brothers followed him. The rest of that family eventually were killed by the Nazis. Leopold is the 4th person I memorialized in A FEW REMARKABLE ALABAMA PEOPLE I HAVE KNOWN, by a Southern Lawyer Who Became a Mystic. It can be read for free at its own blog and at the free internet library. The free library has a number of books I wrote, non-fiction and 3 novels, which present very different ways of relating to what this world serves up. This forum does not let me post links to the blog and the free library, but the links are in my FB profile. From what you have told me about your life, my path is very different from yours. No two people are alike, and thus no two people have the same path - tell that to religions😎 Tell that to social structures😎 To political parties😎
https://archive.org/details/a-few-remarkable-alabama-people-i-have-known_202210
https://afewremarkablealabamapeople.blogspot.com/
Michael White
Sloan Bashinsky Thanks! I will do my best to read about Leopold as soon as I can. My father Joseph's best friend near the end of his days was his older brother Leopold. All good. It's 4 a.m. here in Alaska and time to sleep. I was never able to write until 2 years ago and finally I can write like the wind. I have well over 150K words for my PhD. and D.D.. I never wanted a degree because Christ never needed one, but silly humans won't even listen to a person without one...crazy world.
Sloan BashinskyTop contributor
Michael White I have 2 law degrees and so what? I think until people have their bell seriously rung by God like happened to Peter and Paul, or they are totally desperate and know they need God’s help no matter what it turns out to be, they aren’t ready for real change. When I get to my laptop, I’ll try to find you on Facebook and pm you a link to the book. It’s not a long book. I grew allergic to snow and ice when I lived in Colorado.
Michael White
Sloan Bashinsky Yes, I see the world thru the faith of my human mother which is Catholic, but I rebelled against it for about 25 years, but I always believed in God. As you just said, I will paraphrase it from AA Recovery which is a Lutheran Christian program to help people recover from addictions and find a God of their OWN UNDERSTANDING, which is the only way a person can understand anything anyway, and the bottom line is that no person can truly recovery unless they hit a bottom. I am honored to meet you and enjoy conversing with an adult. I will be glad to read your work. I was born into a den of Wolves...all hurt children. I was also hurt, but no longer. I am responsible. I really need to get some sleep. I might wake up with a foot of snow on the ground and I'm not ready for the long darkness of a remote Alaska winter quite yet, but everything for me is falling into place. I could have used you when I lost every cent I had in a divorce two years ago...haha! All good. I am blessed.
Sloan BashinskyTop contributor
Michael White I don’t think "of my understanding" was in the original twelve steps- it was just God, which is beyond human understanding, by any name called, but not beyond being recognized when something force majeure occurs.
Michael White
Sloan Bashinsky I can't go to meetings at all but living by those principles is the way of Christ. I went far beyond that. Enlightenment is walking thru our most carnal fear. That was a process that took 56 years. It was all perfect timing, and I had a lot of help along the way. My real program would have been Survivors of Incest Anonymous. It is from the Socrates tragedy "Oedipus Rex", with the theme being kill your father, marry your mother. Since God was with me, she killed him indirectly with my flying monkey little brother Marc White. They hide behind the scenes in the government of Canada. That is why I served here in the US, and I why I went as high as an E-5 could go. Trusted all the way to the top. It's all I ever had to be...trustworthy like my beautiful and powerful man of faith father. Now I am quitting to catch a few hours sleep. My criminally insane mother is stuck in emotion at the high-school level of thinking...a very sick woman. Childhood boo-boos rot and fester over a lifetime. It is very sad but there is nothing I can do for her but keep her in my prayers. I tried 57 years to help her but finally quit last year. Nobody can judge me for not being able to heal her. I did my best.
Sloan BashinskyTop contributor
Michael White I pm'd the link to you at your FB.Nobody can be saved who does not want to be saved. I think 12 step people know about and have to be ever watchful of falling into the rescue syndrome. Once when I was homeless and living in a half-way house program, although I was not an addict, I had to attend 12-step meetings every day, and right away the angels applied the 12 Steps to me and it was no fun and that's how I learned the 12 Steps were a for very real spiritual discipline. I sometimes spoke at meetings of dreams I was having about me, and one day an old timer came up to me after a meeting and introduced himself and said he found what I said interesting, and people in the program a while were going to have a meeting just among themselves and was I interested in coming? I said, sure. He asked me who was my sponsor? I said, God. He gave me the look, said I had learned nothing in those rooms. I said, I had read the Big Book and all the material on the walls, and there was nothing in any of it about having a human sponsor, and the entire program hinges on admitting insanity and that only God can fix it and inviting God to do just that. He turned and walked away. I seem to get into trouble everywhere I end up. Imagine if God grabbed ahold of Joe Biden and Donald Trump, kinda like what happened with Saul on the road to Damascus, and started applying the 12 Steps to them, thus turning them every which-a-way but loose and upside down and inside out. What a sight that would be😎
sloanbashinsky@yahoo.com
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