The Spirit of Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me
to preach the good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners,
and recovery of sight for the blind,
to release the oppressed,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.
-Lk. 4:18-19
Welcome to the most popular survey at this blog!
(Is this is silly question? Yes. Try to have some fun, okay?)
Directions: Answer these simple questions, True or False, add up your score, and I’ll give you some instructions at the end.
1. T or F On cold, windy days, sometimes it feels like the wind goes “right through you”.
2. T or F Cats and dogs bother you when you don’t want them to.
3. T or F The wrong mail has been delivered to your home.
4. T or F This wrong mail to your home stuff has happened more than once.
5. T or F Sometimes you feel lighter in the morning time.
6. T or F After a hair cut, sometimes you miss your hair.
7. T or F You feel like you’d like to “go home” sometimes, even though you might be at your own house when you think that.
8. T or F Babies and crazy people sometimes stare at you…knowingly.
9. T or F Your fear of heights has gotten worse over the years.
10. T or F You don’t wear out shoes like you did ten years ago.
Now, give yourself 5 points for every T, and 10 points for every F. Add them up.
If you scored 50-100, your soul is pretty hard to define, size and shape-wise, but I won’t lie to you, you have one. It might fit into a mailbox.
If you scored over 100, you have a soul, and a mailbox is no place to put it. Use your mailbox for letters, and small packages. Take larger packages directly to the post office, and take your soul and spirit with you.
We may not think about our spirits and souls in an everyday way, but if we hold our breath for 20 minutes, a lot of questions get answered. The life breath goes right out of us. The Greek word for spirit is literally “breath of life.” It seems there are a lot of things that aren’t incredibly easy to define. If we think we can use the Bible as a glossary, we’ll find out, there isn’t a definition of the word “soul,” “spirit,” like there would be in a glossary, which would clean up the confusion, nice and tidy-like. But, most of us realize our life experience isn’t just surface level. Are we simply machines that live a few decades, and then die? That’s the harder thing to believe, especially when we take in Beauty that is all around us.
Things like Beauty, Hope, Love, Innocence, and such, are *Ideals* that point deeper, or further out, than we can clearly perceive, or could ever accurately measure. Knowing God (who is infinite and personal) works the same way. So does a life that includes an acknowledgment of soul and spirit, and a journey toward the heart of God who is “Other,” the Source of Good, and the best of the ideals written on our hearts.
Thanks for playing.
I hope you stay, read some posts or try the other self-tests, and leave comments where you’d like to.
-Lisa
It’s July 25th. Christmas day is exactly 6 months behind us. It seems far away from my mind now. Time has shot by, but the happenings of the day are sort of fuzzy. Every year I hear people say, “I wish the season of Christmas spirit lasted all year.” Or, maybe they even claim it does in their hearts. It does in some ways for me, but the greater reality is that I go from season to season, and at different times certain things stand out as more special. In the summer, I enjoy the outdoors more probably for the simple reason that I spend more time outdoors because of good weather. In the winter, I appreciate my close ties with immediate family and working on my interior life in substantial ways that play out in the months that follow the hard work of that time.
Defining what is the Christmas spirit can be slippery, because each person may hold a bit of a different emphasis. The gift of the Incarnation is celebrated that day, and the love, goodwill, grace, and peace of that event can inspire us to live that out toward, God, others, and hopefully ourselves.
What is the “Christmas Spirit” to you? What of it can play out in July?
What one (or more) thing/s will you do to fill your life with this spirit this weekend?
Let’s try a concerted effort at a Christmas in July experiment for the next day or so, and see what happens.
Thanks for coming by.
It’s amazing the gut level response of people with problems against God, and those who believe in him, who fail to see how much their over-reaction gives them away.
God isn’t a man in the sky. He isn’t a “he”. “He” doesn’t pee on people, he doesn’t zap people, stand around glaring, or torching people. He doesn’t sleep through disasters, get kicks from evil acts, or remain aloof when humans encounter poverty, disease, or suffering. It’s a bit more complex.
This view is quite common, but also quite infantile as view of the spiritual of reality. However, we all begin somewhere. Essentially, the problem of understanding something–like the spiritual nature of existence, and a supreme Creator,–which is beyond the scope of eyesight, earshot, etc. and our full comprehension, involves first letting go of the physical assumptions we cling to. We continually thrust these suppositions on how the world MUST be and work, from our human-ego standpoint.
No, one cannot “prove God” with weights and measures. One can’t prove ideals either, but hardly anyone is ridiculous enough to toss those away. Is anyone going to toss out ultimate Justice? What about Truth? Or Beauty? Or Goodness? Or Hope? Are they just fiction? Well, we can’t really prove them. If we take them away, a black hole is created, right in the middle of us, and what we hold dear. It’s nihilism. It assures its adherents that there is no point to existing, and many of its true loyalists end up killing themselves. Its not exactly a philosophy for bettering the world, and making it a happier and more beneficial place.
But just look around. One can’t waste the gift of life like that. Yes, it’s short, and pain and turmoil are found in many spots, but there is beauty and joy to be found as well. There is goodness, and one can do good. There is redemption, and hope. There are people to love and help. And, in the end, God, in a sense, “looks” like the dad everyone wished they had, as we carry out love in Spirit. But, yet “he’s” Other and not really like a human after all.
Reader response invitation…
Did you have a good dad, a good enough dad, or a crap-tastic one?
