Seeker <anon-30263@anon.twwells.com> wrote in message news:<260620032319319100%anon-30263@anon.twwells.com>...
No, you weren't being cryptic, but I was! My fear is of the next layer -- what happens if I make it clear how important it is to me (I've already said it's important, but not made a big deal out of it) -- and she shows no indication of being willing to do anything about it? Things are barely tolerable now -- that could make them intolerable. Do i want to risk it? That's what I'm sitting on. Ted

I don't see the risk here. So what if you go from barely tolerable to
intolerable. How much difference can that be?

Ted, I'm curious. What if your wife suddenly passed away tomorrow.
Aside from grief, what else would you feel? Would you feel relief that
you were now free of the marriage, or would you feel regret that you
wasted the time you had with your own inaction and now would never
know?

I know that's an awful question, imagining someone's death. You don't
have to answer it here publically (probably tacky if you do.) But, it
might help you to ponder your answer privately. If it were me, I
wouldn't want to waste one minute of my remaining life. I'd hate to be
left alone wondering what might have been, if only I had been brave
and done XYZ.


jen

Seeker <anon-30263@anon.twwells.com> writes:
In article <c8cb5319.0306271159.71fbe312@posting.google.com>, shinypenny <shinypenny0001@yahoo.com> wrote: I know that's an awful question, imagining someone's death. You don't have to answer it here publically (probably tacky if you do.) But, it might help you to ponder your answer privately. If it were me, I wouldn't want to waste one minute of my remaining life. I'd hate to be left alone wondering what might have been, if only I had been brave and done XYZ. Jen -- thanks for the question. I've been told by more than one person that when they interview someone in one of the helping professions, either for hiring or assessment purposes, they do not ask them hypothetical questions -- "how would you handle ...", but rather, they ask them to describe how they *did* handle some situation.

Also better because if you ask how someone would handle a situation
they are going to make up what they think you want to hear.

A variant of jen's question, which might sound silly but isn't meant
to be, is "how would you feel if _you_ died tomorrow?"

I know that doesn't really make sense (or at least it doesn't to me,
since I would expect to feel nothing if I died tomorrow). But the
idea is similar. If the double black line were to be drawn across
your life tomorrow, would you feel content that you've done what you
could, frustrated that you weren't bolder, or something else?

In article <TcbLa.41681$nG.44052@rwcrnsc51.ops.asp.att.net>, Doug
Anderson <ethelthelog@yahoo.com> wrote:
I know that doesn't really make sense (or at least it doesn't to me, since I would expect to feel nothing if I died tomorrow). But the idea is similar. If the double black line were to be drawn across your life tomorrow, would you feel content that you've done what you could, frustrated that you weren't bolder, or something else?

Doug -- five years ago this November I met the woman I've called my
soulmate for the first time in person. We spent the evening until the
wee hours of the morning in the lobby of my hotel talking about our
encounters with God. This was the first (and there haven't been many
since) person I had spoken to face-to-face who had experienced God's
Presence as I had. She lives in a town served by a small airport, and
while a few DC-9's do fly there, most of the planes are small commuter
planes. While the flight out the next day wasn't particularly rough,
it was one of those small planes and of course it rocked back and forth
some on takeoff. I won't say I was afraid, but the thought of a
potential crash did come to my mind -- and I knew without a shadow of a
doubt that I had no fear of dying, would have no regrets -- at that
moment I was certain that all was right with the world, my faith had no
doubts, and I was content to die, and I still am. The next thought
in my mind was Simeon's prayer "Lord, lettest thou thy servant now
depart in peace, for I have seen the glory of thy salvation."

Ted

Seeker <anon-30263@anon.twwells.com> writes:
In article <TcbLa.41681$nG.44052@rwcrnsc51.ops.asp.att.net>, Doug Anderson <ethelthelog@yahoo.com> wrote: I know that doesn't really make sense (or at least it doesn't to me, since I would expect to feel nothing if I died tomorrow). But the idea is similar. If the double black line were to be drawn across your life tomorrow, would you feel content that you've done what you could, frustrated that you weren't bolder, or something else? Doug -- five years ago this November I met the woman I've called my soulmate for the first time in person. We spent the evening until the wee hours of the morning in the lobby of my hotel talking about our encounters with God. This was the first (and there haven't been many since) person I had spoken to face-to-face who had experienced God's Presence as I had. She lives in a town served by a small airport, and while a few DC-9's do fly there, most of the planes are small commuter planes. While the flight out the next day wasn't particularly rough, it was one of those small planes and of course it rocked back and forth some on takeoff. I won't say I was afraid, but the thought of a potential crash did come to my mind -- and I knew without a shadow of a doubt that I had no fear of dying, would have no regrets -- at that moment I was certain that all was right with the world, my faith had no doubts, and I was content to die, and I still am. The next thought in my mind was Simeon's prayer "Lord, lettest thou thy servant now depart in peace, for I have seen the glory of thy salvation."

OK. I was asking about today. Do you still feel that way?

In article <280620031603270775%anon-30263@anon.twwells.com>, Seeker
<anon-30263@anon.twwells.com> wrote:
I was content to die, and I still am.

After returning to my lawn mowing (it had been interrupted by a quick
shower) I thought about my response a little. I have some sense that
regret is likely not an emotion one "feels" after death -- but if it
were maybe I would have one regret -- that I'd dragged my wife into
therapy but not yet had a chance to complete it. It would be better
if I'd pretended to be happy and not shattered her image of our
marriage -- that I'd kept that secret (and all the others I have) to
past the grave, to a time when they could be understood. But even that
I'm not sure about -- as much as I know anything about what the right
thing to do at any moment is, asking her to come with me *was* the
right thing -- and how can one ever regret having done the right thing?

Ted

In article <c8cb5319.0306271159.71fbe312@posting.google.com>,
shinypenny <shinypenny0001@yahoo.com> wrote:
I don't see the risk here. So what if you go from barely tolerable to intolerable. How much difference can that be?

I had a difficult time coming up with the right words. I can imagine
several scenarios where things are a *lot* worse than the are now, with
even less hope of getting better than there is now.

Ted

In article <8bDLa.52156$R73.7293@sccrnsc04>, Doug Anderson
<ethelthelog@yahoo.com> wrote:
If you died without having tried to make things better at the risk of making things worse, would that make you feel regretful (again imagining that you could feel anything after you died).

I don't know Doug, and perhaps that's one reason I'm stuck. I am
pretty sure that if I did risk it, and things did get a lot worse and I
were around after having done that, I'd regret it -- unless I were very
strongly convinced (which obviously I'm not) that risking it were the
right and only course of action.

Ted

"Seeker" <anon-30263@anon.twwells.com> wrote in message
news:290620031117463927%anon-30263@anon.twwells.com... In article <8bDLa.52156$R73.7293@sccrnsc04>, Doug Anderson <ethelthelog@yahoo.com> wrote: If you died without having tried to make things better at the risk of making things worse, would that make you feel regretful (again imagining that you could feel anything after you died). I don't know Doug, and perhaps that's one reason I'm stuck. I am pretty sure that if I did risk it, and things did get a lot worse and I were around after having done that, I'd regret it -- unless I were very strongly convinced (which obviously I'm not) that risking it were the right and only course of action. Ted

Is this a case of..... *the pain you know is better than the pain you
you don't know?*

or perhaps it's a life lesson on overcoming your fears?

What if the main mission
in life for each individual
is to overcome fear.

In article <5HXLa.31035$Kg7.7585@nwrdny01.gnilink.net>, urf
<urf@nospam.com> wrote:
Tell us about your *spiritual conversion*.

Believe it or not, telling you the whole story would be quite an order
-- the only time I've actually sat down with someone and done that it
took two and half hours, and even as it was, that left out a couple
very personal things that I still keep pretty much to myself. So, all
I really can do now is tell you how it started.

The process started on Wed., Feb. 12, 1997, at 7 PM, give or take a
few minutes. By that time I was 7 months sober so definitely not
under the influence of anything. I have gone to church my entire life
(initially Presbyterian) and my wife and I have gone to our current
church (Lutheran) ever since we returned to this area in 1969 after I
finsihed graduate school -- it is, in fact, the church she was born
into. We have been members of the choir that entire time and I was
with the choir up in the balcony before the Ash Wednesday service. At
the first chord of the prelude I knew something was happening -- the
whole prelude affected me enough I went up to the organist afterwards
to ask him what he played and he told me he improvised the whole thing!
(I find that a fitting part of my story: no two spiritual journies are
the same and mine clearly could never be duplicated.) As the service
went on -- a service essentially identical to one I'd gone to for many
years -- for the first time in my life all the hymns and prayers and
liturgy became real -- for the first time in my life I *knew* it was
true. As I wrote to someone a few weeks afterwards, it was as if the
world had turned upside down -- no longer was anything what it was
before. (Those with a Pentcostal bent know what happened -- for me,
Pentecost came on Ash Wednesday.)

Over the course of the next four years or so I was blessed to be aware
of God's Presence in a wide variety of forms and ways and places. A
couple of years ago I jotted down from memory, without consulting any
of my journal entries or other notes, each that I could remember and
came up with something like 20-30 different occasions. Almost all of
the occasions were not in any religious setting or even during the
course of private meditation, but rather in settings like while driving
to or from work, on an airplane, talking a walk around my son's
neighborhood or at work, or while fixing dinner in the kitchen The
frequency and "intensity" of such occasions has dropped off a lot since
then, and I admit I'm a little sad about that, but I also understand
that is typical. The point of all this is that I had been brought up
in a religious tradition that kept hidden any notion that God could be
experienced personally (for quite understandable reasons, actually) and
it was both a joy and quite a surprise to discover how wrong a message
I'd been given. (The scripural verse "Lo, I am with you always" seems
to have been swept under the rug, you might say.)

As I said, writing down the details of all of what has happened on my
spiritual journey since then, including those related to some very
important friendships I have been privileged to make as part of it,
would take a lot more time than I have now, or am ever likely to have
until I retire. At one point a couple of years ago I decided to write
down all of what those experiences had taught me -- what I knew about
God and other spiritual truths from my own experience, not from
something I'd been taught. With a few exceptions it is all of course
consistent with what I'd been taught. (When one travels to a foreign
country one usually expects to encounter the same things people who
have been there before have encountered.) Here's the list I came up
with:

- The incarnation is a fact ó God did uniquely enter the world in
human form, in a singular historic event
- God can be heard as a voice
- God can be seen
- God can be touched, and touches
- Jesus Christ is alive today as a living person, not just as embodied
in us
- The Holy Spirit is real
- God also appears in other forms, including feminine ones
- Angels are real (no, they donít have wings!)
- Satan is real
- Miracles of healing in response to prayer do occur
- God can and does arrange for things to happen, including sometimes
in response to prayer
- God does sometimes have specific things for us to do and
communicates them to us
- The communion of saints has true meaning: we are connected to each
other through time and space
- God can and does communicate through dreams and prophetic writing
- Fundamentalism is a heresy: the Bible is neither inerrant nor
infallible ó but it is authentic
- God is patient, gentle, graceful and full of grace, courting ó not
capturing, inviting ó not insisting, forgiving, compassionate,
sensuously passionate, playful, full of surprises, untamable, joyful,
and, most of all, profoundly but tenderly loving

(A few of those are not the result of my direct personal experience,
but reflect the direct experience of two or three people I've come to
know very well, although even in those cases I have *experienced* the
truth of what they were telling me, if that makes any sense to you.)

The obvious question (other than my sanity or veracity) is, what does
my wife think of all this? When it all started and I tried to tell
her about it, she showed no interest, but neither did she reject it. I
later learned it frightened her -- she was afraid I'd go run off and
join "one of *those* churches." In addition to whatever else was
wrong between us her lack of interest and enthusiasm for what was
heppening to me made me feel especially lonely, and that compounded by
the fact I had found other people, mostly women, who *were*
enthusiastic about the same sort of thing. On the other hand, she did
support any decisions I made in the course of pursuing all this,
including my monthly meetings wiith a spiritual director and later
enrolling in a two-year program to be trained to be one myself -- both
of which took a committment of both money and time on my part. But
she has clearly and vocally declined to participate in my spiritual
journey in any way -- she has her own to follow and doesn't want to get
swallowed up in mine.

For three years I despaired of our ever getting together on any kind of
common spiritual ground -- how could God be real for me and not for
her? For reasons I think I understand but won't get into now, on Feb.
4, 2000, she told me a secret she had kept from me our entire marriage
-- that she, too, had had an analogous experience -- long before we had
ever met -- and a somewhat analogous on-going relationship with God --
but that she'd been told when we met that she had to keep it secret
from me. (When she told me that I realized it was one of the primary
reasons she declined to go to marriage counselling with me when I first
tried it in mid-1999 for a few sessions and it is partly why when I
decided to try again I made sure to find a counsellor who would be
comfortable talking about it were it to come up -- I have deliberately
not yet brought it up in our joint sessions -- though of course I told
him about it in the private ones -- but neither has she.)

So, does that answer your question enough?
Your turn...

Ted

"Seeker" <anon-30263@anon.twwells.com> wrote in message
news:300620031933217634%anon-30263@anon.twwells.com... In article <5HXLa.31035$Kg7.7585@nwrdny01.gnilink.net>, urf <urf@nospam.com> wrote: Tell us about your *spiritual conversion*.
So, does that answer your question enough?Your turn...
Ted

No, actually. ( No offesnse intended)

You used a lot of words but told me very little. Try using less words and
saying more.

For me, my epiphany, came in the shower one evening when I was in my late
30's.

The message which stays with me today is quite simple.

I was told directly and in an instant that I am alright.

In the years since then I have come to have a much broader view of
spiritality.

In article <i5CcnbOubdLpc52iU-KYvA@comcast.com>, urf <urf@nospam.com>
wrote:
You used a lot of words but told me very little. Try using less words and saying more.

I can't win urf. Doug just accused me of being mysterious and abstract
-- so I thought I'd put in a lot of detail.

But, what "more" would you like me to try to say? Try asking me a few
questions that perhaps have short answers.

What's your pesonality type, by the way?

Ted

"urf" <urf@nospam.com> writes:
"Seeker" <anon-30263@anon.twwells.com> wrote in message news:300620031933217634%anon-30263@anon.twwells.com... In article <5HXLa.31035$Kg7.7585@nwrdny01.gnilink.net>, urf <urf@nospam.com> wrote: Tell us about your *spiritual conversion*.So, does that answer your question enough?Your turn...Ted No, actually. ( No offesnse intended) You used a lot of words but told me very little. Try using less words and saying more.

Well, actually I don't think he did so badly (though he did use a lot
of words).

From my own experiences and those of people with whom I discuss
spiritual things, Ted began having moments of spiritual
transcendence.

Lots (I have no idea how many, but I've talked to many) of people have
such moments, including me, but not all of us corellate them with
religious beliefs.

Music, of course, is a well-known catalyst for such feelings, hence
the attention paid by the older christian religions (e.g. Lutheranism
and RC and Anglicanism) to music (and vice versa).

My feeling about this (and Ted is free to disagree) is that many of us
have such moments when relatively ordinary experiences resonate in
some special way. If one is of religious bent, then one interprets
these as moments in which one is in the presence of god. If one is of
a rationalist bent one might interpret them as being some peculiar
brain chemistry phenomenon. (Myself, I try to just enjoy them.)

Seeker <anon-30263@anon.twwells.com> writes:
In article <8ru1a63ob9.fsf@noether.uoregon.edu>, Doug Anderson <ethelthelog@yahoo.com> wrote: It wasn't really meant to be an accusation. But in your long description, you were kind of abstract. Now for all I know, there isn't a better way to write about a spiritual conversion. Hmmm... and I thought I did put in a lot of concrete detail!

I wasn't trying to criticize.

"Doug Anderson" <ethelthelog@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:x2fzlq3lig.fsf@noether.uoregon.edu... "urf" <urf@nospam.com> writes: "Seeker" <anon-30263@anon.twwells.com> wrote in message news:300620031933217634%anon-30263@anon.twwells.com... In article <5HXLa.31035$Kg7.7585@nwrdny01.gnilink.net>, urf <urf@nospam.com> wrote: > Tell us about your *spiritual conversion*.So, does that answer your question enough?Your turn...Ted No, actually. ( No offesnse intended) You used a lot of words but told me very little. Try using less words
and saying more. Well, actually I don't think he did so badly (though he did use a lot of words). From my own experiences and those of people with whom I discuss spiritual things, Ted began having moments of spiritual transcendence. Lots (I have no idea how many, but I've talked to many) of people have such moments, including me, but not all of us corellate them with religious beliefs. Music, of course, is a well-known catalyst for such feelings, hence the attention paid by the older christian religions (e.g. Lutheranism and RC and Anglicanism) to music (and vice versa). My feeling about this (and Ted is free to disagree) is that many of us have such moments when relatively ordinary experiences resonate in some special way. If one is of religious bent, then one interprets these as moments in which one is in the presence of god. If one is of a rationalist bent one might interpret them as being some peculiar brain chemistry phenomenon. (Myself, I try to just enjoy them.)

I have never been able to define *God*. Attempts to do so put a fence
around the infinite. I have experienced that same transcendence. It
is experienced in different areas of the brain than normal consciousness
experiences.

On Mon, 30 Jun 2003 23:31:36 -0500, twoFive <twoFive25123atyahoo.com>
wrote:

Since God has only designated one of a few billion women as being offlimits to you, it would seem that you have lots of options ;-)

And this is the first I've heard of God being the arbiter for
adultery. lol



Have a nice week...

Gus

If your parents never had any kids, chances are you won't either!

"urf" <urf@nospam.com> writes:
I read a book a long time ago by Baba Hari Dass..... http://www.mountmadonna.org/yoga/babaji.html He is a yogi who has not spoken a single word since 1952. He carries a small chalk board to communicate with others. Because he writes everything on this small board he has become very succinct. It is his way of discarding the clutter and focusing on what is important.

I think I met him in a comic strip of my youth: Tumbleweed.

"Doug Anderson" <ethelthelog@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:3cisqmmhps.fsf@noether.uoregon.edu... "urf" <urf@nospam.com> writes: I have never been able to define *God*. Attempts to do so put a fence around the infinite. I have experienced that same transcendence. It is experienced in different areas of the brain than normal consciousness experiences. How would we know this latter thing? I just know it _feels_ different.

Exactly.