Let Your Light Shine in Daydreaming on the Porch

Aug. 24, 2020, 3:40 a.m.
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Public

It’s been seven months now since Mom passed. I still feel the loss very deeply. The last few months were very hard on me, but despite her dementia she held onto her faith. This is what carried her through. Just two weeks before she died she shocked me by reciting a Bible verse I had just read to her when I asked to tell me what I had just said.

Her Christian faith was indeed very strong and simple, and deeply grounded. She spoke to her children as if we were all of the same mind and had as strong a faith as her. I know she prayed that we did. In her handwritten prayer journal for the year 1993, the only one I’ve been able to find so far, she constantly expresses her gratitude to God for her many blessings, and she told us time and again that her children were her greatest blessings. That was a lot to live up to m, and it also inspired the depth of love then enabled me to cope with the extreme manifestations of dementia I experienced off and on with her for probably the last seven or eight years. It got progressively worse, but by the final year, the storm seemed largely to have passed, and she mostly slept, but when awake she had moments of great lucidity She often said she was ready to “go home” and be with her mama and daddy. She called for them often.

My own faith was strengthened during my years with Mom, but it has followed a very circuitous route. With Mom there was no complex theology to dissect. No doubts, at least as far as I could discern. My tendency has always been to look deeply for more understanding of the Bible and tenets of Christianity, and by that I mean I struggled mightily with doubts and disbelief. This has been both a hindrance and a source of great stimulation and excitement. I’m glad I want to at least try to push the limits of my intellect in all matters of mind and spiritual growth. It hasn’t been easy. I’m fairly sure my mother has had many of the same questions I’ve raised with myself and God, but we never discussed it.

I’ve been reading the great theologian Reinhold Niebuhr’s “The Nature and Destiny of Man” for some time, with great pauses in this ambitious project. I find his work understandable and very profound, but it’s heavy going even as it is quite intellectually stimulating and challenging. I have marked up a lot of the pages I’ve read, but I can’t seem to finish it. I have online college lectures on theology and the gospels, on philosophy and religion and the search for meaning. Also, I have books on Eastern religions and the “secret wisdom of the ages.” I have an insatiable curiosity.

Mom and I were very different in this regard. I seemed to be always looking for more, while she accepted and believed very early on in her life. She maintained a certainty of belief and a capacity for prayer that astonished me.

True, she was 96 and had a lot more years of accumulated wisdom than I did, but still, she was an amazing person of faith and a lot of it can be attributed to her mother, a very devout Methodist. Mom lived her faith, and you could see from her pure and beautiful smile that she was at peace with God and herself. I admired that so much and I was very thankful because it truly helped keep me going as well as her.

I’m glad I’m inquisitive and seek answers to my questions, or question the answers I find, or at least point myself in directions I’ve never gone before. However, there are a lot of basic, fundament truths I’ve discovered in my long and winding Christian faith journey that have penetrated deep down to the core of my being. This comes from reading many of the Psalms; the epistles of Paul in the New Testament, particularly the book of Romans; the beatitudes (it’s all there); and “The Upper Room” devotions which I’ve read pretty consistently for the past 40 years and which contains stories contributed by readers of the magazine. The parables of Jesus offer lessons as relevant today as 2,000 years ago.

Books I am reading include: “A Sacred Primer: The Essential Guide to Quiet Time and Prayer” by Elizabeth Neeld and “The Mystic Vision: Daily Encounters With the Divine” compiled by Andrew Harvey and Ann Baring.

I plan to start reading @God: A Biography” by Jack Miles; UFO’s: God’s Chariots” by Ted Peters and “The Roots of Consciousness” by Jeffrey Mishlove. Also, his video interview series “New Thinking Allowed” is a source of wonder and covers every imaginable topic in parapsychology, mysticism, psychology, and comparative religion.

https://www.youtube.com/c/NewThinkingAllowed

Finally, I didn’t grow up listening to gospel music, but as I’ve gotten older, the words and music of these timeless old songs reverberate with me as they never did when I was younger.

Simple words. Simple music. And amazing voices to sing them: Mahalia Jackson, Aretha Franklin and Elvis Presley.

After seven months of a global pandemic and four years of a seemingly endless political nightmare in Washington, the country and world, while still full of goodness And hope for the future, have dark clouds hanging over them now. I’m glad my mother never saw what this country has become. She was the kind of person while didn’t hide her light but let it shine so others could see it. We need that in people today particularly.

There’s a lot of beauty out there still, and I have a lot to be thankful for: Beautiful and sublime music to listen to; laughing babies and cute dogs and cats on YouTube; unimaginably beautiful photography on Tumblr and Pinterest; more good books than I can ever read; the sound of gentle streams In the forest, sunsets and clouds, friends and family. As Louis Armstrong famously sang, “What a Wonderful World.”

I battled depression for much of my life, but whenever those clouds lifted, as now, I saw the world in a whole new light.

“Precious Lord” Mahalia Jackson

I’ve been reading the great theologian Rheinhold Niebuhr’s “The Nature and Destiny of Man” for some time, with great pauses in this ambitious project. I find his work understandable and very profound, but it’s heavy going even as it is quite intellectually stimulating and challenging. I have marked up a lot of the pages I’ve read, but I can’t seem to finish it. I have online college lectures on theology and the gospels, on philosophy and religion and the search for meaning. Also, I have books on Eastern religions and the “secret wisdom of the ages.” I have an insatiable curiosity.

I plan to start reading “God: A Biography” by Jack Miles; UFO’s: God’s Chariots” by Ted Peters; and “The Roots of Consciousness” by Jeffrey Mishlove. Also, his video interview series “New Thinking Allowed” covers almost every topic you can think of in parapsychology, mysticism, psychology, and comparative religion.

https://www.youtube.com/c/NewThinkingAllowed

Finally, I didn’t grow up listening to gospel music, but as I’ve gotten older, the words and music of these timeless old songs reverberate with me as they never did when I was younger.

Simple words. Simple music. And amazing voices to sing them: Mahalia Jackson, Aretha Franklin and Elvis Presley.

After seven months of a global pandemic and four years of a seemingly endless political nightmare in Washington, the country and world, while still full of goodness And hope for the future, have dark clouds hanging over them now. I’m glad my mother never saw what this country has become. She was the kind of person who didn’t hide her light, but let it shine so others could see it. We need that in people today particularly.

I battled depression for much of my life, but whenever those clouds lifted, as now, I saw the world in a whole new light.

“Precious Lord” Mahalia Jackson