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[Montana Keith]

SIDE CONVERSATION YOU MIGHT WANT TO SCROLL THROUGH.

I am no longer active in the religion in which I was raised. One of the most courageous—and most foolhardy as some of my extended family would say—things I’ve ever done in my life is deciding to no longer be active in the religion in which I was raised. Converting to this religion back in the 1840’s & 1850’s is what brought my ancestors to the United States. At times, I notice something in me that is so sad and so hurt over the “subtle shunning” I’ve felt from family members over this decision. For a long time, I thought that unless I were 100% active in this religion then I was not entitled—that it was not my right—to take any of the unique good things I learned from it. It was kind of one of those all or nothing type deals. However, recently, I have started to once again wake up to the fact that I can choose to play this game however I like and to accept or reject whatever I want. The following are “scriptures” unique to my religious tradition which spoke to me when I was active and which I am happy to report that their essence continues to speak to the longings of my heart now.

And the Lord called his people Zion, because they were of one heart and one mind, and dwelt in righteousness; and there was no poor among them. (Moses 7:18)

And it came to pass that he said unto them: Behold, here are the waters of Mormon (for thus were they called) and now, as ye are desirous to come into the fold of God, and to be called his people, and are willing to bear one another’s burdens, that they may be light; Yea, and are willing to mourn with those that mourn; yea, and comfort those that stand in need of comfort, and to stand as witnesses of God at all times and in all things, and in all places that ye may be in, even until death, that ye may be redeemed of God, and be numbered with those of the first resurrection, that ye may have eternal life—Now I say unto you, if this be the desire of your hearts, what have you against being baptized in the name of the Lord, as a witness before him that ye have entered into a covenant with him, that ye will serve him and keep his commandments, that he may pour out his Spirit more abundantly upon you? And now when the people had heard these words, they clapped their hands for joy, and exclaimed: This is the desire of our hearts. (Mosiah 18:8-11)

You might have noticed that all through my previous post and this post I have been speaking of the essence of things. I am noticing that when I become too “literally minded” and too “dogmatic” in my approach to people and institutions, then I am blind to their “essence.” I think this might have been what Paul was referring to when he wrote:

“For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.” (Romans 8:6)

A few years ago, a number of books known as the “Betty Books” by Stewart Edward White came into my awareness. The following excerpts from three of these books expound on this idea of the “essences” of things.

In conclusion it might be inspiring to quote an example of approach to constructive prayer as reported one day by Betty.

"It's a beautiful form, a grand rhythm. In utter obliviousness of everything else I fling myself, abandon myself to one collective thought, the beauty of a physical world. I sweep it whole right into my heart, everything, the little Alpine flowers on Kearsage top, the undersea gardens, the desert bloom, the frost crystals, the world of the magnifying glass, the stars-all the physical universe. The manifestation of overpowering love and intelligence,-I gather them all in my own great rush of worship. It's an offering, a concentration of my life's experience returning to its source. Once spent, I lie still and quietly life recharged filters back to me, recharged with vitality, strength and eagerness to take my part, to be victorious with humility, conscious of the immensity of the scheme. When the renewed life flows back into me my great effort is to retain it, to contain it all in all, for the force of the renewed life must be converted into world activity." (The Betty Book)

The following excerpt is not from one of Mr. White’s books. However, it reminds me of the essence of the type of worship/prayer spoken of by Betty above. It is an excerpt from Thomas Merton’s book New Seeds of Contemplation.

WHAT IT MEANS TO SEEK GOD PERFECTLY
This then is what it means to seek God perfectly: to withdraw from illusion and pleasure, from worldly anxieties and desires, from the works that God does not want, from a glory that is only human display; to keep my mind free from confusion in order that my liberty may be always at the disposal of His will; to entertain silence in my heart and listen for the voice of God; to cultivate an intellectual freedom from the images of created things in order to receive the secret contact of God in obscure love; to love all men as myself; to rest in humility and to find peace in withdrawal from conflict and competition with other men; to turn aside from controversy and put away heavy loads of judgment and censorship and criticism and the whole burden of opinions that I have no obligation to carry; to have a will that is always ready to fold back within itself and draw all powers of the soul down from its deepest center to rest in silent expectancy for the coming of God, poised in tranquil and effortless concentration upon the point of my dependence on Him; to gather all that I am, and have all that I can possibly suffer or do or be, and abandon them all to God in the resignation of a perfect love and blind faith and pure trust in God, to do His will.
And then to wait in peace and emptiness and oblivion of all things.
Bonum est praestolari cum silentio salutare Dei. ("It is good to wait in silence for the salvation of God.") (New Seeds of Contemplation by Thomas Merton, pp. 45-46)


BETTY: I am getting a glimpse of the harmonizing power of this force in its essence, and it is so tremendous that I don't DARE try to tell you. It puts such a new interpretation on everything. It is creative force: it is the essence of life of all things--and you can't handle the essence of life with your finite mind! I am overawed and dumfounded by it. It is like some supreme stimulation of each thing up to the limits of its perfection within its laws. It is an ordering magic. Its most diluted form,--which is the only form I am capable of daring to handle—applied to a jumble of disarranged, ill-functioning, perverted life of any kind, passing over it, magically orders it. I see the little laws all working busily, righting themselves. It functions beautifully and naturally now; and before, it was so jumbled....

But I'd better not try to tell you about it--I couldn't. . . .

Now when you stop to think of it, all these latter material contacts, right through the whole of life, are at root and in essence aimed at really just one thing: that rare inner feeling of companionship suggested feebly in the sitting-by-the-fire idea. That is what we really are groping for in all friendly and loving human relations, hampered by the fact that we are different people more or less muffled from each other by the barriers of encasement in the body. . . . (Across the Unknown by Stewart Edward White)

For the purpose of this building we must next attend to the gathering of the materials therefore, which is the real significance back of the very imaginative third and fourth exercises. Later, from her vantage of the unobstructed, Betty impressed on us that she now works in essences; and that, in a way, is exactly what we are called upon to do here. From the "beautiful groves of fruit, vineyards, the coming harvest," and all the rest of which we are advised to think, what we really draw is the essence of abundance, vitality, life which they embody, a distillation of those qualities. We are not sufficiently advanced, as yet, effectively to take the pure thing, from the source itself, so we must allow ourselves—in meditation--to be drawn in thought to that imaginative image which most nearly expresses the particular "abundance" we most need. . .

Betty early recognized this truth and expressed it, though the rest of us did not fully grasp the implications until she herself had gone to the unobstructed universe, and reported back that trilogy of essences which has so engaged the thinking scientific world.

"You see," said she, while she was still here, "I must begin to collect some materials for myself. If I am to work in essences this way—between the pure spiritual conception and its manifestation—I must get the tools of my craft. So I must collect myself essences: the time-achievement of the tree; the energy of my waterfalls; the stability in my rock. The sweet chemistry of earth is endless. All I have to do is to walk in my garden collecting and releasing essences, never hoarding in the cloistered-garden sense. Essences are everywhere to work with. It needs only the sensitive heart to utilize them."

Only after she left us were we given the basic hypothesis. . . . (With Folded Wings by Stewart Edward White)

"The new thought that has been growing in your consciousness is the fact that the three essences of the orthic trilogia—RECEPTIVITY, CONDUCTIVITY, and FREQUENCY—have been manifested in the obstructed universe as TIME, SPACE and MOTION, precisely as CONSCIOUSNESS itself has manifested in the obstructed universe as MAN, NATURE and MATTER.”

These "essences" of the things with which we are already familiar here in our earth life, Betty assures us from her present vantage in the unobstructed, are the everyday material for activity in the invisible life.

"I told you once that over here I worked in essences," said she, "I spoke of 'going around my garden collecting essences.' You will find it in one of the books and in the records. That is how I work now—in essences. But I live, as always, in an actual world. Now:

"The ESSENCES of Time plus Space plus Motion equals created matter of some kind, depending on their proportions, etc. Thus we have the constituents of a world--yours or mine, or other worlds beyond ours.

"The ESSENCES of Time plus Space equals duration." (If you inject Space into pure Time you get the extension of time to duration.)

"The ESSENCES of Space plus Time equals distance." (If you inject into space the "slowness" of getting there, you lave distance.)

"The ESSENCES of Motion plus Space equals pure communication." (There is in radio a slight injection of time, of course; but that comes nearest to "pure communication" with us.)

"The ESSENCES of Motion plus Time equals pure Being."

She went on to explain her manipulations in dealing with her kind of space and time, but that aspect of the subject is complicated and beside our purpose. The point is that she can manipulate them according to their nature and her own skill. What affects our present argument is her conclusion.

"Less completely, within my capability of dealing with the pure essence, I can approach the state of pure Being. Impossible to do so perfectly. That is an ultimate. Matter of growth and development. Principle only." (With Folded Wings by Stewart Edward White)