Posts Tagged spiritual
Behind the Veil: Avengers
Posted by annaldavis in Everything Else on May 29, 2012
Most of us know, or at least suspect, that we can’t see many of the things that really matter. We desperately want an unseen world to exist, and yet at the same time we fear its existence.
We speak of ghosts and haunted places, miracles and prayer, vampires and zombies. We toss these words around, maybe play a few video games, watch the Avengers, and then go back to our regular everyday lives based what we can see with our own two eyes. What we can quantify. If we can see it, measure it, size it up – then we can control it.
We feel safer that way. But it’s an illusion. Reality is behind the veil. Because behind the veil exists an unseen world far more beautiful and dangerous than anything we’ve ever seen with our own two eyes.
Behind the veil, I’m the hulk. So are you. Zombies walk among us, as do evil aliens from another planet. We’re locked in cages, held captive by our own minds and victimized by jailers who are themselves held captive against their will. It’s why we cheer for Captain America, why we tolerate Iron Man’s narcissism, why we feel a thrill when Thor holds his hammer up for the lightning. We like superheroes because we need them. Humanity is a mess down here. And we know it. Despite our many efforts to shirk our own humanity, we know we’re fallen and broken and desperately lost.
If you need proof of that, then you haven’t yet lived enough life. Or watched the news. Or thoughtfully examined the problem of suffering.
Behind the veil, our souls could starve to death. Loki and his Chitauri do their best, trying to turn us against each other. If all else fails, Loki will reach out and touch our vulnerable hearts with his scepter, making us like him.
But there is hope. Not everything behind the veil is lost.
Nick Fury: “And there came a day… a day unlike any other… when Earth’s mightiest heroes found themselves united against a common threat… to fight the foes no single superhero could withstand… on that day, The Avengers were born.”
Behind the veil, we’re the avengers. You and me. The angry hulk, egotistical Stark, conflicted Romanoff, lonely Captain America, Thor and his family struggles, human but skilled Hawkeye. There’s a little bit of each in all of us, I think. We could easily destroy each other. But if we work together…
Behind the veil, we can unite against evil and avenge what’s been lost. We can fall in line behind that one perfect superhero, and take up our weapons against all the forces of darkness. We can do this, because that’s what the Church was created to do. As Captain America said “There is only one God.” And if that God is for us, then who can be against us?
May we have courage to look behind the veil. And more courage still to LIVE behind it, to engage the battle that’s been raging among us. Unseen.
after pluralism (part 3, the last one)
Posted by annaldavis in Everything Else on June 3, 2010
Pluralism leads to a false sense of unity, a warm fuzzy feeling that is almost spiritual at the core.
Let’s make this personal: I believe that Jesus is the Messiah — God incarnate — and that the Spirit of God dwells within me since I have been born again. But when I talk with my Buddhist friend, we tend to discuss a form of spirituality — all spirit and light. If I don’t bring up Jesus, we can speak the same language. We have a meeting of the minds (incomplete as it may be). Some might call this a spiritual “synergy” because we are all connected; we all share in the energy of this great universe as fellow beings.
This is the spirituality which I believe will lead us into the one-world “religion” mentioned in Revelation 13. It is not a religion at all, not in the traditional sense of the world. Because how could all the earth’s religions come together as one UNLESS we embrace our similarities and ignore the differences? As our world becomes more global, we are seeing more and more “interfaith” initiatives, and denial of symbols or words that bring division. And at the same time we also see a drive toward “unity” and “working together” and “global policy.”
We are building the Tower of Babel all over again.
This is the end of this series. Below I have included some helpful articles and links so you can check out these ideas for yourself.
If you need a reminder about how the Spirit of Babylon works, click on my recent post “oh, Babylon.”
For how globalization, pluralism, connectedness, and Babylon relate to each other, click here “Reflections of Babylon: Intercultural Communication and Globalization in the New World Order” Leigh, J. Globalization, 2004.
For some good resources about Babylon in our modern globalized world, click here: Who and Where is Mystery Babylon?
To see how pluralism as “spirituality” is growing in popularity, click on this CNN article. A quote from the article: “I had this revelation that I bow to no one, and I’ve been spiritually a much happier person,” says Ekim, who describers herself now as a Taoist, a religious practice from ancient China that emphasizes the unity of humanity and the universe.
and finally, for a great blog post that dives in the theology of LOST, click “The End of Lost: What did it really mean?”
Spiritual, Supernatural Things (Part 3)
Posted by annaldavis in Everything Else on May 15, 2009
My sister Krista and I don’t have a typical relationship. We didn’t grow up together. That’s right – no fights about who gets to play with the cool Barbie first, no stealing each other’s clothes, none of that catty girl stuff. It wasn’t until my late teens (and her preteens) that we began spending time together. Now we’re both in our 20s, and we’re the best of friends.
But because we didn’t share common experiences during childhood, what happened last fall can’t be explained away by sisterly insight. There was something else happening.
In Part 1 of this series, I described a time when God called me to pray for a friend’s struggle, before I even knew anything about that struggle. That was my first experience with Spirit-led intercessory prayer. By October of last year, I had been in this gift for several years and had mostly stopped second-guessing the spiritual pull within me.
It was during this time that Krista encountered a rather significant, life-altering internal struggle. She came up to a crossroads, a place where she would choose what kind of person to become. And like so many of us have experienced, her emotional and spiritual life was in turmoil as she approached this figurative fork in the road.
Unlike before, I knew many of the details. Not all (in fact, the most significant details only she knew), but enough to put words to the prayer. I prayed for God to show her the clear path – for Krista to have total peace if the path was right. And if she had missed the right path, if she needed to change direction— for her to have increasing uneasiness, a clamor in her ears. These are the specific words that I prayed, peace or unease according to God’s plan for her life, and I began praying this during the middle of October. After two weeks I felt that I needed to tell her about my prayer.
So I sent her an email, and explained that I had been praying this way for two weeks.
Here is her condensed reply: “First of all, your email almost made me break into tears. I’m kind of in shock right now. I feel like when it comes to matters of the heart and just following intuition, God is at the center of it and keeps sending me these little messages. Sometimes, they are really big messages that are right in my face.
Anyway, seriously, your email almost knocked me out of my chair because I feel like over the past two weeks, my uneasiness has gotten worse when I thought it would get better, and I do have a “clamor in my ears.” I feel like you had such a strong desire to tell me about your prayer because you know that if I was feeling anything strongly, that it could be that God was working on me. And I guess we see now that He has been.”
Let me be clear about something: I don’t have magic, psychic powers; my words on their own didn’t “curse” her with uneasiness. I think what happened is that God needed a bridge to Krista, extending from heaven to earth. And in praying through the Holy Spirit, I allowed that bridge to happen.
This is my last post in this series. What spiritual, supernatural things can happen in your life? Have you asked God to open your eyes?
