Ann, how true and what a great perspective you offer! What happens as we grow into adulthood, we seem to lose that sense of knowing and trusting others.
I love Monet’s art and his profound message.
How can we teach ourselves what we do not understand? It is in the willingness to acknowledge that it is impossible and the instant that we abandon the notion that we can, the Teacher enters into our awareness. We place trust in our Guide, not ourselves, for the moment we place trust in ourselves, we lose the motivation for learning…because we think we already understand. When we think we know we have abandoned the One who can teach us.
When we make room, we invite the Teacher in to guide us. “Ask and it shall be given. Ask for light and learn you are light” (CIM.) It is a decision to listen to our Guide.
(The above reflection is based on teachings from A Course in Miracles.)

LikeLike

As someone who loved to listen to my father inquire about and discuss scientific discoveries at the dinner table, the scientific understanding or inquiry has never distanced me from God. Like much of my very early theological understanding, I feel fortunate for that. Through my church in Pasadena, I have become friends with several astronomers and scientists from JPL and Cal Tech. We have shared our reflections about the mystery of God so evident in the universe and close at hand. As a family caregiver, I have experienced that mystery during times of suffering, despair and healing. May it continue to be so.

LikeLike

The only truth I know is Love…
I thought I would share with you some fascinating thoughts thoughts from Albert Einstein on this subject.
In his book, “The World as I See It” Einstein describes three stages of religious experience, the first human experience was a fear of God’s punishment and the second was of a developing morality. Einstein explains, “But there is a third stage of religious experience which belongs to all of them, even though it is rarely found in a pure form: I shall call it cosmic religious feeling. It is very difficult to elucidate this feeling to anyone who is entirely without it, especially as there is no anthropomorphic conception of God corresponding to it.”
“The individual feels the futility of human desires and aims and the sublimity and marvelous order which reveal themselves both in nature and in the world of thought. Individual existence impresses him as a sort of prison and he wants to experience the universe as a single significant whole. The beginnings of cosmic religious feeling already appear at an early stage of development, e.g., in many of the Psalms of David and in some of the Prophets. Buddhism, as we have learned especially from the wonderful writings of Schopenhauer, contains a much stronger element of this.”
“The religious geniuses of all ages have been distinguished by this kind of religious feeling, which knows no dogma and no God conceived in man’s image; so that there can be no church whose central teachings are based on it. Hence it is precisely among the heretics of every age that we find men who were filled with this highest kind of religious feeling and were in many cases regarded by their contemporaries as atheists, sometimes also as saints. Looked at in this light, men like Democritus, Francis of Assisi, and Spinoza are closely akin to one another.”
“How can cosmic religious feeling be communicated from one person to another, if it can give rise to no definite notion of a God and no theology? In my view, it is the most important function of art and science to awaken this feeling and keep it alive in those who are receptive to it.”
“Now, even though the realms of religion and science in themselves are clearly marked off from each other, nevertheless there exist between the two strong reciprocal relationships and dependencies. Though religion may be that which determines the goal, it has, nevertheless, learned from science, in the broadest sense, what means will contribute to the attainment of the goals it has set up. But science can only be created by those who are thoroughly imbued with the aspiration toward truth and understanding. This source of feeling, however, springs from the sphere of religion. To this there also belongs the faith in the possibility that the regulations valid for the world of existence are rational, that is, comprehensible to reason. I cannot conceive of a genuine scientist without that profound faith. The situation may be expressed by an image: science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.”

LikeLike