The Nature of God
God is good, not evil. God is love, God is mercy, God is forgiveness, God is manna in the desert, God is hope.

When we see love or goodness, we are seeing God. It makes sense, therefore, to thank God for goodness.

When good things happen, we feel at least a bit of the awe that frightened Hebrews felt when they went out in the morning and found manna on the ground. How wonderful it is to live in a world where goodness exists.

When we pray, we pray for more of that goodness?for healing, for forgiveness, for compassion, for justice. Thus, we pray to God that God be God.

That's why the earliest name for God was Yahweh, meaning something like ?God will be who God will be.?

When bad things happen, we are tempted to blame God or to feel abandoned by God.

That misreads what Scripture says about God. Scripture says that God is love, not that God is love and hate.

God allows a world in which hatred can exist, but that doesn't make God the source of hatred.

by Tom Ehrich
from "What Are You Asking?"
Why do we praise Jesus or God whenever something GOOD happens
but are never supposed to blame God when something bad happens?

An Interview with Caren Goldman co-author
(with William Dols) of Finding Jesus, Discovering
Self: Passages to Healing and Wholeness

This book was not written just for Christians. It is for those wishing to learn new ways of looking at the world around them, and inside them, using the life of Jesus of Nazareth.

In the following excerpts from our interview, Caren Goldman talks about her own experience with these stories both as a Jewish woman and as someone who has written about spirituality and healing for more than 30 years. ...

Q. Why do you, a Jewish woman who was both raised Jewish and actively practices her faith, choose to write about Jesus? ...

A. The most direct answer is that Jesus of Nazareth was a Jew. ...

Part of the problem in the Jewish community with the ?J? word or ?that man? exists because many Holocaust survivors and those born in the post Holocaust era were brought up not to ever?under any circumstances?mention Jesus? name. ...

Q. What advice do you have for those who have a hard time connecting to scripture?

A. Put your old tapes and the layers of other people?s answers to what the text means on a shelf. It?s your shelf, so you can take what is yours off of it any time you want to. ...

There seems to be an explosion of interest in the ancient spiritual practice of spiritual direction.

In response, the following questions and answers may prove helpful.

Q: In Spiritual Direction, does someone "direct" my spirit by telling me how to conduct my spiritual life and practice?

A: Despite the way "spiritual direction" sounds, it is not one person telling another what to do.Rather, it is one person helping another listen to what the Spirit of God is already doing in his/her life. ...

Q: Why do people seek spiritual direction?

... Most of us live our spiritual lives in the mind - thinking, believing, analyzing, judging, evaluating---but not actually experiencing the reality of a relationship with God. ...

Q: How is spiritual direction different from therapy and counseling?

A: Generally speaking, therapy and counseling are problem- oriented - that is, one seeks help to resolve a particular issue. By contrast, spiritual direction has as its goal the discernment of God's presence and action in one's life. ...

by Linda Douty
from "Spiritual Direction: What it is and what it isn't"