HERESIES OF A HEATHEN

Why the title "Heresies of a Heathen?" Because whether you're considered a member of the club, or you've been cast out and stoned with self-righteous condemnations like 'heathen,' whether your understanding of God is orthodox and commonly accepted, or you're the 'spiritual but not religious' type like me who speaks of the spiritual in 'heresies,' you can never actually be cast out of God's company, for God's company is absolutely inclusive. The truth is that even the 'heathen' thinking 'heretically' can offer insights into the spiritual (or 'metaphysical') nature of existence and, in fact, some argue that it requires the ability to look outside of conventional lines oppressively drawn to control us in order to best see God. This has, in fact, been my own experience, as God has led me to truths which can never belong to any one religion or group of people, and I'm offended by the attempt of religion to control divinity. In my own quest to understand the nature of divinity, I've learned of God to be the eternal, conscious energy essential to all people, places and things, including spacetime and matter and all forms of life manifested by God's divine force, regardless of grouping and label. In truth, we all exist within God, as mortal manifestations of God's immortal essence, for the purpose of infinite perspectives upon and experiences of existence. We're all finitely-formed facets of God's infinite nature, ever adapting in partnership with the material realm to be ceaselessly remade in God's limitless image, an image unbound by human-centric form. In the truths to which God has led and continues to gently coax me to convey to as many forms as I can muster, I've found my own mode of ministry, and I know in my heart that such a ministry needs no official religion or institutional sanction, for it's the heart itself that truly conveys God's will. I believe religion to perform many social and moral services, to offer community and hope to the lonely and the lost, and that its manifold manuscripts born through the ages, across the endless multitudes of culture and perspective, contain countless laudable principles of inestimable value to life. At the same time I know that, due to its historical development intertwined with State and Empire, religion is replete with irrevocable issues; with hierarchies, idolatries, mind-controlling propaganda and the implicit, and sometimes explicit, denial of empowering disciplines, like science and philosophy, and their emancipating, elucidating, edifying power. I also believe that, owing to that same history and its contentions with contradicting religions, religion in general tends to be divisive, leading to discord and hatred, thereby denying humanity's greatest unifying potential.