God and parenting
CHRISTMAS EVE is the best time to get together with God and contemplate His works just before the day man designates as His only begotten son’s birthday.
I’ve tried to teach you the purpose of this mundane life, which is, through experience, to Be and to be Who We Really Are, namely little pieces of God sent to this relative existence for completeness before returning to God’s existence (absolute knowledge) with the added experience of ‘reality’. This is what is meant in scripture by the assertion that Man is made in God’s image. That truism doesn’t involve the need for mirrors, nor is it a photographic reference. It’s simply another way of saying, as Jesus did, “At that day, ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you.” (John 14:20; KJV).
It’s not an exercise in cutting and carving. It’s not a King sending his army forth to conquer worlds. It’s the consequence of a collective oneness for the purpose of a collective seeking through the divine miracle of birth and what we call ‘life’, God’s completeness.
God is complete when experience of relativity is added to His absolute knowledge. When Lord Francis Bacon, as William Shakespeare, penned the philosophical question “to be or not to be ...”, he exposed his spiritual mastery. Our worldly choices (experiences) are what allow us to rejoin God, (‘to Be’), and if we’ve accomplished our mundane mission, To Be Who We Really Are, namely Knowledge + Experience (God’s completeness), which, for our worldly purposes, we say = Wisdom.
Just as we call God ‘The Creator’, so are we, as pieces of God, little creators in our own way. As God creates by fleeting thought, so do we. The first step in our creative process is always thought. Then we verbalise that thought (word), and the verbalising of it forces us to act (deed) to make it so. So, by thought, word and deed, we create whatever we choose.
But, like God, we must choose in order to create. Wishin’ and hopin’ and thinkin’ and prayin’; planning and dreamin’ his kisses will start. That won’t get you into his heart.
By now, readers should know I’m for old-fashioned parenting. I don’t accept ‘children’s rights’, save that they should be loved, protected, guided, and educated. When I see, as happens more often these days, children in control of their parents, I cringe.
When Little Larry is lucky enough to have parents who can and do give him food to eat and he says “I don’t want that,” which is immediately followed by a change of menu, I develop an irresistible urge to slap the parent.
But the worst crime a parent can perpetrate against his/her child’s development is to permit the use of two of English language’s most self-destructive words: ‘I want’. I know this is no longer politically correct and we must at all costs avoid warping Little Larry’s mental health with discipline, but this ‘I want’ disease is a debilitating and despicable enemy of the soul.
Children must learn that they don’t own or control the home within which they’ve been permitted to reside (free of charge) by their parents. I don’t go to the extreme of ‘children must be seen but not heard’, as did my grandparents’ generation, but even that extreme is preferable to today’s scenario, where the home is controlled and operated
by children to cater to their every whim.
I told each of The Old Ball and Chain’s three sons as soon as they could understand language: “Try to remember, I made you, not the other way around. I made you, and I can take you out. Here’s the bad news for you and the good news for me. It won’t take me two minutes to make another one who looks just like you!”
Left alone, a child WILL play in traffic. It’s up to a strong parent to stop that from happening. So, with zero apologies to modern parents, don’t reason or argue with children. Theirs not to reason why. Theirs but to see and sigh. So I’d never have explained this to any of my children until they reached an age of reason, but the rationale behind the banishment of the words ‘I want’ from the home is that they create the absence of whatever it is to which they were intended to refer.
‘I want’ is a statement to the universe that you don’t have whatever it is. As long as you
‘want’ something, you’ll never have it. But if you CHOOSE something or someone, go out and do what’s necessary. It shall be yours. So if you’re looking for love you can share. All you gotta to do is hold him and kiss him and love him and show him that you care. So we come to this Christmas Eve lesson, which is the difference between the mind and the soul. Simply put, the mind chooses; the soul feels. This isn’t a chicken-and-egg scenario (although we know it’s the chicken who came first and can be seen contentedly smoking a cigarette in bed beside a frustrated-looking egg with her back turned), the soul definitely comes first. The soul creates feelings, then the mind reacts by making conscious choice.
The soul (which is your divine self) knows from whence you came; where you’re going; and that the experience of every moment is sent to you by God (In that day, you will no longer
ask Me anything. Truly, truly, I tell you, whatever you ask the Father in (My name, He will give you. John 16:23). This is the true meaning of the present (today). It has been pre-sent by God for you to experience. The ‘present’ is a gift from God. Your soul is how God has ensured that you’ll seek the experiences needed to fulfil the purpose of life’s journey and return to God to be Who You Really Are. So your soul understands what your mind cannot and guides you, by way of feelings, to the path you must travel.
This is the purpose of meditation. You must find a way to leave your mortal mind and do some soul-searching, which is how you’ll be able to choose your way forward. Your soul intuitively seeks the perfect circumstance for you and shows you this by feelings.
I’ll bet dollars to donuts that Davina just felt she should enter a beauty pageant coming from somewhere deep inside her and acted on her feelings by choosing the Miss Jamaica Universe pageant. She chose to win that pageant, and if she had the spiritual courage to choose to win Miss Universe, she would’ve won that, too. I believe her spiritual courage just failed her on the big stage at the last minute and she gave in to chance instead of positive choice. Still, her result was exactly what her soul knew was to be her experience and from which she gained incalculable wisdom.
So, this Christmas, let’s commit to listening to our souls when they speak to us through feelings. Let’s honour our feelings. Let’s insist on following our feelings by way of our conscious choices. Choose your future. Don’t allow your future to choose you. In the meantime, I wish all my Christian readers a happy and holy Christmas. To those of other faiths or no faith, I wish for you enjoyment of a peaceful, happy holiday season.
Wishin’ and Hopin’ was written in 1962 by one of the best songwriting duos of all time, Hal David (lyrics) and Burt Bacharach (music). It was recorded in 1963 by Dionne Warwick (who else?) as the flip side of her recording The Empty Place and a track on her debut album. But the song came to prominence when English songbird Dusty Springfield was eventually convinced by Bacharach to release her cover as a single in 1964.
After hearing Dionne’s album, Dusty had recorded the song in January 1964 as a cut on her album A Girl Called Dusty. Although the single was never an official hit (its release clashed with Dusty’s already released monster hit I Just Don’t Know What to Do With Myself), it was extremely popular with DJs, including in Jamaica, and became identified with Dusty Springfield.
Peace and love.