Gratitude and Expectations

I have been thinking about Gratitude.  I remember a f/Friend of mine who sent out a Christmas letter in which she invited us all to play the "thanksgiving game".  She said it is easy and gave examples that she is thankful that she can see so she can read, that she is grateful that she can walk so she can go places.  She is slowly loosing her eyesight and had polio as a child and so it makes sense that she is grateful for such things.  As an able bodied person it , unfortunately, never occurs to me to be thankful for such things.  I have an expectation that I will see and walk and because I have that expectation I take it for granted.  In fact I sometimes struggle to find what to be grateful for, focusing on problems and feeling sorry for myself about those things.  My expectations often cause me problems as I get upset by things which are not as I thought they would be.

Right now I have a lot of gratitude- in fact I feel a little like someone who has won the lottery and keeps expecting someone to come knock on their door and ask for the check back because it is all "a big mistake".  I have been thinking about how expectations, like goals and dreams are generally a good thing and help us aim for things and collectively move forward in life.  And yet I am aware of how we can become so attached to a dream, or a goal as to have the expectation that life will be a certain way and experience great disappointment or frustration when it is not that way.  So I have sat in the silence of Meeting trying to reconcile those two things - the good of our dreams and the problems of our expectations.

I thought about the old saying:  "I will do X tomorrow, God willing and the Creek don't rise".  One thing about that saying is it makes the assumption that all or our intentions are subject to God's will.  It occurs to me that the problem with expectations, dreams or goals is not having them, but when we do not subject them to The Divine Author, but rather see our lives as separate from God wholly of our own making.  Among other things this does separate us from the source of our blessings.  When we are not busy being our own Creator, it is easier to notice all the many small and large blessings and goodness of the Creator.

Is There a God?

I was 12 years old and I was sitting on a bench in Meeting for Worship and I was wondering: "Is there a God?"  This seemed like an important question to which it was not clear how one could get an answer to this question.  As I sat there I looked at a purple Iris outside the window with a huge dew drop on the petal.  The sun was hitting it refracting a rainbow within the dew drop.  I rejoiced in the beauty and majesty of all this!

I reflected upon what we had just been studying in biology: about how flowers reproduce, about how light is refracted, about how water evaporates and goes up in the air and is held in clouds and then is released in rain, and the whole rather perfect cycle of nature there, and in reproduction of plants, and of birth and death and rebirth of plants and animals, etc.  "It is all perfect", I thought.  And suddenly I knew; I knew there is a God.  Because I realized nothing could accidentally or randomly occur that was this perfect.  I saw there was an intelligence in the universe.  I felt an energy that could be turned to for guidance and wisdom.

As I got older I would contend with questions like: Why does God allow suffering? What does God want me to do and how do I know?  How do I pray?  And what is the correct name of God?  But for then, for 12, it was just good to know there is a God.

When I was much older I had a long argument with a friend who identifies himself as an Atheist.  I told him that while I could understand someone being Agnostic, not knowing if there is a God that I did not know how he could claim to know conclusively that there is not a God when others say they have experienced God directly.  He made various arguments and asked me several times to what my experience of God was.  I described it and he said he had not had that experience. I acknowledged that but said I still did not think he could dismiss others experience. 

He did acknowledge that there is a principle of intelligence within the Universe, but then said crossly that he did not understand why I was calling that God.  I said that I did not understand why he would refuse to call it God.  He talked over and over again about the evils of the church throughout history.  I acknowledged that the organized churches have done many evil things and that that is the doing of humans while hiding behind the cloak of the church.  I said that you could not throw God out with the churches.  He eventually said that if I was calling the Mind of the Universe God that he agreed that it existed, but found it unnecessary to call it God.

We were young then.  I have not asked him where he turns for comfort when the world looks dark?  Or where he finds strengthen when he has to do the hard things? Or what helps him to find connection to all people around him even the crappy ones?  But these are reasons why I have discovered there is a God not just a Mind of the Universe.