God Is Not 3 Guys

I’m home and I’ll resume my recovery here. This is four weeks after I entered the hospital. Recovery is slow. I’ll be finding spiritual lessons from this for a long time to come. What touches me most deeply is the loving care and concern I’ve received from many people. I feel unworthy and helpless to adequately thank everyone. The profusion of flowers and cards in my room prompted a visitor to comment, “You are well loved.” Yes, and I didn’t earn it. I’m grateful that the expressions of love countered the pain of major surgery, but I have to make an effort to accept love I didn’t earn. This is one lesson—that love is not earned. I hope this experience increases my own loving care and concern for others. John Lennon’s statement spoke to me on my hospital bed: Life is what happens while we have other plans. In advance I’ll thank any reader who can give the exact quote and maybe circumstances accompanying it. I will resume nudging Christians out of our box of assumptions, encouraging them...

This is Patrick, Jeanette's son. I am posting this comment per her request. One of the interesting comments that came in during my illness was by M. Stromer. His interpretation of my Good Friday post was distorted but I won't bother to say what I meant and what I didn't mean in the matter of the Clinton and Obama debate. Instead, I'll take this opportunity to reinforce Stromer's theme, which also runs through everything I write about religion. It is that we Christians insult people of other faiths by placing the Christian frame on them. The great theologian Karl Rahner did this with his reference to "anonymous Christians." A Buddhist appropriately asked him how he'd like to be called an "anonymous Buddhist." I hope M. Stromer carefully reads my chapter in God is Not Three Guys in the Sky on the inner Christ to see my inclusive identification of Christ with the Self, with Atman, and with other non-Christian terms. I can't say more about i...

Jeanette's recovery continues. I have read to her some of the interesting comments people have sent on the posts and she is looking forward to commenting as well. She hopes to be back in business within a week and apologizes for this hiatus.

This is Mollie, Jeanette's daughter speaking on her behalf. She is in the hospital and hopes to be blogging again within a week.