Connecting with Jesus: Stream of Spirit Contemplations – First Post

I've been spending more personal time with Jesus, enough that he's inspired me to blog about the story of our friendship and his mentorship, past and present. This is my first entry. I can feel his presence pretty good these days, so I tried connecting with him to ask him what I should call this series of blog posts. I shut my thoughts off and let my consciousness slip into my open heart, the only place I like to blog and tweet from. I’m totally at peace and I wait, calling out to Jesus. Thoughts clearly and singularly come into my mind:

I want to be honest! I’ve been holding back a little because I sometimes worry how the truth will sound to others. For example, just today I was reading about people’s reactions to an article on how Transcendental Meditation is spiritually dangerous, saying it’s an act of the devil. People be crazy, I mean, under-educated and ill-informed.

Then a pseudo-quote from Mother Thersesa comes into my mind, “In telling the truth, people might offer death threats or say you’re doing the devil’s work. Tell the truth anyway.”

I mention the death threat thing because I was talking with a psychic the other day who can see and talk to angels, and she was saying how she really does gets death threats. And I hate that that’s not more surprising to me. Ok, Mother Theresa, I will tell the truth anyway.

This is me: I’m one of those people who thinks ANYTHING is possible (except going back in time). So when I first read about Jesus saying, “He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater,” I absolutely took that literally and absolutely took that to mean he was talking to everyone, including me. So why aren’t more of us there yet?

When I was a chaplain, I met a nursing-home worker named Michael, a great guy who was also surprised people weren’t spontaneously healed more with the power of the Holy Spirit. I fully know how crazy that can sound, I but I also fully know that if you really believe in Jesus, you too must believe these things and more are possible. I also remember meeting a fellow Clinical Pastoral Education student at a workshop in Reading, PA, someone who was taking the traditional pastoral route of seminary, and him being curious why more greater (yes, more greater) things weren’t happening as “promised in the Bible.” And a fellow substitute teacher who wanted to be a monk (of sorts) like me, and wanted that to be a real thing people can make a living doing as a part of society. (I’m curious if I’ll cross paths someday with one or more of them, sharing all that I have learned since then, unless they have learned even more themselves.)

I decide I want to try and connect with Jesus again to get a title for this series, so I re-quiet my mind, slip into my open heart, and I feel Jesus there, being patient. I ask my question and “Connecting with Jesus” comes into my mind. I laugh a little at how easy that was and at how much I like the title, and at how obvious it seems as it jives with my whole blog site in general. Thanks, Jesus!