Open minded or vacuous?
On Friday mornings for the past four years I have met two of my closest friends at Starbucks. When I say morning I mean early, as in 5:30 am early, right as they unlock the door. They now make our drinks as we walk in the door. Not really but close enough. This time has become so precious to me. It is a time to talk, laugh, cry and study God's word with people I can be totally transparent with. That is such a blessing.We have studied articles, books, workbooks and now we are listening to a cd collection. At least we were until today. I consider myself an open minded person. I try very hard to listen to the point of view of different people and then make up my mind about how true it is and whether that can be a part of my beliefs. For the most part this has served me very well and I have learned wonderful things from people. There are at times, however, people who open their mouths and immediately I know that what they have to say is not healthy for me to even listen to. Other times it takes me a while to figure it out. This is what has happened with the CDs we have been listening to.
The CDs are done by an Episcopalian priest who happens to be female. The idea was to see Jesus in a deeper way, in a different light so to speak. I'm all for seeing the familiar in ways that reignite the joy in the story. Unfortunately this priest has taken a little bit of truth and worked it together with her ideas of eastern mysticism to the point of being almost unidentifiable. Each lesson finds her mixing more and more mysticism in with less and less truth. Now I am one of those people who will watch a really bad movie all the way through in the hope that it will finally get better. So I listened each time to my lesson and worked to find the good in what she had to say. Today, one of my small coffee group stated she was taking a sabbatical from listening to the cds because she needed to refocus. Then another one of us made a few statements about how difficult the teachings were. Listening to them talk, it suddenly dawned on me that each time I sit to listen to the lesson of the week, I feel this feeling that I am not doing what I should be doing. The Spirit is telling me each time that this is not good for me to be listening to this woman. I know I am really slow sometimes. I felt it but had kept putting it aside in hopes of being open minded and learning something -- something from the lessons. Now it was very clear that this was the Spirit I am putting aside. So I said that to my friends and immediately we decided that since we were all getting the same feelings and thoughts that this should end right now. I am tempted to take the cds and break them in half just as a protective measure.
How open minded can we be before we become vacuous? How much information do we need to hear or read before we know this is not good information and I don't have to hear it in any way to make a healthy decision for myself? These are the questions on my mind today. I think that this will become a part of my petition to God that he give me the wisdom to recognize the Spirit moving in me to start or stop doing something. I've been asking for the wisdom to know what to do. Now I will ask for that same wisdom to know when to stop. For me that seems to be an important lesson.
Yes it took a while for us to finally come to the right conclusion about this study. I think that is okay, though because we've learned something about the Spirit in this process. I am so grateful for my friends and for our freedom to say, this doesn't feel right without being thought a bit strange. Instead we are all willing to believe that God is leading us and today gave us a strong lesson on the teaching of the Holy Spirit: one that we won't soon forget, I'm sure. We decided that we are going to go straight to scripture for a while and read the book of Luke. It will be a way to clear our palates after a very strong and unsavory experience.
God is so good! Today the three of us have been deeply blessed.
posted by Dana @ 12:46 PM
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