I leave for my Hospital Experiment tomorrow morning, which means I probably won’t be updating my Xanga for a few weeks. I’ll still be checking email and everyone’s Xanga updates, but the material I was using for updates won’t be available to me. Everyone will just have to wait to keep hearing about my retreat!!!

January 13th
Day 5

Sin is of the flesh, not the spirit. Since the spirit exists on earth in the flesh, it is trapped by sin. Our hearts, though, can be freed and this is what Baptism makes possible. In Original Sin, we are condemned. The door is locked. Baptism does not save the flesh, but the heart, the soul. If we spend our lives striving to keep our souls free of sin, death will allow our flesh to fall away and our souls will reunite with God.

Sin separated us from God.
Once we were united, alike, as we were meant to be, praising, reverencing and serving God; loving Him. Then Adam and Eve ate of the tree, an act that went against their purpose and nature and suddenly they were not what they were. Eden was a place created for those in union and love with God, and since Adam and Eve went against that, they could not stay.
But God still loves us and wants us to return to Him as we were meant to be. How? Well, the flesh is now a slave to sin, so flesh cannot enter Paradise. He COULD just do away with sin, but since WE CHOSE it and HE loves us, He won’t as it would betray His promise of free will and says, “I love you as you are… except this sin thing. So I’ll just do away with that and then everything will be fine.” Instead, in love He works with us as we ARE, as we chose to be.
This means that all He has to work with, all He can save is our souls, the only part of us that sin is not the automatic master of, since the soul is from God and not from the flesh. Our flesh comes from our parents; the soul does not. Your body is half of your mom and half of your dad. Would you say that your soul is half of your mom and half of your dad? Certainly much of who we are comes from them, but ultimately I am quite different from my parents. My parents did not give me a soul, did not give me life. They gave me a body, God gave me a soul. My parents created a vessel, God filled it with life.
The Law (the ten commandments and others) was not meant to forgive Original Sin, it was meant to prepare a holy people to receive the Messiah, and to bring the chosen people closer to God, requiring great devotion and dedication to repair the relationship damaged by sin.
Christ then comes, giving us Baptism to cleanse us of the Original Sin, unlocking the door to our souls. The Law and the teachings of Christ now serve as a guideline of how to live and how to maintain a free heart for God. Some of the laws (animal sacrifices in Leviticus, for example) were done away with; Christ was the final sacrifice of that nature. So now it is possible for us to keep sin from it’s hold on our souls, but our flesh is a lost cause.
But the door to Eden is still shut and locked. In order for a man to enter Eden, he would need to be perfect, free from Original Sin on his soul and free from the mastery of sin, period. He must be united perfectly with God in love, just as Adam was before the fall.
Enter Mary, free from Original Sin from birth; the perfect mother. God is the perfect father, therefore Jesus is the perfect child and later will be the perfect man. Jesus, by His parents, never inherited the sin of Adam and Eve. After living a life that is to serve as the model for all to live, after living a HUMAN life and even being tempted, He does not sin. He is in perfect union with God, as He IS God. Then He dies, completely perfect and sinless, and Eden cannot refuse Him because of this perfection and also because He is God, returning to His home. Christ FLINGS OPEN the gates of Eden for us. He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and no one shall come to the Father except through Him!
After His death He returns and orders His apostles to baptize all in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. But in loving us, God gives us Baptism as a choice still. Even after all of this, we still must choose Him; He doesn’t force us to love or choose Him. How amazing is that?!
God became fully human, praising our humanity in doing so. In keeping salvation as a choice for us to make, He reverences us, respecting our free will at the risk of losing us forever. During His time on earth, God served us always, and serves us still. Christ is the greatest sign of God’s love for us.
Now we have a way of living that helps us to free our souls from the clutches of sin, and Eden has been opened to us by Christ, the new Adam. But there is something a lot of people don’t think about. In the beginning, God created EVERYTHING and gave it to Adam as a great gift, to share all of God’s creation with God. The coming of Christ was the dawn of a NEW Genesis, Christ being the new Adam. What great and amazing gift did we receive then? There were MANY.
TO BE CONTINUED……

Here are the thoughts I wrote in my journal about sin. Remember, I’m not a theologian! These are just my thoughts as they came to me, and they help me understand things a little better. I’m sharing them with all of you in the hope that maybe they’ll help someone else, too!

January 12th

Day 4

            We exist in an unnatural state. We were intended to exist in loving, perfect union with God, but then sin entered into the world and made us slaves, as Paul describes in Romans 7:14-25.

        “For we know that the law is spiritual. But I am carnal, sold under sin. For that which I work, I understand not. For I do not that good which I will: but the evil which I hate, that I do. If then I do that which I will not, I consent to the law, that it is good. Now then it is no more I that do it: but sin that dwells in me. For I know that there dwells not in me, that is to say, in my flesh, that which is good. For to will is present with me: but to accomplish that which is good, I find not. For the good which I will, I do not: but the evil which I will not, that I do. Now if I do that which I will not, it is no more I that do it: but sin that dwells in me. I find then a law, that when I have a will to do good, evil is present with me. For I am delighted with the law of God, according to the inward man: But I see another law in my members, fighting against the law of my mind and captivating me in the law of sin that is in my members. Unhappy man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death? The grace of God, by Jesus Christ our Lord. Therefore, I myself, with the mind serve the law of God: but with the flesh, the law of sin.”

            Because of Adam and Eve, our flesh is a slave to sin. Jesus Christ came to teach us how to live with free hearts and free souls, that our souls might still be freed from sin after death and exist with God in heaven.

            Slavery is an unnatural state. A person is forcefully removed from their natural state and made to do the will of the slavemaster instead of their own free will. Much as a slave is forced to do the will of their master, we are forced against our will to be slaves to sin.

            The danger of all this, actually, is losing our identity as a slave in this life. If my natural or former origin is unity with God in love, I must always keep within my inmost self, my soul, the constant and true desire to escape and run home to Him by keeping His laws and patiently awaiting the day when He releases us from our slavery through death of our body. As slaves, however, our best intentions are often marred and tainted by our captivity. What begins as good and what began as what we “wanted” to do often ends as the opposite because of our bondage.

            If we do “what we don’t want,” as Paul says, it is no longer us doing it but our slave master, sin. Sin is what “we don’t want to do,” want meaning that we really desire to do God’s will and not sin. But being a slave to sin, we are forced to sin despite what we desire. This in a way is good, because a slave MUST do the will of the master, and not their own. If they cooperate with the will of the master, doing what they “don’t want to do,” they are no longer a slave and are instead a servant. This is all why despite our best efforts NOT to sin, we always manage to do so. This is why despite my best efforts to maintain a pure and chaste mind, sinful thoughts still enter it, even against my own will. My brain, part of my body, is a slave to sin.

            If we become a servant of sin, losing our identity as a slave, what need would we have for God to free us? We betray our origin, we forsake our homeland of loving oneness with God and decide to be one with sin. We MUST be slaves, but very inwardly rebellious ones, being forced to do the sinful will of the master because sin cruelly makes us, and to never cooperate in the slightest, even if sin would put us to death. If we have kept our homeland, God, alive in our hearts and souls, if we have dedicated that last inch of ourselves to God and maintained it, death becomes our freedom instead of our end. Free of flesh, free of sin. God’s laws help us to keep our souls free from the chains of our slavery, to reserve that last and most precious part of us for God. God’s laws are not meant to save our skins, but to keep our spirits in the mood for flying once our fleshy cages are opened and we can fly home to Him!

I made it! To begin things, I will start by sharing an important lesson I learned: what love is. Yes, there is a definition that I think works very well! It all has to do with our purpose. What is our purpose, why are we alive? Why did God create us?
Our purpose is to praise, reverence, and serve God. It sounds simple, but really think about it. Think about the people who you know have loved you. Did they not praise, reverence/respect, and serve you? Did you not do the same for them out of love? Here are some of my thoughts from Day 3 of the retreat.

“God loved me even before I existed, before I was even growing in my mother’s womb. I once ONLY existed in God’s love. He created me because He loves me, therefore, my first purpose is to BE LOVED BY GOD, TO LET HIM LOVE ME, TO ACCEPT HIS LOVE.”
How many people live their entire life without ever thinking about this? About LETTING God love them? About accepting it? It can be a scary thing to let oneself be loved, much less by the One capable of loving perfectly!

“My second purpose, due to the nature of love, is to return His love with love of my own, to love Him back.”
Pretty straight-forward.

“My third purpose, because He loves me and I love Him is to love ALL of His people, as He, my God who I love and who loves me, dwells and exists within each person.”
Kinda sounds like some Gospel, don’t it?

“In praising, being reverent, and serving God, I fulfill all of these purposes, all three united in the love of God. In fulfilling this great threefold purpose of loving, I unite myself with God’s love in this life as I was united with Him before my existence, and since I was alive IN Him then, saved from non-existence by His love, and I am alive with Him now and even will be after death. Death can only be conquered by love, true love, God’s love- it is the ONLY constant and incapable of death. If I unite myself with That Which Lives FOREVER, I am utterly saved, all because so very long ago He loved ME first!”
So this is a very big step for just about anyone, and I hope it makes sense to you readers out there. You see, in fulfilling our purpose of loving God in praise, reverence, and service as He praises us, reverences us, and serves us, we maintain that unity we shared in Him before our earthly existence. If we maintain that our whole lives and die in that love, we go on existing within it.

Sin goes against our purpose. Sin does not praise, reverence, or serve God and separates us from Him. God told Adam and Eve, “Don’t eat from that tree.” Adam and Eve ate from the tree. Sure, they admitted that the tree was very lovely and the fruit delicious (praise) and they probably still held God in great esteem (reverence) but then you come to service… did eating that fruit, despite God’s asking them not to, serve God? Nope. And look what happened, all because of ONE sin. One sin separated us from God. One. Look at how different the world is from the paradise of Eden because of that separation from God. YET despite sin flourishing in our world, despite our own sinfulness, God STILL loves us more than we are even capable of knowing. He RAINS gifts upon us- look at all the gifts in the world! Music, sensation, art, food, laughing, naps, warmth, rain, sunshine, a good cry, friends, adrenaline, cookies, peanut butter, pets, trees, Iowa, fireworks, stars, poetry, romance, stories… on and on! LIFE! EVERYTHING is a gift from God. Everything.
With everything being a gift from God out of His love, even those gifts can help us fulfill our purpose, IF WE USE THEM LOVINGLY.
-In using His gifts lovingly, we ACCEPT the love in which He gives His gifts and further praise (thank you!), reverence (respect the gift) and serve (use the gift well!) Him.
-In using His gifts lovingly, we show OUR love for Him, especially when we praise, reverence, and serve Him through His gifts (art, music, etc.)
-In using His gifts lovingly, we inevitably show our love for one another, sharing the gifts we receive with everyone so that all might better praise, reverence, and serve Him.

So, if ever you are wondering if you are loving God or yourself or your neighbor as best as you can, ask yourself:
-In doing (whatever), am I praising, reverencing, and serving God who loves me?
-In doing (whatever), am I praising, reverencing, and serving myself in order to do the same for God even better?
-In doing (whatever), am I praising, reverencing, and serving the God who dwells in others?

If you try this, you might by amazed at what you find. It isn’t a sure fire method; love is far too mysterious to be defined in only a few words, but I think this is a great starting point to loving more truly.
OK so I think I’ve said enough for now. Every few days I’ll try and answer questions people may have before I continue sharing my thoughts and experiences with all of you. I hope that they will help you all come closer to God, or at least give you something interesting to think about. Later!