Meditate | What Does It Mean To Be Alive?
Chelsea Rose Odhner | Monday, November 1, 2010 Nothing that is a person’s very own has any life in it. When presented to view, it looks hard as bone, and black. Everything that comes from the Lord, on the other hand, has life. It has a spiritual and heavenly quality and looks like something living and human.
Incredibly, perhaps (although it is absolutely true), each word, each mental image, and each scintilla of thought in an angelic spirit is alive. Passion received from the Lord, who is life itself, permeates every single thing about such a spirit. Secrets of Heaven 41
The Lord is life itself. This amazes me. Life is something we receive from the Lord. It is so easy for me to get more focused on the concept of “having.” I have life. I have love. I have passion. But all these things we receive from the Lord. My concept of reception has been shifting. It is now a much more dynamic, moment-to-moment, real time experience of receiving things (like passion and life and good and true thoughts) from the Lord. Recognizing that, that it’s a constant flow is hard for my small, limited mind to handle sometimes, but it excites my spirit.
Also this passage changed my ideas about what is our “very own.” I often in the past have equated what is our “very own” with what is physical. The physical parts of me are inherently lifeless and it is only through the Lord’s influx that I get to be alive.
Wondering about the inspiration for this article? Look up the New Church, which is based on the theological writings of Emanuel Swedenborg.
