funny you should ask...

rudenski,

i hope you see this post as it is kind of far down now. but you asked a question and it took me a while to answer it in my mind.

the short story is this. i lost everything, i mean everything. and somehow that was a gift, but only in retrospect.

i was raised evangelical christian but let go of that at about 21 mainly due to the whole concept of eternal torment for non-believers, i just couldn't believe that no matter how hard i tried. but the thing is i still believed in Jesus as a real living force in the world, and still do. i just couldn't reconcile the Jesus i believed in with the christianity's concept of Jesus.

i had a high profile and very successful career. i even used my position of influence to help some people. but at the height of it all a nagging injury turned into a constant tormenting pain, and i fell sick. i was unable to work, i lost my job. i also had a business that i had started with a business partner who i believed was also my friend. he made an alliance with a real criminal and they conspired to steal the business out from underneath me in a manner that was so cold and diabolical i really didn't understand people acted in that manner until it happened to me. in the end i was forced to sell my share for pennies on the dollar. that moeny lasted for mabye 8 months and i was too sick and injured to work so i became quasi homeless living in backyards and toolsheds and whatnot. the story goes on and on. ny family rejected me and acted like the whole thing was my fault and i hated my parents for doing so. i wound up in a homeless shelter with crack addicts murderers, and rapists.

my career my health my familiy my faith my belongings - all gone. i felt useless and thought life was pointless. i hated the people who did this to me, or hated those who could have helped but didn't. i also hated God for sitting by while my life self destructed.

i prayed though. and talked to God regularly. God told me very specifically that if i would feel my heart and do what i knew was the right thing in that moment, that things would work out. God told me that life was not about things or success but about relating to people through your heart and living like God was inside everyone. it was a voice inside, i wondered if it was just me talking to myself telling me something i wanted to be true but wasn't really.

i started hanging out at the local library and cruising around the internet. i found sites dedicated to the NDE experience. i read NDE after NDE. the experiences touched something deep inside. i wept there sitting in thepublic library. more than once. the librarians were afraid of me. i didn't care. some kind of healing happened for me there.

the NDE God always told people to love each other, that that was the key and most important thing, over and over and over the same thing. i began to realize that the voice inside of me and the God in the NDE's were saying very simalar things. i started to think that maybe God really did live in me and talk to me.

i started to understnd that living each day simply and doing at least one loving thing is what really matters, and all the things that people think matter moslty just don't.

i also feel that God has given me some kind of revelation of love inside of me, it is a gift but also something difficult. because i fall so very short of it so very often. i am rude and overbearing and sarcastic and judgmental. i try to convince people that it is not about religion or war or whatever but about love, and in that discussion they disagree and then i get short tempered and judgemental and then where is the love in that?

now God is putting my life back together very slowly one piece at a time. really it is God, i am just trying to be in my heart and live the way God wants me to. God always tells me to feel my heart and do kind things and that all the other stuff like money and jobs and whatnot will work out. so far God has been right.

this is a long post but you asked a long question. in reality this a very very abreviated summary of how i came to where i am at. sometimes i am in despair because i spend too much time alone and because i wonder if i will ever be the loving person that i aspire to be. but then really it is God's problem, i can only do what i can do here and now and trust that God, or the Creator, or the Spirit, or the Source or whatver name you choose is at work inside me and re-creating me each day.

ff