I've thought of another analogy. Yep, even when I'm fed up with people I am still trying to think of ways, images and words to better explain God and his purpose. That's the one thing that has any hope of working. People have become so derailed that the only remedy is to repeat the truth and edify it from many different angles and examples. Well, so here is another one.
Tattoos are popular (yuck to most of them I say) and I can't say I'm an expert except I know what I'm talking about in the negative implications of dark themed tats. It goes beyond "body art" and is a reinforcement of what in healthy people would just be fleeting thoughts, many of whom are outgrown or mellowed out over time. Many tats codify a depressive darkness that might have been "a phase" in the person's life, but assume a power of daily, even hourly, reminder that is not healthy for many people. What can I say.
Anyway, several years ago I lived in an apartment in New Mexico. I met a young man as I stopped to admire and pet his puppy. I noticed that the man had the letters H-A-T-E tatted across the fingers of one hand (the hand I guess he would sock someone with) and L-O-V-E tatted across the fingers of the other hand. I know this is a common enough tat motif but it still is worth giving some thought about. Remember I've blogged about how to logic one's self through an addiction to a cult activity such as tarot card reading by recognizing the mathematics of the rules of the reading do not make sense when compared to the reality of life. For example if one suit of the cards (swords, also known as spades) are viewed as "bad" cards, then that assumes that one-fourth (at least) of life as represented by your questions to the cards are "bad." And that is of course wrong. I've often thought of the young man's tats. Leaving aside that one uses the preferred hand for most activities, so maybe he put LOVE on his preferred hand since that's most of what he conveys, let's think of hands as equal. If you have HATE on one hand and LOVE on the other, that's an unconscious leaning toward thinking the world, or your interface with it, is half and half. I bet this appeals to soldiers because they might view work as where they need the "hate" hand and their real life as being the "love" hand (patriotism, love of family, love for buddies).
But I thought of a hypothetical pairing of tats that would be more balanced and accurate. (And I am not recommending a tat! This is just a light hearted example of how I look for analogies to explain deeper things!) A tat that said "action" and a tat that said "receptivity" would be much more reflective of how life really is. Action can include either "hate" (as in war or conflict) or "love." Receptivity also is a way to respond to situations of either "hate" or "love."
This then gave me the idea to use this in a quick spiritual direction exercise. The least understood of the Trinity is the Holy Spirit. One quick way to think of the Holy Spirit is "the action hand of God." The Holy Spirit is out there, and not just as a passive dove. The Holy Spirit is also a flame, and Jesus warned people against offending the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit has an infinite range of action, from the gentlest movements of feminine wisdom to very kick *ss manifestation of God's willpower and action. These all, from gentle to robust, are actions, so the Holy Spirit can be thought of, for the purpose of analogy, as God's "action" hand.
So how is God showing a "receptive" hand? The best example is the other figure who provokes the most debate and is misunderstood by many (to their detriment, I might add). This is the Virgin Mary. Now do not jump on me and accuse me of saying the Blessed Virgin Mary is one of God's hands or part of the Godhead, as I am not saying that. I'm using a tat analogy to understand divine matters. One best understands Mary if one thinks of her as the "receptive" manifestation of God's grace. God bestows grace in many ways. Sometimes God can't seem to give away grace if he was having a free garage sale since people prefer to disobey and do their own thing. But one way that God bestows grace is to show the power and salvation in the simple acceptance, the receptivity, of the gift of grace. Mary is hailed by her title, "Full of Grace" because she said yes to being the "not active" but receiving vessel, the new Ark, of grace. She was therefore able to receive the fullness of grace that is of the purest vessel to contain within her Jesus, the Messiah and Savior.
Sometimes God takes "action" and sometimes God creates places and people of receptivity. I think looking at it this way, not from a theological viewpoint but just as a mental assistance, will help people to understand God better, the Holy Spirit and Mary better, and also the idea "balance" in healthy individual humans and community. Action is extremely important, but nowadays it is totally misdirected. People do not act enough to preserve their purity and piety, but they act too much in empty "busy-ness." And at the same time people are not receptive enough when it comes to grace, wisdom, and acceptance of reality, while they are overly receptive to cultural degrading intrusions and being over stimulated while being inert. I'm irritated just typing these two previous sentences since I have to think about this mess as I type and the energy and priorities of people are all wrong. So I hope that this will help some readers to think of how God has perfected interfacing with human children in both "action" and "receptivity" and I hope people can recognize how they can emulate this balance more (and people used to be much better in this than they are today, where the balance has been just about totally lost). When people were "closer to God" and "closer to the land" this action and receptivity balance and understanding was much easier to understand and indeed, in fact, it came naturally to people. People understood both Mary and the Holy Spirit much more when they were poor, unlettered but living in the real world with faith than cynical or self centered "educated" people do today who live in a world bathed in plastic falseness and electronic signals whose objectives are to remove one from reality. (There I go getting irate again as I type that last section!)