God in Others

If this attempt I am making to let God make me more aware of God's presence within me and around me in nature and art is authentic, then I should be able to find God in people as well.

It is easy to see the Divine shining in the people I love: relatives and friends and children such as those in this picture. It is not so easy to recognize God in the people who annoy me or take advantage of me or whose behavior makes me mad. God is not in the bad things or in the evil that people do, but God is in the persons who do them.

Recently I made a very deliberate effort to treat some people who were getting on my nerves the way I would treat God, to love them. The problem didn't entirely disappear, but that did help. I wasn't always on edge the way I had been with them earlier.

I do find God in people who need me for physical things such as for food or utilities; but when they are emotionally or psychologically needy it is not always easy for me. I pray that as I become more and more aware of God in me and in the beauty and goodness around me, I will find it easier to recognize the Divine shining in those I find unattractive.

Beauty, Truth, and Goodness as Default Settings

As I have been thinking about trying to make God the default setting of my brain I realize that part of the problem is that we are not pure spirit. We are also material and most of what we know and remember is material stuff. Our imagination is full of images of things.

So, one of the things to do, is surround myself with a lot of good and true and beautiful things that carry the Divine to me. Nature works overtime where I live to make our neighborhood beautiful. The view of the lake from my home is stunning. In my home I have beautiful pictures and objects that human beings have made. God is Beauty.

The things that I read put me in touch with the Truth. Both novels such as "Black Swan Green," and non-fiction such as "My Life with the Saints" have given me a more truthful view of the world than I had before I read them. God is Truth

Surrounding myself with good people, neighbors, friends, and relatives, also puts me in touch with the Divine. God is Goodness.

Hopefully the more I surround myself with Goodness, Truth, and Beauty, the more these kind of images will stick in my memory and imagination. Then when I am not intentionally doing something else, my mind would be more likely to jump back automatically to these images.

This helps to make God the default setting of my brain.