Suddenly my God was speaking:

My name is “I Am”

God paused.

I waited. God continued,

“When you live in the past,

with its mistakes and regrets,

it is hard, I am not there.

My name is not “I Was”.

When you live in the future,

With its problems and fears,

It is hard, I am not there.

My name is not “I Will Be”.

When you live in this moment,

it is not hard, I am here.

My name is “I Am”.

Just a thought I was given by someone a few years back. Thought I would share this.

Sara

-- Sara (sara@yahoo.com), March 29, 2003

Answers

Well, the problem is that you cannot live fully the present time if you are not aware of your past and you don't think of your future (if you don't believe that see a person with Alzerheimer...). That's why the good Lord has given us our memory and our capacity to imagine and to think. Your "poetry" is just useless pseudo-spirituality.

-- Marty Nantes (MartyNn5@hotmail.com), March 29, 2003.

Sara - Very fine indeed. As to the first two responces - shallow brain pans react rather then respond.

-- jean bouchard (jeanb@cwk.imag.net), March 29, 2003.

Another little snippet I heard that expresses a similar idea is:

Yesterday is history.

Tomorrow is mystery.

Today is gift.

That's why it is called "the present".

-- Paul (PaulCyp@cox.net), March 29, 2003.

Paul, very beautiful little snippet there! Thanks Jean, as I said it's not actually my poetry... someone I work with has this up on their wall at work, I believe they got it from a book of Catholic Spirituality. I think it's thought-provoking and very reassuring if we are prone to being worriers!

God bless

Sara

p.s. Marty.

-- sara (sara@yahoo.com), March 29, 2003.

Jean, it is really a question of a shallow brain here. Not on the side of Marty though. Use your brain better to see it or restrain from your impulite comments please.

-- Andrew Bolt (AndrewB22@aol.com), March 29, 2003.

I agree with the first comment. It is not only against our nature but also to no avail to live just for the present moment. What would our Lord Jesus be had he not the vision of the future sacrifice for us "on his brain" so to speak and the unfortunate history of Adam too? This is just another expression for fatalism.

-- Elisabeth Winter (ElisabethWinter@yahoo.com), March 29, 2003.

"Living for today" in the pagan sense is indeed based on fatalism ...

"If the dead are not raised, let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die" (1 Corinthians 15:32)

This is the sense of "living for today" among those who are not living in the power of the Resurrection. However, "living for today" as understood in the Christian sense is valid, and is based on trust in divine providence, not on fatalism ...

"... do not worry about tomorrow; for tomorrow will care for itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own" (Matthew 6:34)

Before Jesus gave this sound advice, He explained His meaning quite thoroughly, so that no-one would interpret His words as fatalistic ...

"For this reason I say to you, do not be worried about your life, as to what you will eat or what you will drink; nor for your body, as to what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air, that they do not sow, nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not worth much more than they? And who of you by being worried can add a single hour to his life? And why are you worried about clothing? Observe how the lilies of the field grow; they do not toil nor do they spin, yet I say to you that not even Solomon in all his glory clothed himself like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the furnace, will He not much more clothe you? You of little faith. Do not worry then, saying, 'What will we eat?' or 'What will we drink?' or 'What will we wear for clothing?' For the Gentiles eagerly seek all these things; for your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. (Matt 6:25- 33)

-- Paul (PaulCyp@cox.net), March 29, 2003.

Those "poems" are nice sentiments, I suppose, but God is not merely the Here And Now. He is the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. He always was and He always will be. He is limitless.

That should be a great comfort. He is timeless, and he can heal our past. He can guide us in the present, and He will be there for us in the future.

-- Anna <>< (flower@youknow.com), March 29, 2003.

The idea behind this meditation is that God is with us now. If we are worrying about things we put them in His hands. He is always with us, he knows what is in our minds, our hearts. We have to put our trust in him. Like Paul was pointing out when he quoted that passage from Sacred Scripture, this is something Jesus told us to do. To put our trust in the Father, not to worry about what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next year etc. If we have total trust in God, then things will be ok. If we let Him, He will take all of our worries from us, That's the kind of Peace Jesus brought us. Peace in the knowldege of God, and His love for us. God is eternal, we all know that. However, we are not living yesterday, we are not living tomorrow, we are living today, in the present, the here and now, that's our reality. Right now is when we feel His love.

Now, I didn't post this little meditation to cause arguments If people can't accept that thinking about God's love in this way works, then that's fair enough. However, I pray that maybe, just maybe, when someone is depressed, lonely or worried about something, they think about the great 'I Am', and receive His Love, comfort and peace for the present.

Yahweh, I know you are near, standing always at my side!

Sara

-- sara (sara@yahoo.com), March 30, 2003.

The worst help to someone who is depressed is to give him a dose of fatalism. A hope for his future is what he needs, open the horizon of his closed world and let him see Him at the end of the tunnel preparing a better tomorrow! Tell him just to watch the present and he'll become sick and mad even more.

-- Elisabeth Winter (ElisabethWinter@yahoo.com), March 30, 2003.

Dear Elizabeth,

A person is depressed because they see no hope for the future. "Hope", in the Christian sense, means "trust". The best way to develop a trust in God for what He will do in our future is to develop a day by day and minute by minute trust in God for the present. A person will never be able to say "I trust God with my life" until they can say "Lord, I trust you right now", without worrying about the future. When we trust Him right now, He proves Himself trustworthy right now, and soon the "right now's" begin to add up and form a pattern of trust which can eventually be extended into the future. That isn't just how an untrusting person develops trust in God, it is how such a person develops trust in anyone.

-- Paul (PaulCyp@cox.net), March 30, 2003.

Hi, Sara,

I hope I didn't sound argumentative. I just wanted to point out that truly God is present in our past, in our present, and in our future. We live in chronological time...minute to minute, day to day. But God isn't confined to "our" present. I just think that that is an awesome thing to ponder on...No matter what, no matter when, no matter where...GOD IS There!

Pax Christi. (I like your posts!)

-- Anna <>< (flower@youknow.com), March 31, 2003.

Dear Eva,

Having reread my post carefully, I do not find the word "sin" mentioned. Neither do I see any equating of depression with lack of trust. The topic of the post is the development of trust in persons suffering from depression. If you have anything constructive to add to the discussion, please do. If not, why be critical of those who do?

-- Paul (PaulCyp@cox.net), March 31, 2003.

Eva writes: "The depth of ignorance is just stuggering."

I just smiled when I saw this statement.

Mateo

-- (MattElFeo@netscape.net), March 31, 2003.

Dealing with the subject matter of this thread, that our relationship with God is a daily relationship seems to me to be reflected in the Lord’s Prayer wherein we say "Give us this day our daily bread" (we do NOT say "give us this day a lifetime's bread and as many other luxuries as we can imagine"), this being consistent with the experience of Moses and the Israelites during their 40 years in the desert (Ex 16) gathering manna for THAT day's food requirement. Ex 16 portrays a consummate lesson in daily obedience to God: we must trust God to meet our daily needs, and when he does we must be satisfied with what we have been given.

the corollary, as I understand it (big caveat), is that if we try to remain true to God's word because we dream of Salvation and fear damnation (ie we look to the future), then that is not as good as loving God for Himself trusting in Him. to put it another way, we should love rather than fear God (although, for the record, so far as I am aware, can be rewarded with Salvation if we obey God’s commands through fear alone).

Now, all of these notions seem to be reflected in the original post. A charming little ditty that contains a lot more than first meets the eye.

As for the vitriol that these lovely words have “provoked”, I have gone through this thread several times to try to understand the various posts that claim that depression is a sin.

1 the term “depression” was first used in this thread in Sara’s line “when someone is depressed, lonely or worried about something, they think about the great 'I Am', and receive His Love, comfort and peace for the present”.

2 this is then transformed into a spurious allegation that the Church regards clinical depression as a sin.

3 How did we get there? I can find to meaningful answer to this question.

-- Ian (ib@vertigfo.com), March 31, 2003.

Well Mateo,

I giggled when I read Eva's statement.

lol

Sara

p.s. when I saw how this thread has developed and the subsequent discussions about depression, I thought about a time when I was in the depths of despair for very personal reasons that I don't want to share here. The words in this hymn kept coming into my mind and, along with the meditation of earlier, gave me solace and hope. Trust in God and He will answer our pleas.

'Be still and know I am with you. Be still, I am the Lord. I will not leave you orphans. I leave you with my world. Be one.

You fear the light may be fading, you fear to lose your way. Be still, and know I am near you. I'll lead you to the day and the sun.

Be glad the day you have sorrow, be glad for then you live. the stars shine only in darkness, and in your need I give my peace.'

-- sara (sara@yahoo.com), March 31, 2003.

You giggled? Maybe others giggled over your opening post too - but didn't feel the need to announce it to the others. A sad comment of yours, Sara.

-- Patricia Jahery (PatriciaJH@hotmail.com), April 03, 2003.

Really, what wouldn't some people do to defend their simplistic answers, their ignorance and their ego.

-- Anatoly Peterson (AnatPet@win.net), April 03, 2003.

Just curious ...

Marty Nantes,
Andrew Bolt,
Elisabeth Winter,
Eva Kostnicky,
Patricia Jahery, and
Anatoly Peterson ...

Are you six "manifestations" of the same human being?
I think so. And you have had about 50 other "incarnations" on various threads in the past few weeks. In other words, the number of your aliases is just "stuggering."

The practice of using more than one name (or alias) was banned by the moderator as of January 7, 2003. In other words, it is against the rules.
All your posts are subject to summary deletion.

God bless you.
John

-- J. F. Gecik (jfgecik@Hotmail.com), April 04, 2003.