(Auto-generated)Greetings and salutations, you wonderful people who matter so very, very much.
I'm WS Walker and this is the Laughing Matters Podcast.
Just a quick reminder out of the gate to subscribe if you're enjoying the show, or to reach
out to willhelpmail at gmail.com if you have any questions or want advice on anything.
And my advice game is on point y'all, seriously.
So you gotta try it out.
Send something in and just watch me work.
Not that I haven't been giving advice on the show, I mean.
And to speak to that, I do have some more advice for you on how to feel closer to God.
I'm sorry guys, I'd get it all out in one show, but I got a few tips here.
You see, there's this distancing that happens naturally.
And I say naturally because, well, we can't see God and we can't hug Him and we can't
understand Him fully or visit Him and our conversations with Him are pretty regularly
one-sided.
So it makes sense that a lot of you have struggled with that divide.
I mean, how am I gonna know someone that I can't get close to?
Well, as it turns out, you're a lot closer than you think.
And I have something for that.
Now most of you, hopefully, have listened to season one of the show, have quote unquote
read the book, and know how I feel about a big part of the relationship between God and
man.
I've already explained why I believe the theory of the Big Bang to also be the story
of God making everything out of Himself.
I mean, if at the beginning there was a singularity in nothing, and then everything that made
up that singularity blew outward, becoming all the energy and matter that would ever
exist, and if we simply place God in the role of the singularity, it still lines up.
After all, what is a more appropriate explanation of God's first creation, light, than the explosion
of the Big Bang itself, releasing all the energy that ever would be?
And if in the beginning there was God in nothing, then it stands to reason that we're all made
of God.
Every tree, blade of grass, air molecule, every strand of fur on your puppy's head,
all of it is made of God.
In this sense, you can be near God anywhere, because He literally makes up everything and
everyone.
So are you mentally prepared for the best news you've heard all week?
You can, in fact, hug God through a dog.
And you know what, if you don't have a dog to hug, you can hug yourself, because you're
made of Him too.
And one of the many ways I like to utilize this is I talk to this tree in my front yard.
I have this one tree in my yard that lines up perfectly with the front porch, and when
I sit out there and talk to God, I use that tree as a constant reminder that I am surrounded
and enveloped by God, that I exist within Him.
I use it as a link in this world to the more omnipresent idea of Him.
Let me explain.
It allows me to have a grounded conversation with Him, where I'm not searching the sky
with my eyes when I talk, and staring at my hands.
In the episode, Talk Like Friends, I suggested being more informal at times with God, to
speak with Him as a friend or confidant.
It's because of this grounding technique that I've been able to speak to God in this
way.
Both are very useful techniques and have helped me to feel a lot less lost in what to say
to Him, and have connected me closer to Him.
So give it a try sometime.
See what you think.
And when you look at the tree of your choosing, or bush, or whatever you choose, let it stand
as a representation of a piece of God, a part of Him, and expand your view to see all the
other parts of God in action all around you.
See how it connects to them.
See in your mind's eye the tree's roots spreading out and downward, parting the soil
and rock, stretching its fingers into the planet that your perfectly designed toes and
feet are holding you upright on, as that planet spins through the orbital solar system, and
as that galaxy hurtles through the universe, and know that He is every part of that connected
together, and that all of that leads right back up through the soil and up through that
tree.
And when you feel Him, latch on to that feeling.
Speak to that feeling.
Aim your questions and conversation at it.
You'll move closer and closer still to Him.
I promise, it helps a lot.
Which actually brings up one more thing I wanted to touch on.
If God is everything, then that which you have done unto the least of you, you have
literally done unto Him.
And not only that, but you did it while wearing God, and had Him do whatever unpleasantry
to Himself through your choices.
I mean, come on.
No wonder it's the golden rule across the religions.
Think of the number of ways that we abuse and hurt each other and then realize that
we subject God to the experience of being both the victim and the enactor.
And then we often cover up our guilt with the use of the sound of love on aim, one of
God's greatest gifts to mankind.
I know that would be way more than enough to devastate most if they experienced even
a small sampling of that.
Now that last little bit there, I'm pretty sure that probably created some conflict in
you.
Good.
I want that conflict in you.
I want you conflicted about it, thinking about it later.
I want it keeping you up.
I want it to bother you, because when it doesn't anymore, yeah, that's bad.
That is real bad.
You may think that I'm just trying to create problems for you.
Not really.
I'm not creating them.
I'm pulling the veil away so you can see the problems when they occur for what they are,
giving you a much better view from which you can see what is the approach that deals with
this problem the best.
So yes, we're going to want that compassion active.
And yes, I want it to bother you.
I want you to remember what brings real happiness, genuine laugh into your life and what brings
you closer to God and all the others.
To remember what's on the line.
To stop chipping away at society's compassion and start helping to build it back up, to
give them another reason to trust again and to see for yourself, yes, I can trust openly.
You don't know how many people there are that are struggling with trust issues.
And how many of them out there that aren't even struggling anymore.
They've just given up on trusting.
And I know how easy it is to let fear lead and to not hear it until later.
That voice saying I should help or that I should reexamine something or remember the
concepts it is far too easy to lose sight of it and forget in that moment.
In fact, it's so seductively easy to forget that I've often had to be shaken out of a
stupor.
A lot of times I have to have a little reminder happen to be like, oh yeah, God is everything
and I can love the soul part of them and talk to the soul of this guy that's being a real
asshole about something instead of engaging his brain.
And I can love him and I can, you know, this is the way that I should do it.
I don't let fear lead, let God lead and trust God that there's nothing to fear.
And a good way to be reminded regularly is to find your extension of God, something that
sticks out a bit, but in some way leads back to all the rest of him, to feel him in it
and have conversations with him through that.
And every time you see that tree or bush or field or whatever it is that you choose to
see him in, to feel him in, you're going to get just enough of a reminder to make a choice,
to remember that all of this is his and to remember that he is all of this and that we're
doing these things directly to him or we are doomed to keep going from distraction to distraction.
The choice is yours.
He may be all things, but he gifted you with the ability to choose among them.
So choose to be good to them, to be good for them, and you're going to be magnificent.
This is W.S. Walker, choosing to do the same.
Be sweet.