Preface
Theme Song: I Can See Clearly Now - Johnny Nash
"If the you of five years ago doesn't consider the you of today a heretic, you are not growing spiritually."
~ Thomas Merton
Hi, my name is Celeste Foley and I'm a heretic.
GOD-centric Exterior Spiritual Disciplines
Five years ago, in 2011, I wrote GOD-centric to fulfill a lifelong mission to rescue my good and fair God of love from religions which did not portray God as always loving, good, and fair. My heart was with God and my desire was to save religions from themselves by challenging them to filter their texts and teachings through a loving, good, and fair lens so God's glory could be more brightly and accurately revealed. I considered myself GOD-centric because I put God before religion when religion conflicted with God's love, goodness, and fairness.
In 2012, I published GOD-centric Interior Spiritual Disciplines putting into practice the filtering of sacred texts and verse through the loving, good, and fair lens. I hoped that interior spiritual disciplines of GOD-centric prayer, contemplation, lectio divina, and study would fortify us internally so we could better live out God's love, goodness, and fairness externally. I vowed to write the third book in this trilogy, GOD-centric Exterior Spiritual Disciplines, once I had improved my praying off mat and really had something to say.
In 2015, I was not yet satisfied with my praying off mat or convinced that I really had something of value to say; but, I wanted to continue to make my GOD-centric (loving, good, and fair) contribution so I sat down to compose GOD-centric Exterior Spiritual Disciplines. As I tried to put words on the page, a disturbing reality froze me: I no longer believed in God. I sat like a statue. How could I move? My animating source, the center of my heart and mind from early childhood, was gone. Not gone in the dark-night-of-the-soul-achy-please-come-back-to-me way, gone. I was stunned ~ and mute. How could I write GOD-centric Exterior Spiritual Disciplines without a good and fair God of love?
Now, it's 2016. I still have a joyful Buddha in my foyer to greet my guests, and a sorrowful Buddha on whom I gaze as I listen to my Zen Spirit CD and contemplate the infinite, and a 2 ½ foot tall Buddha-esque statue that I call “The Happy Spiritual Traveler,” three manger scenes, four crosses, my childhood crucifix, two rosaries, a St. Francis statue, and a dancing Shiva on display, not to mention a whole bunch of diverse books on religion. What I do not have is belief in a good and fair God of love.
