CAN YOU UNFOLD A ROSEBUD?

This is great



GOD'S Rosebud

A new minister
was walking with an older,
more seasoned minister
in the garden one day.

Feeling a bit insecure
about what God
had for him to do,
he was asking the older preacher
for some advice.

The older preacher
walked up to a rosebush
and handed the young preacher
a rosebud and told him
to open it
without tearing off any petals.

The young preacher
looked in disbelief
at the older preacher
and was trying to figure out
what a rosebud
could possibly have to do
with his wanting to know
the will of God
for his life and ministry.

But because of his great respect
for the older preacher,
he proceeded to try to unfold the rose,
while keeping every petal intact.

It wasn't long
before he realized
how impossible
this was to do.

Noticing the younger preacher's inability
to unfold the rosebud
without tearing it,
the older preacher
began to recite
the following poem...


"It is only a tiny rosebud,
A flower of God's design;
But I cannot unfold the petals
With these clumsy hands of mine."

"The secret of unfolding flowers
Is not known to such as I.
GOD opens this flower so easily,
But in my hands they die."

"If I cannot unfold a rosebud,
This flower of God's design,
Then how can I have the wisdom
To unfold this life of mine?"

"So I'll trust in God for leading
Each moment of my day.
I will look to God for guidance
In each step of the way."

"The path that lies before me,
Only my Lord knows.
I'll trust God to unfold the moments,
Just as He unfolds the rose."

Please share this poem
with a friend if you enjoyed
being reminded to let go
and let God unfold your life.

thanx, quite a beautiful message

I agree. It's a great poem and idealistic moral. The problem is, of course, that no human being has ever seen God except in mythological fables where God appears as a burning bush or whatever. So in essence it's impossible to let a God of a religion lead your life.

At the very best, all you can do is follow your own heart and intuition and call that "God". In fact, if this is "God", then I confess that I have not always followed God, in my early days I was corrupted and taught to follow a bigoted religion instead.

Once I realized that religion isn't God, I was finally freed from the bondage of man's prejudices and bigotries. Now I do follow my heart and my intuition and the religious people now call me a heathen.

So I guess the only way to follow "God" is to become a heathen in the eyes of religious people. But, your poem's right. This is precisely what we should do. Reject religion and follow our heart and intuition because that's as close to God as we can ever get. The burning bush is in the rosebud of our hearts.

Religion itself is precisely mankind's attempt to open the rose bud via his own interpretations and opinions of other men's thoughts. That will destroy the flower every time.

Why do forums all have one person who wants to be sooooo intellectual and change subjects just to get them back to their beliefs and stories??? The poem was beautifull!!! Thank you for sharing it with us... Whether GOD exists or does not does not take away from the beauty of the poem...s

thank you Linny

In all honesty I thought my intellectual commentary was "beautiful".

At least from an intellectual point of view.

I was actually agreeing with the poem the whole way through.

But I do have a confession to make. I confess that I felt a little bit of relgious proselytizing leaking through the poem via the use of the words "minister", "preacher", "lord" and referring to God as a "he".

So that's what drove me to instinctually bring up the distinction between "god" and "religion".

And I especially feel that the last sentence of my post is right on.

Other than that. I thought it was GREAT and I totally agree with it!

Bad Abra! Go to the Poetry Thread!



This is General Religion Chat.
It is chock full of chat.



Truly we must accept that there is much in life
which we do not control...

Hey Slow, my man!

I was just over at the Poetry Thread I dropped off a spiritual hymn that a friend of mine wrote and I sang. You can take a listen here:

It's called "Awake O Dreamer"

http://mingle2.com/topic/show/277536

I didn't want to post it in the GR forum because it might be seen as a "proselytizing campaign" to suggest that God is feminine. So I put it in the art forum where it can be accepted as just artful inspiration.

Although I confess that I almost did post it here. But then I figured why bother? Let art be art and religion chat be religion chat.

So, if one were to take that same poem and substitute "The Tao" for instance of "GOD", it would get just as much praise from Believers afterwards?

Besides, half the post wasn't about the poem, it was about Holy Men and the same-old-same-old theme about there having to be a patsy in every parable that the person doing the proselytizing wants to project upon those who don't agree.

So let's try an experiment. Here's a secular poem without the 'patsy' factor-- let's see if it plays as well to the readers, shall we?




-Kerry O.

hahahaha

Dear Abby,

another controversy of authorship!


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Do_not_stand_at_my_grave_and_weep

both poems were beautiful,,,isnt it sad that the moment anything otherwise positive or beautiful is categorized as religion based,,it becomes something bad ,,,,I dont quite get that

Call it the iron fist in the velvet glove, something one gets used to when one openly professes to be an Unbeliever. Especially when one was raised Christian and is now considered apostate.

It's like an ancient instinct deep down inside one's racial memory to move quickly when one catches the movement of a shadow in one's peripheral vision, lest it be the sabertoothed tiger who will have one for lunch.

It's the unfortunate result of religious persecution at the hands of the majority over centuries. And many militant Christians can't get over seeing Unbelievers as immoral, moronic lumpen lepers who are the spawn of Satan.

FWIW, Ms Harmony, I don't see you as being that way. We've disagreed, vociferously at times, but you've pretty much never crossed personal boundaries. And I respect that and you for having done so.

-Kerry O.

thanx, there are instigators on both sides,,,,but what does FWIW mean...?

For what it's worth.

ahhhhh

When 'god' unfolds the rosebud even 'he' drops a few petals.

In all honesty, for me, that is indeed the single greatest thing that keeps me inherently agnostic in the end. As much as I would love to believe in a divine gardener, the garden of creation simply isn't perfect, and that raises humongous questions.

The obvious practical example is indeed that the world is naturally dog-eat-dog. Even without man. Take man out of the picture altogether and you've got animals eating each other and competing for territory and for mating rights. Stealing eggs from the nests of other animals and eating their new born babies, etc.

In short, man is not the cause of what we like to think of as 'sin' or 'evil'. If mankind were the only one who did these things and all animals were vegetarian, then a religion that points the fickled finger of fate at man might have some merit. But let's face it, the world is inherently corrupt or imperfect already without any need for mankind to corrupt it.

So in a sense, god has not only dropped a few petals but "he's" basically created a quite messy creation in general. And this single, quite bothersome observation, is actually what gives atheism a solid rock to stand upon. If the world is indeed "just a freak random accident" then we're lucky that it's as nice as it is, forget about any need for it to be "perfect", it was just an accident in the first place.

So if there is a 'god', he/she/it appears to be far from perfect. And that lack of perfection cannot be blamed on man. The shoe just doesn't fit. Or to put it another way, the shoe fits basically every animal that exists on the planet, and not just man. So to single out man as being the culprit to blame for this just makes no sense, IMHO.