Saturday is Prose & Poetry Day here on the blog, a time to take a moment once a week to relax the mind, open the heart, and access the soul through the gift of prose from one of the many books of The New Spirituality, and through the poetry of m. Claire, author of the forthcoming volume, Openings.
This week’s prose…an excerpt from Conversations with God for TEENS…
I wrote a book called Conversations with God because I wanted to know why my life wasn’t working, why it always seemed to have to be such a continuing struggle, what the rules were and how I could “play” and not lose all the time. I also wanted to know the point of it all.
What resulted from that call for help was a dialogue with God that I had in my mind and placed on paper. Other people found value in it and it wound up being translated into 27 languages.
My questions continued and more books followed. Then someone asked, “Why don’t you do a book for teenagers?” And I said, “Because I wouldn’t know what to ask about.” And they replied, “why not let them tell you?”
That’s when I started asking teenagers, in person and through the Internet, If you could ask God any question, what would it be?
I received hundreds of replies. Here are some of them…

Why do You let children get abused sexually and physically? How come everyone wasn’t born smart? Why is the world filled with hate?
What’s the deal with the generation gap? Why can’t parents just talk with us? And why is there so much pressure—from parents, from school, from everyone?
Is my life controlled by fate? Why are we taught facts, and not ideas, in school? Will I return to
You, and will You be happy with me?
How come I have to pay adult ticket prices at the movies when I’m 13, but I can’t see an ‘R’ movie? That’s stupid. Why do we have to have three hours of homework after seven hours of school?
I’m confused and scared about what to make of my newly found sexual identity. How can I present that to the people I love?
How come people make such dumb laws? If You made us, then who made You?
How is that a God of mercy can be such an isolationist and so intolerant to other views? How can a God of infinite mercy condemn anyone for anything? Why condemn magic that heals?
Why condemn for eternity those transgressions that are momentary?
Why is it that my parents notice only the things that I do wrong? How come adults want respect but don’t give it back?
Why do people die? What can’t we live forever? What really is life after death?
Why is it that I can die for my country at 18, but I can’t enjoy a cold beer on a hot day?
I feel like I need to be successful—at everything. My parents seem to desperately want that. But what is ‘success’?
I don’t know whether to hang with the popular “preppie” kids or the castoff “grungy” kids. Why does everyone have to separate?
Why do my parents freak out about sex? My God, they freak out.
Now aren’t those great questions? They’ll all be addressed here, as will many others that were asked—questions about dealing with authority, about choosing the right career, about drugs, about marrying or living together, about how the experiences of our lives are created, and even about what God looks like. (In the Saturdays ahead I will be publishing continuing excerpts from this book. So if you know any teenagers with questions such as these, you may want to direct them here!)
Let’s get to one of those questions now, so you can see how the process plays out, and then I want to explain to you how my method of “receiving” the responses works.
This question was given to me by a young woman named Varinia.
Why do you let children get abused sexually and physically?
Varinia, My lovely, lovely friend, I know that you wish deeply in your soul that cruelty of all kinds could be eliminated from the Earth. So many people wish that, and so many are working for that.
There is so much sexual abuse in the world because there is so much sexual repression in the world. Humans have been taught from the time they are very young to be ashamed of their body parts and embarrassed or guilty about their sexuality. The result is that millions of people have sexual hang ups you wouldn’t believe.
Later in this conversation we’ll talk about how you can help change all that, and how you can deal with whatever hang-ups the people around you may have. But you did not ask me why there was sexual and physical abuse in the world, you asked me why I allowed it—and I’m aware that that’s an entirely different question.
Yes, it is. So why do You allow it?
When I created life as you know it, I did so by simply separating myself into countless smaller parts of me. This is another way of saying that you were made “in the image and likeness of God.”
Now because God is The Creator, that means that all of you are creators, too. You have free will, just as I have free will. If I had not given you free will, you could not create, but only react. If you could only do what I tell you to do, then you could not create, but only obey.
Obedience is not creation. It is an act of subservience, not an act of power. God is not subservient to anyone, and since you are a part of God, you are, by nature, not subservient to anyone, either.
That is why, when you are made to be subservient, you immediately revolt. It is against your very nature. It is a violation of Who You Are at the very core of your being.
Teenagers know this more than anyone.
But what about those human beings who have done things with their free will that has been very hurtful to others?
There have been many people like that, and it is true that I could have stopped this. I did not stop it because the Process of Life itself is the expression of free will. Anything less than that is not life, but death.Even when the expression of free will does not serve the highest good, it must be allowed, or freedom itself is a mockery.
The word “freedom” and the word “God” are interchangeable. You cannot have one without the other. For God to exist, freedom must exist.
The beauty of freedom, however, is that it can be expressed by all beings, not just a few. This means that the people of the Earth are free to eliminate the experiences of sexual abuse and physical abuse from their collective experience forever.
They are also free to eliminate other conditions of cruelty and misery that they now endure.
How?
That is the question this book will answer.
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This week’s gift of poetry
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Is it You
who speaks first?
When the veils lay or lift
is it Me
who initiates it?
When a longing returns
Beloved,
was it You
who first felt it?
My Other,
I cannot even laugh
without wondering
if you laugh, too.
I cannot cry,
without then reaching out
to touch your cheek.
And when I leave
the Heart
and enter Forgetting
I try not to look
for You there.
But you are the beginning
and I am the ending
of
every footstep.
Every footstep.
(Is It You?, m. claire – copyright 2007 – all rights reserved)
For more of the work of this new American poet, go to www.mclairepoet.com