God shines through those who love God

April 20, 9:13 PMAstrology ExaminerMaria Barron

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My grandmother, Agrippina, and her sister, Maria, grew up in the Russian Orthodox Church. During the revolution, they fled war-torn Ukraine with their mother for China, where my grandmother met and married my Belgian grandfather. My father and uncle were born in China. 

After the Japanese invaded China in World War II, the whole family went to a Japanese concentration camp, where they subsisted from the time my father was 8 until he was 12 and the camp was liberated by American pilots. My dad is certain they would not have made it another winter. They would have starved. 

In the concentration camp, it was the Catholic priests and other religious people who shone with the light and love of God. They risked their lives to get food into the camp, kept the children like my dad fed and kept those locked in from doing harm to one another. God shines through those who love God. 

I have a great love for people of faith and for the practice of religion. I count myself among those who find truth in established religion. At the same time, I do not believe that any of our imperfect human institutions ought to claim to be the one true religion. I do not say that to offend. But I can see what God opens my eyes to see. I see that God soooooo LOVES the world and the people, and God speaks to each in many, many ways, not only one. 

I am happy that God finds many ways to speak to me, including recently through a person from Cyprus who is a stranger to me but who has such divine love in his being that he sought to correct me through email. By my seeking to stand under God's stars and understand their cycles not only scientifically but symbolically, my correspondent thinks that I am somehow breaking all the rules and risking offending the divine. 

I disagree. But I so clearly felt his love for God and for his church and I so clearly recognize his love of neighbor, which he is willing to extend to a foreign stranger like me, that I feel deeply touched and blessed by his outreach. 

The cycles of time in space exist both internally and externally to religious systems of belief. They exist within you and without you. I see them in the context of my faith in God; others see them in other contexts. That's all OK with me. I do not feel called to proselytize. I think the stupidest activity ever is fighting in a nasty spirit of condemnation over beliefs or lack of beliefs, but I find it fascinating to discuss those same things with loving kindness. 

Regarding the cycles of time in the context of Judeo-Christian thought: Is it not true that a turn of the Earth is a day and a night, which God created for our good? Is it not true that a trip of the Earth around the sun is a year with its seasons, which God created for our good? Is it not true that a trip of Earth's moon around the Earth marks for us our months in which we are called to devote ourselves to different activities? For one month is not just like the next. 

God created the cycles of time and put signs in the heavens to help us use our time wisely. That is my belief and it contradicts nothing in religion. At the same time, for those whose beliefs do not include God, the cycles of time in space still exist. The world still turns. 

The cycles of Venus and Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, are all part of my understanding that for everything there is a season. And the wheels inside of wheels seen by the prophets are the same. The wheels inside of wheels, the cycles of the planets, mark many more of God's seasons than many people are aware of. Ezekial clearly describes the four quadrants of the zodiac and the four faces of the four fixed signs: Aquarius, Leo, Taurus and Scorpio when he speaks of the wheels and the burning embers that are the stars. 

Astrology does not and never has suggested that our decisions and actions are all pre-ordained and written in the stars. That's the second-silliest thing I've ever heard. It sounds more like Calvinism than astrology to me. 

Are there people who have tried to use astrology for evil? Yes, there are. Are there people who have tried to use the church for evil? Yes, there are. Are there people who have tried to use anything and everything in the world for evil? Yes, there are. 

Astrology is the first weather report, the original science by which the seasons and conditions on Earth were marked. Who do you think came up with the science that marks the vernal equinox that is the first day of spring? Why do you think it's valuable to know when spring begins? So that the farmers may plant and know that the rains will come and the crops will grow. 

How do you think the Magi knew they would find an immortal newborn king in Judea? What do you think Magi means? It means astrologers. They were AMONG THE FIRST to welcome God on Earth if you believe the Bible! God loves me, dear reader, just as God loves you. 

In fact, I believe God holds us so dear that God's truth is sprinkled about in many places in many ways, available to believers, nonbelievers and "Heck, I don't know" folks as well, for God is not limited in domain.