God as Energy & Light
We are pleased to share these writings and paintings from Marcia Fleischman, which are a selection from her new book: If God Is Love Why Do I Feel So Bad?
“God as Energy” by Marcia Fleischman
New Images of Jesus and God – Part Three
I went to visit my niece, Meredith, in Lawrence, Kansas, when she was a student at Kansas University. Since we both were following a spiritual path, the topic of conversation quickly dove into the depths of spiritual understanding. Thinking of the subject of what God looks like to different people, I asked her, “What does God look like to you?” Without hesitation she waved her hand in the air in an undulating motion making energy waves.
“You think God is like energy waves?” I asked, just to clarify what she was saying. “Yes!” came the immediate, emphatic reply.
I began contemplating this image of God and found it to be extremely helpful in understanding the essence of God and how God works.
In John 4:24, the gospel writer says,
God is Spirit and his worshipers must worship him in Spirit and in truth.
What then is Spirit and how do we describe Spirit? I believe Meredith hit on the answer. God is Spirit and Spirit is energy. This description of the essence of God is a new and profound way of seeing God. I love the description of Spirit in the New Testament, comparing it to the wind.
The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So, it is with everyone born of the Spirit. John 3:8
There was not much science back in Jesus’s day so we read the scriptures and find observations about the world and metaphors for God that came from religious contemplation and insight. It is more a modern way to describe the Spirit as energy.
In watching modern day weather reports, weather fronts are often described as energy moving across the land.
Nicola Tesla, electrical engineer, mechanical engineer, inventor and creator of alternating electric current, AC, stated:
If you want to find the secrets of the Universe, think in terms of energy, frequency and vibration.
It is becoming a popular, Avant Garde way of thinking of God as energy. Think of God as the energy of the Universe and as the presence of that energy that lives in us. When we awaken to the Presence of God within us, what Jesus called the “Holy Spirit,” we are becoming aware of God’s energy within us.
However, there is a difference between energy and God’s Energy. This is the great revelation from Jesus and is based on the experience he had of God. And it is the experience his followers have of God as they open to God’s presence. God is love. God is energy. God is loving energy. Following is one of my favorite verses from the Bible, from the book 1 John:
Beloved, let us love one another for love is from God and, whoever loves is born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. 1John 4:7-8
The differentiating point is that God is not just energy but is loving energy. Our scientific minds sometimes have a hard time thinking of the physical form that we know as energy combining with the very human notion that is love. Can energy have a personal aspect that we know as love? Yes, this is the great revelation that Jesus had for us. God is energy that is filled with love. To experience God is to experience God as loving energy.
Jesus prayed for all of us when he said:
My prayer is not for them alone. (Referring to the disciples) I pray for all of those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. John 17: 20-21
When we see God as human form this verse seems to be awkward and not make any sense. How would God become one with a human? If we are imagining God as energy, it makes perfect sense. God’s energy can live in us as it did in Jesus. And Jesus’s energy lived in God and in the disciples.
“Dreamer Creator” by Marcia Fleischman
Let’s expand this idea to human form and interaction. Can human energy live in someone else? I find that it can. Think about your own relationships. Are there people you know who have happy, fun energy? When they walk in the room does the energy of the room lighten up. Is it more cheerful, more positive? On the other hand, if someone with negative energy connects with you, can you feel your mood change? I had a college friend who talked in a sort of negative whine. I found that, after a few minutes of visiting, I was talking just like her, a soft, low negative whine as if everything was a miserable experience. That is not like me. I am a very positive person. It was her energy that affected me and I started to talk just like her. Her energy became one with me.
If an angry person walks in a room, does the feeling of the room change? My uncle often said that he would hide and watch to see what his dad’s mood was when he came home. He was afraid that he would come home angry. People’s energy does affect us. We need to be mindful of the affect other people’s energy has on us.
I was sick with a formerly fatal disease for five and a half years before my life-saving, death-defying double lung transplant. I had Primary Pulmonary Hypertension. I wore a pump 24/7 that pumped brutal medication directly into my heart every 30 seconds. This medicine kept me alive until transplant and it had painful side effects. Lung transplant is not a cure and not necessarily a fix. I was in a support group of people who were using the pump and the medicine in it, Flolan. I am blessed to live so long. Of all the people I knew in the support group, I am the only one left standing, the only one left alive at this time.
While I was sick, I read a book by Caroline Myss called Why People Don’t Heal and How They Can. Caroline Myss is a medical intuitive. She reads the energy in people. She can see where stuck energy will create illness in people. It is an amazing gift. I read her book each January while I was sick. I read it four times. There is one take away from the book that served me well.
Myss holds that each day we are given a certain amount of energy. If we are around negative people, they will drain us of the energy that we need to heal our bodies. I took this advice very seriously and worked very hard at protecting my energy. People with negative energy can drain the energy that you need to keep you healthy.
I also got prayed for by people in my church. We prayed in a different way. We prayed by laying hands on people and listening to the Spirit, passing on messages received from Spirit. This kind or prayer sends God’s energy into the receiver. This was a tremendous part of healing for me. I appreciate the support I got from all the prayers at Broadway Church. It served as a witness to God’s energy at work in and through the people of the church and in me.
I asked for prayer from anyone who would listen. I had to move to St. Louis to wait for my transplant, to be there when my new lungs arrived. I went to get money from my savings account and asked the banker to pray for me. When I picked up my check, she told me that she had immediately called her mother who put me on the church’s prayer list. Later I heard from a friend who leads worship internationally. He had been in Brazil and called me to say that he heard that people in Brazil were praying for me. My daughter had been on a trip in Australia and had emailed her contacts there and in the UK to pray for me. I was amazed and humbled by all the prayers on my behalf.
One night a member of Broadway was getting home from work. When she was getting out of the car, she had a strong impression to pray for me and she did. She said she got to church the next Sunday expecting to hear that I had died. But it turned out, she was impressed to pray for me because I was in surgery, the time of transplant was there. She prayed for me during my surgery.
I also saw an energy healer, Dr. Patricia Searing. I saw her for several years before transplant and several years after. She is very gifted in seeing energy, helps move energy and releases places in the body where energy is stuck. I believe that energy healing will become a very important healing mode now and, in the future, as we begin to see everything as energy;
I believe that God’s energy was being sent full force to my body for healing and I am eternally grateful for all the love, attention and energy sent my way.
“God as Light” by Marcia Fleischman
There is a beautiful description of God living in Jesus and in us that is closely connected to the image of God as energy. The image is that God is Light. It is the essence of God living in Jesus and in us that created light for the world. From John 8:12
When Jesus spoke again to the people he said, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”
Then, in the book of Mathew, Jesus says to his followers:
You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead, they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven. Matthew 5:14-16
Many mages of God are poetic and are intended to speak to our hearts more than our minds. In Seminary one of the professors said that to describe a simple concept, it takes very few words. For example, the concept of mud takes one word to describe what it is for us to get the picture. Let’s say that the word “mud”, in terms of image, covers the ground! Hahahaha, little joke.
The larger and more complex ideas need many descriptors to create the image of the concept. God is probably the most complex idea that we can think of. Therefore, many words, images, metaphors, word pictures are needed to define the concept of God. I don’t know if anyone has been totally able to describe everything about God. This book is an effort to describe some of the aspects of God that many hold dear.
I have often observed that, when talking to people about God, their faces seem to “light up”. It is also true when people speak of things or people they love, their faces emit a very subtle light. It is the glow of love that expresses itself as light. This is the light of God that lives in our spirits or souls that can become visible on people’s faces.
I have wondered what it was that people saw in Jesus that made them follow him. What was it that strong, tough fishermen saw in Jesus that caused them to immediately throw down their nets and follow him? I think that they saw the light of God and felt the energy of God’s love that so profoundly affected them that they abandoned their livelihoods to follow Jesus.
I enjoy reading NDEs or Near-Death Experience stories. They are about people who have died briefly, experienced going to the Other Side (Heaven) and returning to talk about it. Many of them experience gentle and powerful love. One person saw a great source of light like a great globe emanating pure love and light. To his understanding, it was the source of all being. What a mystery!
“God Beyond Us” by Marcia Fleischman
