Into the Box, Too

I suppose that with almost 1,700 posts hiding in the dark recesses of Older Eyes – Bud’s Blog, it was inevitable that eventually, I’d sit down to write a post with a topic … and a title … in mind only to find that I’d already written it.  Back in September of 2011, I wrote a post titled Into the Box concerning a spiritual artifice that I’ve some across on a variety of self-help venues, variously known as a God Jar, a God Can (as in I Can’t, God Can) or God Box.  It is a place to symbolically put things that you want to turn over to God.  If calling something an artifice sounds dismissive, that would be the work of my Inner Skeptic who used to be in charge around here.  He has a similar opinion of bumper sticker slogans like Let Go and Let God.  My Inner Skeptic, a close friend of my Outer Scientist, is results-oriented … if I put something in a God Box, he wants to know what happens.  If I let go and let somebody, he wants to know what that somebody does.  Although my Inner Skeptic doesn’t run the show around here any more, he can be very useful in practical pursuits like science so I don’t condemn him to my mental dungeon, even in spiritual matters.

Into the Box

Last Tuesday, the September 20th reading in Iyalna Vanzant’s daily reader, Until Today! began with, Do you have a God Jar?  If you don’t, you should.    I’d heard of a God Box nearly twenty years earlier in one of my first Twelve Step meetings.  A God Box could be any sturdy box.   It didn’t have to be fancy but many people either found a decorative box or decorated one with their own art work.  Mine is a carved wooden box I found at Pier One Imports, decorated a photograph I took of the hills near the location of our Men’s Retreat.  Supposedly, the God Box started out as a God Can (as in, I can’t, God can) … I don’t know whether that’s Twelve Step legend or not but it’s cute.  It turns out that the notion of a God Jar appeared in Julia Cameron’s Vein of Gold, sequel to The Artist’s Way.  In keeping with her theme of finding your inner artist, Cameron recommended decorating your jar with your own art and keeping it in a special place she called an artist’s shrine.   Vanzant recommends an old mayonnaise, pickle or jelly jar and says, If you are so inclined, you may decorate the jar, consistent with her pragmatic approach to spirituality.