MUDDLING THROUGH
I overslept this morning. Didn’t open my eyes until 6:15 ! And promptly thought, actually it’s 5:15 , so I didn’t oversleep by that much. The
time change.
What is baffling even to me is why I feel I must come up
with an excuse when it’s just me I’m dealing with, who is going to be affected,
who has anything at all to do with my goings and comings…with the possible
exception of Ruckus, and he wasn’t complaining.
The fact is I do prefer to get up early. My spiritual
director told me many moons ago to get up as early as possible before the rest
of the world is up and about disturbing the vibrations in the atmosphere. I
took her at her word and have made it a habit to get up around 4:30 /5:00
ever since.
The most important thing affected is my quiet time…if I
don’t consciously give the “first fruits” of my day to God, I simply slough off
my quiet time…do my meditation in less than a minute, read my dailies even
faster, and now here it is going on 1:00 PM, and I’m just getting to my
writing…with a not very spiritual focus.
Which I get to accept just as it is...it's as good as I've got.
Thank You.
TO LAUGH WITH GOD
I knew it was a blinding flash of the obvious when I read
it, that sentence in my Lenten book: “Bring out of the shadows those parts of
me that have been put under a ban, or kept out of the light. Let Christ show me
what they mean to him and how he is redeeming them.”
I read that on March 8th and knew my decision
when I was two years old to never be left alone was the determiner in my
life…had known that for at least 35 years, but the answer to what to do about
it has been hidden from me.
I even attended a week-long Life, Death and Transition
workshop at the Elizabeth Kubler-Ross farm in search of an answer to my
question of what do I do with that? We did drawings there which the counselors
interpreted for us. I drew a young girl on stage, peeking out from behind the
curtain with a huge smile on her face…it was interpreted as my having come into
my own freedom, I could now live happy. Which was pretty much a ho-hum to me,
but you take what you get.
I’m taking a risk this afternoon…driving to a new place to
meet with people I don’t know. This morning, I wrote in my journal that all I
needed to remember is that God has my back if I’ll keep my saving grace, my
sense of humor, open and...BINGO.
There it was…the answer to my drawing of the girl behind the
curtain with the huge smile. The answer to my question of what to do with the
decision I’d made and couldn’t let go was always there hidden in the shadows
(or behind the curtain): I am to laugh with God at me all my life holding onto
a decision I made at two years of age, letting it color my life.
The rest of the good news is the gift of knowing I’ll get to
practice this blinding flash of the obvious until three days after I’m dead. Which is fine by me...how can I hate laughing with God?
Oh, it’s a great gettin’ up morning…Thank You.
SOMETHING TO LOOK
FORWARD TO
In making changes within, I know and have known from my
eyebrows up for a long time that the most important thing to remember is that I
am not the one who makes the changes. That is God’s job. My job is to make
myself available to It, to do with me and build of me as It wills.
I think that is so hard to remember because it requires
nothing but faith, trust, belief…and a boatload of patience. God is not on my
timetable.
I do know from my eyebrows up, and that knowing has moved
down to my heart. It is letting it flow deeper to my higher center, and that
can only happen through the grace of God…and giving up any idea that I know how
that is to happen and how it will look when it happens…IF it happens in this
lifetime.
But happen it will, and why not the next lifetime? My life
is better than I ever dreamed possible right this minute…knowing something even
better awaits me will give me something to look forward to.
Thank You.
GOD CAN AND WILL IF
SOUGHT
My Lenten reading, “A Season for the Spirit,” by Martin L.
Smith, brings me new, different and exciting messages every year as I reread
it.
This year I read, “Bring out of the shadows those parts of
me that have been put under a ban, or kept out of the light. Let Christ show me
what they mean to him and how he is redeeming them.”
WOW! How did I not read that before? Especially: “Let Christ
show me what they mean to him….” I don’t have to think on
them, ponder about them, rake my brain, turn it inside out (all synonyms for
worry). I can know unto complete trust that the Christ within me is
redeeming them.
The shadow part of me that has colored my entire life is a
statement, a decision I know now, that I made when I was two years old. I
remember it as if it were yesterday…my brother, who was three at the time, and
I had just learned of our grandfather’s death and we were in our backyard
talking about it…trying to figure out what the act of death meant. Paul said,
“I don’t want to be here without mommy and daddy,” and I said, “I don’t want to
be left alone.” End of memory.
That statement/decision, “I don’t want to be left alone,”
set the pattern for my life. I handled my fear of being left alone by never
letting anyone into my life…I stayed alone in order not to be left alone.
There…that’s the reasoning mind for you.
I have over the years made peace with that long-ago
decision, and I’m guessing I connect so completely now because that simple
sentence gives me the answer to something I’ve been puzzling about…how to be
more thoughtful toward others, all others. The why’d I do this? or what can I
do about that? or what was I thinking? No biggies, just the minor discomforts
of my behavior toward others. I do not behave maliciously toward others, but I
can be thoughtless…dismissive…hurtful in a word.
I tend to believe the only daily sin is to give another a
resentment, so my behavior has to be on a fairly constant monitor. Which, I
confess, I cannot maintain. Hence, my joy at: “Bring out of the shadows those
parts of me that have been put under a ban, or kept out of the light. Let
Christ show me what they mean to him and how he is redeeming them.”
God can and will if sought.
Thank You.
IMAGINE ALL THE PEOPLE
LIVING LIFE IN PEACE
I’m convinced the only thing that each of us needs to
overcome is self.
The only thing that anyone anywhere at any time ever did
need, ever will need or needs now to overcome is self…the ego-victory-centered
self.
The not easy but very simple path to follow is the one that
leads to ego-reduction in depth. The reasoning mind will never get us there. If
we’ll ever have a chance, it will be through rising above the reasoning mind to
a deeper reality within…that much-discussed, hard-found, center of our being,
a.k.a., heaven. As in, “Our Father which art in heaven….”
An aid that helps me enormously is John Lennon’s “Imagine.”
Imagine there's no
heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people living for today
Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people living life in peace
You, you may say
I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one
I hope some day you'll join us
And the world will be as one
Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people sharing all the world
You, you may say
I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one
I hope some day you'll join us
And the world will live as one
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people living for today
Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people living life in peace
You, you may say
I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one
I hope some day you'll join us
And the world will be as one
Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people sharing all the world
You, you may say
I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one
I hope some day you'll join us
And the world will live as one
Peace, personal and/or world peace, is as close as that…just imagine.
Thank You.
THE FIRST CHANGE I
NEED TO MAKE IS ALWAYS IN MY THINKING
I was reminded this morning of a favorite Bible verse of
mine. It’s in Genesis in the story of Joseph being sold by his brothers into
slavery in Egypt
Joseph says, in a word, if he hadn’t been sold into slavery,
he’d not have had the opportunity to do so well: “You meant it for evil, but
God meant it for good.”
I love that because it is the essence of “resist not evil,”
“turn the other cheek,” and “all my problems can be solved by spiritual
principles.” All of which turn my thinking around whenever I feel I’ve been
“done wrong.” My IRS experience for sure proves that out. It did indeed turn
out to be an incredibly deep spiritual experience that originally I would have
passed up in a heartbeat, given the choice.
That’s why when I hear of someone going through a terrible
experience, I hope they stay with it…play it out. For those old clichés we hear
of are based in truth…as in, “God works in mysterious ways, His wonders to
perform.”
There is always another way of looking at whatever I’m
facing…changing my mind about the way I’m thinking is the hardest part.
Thank You.
BECOME WHO WE ALREADY
ARE
In prayer we discover
what we already have through the indwelling Spirit of God and our incorporation
through baptism into Christ. You start where you are and deepen what you
already have and you realize that you are already there. We already have
everything but we don’t know it and we don’t experience it. All we need is to
experience what we already possess. – Thomas Merton
I read that this morning, and I was amazed…because I not only believe it, I say it often…in a much shorter less articulate way of course.
What I believe and say is that when we pray for anything,
we’re going down that wrong road again. We already have all we need…now, let it
flow forth. We let it flow forth by living, thinking, doing, being…for others.
That is the entire message of the Sermon on the Mound including how to do it,
such as, among other things, resist not evil, if someone slaps you upside the
head, turn the other cheek.
What got my attention originally is that I don’t think I
knew that Merton had written or said that. I knew, for sure, I’d gotten it
somewhere, but not from Merton. Which I love for it proves the connected-ness
of spiritual thought.
If I can’t find the connection between some spiritual tract
I’m reading and some spiritual fact I
already believe in, then I know one or the other is not true for me. Actually,
it’s in “original” thought that I generally find the failing…which is a good
way to know I need to turn around, go back to my basic Sermon, and study it
still deeper. It never fails to teach me.
Thank You.
JUST DO IT
Minds, like bodies,
will often fall into a pimpled, ill-conditioned state from mere excess of comfort.
– Charles Dickens
I fear this is me. I have had on my to-do list for too long
already “volunteer at Virginia Hospital
Center
This I know about me…I do nothing until the spirit moves me.
I’m not saying it’s the spirit of God, it’s probably just the spirit of Nike,
Just Do It, that finally breaks through. But all the guilt, all the nagging,
all the begging that my ego can heap on me will cause nothing to happen. Then
one fine day, I just do it.
I can only know for sure…I’m moving closer.
Thank You.
I AM, REALIZED
Two blinding flashes of the obvious this morning:
- “God Calling” today, “… and Healing are yours in very full measure.” I realized that I have experienced healing for others only not as my reasoning mind thought “healing” entailed. And in that realization I saw that it is already true of all of us.
- Eknath
Easwaran today, “…in the spiritual life, when we are defeated, it is
possible to go deeper into our consciousness to bring out greater
resources.” Here, too, I realized that every time I run up against an “oh
no,” today, I’ve learned to virtually say, “so be it,” and drop it as
important. I remembered back when I was taking care of the IRS, I’d cashed
a check for $50 (which at that time was a
Then, the halo round my world: My Lenten reading today: “The
Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news…”
Luke 4:12-21.
Thank You.
I read Deepak Chopra’s “Jesus” a few years back. It is subtitled “A Story of Enlightenment” and it is a fictionalized version of Jesus’s unrecorded years. His buddy is Judas, and the punch line is Judas, through his slights, snubs and betrayals of Jesus, was the key to Jesus’s enlightenment.
That is so helpful to me in learning not to take every slight and snub, each one feeling like a betrayal, personally.
I have a friend who has a quick-trigger temper, and she has gone off on me three or four times…which is two or three times more than anybody else who has stayed in my life. I have never known why I haven’t mouthed right back, blowing off the friendship right then and there, but I never have.
She’s building up to a tear, which is not comfortable to deal with, so I do extra peace-be-still work when I see it coming. I was doing my peacefulness time, and I had a blinding flash of the obvious: She is my Judas…and therefore more important to me than anybody.
It is through her that I am learning how not to take real-appearing slights and snubs personally…they are not. They only become personal if and when I personally attach myself to them…respond to them…resist them.
Thank You.
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