GO TO GOD OR GO MAD

All the spiritual belief in the world is useless if we're not living it. I have a friend whom I love dearly who hears any word of spirituality, and she rolls her eyes and calls it, in effect, God claptrap. She is not an atheist, she is a good church-going...and devout...Catholic.

And I'm referring to myself when I say all the spiritual belief is useless if I'm not living it because what is becoming clear to me is I am resisting her resistance to any credit given to God for life changes.

For example, just yesterday I shared an experience I'd had some 30 or 35 years ago. I was treated very shabbily (by anybody's standards), and I knew I had to let it go p.d.q. I went over to a friend's house and cried and talked and talked and cried, and she walked me through finding my part in it. I walked out of her house some six hours later absolutely free. And, in the telling yesterday, I mentioned God and grace...this peeved my friend no end.

I think she couldn't quite believe I was able to walk free...that, in fact, I was "stuffing my feelings." She did not use those words, but she was irate about the whole story. To me, she got caught in the  same thing I knew I'd get caught in if I didn't do something to release it fast...the fact of the ugly unfairness of what had been done to me with nobody getting punished.

That is life's velcro...ugly unfairness is going to happen, and it will attach itself to our ego-victory mind. It truly is our reaction to life's velcro that determines whether we walk free in our own mind. To me, it's go to God or go mad.

Which returns me to my dilemma...my resistance to her resistance. It's like justified anger...it  does not matter that I believe I'm resisting the "right" thing...she thinks she is, too!

Actually, yesterday's incident is God's gift to me. Here is a friend I love who fundamentally disagrees with my foundation...my basis in life. And I disagree with hers. God's gift is knowing that all I need focus on is the fact that our disagreement does not change by a hair our equal freedoms to our foundational beliefs, that resistance only muddies the fact in our own minds.

Apparently, resist not evil begins with not resisting another's resistance.

Thank You.