GOD IS AT THE POINT OF UNEXPLAINABLE

It is not God we test, it is our own selves we test.

We think we have an unsolvable problem. We ask God to solve it. We wait five minutes, then do what we were planning to do before we took a second to ask His help.

The test is not to see if God will solve it...the test is a matter of our patience: Are we willing to "sit and wait on the Lord?" And for how long are we willing to sit and wait on the Lord with no answer apparent to our own eyes.

My "how long?" used to be how ever long it took for me to think of yet another me solution...which wouldn't work. So I'd again ask God's help, wait till I thought of yet another solution which wouldn't work, etc. This entire time, of course, I was building my foundation of no faith...my proof that if there is a God, He doesn't know my name.

And there's the paradox. To build our proof of no God, we must keep coming back to try again...and we finally reach the unanswerable-to-the-reasoning-mind. At the point of the unexplainable is where the miracle of God appears...where the reasoning mind surrenders.

It feels like crash and burn, but in fact it is rebirth. Both crash and burn and rebirth are painful, but both are essential if we would have a new outlook, a new belief...a new life.

Thank You.

WE CAN NEVER NOT HAVE GOD

We must be willing to give up to get...but if our objective in giving up is to get, we deny ourselves for there is no God in self-determined objectives.

Our main self-determined objective is to "get God." That is a reasoning-mind objective and can never be achieved because we already have God. We cannot not have God. God lives in us, within us, without us. When we realize that, we will have All.

Thank You.

GOD CONSCIOUSNESS...WORLD CHANGING

Yesterday's 50th celebration of the March on Washington: Hearing MLK's speech all the way through again, seeing President Obama, hearing his speech, all so...inspiring and depressing, both at the same time.

It all depends from what level I choose to ponder it...from my 50-years-ago self, thrilled, righteously thrilled, to today, depressed...where is that challenged feeling? Have I beaten it out of me? Or has it just leaked away? All that fight for rights...my consciousness raising groups for women's rights...my get-out-the vote campaigning. Was that all for naught?

Burke & Herbert is the only bank standing that I would trust with a penny of my money. I trust credit unions but I suspect Navy FCU and Pentagon FCU have become big banks. What happened to: "If you can't trust your banker who can you trust?" Or was that your hairdresser?

And Maureen Dowd now says the President is only guilty of presiding while black, and she's been taking cheap shots at him for six years...and she doesn't even blush. Worse, I just think, "Typical." That's what upsets me most...I hear her with a shrug.

Where is my passion of yesterday? It doesn't just naturally go with old age...else Grandma Moses would never have become.

This is what happens when I spend too much time pondering the world through my ego-victory eyes. Those eyes that tell me if I can't fix it, it can't be fixed. I remind me that God can and will if sought.

The realization is that the state of the world is not God's...the state of our consciousness is God's...God consciousness. And that consciousness will truly change the world.

Thank You.

WE ALREADY HAVE THAT FOR WHICH WE PRAY

I'm forever reminding myself (and others!) that we already have that for which we pray.

So here's me at my exercise class...the instructor mentions something about teaching a weight-training class, and my ears perk up. I ask if she is still teaching the weight-training class, and she answers, in a rather puzzled tone, that she is. I immediately ask where and when, and she replies, "This is it!" 

I've been searching elsewhere for a weight-training class, and the very class I am taking is a weight-training class...we both cracked up. Since the name of the class is "Seniorcise," I've just been thinking of it as an old-ladies' barely-moving class. We use the stretch bands, the squeeze balls, the weights...it just did not compute.

I've very cleverly dropped the name "Seniorcise," and now tell people I do weight-training twice a week. Need I mention that I feel like a much more "with it" person, not to mention healthier...wealthier and wiser are coming, I'm sure.

Once again it comes home to me...I already have that for which I pray!

Thank You.

GOD WITHOUT BORDERS

You must know that I shall cause you no more pain in the doing of it than a physician, who plans and knows he can effect a cure, would cause his patient. -- "God Calling," August 27

We go into surgery knowing that this is going to hurt and it'll take time to feel better, but we go to God expecting an immediate healing without pain or even discomfort...joy is our expectation actually. 

The physician must cut through our physical body so we know this ain't going to be painless. We know and agree that it is going to take time to heal and there is no easy way...plus, it is going to cost us actual dollars.

We pray fully expecting any change to be painless, not only painless but to feel good, not just good but exhilarating in fact...and we'll know peace into the bargain. We ignore the fact that God must cut through our free (self) will, our ego, our fear, and that that cutting only happens by our letting go..by our opening ourselves to God without borders.

This is when we learn that letting go of self-anything feels like we are stripping ourselves of our own skin. We also learn that the sooner we become willing to feel the pain and do it anyway the sooner the pain lessens, is transmuted...and we find that joyful exhilaration we were looking for.

Freedom from self...a whole new world.

Thank You.

PEACE AND BELLY LAUGHS

I had a house guest for the last four days, and we had a wonderful time. I consciously thanked God for teaching me that planning for, living for, another's good is the way to peace. That sounds so good it doesn't seem like it'd be all that hard to do.

Truth to tell, it's taken me years to even consider it as a possibility, more years for it to be a probability, and just this visit did I fully succeed...100% due to the fact that my friend puts another's good first as a matter of always.

And we both knew peace the entire time...which included a lot of laughs.

Who knew? Who knew you could know peace and belly laughs at the same time?

Thank You.

LESSONS LEARNED...AGAIN

[The following is a reprint of my blog of August 20, 2009.]

So yesterday morning, I’m up at 5:00, feed my little guy, Ruckus, get the leash on him to take him out, am pondering a world-changing thought, slip on the marble of my foyer, fall and hit my left temple on a table, and I know as I’m laying there, I’ve hurt my right ankle and have probably reinjured my bum right knee.

Long/short, I called a friend for help and she did not even hesitate…was practically at my place before I told her what the need was. She bundled me and Ruckus in her car, dropped me at the Virginia Hospital Center ER, took Ruckus home with her where she walked him, fed him, kept him happy, and waited for my call to come get me. I am so blessed. 

I’m now sitting here with a badly sprained ankle, wrapped, iced, with a four-footed cane at hand to get around on, nattering at myself because I absolutely cannot remember what my world-changing thought was.

So typical…the perfect opportunity to count my blessings, and I’m regretting that which I can’t even remember!

I choose to contemplate the many gifts I got yesterday. To have a friend so open to helping without question, to have an ER available to me where the people, the place, everything about it are simply wonderful, to only have a sprained ankle when it could so easily have been much worse.

I thought this morning as I journaled of a friend of my mother’s who lived alone in a big house on a hill and got along very well doing for herself. Early on, her friends would tell her that she should move to an apartment where there were other people around, or hire a live-in so she would have someone around “just in case”…and that’s when she was in her 50s! She lived to age 95, never moved from her house, never moved anyone in with her, and her friends would tell her she was just too independent…she was going to regret it. I am perfectly confident that she never did.

As I wrote, I thought to myself, if I had someone here with me, I would not have walked Ruckus at 5:30 this morning (very slowly but we walked), I would not be testing myself to see how much I can comfortably do…I’d be stretched out on my bed with pillows under my leg, sipping coffee, and issuing demands dressed up as requests. All of which would continue for way too long.

My Father knows my needs.

Thank You.

MY BUDDY JUDAS

[The following is a reprint of my blog of March 1,  2012.]

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 punchline 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.

PERSONAL ATTACKS

[The following is a reprint of my blog of August 23, 2009.]

It is interesting to me to see the reaction of people to world-class sports figures who go through tough times performing in their sport. Roger Federer recently had a stretch of tennis losses, Tiger Woods, a short time back, missed the cut for only the second time in his professional life at a major golf event (the British Open). Then, for the first time in his professional career, lost  on the last hole of a major (the PGA) after coming into the last day leading.

I was saddened, mystified and slightly sickened at the uncharitable, nasty even, remarks of not just everyday you-and-me people, but television personalities, sportscasters and newscasters alike, and on air.

I heard one anchor literally spit the word “Choked!” about Woods’ PGA loss. “Choke” according to Webster’s old reliable dictionary is defined as “to perform badly in a critical situation,” which it cannot be denied on the last hole, Woods did not shine. But by the pejorative way the word is being used today, in anger and even in contempt, it is a personal attack…like a payback for a personal, deliberate, betrayal.

Federer in his disappointment at losing at the Australian Open earlier this year wept openly…I was amazed at a woman sportscaster, months later, who mocked his tears openly. Woman have had the (earned or not) reputation of being easy to cry, so it may be she has learned to literally shut down her emotions and felt threatened by his tears. I believe the remarks are too personal not to come from a personal place in the person mouthing the vitriol. 

I found it even more interesting that both Federer and Woods seemed to take the trash talk a lot better than I did for them.

THE PEARL BEYOND PRICE

I was talking recently with a friend who has been diagnosed with a debilitating disease...not fatal, but incurable. She is in pretty much constant pain and must take a heavy duty drug daily. Through it all, she said, the thing she feared the most was becoming a broken-down old woman.

I told her that that might be exactly how she wound up...as a broken-down old woman. But, the good news is, if she maintained her grateful heart, it would not matter. She would still draw others to her, because a grateful heart does that. She would still know love and kindness, joy and peace. Only her ego-victory thoughts would natter her about being a broken-down old woman...and she learned long ago that she is powerless over those thoughts coming, but she is not powerless over them staying.

We learn to turn from self-seeking thoughts toward self-giving thoughts...a simple "thank you" does it.

There is nothing that will come to us that cannot be met with "thank You" that we won't be the better for. A simple "Thank You" when our life event still looks "OMG...No!" is the pearl beyond price.

Thank You.

EASY TO PONDER; HARD TO DO

Just this morning in Fr. Richard Rohr’s ”Daily Meditations” I was reading about fourth dimensional thinking being an absolute assault on the reasoning mind because it is a different mind that pays attention to different things.

Our ego-centered mind legislates for itself…everything is personal and is seen from the personal view…how we personally feel, how we personally look, what’s in it for me?, etc. According to Rohr, “as long as you read reality from the reference point of the small self of [the personal] you cannot get very far. The lens never opens up.”

So I’m loving this, and I’m pondering it while I’m feeding Ruckus, and my thoughts wander over to a get-together in early September that I've invited three friends to (at the suggestion of one of the friends). I note it is late August, and I haven’t heard a word back from any of the three.

My first thought: “Their behavior is rude, disrespectful and unacceptable. When I hear from them, I’m going to claim that I've made other plans…see how they like it.” I was half way through a mental Miss Manners’s rant before two heartbeats had passed. 

Fourth dimensional thinking is easy to ponder…living in the fourth dimension, not so much.

Thank You.

THE GATE'S OPEN

I received an e-mail this morning with a wonderful attachment. It is the picture of a little dog (the spittin' image of Ruckus) racing up the road, fur flying, tongue hanging out...happy! And the caption: "Live like someone's left the gate open!"

That's it. That's the secret to life itself...happy, joyous and free. And all it takes to live like someone's left the gate open is the willingness. The willingness to live a grateful moment, every moment. No exceptions.

I'm not there yet, but I give myself points for just knowing that's the answer...and turning myself in that direction whenever I get into my self-determined objectives, a.k.a., The Way It Oughta Be.

Living a grateful life is like getting to Carnegie Hall...you get there by practice, practice, practice. Old joke...good advice.

Thank You.

GOD'S HAND IS IN IT

Those who have never allowed themselves to fall are actually off balance, while not realizing it at all. That is why they are so hard to live with. Please think about that for a while. -- Fr. Richard Rohr, "Daily Meditations," August 19.

There is a human answer and a spiritual answer to everything. Often it is the same answer. Each has its own path, and we must decide which path we choose to take.

Our life's journey is determined by the choice we make. If we choose the human answer (our reasoning mind), our intellect will guide us...and there are more than many who successfully live by that choice.

If we choose the spiritual path...resist not, give up fighting, love your enemy as yourself...we will learn the art of finding peace by living peace.

I have found this way to be challenging in the extreme because my ego-victory mind cannot not legislate for itself...and it is my job always to turn it and me toward spiritual principles. That is why it is so important to live an un-self-guarded life...long ago I was told "Showing your butt is also spiritual." I can't imagine anybody ever showed his butt without believing she was in the right.

It is when we find ourselves in the wrong and looking less than wonderful into the bargain that we realize that God's hand is in it. And God's hand cannot be in it while we're maintaining control, or just think we are. This is the ultimate letting go.

The reasoning mind cannot comprehend that in order to know peace fully we must go beyond reason to love.

Thank You.

HAVING ENOUGH IS ENOUGH

Thoughts that come to me and clear my field of vision:

I am my Father's house...He lives within and graces my everything within and without.

God's grace perfects everything...there are no mistakes; there are only opportunities for God's grace to erase the perception of mistakes, thus showing forth perfection.

Perfection to the reasoning mind's eye is often an ego trip...hug it and kiss it and let it go.

The "human condition" is often an excuse for spiritual laziness.

Hope springs from hopelessness.

We may never have more than enough, but we will always have enough.

Thank You.

ONE MUST LEARN AN INNER SOLITUDE

To be sure, this requires effort and love, a careful cultivation of the spiritual life, and a watchful, honest, active oversight of all one's mental attitudes towards things and people. It is not to be learned by world-flight, running away from things, turning solitary and going apart from the world. Rather, one must learn an inner solitude, wherever or with whomsoever he may be. He must learn to penetrate things and find God there, to get a strong impression of God firmly fixed on his mind.

-- Meister Eckhart

GOD IS GRATITUDE IS GOD

I'm back from a wonderful three days at the Greenbrier. I was invited to attend the 50th anniversary celebration of the association from which I retired. The entire event was spectacular.

I had a plethora of emotions...or as I say to my friends, I had feelings up the gump-stump...nostalgia on seeing so many of my former co-workers, and awe at nature's grandeur surrounding White Sulphur Springs, WV, then at the man-made beauty of the Greenbrier.

The outstanding and continuous feeling, though, was of gratitude. Gratitude that I could experience God's grace on display; gratitude that I could experience feelings of love and appreciation for my three former bosses and for my other former co-workers...and receive their warm feelings of friendship in return. 

God is so good to me. God is so good. God is.

Thank You.

LIVING THE GRACE OF GRATITUDE

I'm reminded this morning that there is an art to letting go. It requires us to be willing to let go of the bad and the good...of our own problems, of our own glories, of our own perceptions, of our own opinions, of our very own selves. The art of letting go lives in the grace of gratitude. "Thank You" to and for everything transforms us.

This is the ultimate "living in the now."

It is also the ultimate living in faith...living and breathing the fact that God does indeed have our back.

Thank You.

RESISTANCE...A DENIAL OF GOD

It seems to me that resistance is simply a denial of God...or a bolstering of one's ego, take your pick.

For instance, I read this morning that "the moment a thing seems wrong to you, or a person's actions to be not what you think they should be, at that moment begins your obligation and responsibility to pray for those wrongs to be righted, or that person to be different."

Need I say that I resisted that mightily? But, instead of just dismissing it as wrong, I studied it, and p.d.q. I saw another way to understand it...I remembered "If the only prayer you ever pray is 'thank you' that will suffice."

So I said to myself, "at that moment begins my obligation and responsibility to pray 'thank you' for those wrongs, for that person."

God can never not know what is right and what is wrong. He can, will and does bless it or fix it as He knows necessary and for the benefit of all concerned. My "thank you" simply affirms that for my ego's edification!

Thank You.

UNDESERVED FORGIVENESS...HEAVEN OR HELL?

What if everybody goes to Heaven?

Can you imagine the embarrassment we'd feel if we were, say, Hitler, in the presence of a loving, forgiving God?

With our past laying right out there, bare, we'd be justifying, excusing, lying...and with every justification, excuse, lie that leapt from our lips, God would know it for what it was, and we'd know God knew. And we'd realize that God accepted us, loved us, forgave us anyway.

Would that be Heaven or ultimate Hell?...the embarrassment of undeserved forgiveness.

All of this came from my remembering this morning my experience with the lady who owned the dog that mauled Ruckus awhile back. I had warned her a week previous to the mauling to put her dog on leash which she clearly had not done since one week later he was running loose and mauled my little guy.

I did not go off on the lady when it happened, did not chew her a new one, and when she brought me the check for his hospitalization, I accepted it with thanks...chilly thanks, but thanks. She was less than gracious and snubs me whenever I see her on the street.

In pondering that this morning, the Hitler-before-God analogy occurred to me, and I considered that as her underlying motivator...embarrassment, plain and simple. True or not, I'm going to accept it as such because that brings me an understanding of her behavior today.

It also proves the saying that we cannot hate anyone if we will bring ourselves to an understanding of them...not justify, but understand. That requires us to give over...detach, let go, divorce ourselves from our own opinion...whereby we find peace.

Thank You.

EXTEND OURSELVES TO BE RID OF SELF

We have to extend ourselves to be rid of self...there is no other way. Hiding, withdrawing, "passing by on the other side of the street," is self in the uppermost part of our mind...self in control.

The balance, the fine line, we must walk in extending ourselves lives in our motive: We extend ourselves for others...not to show forth me, not always to do for you...but to share. To share our lives.

Thank You.

MY GOOD COMES FROM ME

My good does not come to me. My good comes from me. It only appears to come to me.

As I'm journaling this morning, I realize that several wonderful things came about yesterday...it was one thing leading to the other, and I was grateful. That led to my conscious realization that each of these happenings had been the basis of my "bless him/her, change me" prayer that I have prayed for some time now.

As each thing happened yesterday, I thanked God at the miracle of each...for each appeared to come from several different people, no event related to the other.

I realized that this is the road to peace within outward even while it appears it is the outward event that is bringing peace in to me.

It was my need (God's will) to do St. Francis's instructions; i.e., if you are slandered and skewered, honestly and sincerely in your heart bless the slander-er and skewer-er in the name of God. That is all.

All the outward appearing gifts to me start with my prayer for peace, love and joy for others...that I may bring, not that I may get.

I have to keep it simple, so my prayer of "bless her/him, change me" covers all the bases, and keeps me from haranguing God with my perceived needs (my will).

God is so good to me.

Thank You.

YES!

We shall find peace. 

We shall hear angels.

We shall see the sky

Sparkling with diamonds!

-- Chekhov

Thank You.

THE ROCKY ROAD TO REAL PEACE

I am reminded again that if we do not transform our pain we will transmit it. The most important part to remember is that the transformation is of God and grace.

We cannot transform our pain, we can only do the footwork of bringing our ego-victory thoughts back to God (repeatedly and then again) to build with and do with as God chooses.

Our reward comes when we are released which release sets the other person free. It is in our transformed pain, the release of our ego-victory's need to be right, that the other person is released from her need to be right. There is always another person. She is the one our ego feels is attacking us when, in fact, he is our angel.

This is the rocky road to real peace. And the road is only as rocky as our ego chooses it to be.

Thank You.

JUST DON'T RESPOND IN KIND

It is said that that which we fear we cause to happen. I think it's more that we invite it to happen, and the distinction is majorly important in how we respond to others. 

Say, when Gertrude for whatever reason feels threatened, she invites her worst fear (rejection) to happen. She begins to act mean, disrespectful and rude to her perceived threatener. (She can't be rejected if she gets rid of her rejecter first.) 

Remember, the base here is her perception, her interpretation, that rejection is either imminent or has happened, and it does not matter that the perceived threatener is her dearest friend, partner, spouse. It only matters what her fear is whispering in her mind.

When the other person is met by that rejection, the reasoning mind says s/he needs to react in kind...because most of us have that same fear, rejection. What does mean, disrespectful and rude shout but rejection?

As Ken Keyes said, "More suffering comes into the world by people taking offense than by people intending to give offense." Gertrude, having perceived rejection, took offense, and her fear attacked. The answer, of course, is to not respond in kind. And that's where we meet, yet again, the power of the ego. We, living in the ego-victory mind, cannot not respond in kind...or by not responding at all, simply drawing a big red line through Gertrude's name, and the friendship is nevermore.  

If we are ever to have long-lasting friendships, peaceful relationships, we need to learn the art of detachment...i.e., to divorce ourselves from our own opinions. 

Since we are indeed powerless over our own ego, we'd best accept that God, and only God, is not. We need to learn and turn...away from self to God. It is in the turning, the willingness to divorce ourselves from ourselves, that the battle is won...and both sides come out the winner. 

A clue: 70 x 7.

Thank You.

GRATITUDE IS ALWAYS OUTWARD BOUND

The mental contortions of everyday life between ego and spirituality, according to me:

Your resistance is a magnet to my ego...which resists your resistance. Thus starts an ego fight: Egos on parade, hoofing it down our own Broadway with our own banners flying, each knowing what the other "needs" to do to get over self.

It may be that our entire problem when going for spiritual growth is that our ego wraps up in spiritual miasma and rides herd, calling it spiritual growth. We name our problems "you" and instruct our ego to pray, preach, litigate for you...which is just "Satan quoting scripture."

The test is whether we are able to realize the peace that true concern for another brings. After 24 hours, if we're still begging the Palace Guards at the door of our ego to "bless her, change me," and cursing God for not listening, we'd best own up that we're stuck in our own self. We simply don't want to change.

Maybe life is simply a test of how to live a life of gratitude...and every niggling bit of resistance is simply a call for gratitude. Since gratitude is always outward bound, it is the quickest way there is to get out of self...or quite possibly the only way?

Thank You.

GO TO GOD FOR GOD...THAT IS ALL

There are so many good tools to use in getting over oneself...the hard part is accepting that these tools require us to rely on a higher intelligence than humans possess. It's God to me and it's thinking in the fourth-dimension, neither of which are accessible through our will or our want for they are "inherently self-advancing and therefore self-defeating." [Fr. Richard Rohr, Daily Meditations, August 4, 2013]

"The reasoning mind is the instrument through which God works...we go into the quiet and let God be released through us so that It will act to make the inadequate intelligence, adequate; It will make the unloving, loving; the ungrateful, grateful...." [Joel Goldsmith, The Heart of Mysticism, pp 702-703]

Our answer remains ever the same: Go to God for God...It can and will supply our every need.

Thank You.

ON THE VALUE OF UPGRADING MY ATTITUDE

[The following is a reprint of my blog of January 26, 2012.]

Since God is love and cannot punish, I have to remind myself that life changes are always for the better. It helps to remind myself that God cannot punish so I will take responsibility for that which has been visited upon me that does not look wonderful…and it’s not my fault, my ego cries.

That life changes are always for the better is obvious only when I look back…those dreaded events that came to me, if they were life changing, they have been for my good. Which is not to say that I haven’t had to do a lot of upgrading my attitude…but that’s never hurt me, either. The ugly events were usually just self-will-powered rues, regrets and remorses…the pretties were singular glories that signified nothing (but nice nonetheless).

I need to lean on that fact, that life changes are always for the better…a fact that is true to me when I stay out of self-determined objectives and into “They will, not mine, be done.”

Thank You.

THE MINUTE BLAME FALLS AWAY....

There is a story about St. Francis being asked how can we find perfect joy. Francis's answer was that even if we were perfect in our holiness and could work all kinds of miracles we would not have perfect joy. This goes on with the questioner continuing to question, "Then how?" and Francis continuing to give variations on the same answer.

Finally, Francis says, "Suppose we go to a monastery and tell the gatekeeper how weary and cold we are, and he calls us tramps and beats us and throws us out into the winter night. Then, if we can say with love in our hearts, 'Bless you in God's name,' then we shall have found perfect joy."

I love this story. I love it because it gives me something to aim for with my petty (even to my own self) peeves...my ego-victory resistance to the slights and snubs of daily life, real and imagined. For I know it to be true from my own very limited experience.

When my mind is freed of my own hurt, anger, righteous indignation at the treatment I received five minutes ago or fifty-five years ago, blame falls away. I am gifted with the feeling of inner joy unlike any other feeling. The minute my mind is freed from blame, my heart and my soul lighten up...shout...sing...turn cartwheels...skip...dance.

All in the name of God...without conscious thought.

Thank You.

ON DETACHING FROM OUR OWN VICTIM

To ponder: What if the Sermon is all about I?...i see you slap my face; i see you steal my coat; i see you sue me. We go to our center, knowing that what we see is always ourselves, and find it is I who translates, it is I who transmutes, it is I who transforms that which is appearing.

We can only transform through a new and higher consciousness of what we are seeing, how we are translating it, how it transmutes into understanding, acceptance, ownership.

I'm guessing this is all about releasing our own pain...detaching from our ego's victim.

As Fr. Richard Rohr says, "If you do not transform your pain, you will always transmit it."

Thank You.