QUIT THINKING, START DOING

I awoke this morning with this prayer in my thoughts:  If I get to choose between a healed knee and a healed relationship with my friend, I choose a healed  relationship with my friend.  Thank you. Amen.

I went into my quiet time and was led to the following:

It is not the avoidance of problems that makes you [free], but a daily holding of the problem, straight on (while not letting it hold onto you)—and finding a resolution in the much deeper and more spacious 'peace of Christ, which will guard your heart and your mind.' (Fr. Richard Rohr, Daily Meditations, November 27, 2013)

Then the next:

In personal relationships, we all get troubled when we do our best to be kind to someone and that person treats us with hostility or ill will in return. This is common in life today, and most of us quickly reach the end of our tether. 'I don't want to see you again,' we say. 'I want to get as far away from you as possible!'

All of us have these human impulses. But that is just where the Gita or Jesus or the Buddha would say, 'No. That is the way of the timid. That is the way of the weak.' Stick it out: not by becoming a doormat, not by blindly obeying whatever command the other person gives you, but by resolutely refusing to hurt anyone no matter how much you have been hurt. (Eknath Easwaran, "Words to Live By," June 1)

There...that's exactly how to find the spiritual resolution I pray for...which is certainly not news. What I love so much is that I prayed as if I didn't have a clue what to do and was immediately led to the answer which, let's face is, is the same old, same old. Boiled down it's simply, quit thinking and start doing; i.e., love and laugh.

As my friend Natalie says, "God's cute."

Thank you.