Sometimes I feel like I'm learning spiritual principles just so I can beat myself up for not living by spiritual principles.
It was a heart breaker and a mind bender when the writings of Mother Teresa were published after her death. I identified way more than I wanted to. And in what world is that an acceptable reality...I identified too much with Mother For Heaven's Sake Teresa! But she was some kind of hard on herself for not living up to her own God standards.
That's one of the giftees I get from journaling...I can look back a year or more later and read about what I was mentally arm-wrestling with back when. It is usually a jolt when I realize...and fairly often...that that problem has been cleared...either resolved in my favor or transmuted as another piece of gold for me to learn to love.
And there's the joy...recognizing a personal rue, regret, remorse as the gold I get to love.
I'm probably putting on airs, but I'm reminded of Fr. Richard Rohr's writing in his "Daily Meditation" of December 4th: However, as a person ripens in unsayable intimacies in God, they ripen in a paradoxical wisdom. They come to understand God as a presence that protects us from nothing, even as God unexplainably sustains us in all things.
Thank you.
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