LOVE IS OURS, USE IT

I'm glad I made a decision, or the decision was made for me more like, a long time ago to just follow the spiritual guide that I knew something about...very little, but something...so I just went with the Sermon on the Mount. Didn't believe 99% of it, didn't care...I just knew I had to find some spiritual message to follow, and I'd already gone down the road of any and every Church of What's Happenin' Now...which only encouraged my self-will to blossom like a dandelion and blow me away.

I've settled on accepting and trying to walk by the precept that our lives are our personal miniaturized "way of the cross"...every invitation to hurt or be hurt, to anger or be angered, that we do not accept, personalize, internalize, is the Main Man in the Book refusing to defend himself or to react in kind to the jeerers or to take their bait.

Every friend who "betrays" us (and it is interesting that it always feels like betrayal to me) is a Judas, the role model for betrayers.

What is harder to live, to make my own, is the fact that every person I bad-mouth, or "bad-think," I am betraying. There are no dual standards in spiritual life. If I choose to feel betrayed by a simple put-down from another, then I am betraying by a simple put-down of another...even/especially when I'm reacting in kind.

Back to Judas...the person he betrayed forgave him yet he hung himself. And there's the rest of the story. We can be forgiven by those we betray, it is for naught if we do not forgive ourselves. We cannot forgive if we will not accept forgiveness...from God or from another human...and we "hang" ourselves by our own self-hate. It is not "them" doing it to us, it is us doing it to us. All because we refuse to change our mind.

We change our mind not by praying for God to make us more loving or a better person...no. We go to God for God, then we Be loving, Be forgiving, Be a better person.

As long as we're asking for, we're denying that for which we're asking. We don't want to become, we want to Be, a loving person...wanting to become is just holding love out there, away from us. We're denying the gift of love we were given at birth.

Love is ours, use it. And use it in the most unlikely places. That is God walking.

Thank you.