STAND ON IT

No matter what the conditions are in my life, God is there. Loving me.

All the love, blinding flashes of the obvious, insights and God gifts are as true this very minute as they were when first I received them. I stand on it.

Thank you.

LIVING IS GIVING...OVER

[The following is a reprint of my blog of January 25, 2012.]

The fact that the Father and I are One is sufficient to meet all my needs…but it is just so many words unless and until I realize it, until I experience it as I live and breathe. And no amount of self-will can cause that to happen. It is blocked by the very thought of getting.

Giving up fighting anything and anybody is the first step into realization.

Thank you.

SOME DISTANT DAY

[H]ave patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language. Do not now look for the answers. They cannot now be given to you because you could not live them. It is a question of experiencing everything. At present you need to live the question. Perhaps you will gradually, without even noticing it, find yourself experiencing the answer, some distant day. -- The German poet, Rainer Maria Rilke

This speaks to  me today. My "getting well" is going way too slow. It has developed into lung and/or breast cancer, double pneumonia, beriberi, or possibly mad cow disease. None of which is my real concern...my real concern is, who's going to take care of Ruckus?

Mark went on vacation for a week. I was doing fine until I found that out...there may be a connection.

How long, oh Lord?

Thank you.

GIVE...WITH BOTH HANDS...GIVE

It is right and fit that I receive my good first.

Less than a wisp of a whisper floated through my consciousness this morning. Lighter even than my blinding flashes of the obvious. And I knew that it is necessary, not just right and fit, but necessary that we receive our good first. And I knew this was about living in a consciousness of enough.

Several seemingly disjointed thoughts came to me then:

Good, whether it appears as a dollar, a donut or a donkey to ride, constitutes enough and our kingdom of heaven in the moment.

It seems to me one cannot have  a consciousness of enough without also having an "others" consciousness and vice versa...to me, they are entirely interdependent.

In their interdependence, their message is: "Pass it on."

There.  It is right and fit that I receive my good first. We must receive it in order to pass it on which is the reason we receive it...to give it away.

To fail to pass it on is to lose it...it cannot be held back, hoarded, stored. The supply is never ending only when it flows forth.

Thank you.

ALL ANGER IS VICTIM BASED

[The following is a reprint of my blog (reworked) of December 20, 2012.]

I read once, and I have come to agree, that there are only two emotions; i.e., fear and love. All other emotions are blooms of those two.

It is my contention that fear's first bud is hurt, the briefest feeling of hurt, which immediately springs forth as anger or self-pity, depending on our bent, but both are victim based. That slight feeling of unease which flashes hurt goes one of two ways: 1) anger to cover up the hurt which justifies hurting in retaliation; or 2) magnified hurt to justify hurting in retaliation.

We angry ones lie to ourselves when we believe our anger is proof of our non-victimhood. Unresolved anger is the cloak of the victim.

Same goes for self-pity which we hurt ones wear as if it were a crown of martyrdom...enviable in our own minds. Its only goal is to hold to the hurt so the one who hurt us...hurts. Self-pity is another cloak of the victim.

What we fail to understand is that all temptations to fear are projected from within our own selves. They are the ego made manifest...looking to glorify itself, to protect itself, to defend itself.

We perceive our projected fear as an attack from another that must be put down, rather than realizing it as an invitation from our own ego. Our ego always legislates for itself, attempting to show its power, i.e., the non-existence of a power greater than itself. It only succeeds in keeping God out.

There is nothing to fear but fear itself. There is no self to protect. The Father and I are One.

Thank you.

THE UNWANTED PEARL...SELF DISCIPLINE

With self acceptance must come self discipline else the reasoning mind will take self acceptance as its license to remain self will run riot. There is no peace there.

Our self acceptance together with self discipline leads to a turned-over-to-God life...without self discipline, we're akin to monkeys run amok.

We learn to remind our self, often and as needed: Most important is the discovery that spiritual principles will solve all my problems. 

Thank you.

SELF ACCEPTANCE...LOVE ME OR LOVE ME

Self acceptance. I think most people on this earth want self acceptance, pray for self acceptance. When...elementary, my dear Watson...the only way to get self acceptance is to accept our self just exactly as we are right this very minute.

Why is that so hard? So hard to get...to do?

I got my first glimmer of my base problem in high school when I was forced to accept that I have fine (now thinning) hair. The homecoming queen had thick, luscious, curly hair. So, of course, I went to her beautician looking to get a haircut that would make my hair BE exactly like hers. Failed, of course...blamed the beautician, of course.

I'm half embarrassed to admit that I was still doing this...it may not even be past tense yet.

But the same principle applies in finding the God of our own understanding. So many of us, well into adulthood, blame our first teachings of God for our refusal to let God be alive in us today. Either we fear him for being an avenger "because that's what we were taught" or we resent him for not being Santa Clause "because that's what we were taught."

I'm convinced that it is our refusal to accept our own self just as we are right this very minute (I'm talking warts, folks, big warts with hairs on 'em)...and joy in it!..that blocks our accepting a God of our own understanding. Plus, what if Gertrude's is bigger, better, stronger, wiser? What if I am wrong?

That's not all. If we would accept not only our warts but also our loving kindness ("I'm not really...I should do more, be better, etc."), we wouldn't need to be begging God every other minute to remove this, grow that, stop me, start me. We would free our self up to take the spiritual...and practical...steps toward making the change in our own attitude about our self. Then we could learn to love and laugh at who we are right this very minute.

Let's face it, we are each as close to perfect as we are ever going to be up to this very minute. Love that! Can't help but laugh now, can we?

Thank you.

TO CAUSE THE REASONING MIND PAUSE

I stand at the door and knock.... -- Revelation 3:20

Blinding flash of the obvious: God does  not stand at the door and knock to be let in; God stands at the door and knocks to be let out. Out into our material world to go before us to make the crooked places straight; to perform that which is given us to do.

We cry that we do not know how to access him, standing there knocking. Where's the door knob? the push button? the app?

There is none...there never was. There is simply our consciousness of the Father within that is the key.

It is our consciousness that we are preparing through our search for still more spiritual growth. When we realize it, we will see that we did not need all that seeking...but we never got it until we started seeking. Just another paradox.

Paradox to me is proof we are on the right track going in the right direction...mainly because it causes the reasoning mind pause.

Thank you.

TO KEEP IT IS TO KILL IT

This is the common temptation to substitute knowledge for actual love or service. --Fr. Richard Rohr

I don't doubt that each of us at some time or other has said or thought essentially that...and that's  not all, we believed it to be original to our self in the saying.

We hear spiritual truth, we like it, but it takes as long as it takes to come to believe it. Then we're there! We believe!! In another heartbeat, we're believing we're doing it. We're not even close...we're a mile and a half closer than we were, but...remember the line, "I've got miles to go before I sleep." There it is.

And that's the good news. Those miles we have to go before we sleep are the fruit on the tree of a loving life. The truth we come to believe is the seed, planted in our heart at birth. Every time we consciously or unconsciously do for another, that seed grows...infinitesimally but it grows.

At some point in our life, an upheaval occurs, coming, as Rohr says, as great love or great suffering. It feels like a personal tsunami within, but it's that little seed having a growth spurt, shedding the old, birthing the new. According to me.

The scales have fallen from our eyes, and we realize that which we knew for truth at a deeper level than we've ever known. We will know it for an authentic spiritual experience when we recognize it as not for us, but for others. That we must needs pass this on...we can only keep it in our life by giving it away.

As we pass it on, we realize that to keep it is to kill it, and our heart, our head and our gut are together at last. And we are at peace.

Thank you.

LESSONS A'LEARNING

[The following is a reprint, reworked, of my blog of September 29, 2011.]

Lessons I am learning:

1. Do not ever believe that what you heard was what you heard.
2. Do not accept that you’ve done enough homework.
3. Do not allow your mood to dictate your feelings…good or bad.
4. Pain does not have a memory…the most intense pain you’ll ever feel is the pain you’re feeling at the moment.
5. Never forget that God can and will if sought.
6. This, too, shall pass is a fact…cling to it.
7. Anything that has the tool within it to help me lose ten pounds, p.d.q., has good in it somewhere.
8. I am more willing to ask for help if another is helped by it.
9. God is good.
10. So are people.

Thank you.

THE ALWAYS ANSWER...LOVE AND LAUGH

I had a blinding flash of the obvious when Pope Francis was visiting here. He stopped at a crowd of people, all of them screaming and waving at him. He grasped one man's hand and said, "Pray for me. Will you do that? Will you pray for me?"

I was touched to my toes, and I realized that he was asking all the people in that crowd...no, he was asking all the people everywhere...to pray for him. Which I took to mean, pray that he know God's will for him and that he have the power to carry that out.

I pray that prayer for the entire world every morning and have for years. At the same time, I pray that prayer for three particular friends, for a person I less than love, for the son of a friend, and for Pope Francis.

I used to say voluminous prayers for others...individualized, specific to the comma and well-meaning as only a fanatic can be. Like to wore myself out. I finally accepted the instructions I had been given originally; i.e., get, and stay!, out of God's way. What a gift when I realized I can only get in God's way in my own head. My reasoning mind links up with my ego, and there it is: I See Me...doing my thinking for me yet again.

Keep it simple...love and laugh.

Thank you.

WE ALREADY HAVE THE HELP

Back in the day, when I was young...hip, slick and cool...there was very little in my world that I did not know. One day the love of my life said a hurtful something to me. Even though he denied saying it, or meaning it that way, or etc., I would not get over it. I would not let it go.

He finally said the magic formula, the full meaning of which took me nearly twenty years to grasp. I consider it an act of grace that I caught the essence of it at the time. He explained that I know him, that I know he would never deliberately say anything hurtful to me or about me. Then he said, and here's the magic formula:  I don't deny that you know what you heard, but you can't deny that I know what I said.

This is the magic formula for peace in our time. We could use it like a mantra today and be the better for it. It takes our hurt or our angry (both fear) focus off the speaker and gives us the choice between two reactions...whether to respond from love or from of fear.

It doesn't take very long to learn that to respond from love to what we heard...no matter what our reasoning mind/ego heard...is to immediately walk away in peace in our own head.  Responding from fear? There is no walk away...especially in our own head. It will play over and over, it will grow, it will do our thinking for us. All because we chose fear over love and, the key really, to put someone else's name on our own reaction.

Her nasty is not what rides me, it is my thoughts about his nasty that live as a growing bramble bush in my head. S/He is not responsible for my thoughts...I am.

I am a believer that none of this can be accomplished without God's help.

Thank you.

WE ALREADY KNOW HOW TO...NOW DO IT

Picture it: We're at sixes and sevens with Gertrude so we pray, "Bless her, change me." And God changes us...he makes our green eyes brown.

We are incensed. We were pretty much happy with our eyes. So we rant, rail and wail...in the prettiest words possible so as not to offend God further...figuring we must've already offended him or he would have blessed me and changed HER which, who's kidding whom, was the underneath message of the prayer in the first place.

God, being patient, explains to us: He knew at the get-go that humans are born into the material world, thus are going to need to change if we're going to make the journey out there and back home to him in the spiritual world.

So he gave us the instructions, the how-to in making the changes for our own self...put into words in the Sermon on the Mount for one instance. From our eyebrows up, we know how to do this. We've got all we need to "bless her, change me." What we're lacking is the want to.

The fact is, asking God to do it is just delaying doing it. Which is akin to taking a driver's ed course, learning everything we can about driving a car, buying a car, then sitting in the car and praying that God will get us where we want to go. Our true want is for a chauffeur. Like we're Miss Daisy and God's the hired help. See, we're afraid to drive. We've never done it before. So, please?

Follow the directions. Do unto others...love your neighbor as yourself...turn the other cheek. Just do it. (Which tells its own story...we rely more on the words of a Nike commercial than the words of the Sermon.)

The secret, of course, is that we must take the first step...all else falls in line behind it.

Thank you.

ON TURNING OUR MIND AROUND

To take my thoughts off that hospital, I've landed on the mystery that is Trump.

We beg for peace of mind when it is a seeking mind that we need...an all-but agitated mind that, through our search for the spiritual, we keep calmed, reined in as it were. For instance, we remember to be grateful for friends, but to get closer to foes...until they become the friends we can be grateful for.

Spiritual law is not in common sense. There is a reason, above our imagining, that Donald Trump, exactly as he is, walks amongst us today...with followers. We must go beyond our reasoning mind to be open to the answer. Trump easily goes outside any norm that we have ever known in political campaigns and yet draws thousands to him. Why?

I wonder if it isn't the hope that he'll be the one who can right the unbalance of power, wealth, law so many experience in America today. That may well be the core of it. He goes outside anything we're ever experienced in politics...and succeeds. Which tells me that he must be necessary to us just as he is right now.

If that be true, we must needs understand, not resist, the phenomenon. Plus...here's the danger...if we resist him, we become him.

We must befriend the WHY he is here, not the personality for, I suspect, any personality doing the exact same thing at this time and in this place would be getting the same results. Our aim must be to not resist the agitator for that takes our eye off the agitation, the reason we are at this place. We must seek to understand not condemn the agitation and then, the most important piece, do what we can to effect change.

Having laid all that out, here's my oh-so simple solution:

As a start, to alleviate the overreach of the Citizens United ruling, a Fund is set up for the health and educational benefits of all people who earn under $50,000 annually. It will be funded as follows: first by Wall Street, the entire contingent, hedge funds, et al., and each will contribute $1 billion; then $10 million a piece will come from each and every one of the billionaires in the country. Next, each and all millionaires, on a sliding scale, contribute at least $100,000.

In today's world, that is only a lot of money to those who earn less than $50,000 annually.

Then the rest of us...those who are far from wealthy but not in financial hurt...can make a commitment to associate ourselves with the Fund...give some time each day/week to do volunteer work in setting up the Fund, in being the hands and feet for those in need, etc.  

I do not doubt that the hardest part of this plan is coming to believe that this is not a political plan...it is a spiritual plan purely and simply to benefit our own soul.

Well, there it is. I've succeeded. I not only got my mind turned around a tish in re Trump, but I took my thoughts off that hospital.

Thank you.

I LOVE, I AM LOVED

According to Fr. Richard Rohr, "It takes all of us a long time to move from power to weakness, from glib certitude to vulnerability, from meritocracy to the ocean of grace."

He's sure right about that...the better part of that "long time" is in coming to believe that that is going in the right direction. Who in their right (reasoning) mind would make the decision to move from power to weakness?

One of the "in" cries back in the day, when one felt hurt, slighted or wronged, was "I gave my power away." Talk about a paradox. For it is only in giving our power away that we find the peace of powerlessness. Which, we come to find out, is "the secret place of the most high."

I fell ill recently and am slowly recovering. My thoughts, feelings, attitude seem upside-down and backward...not to mention unfair, my once favorite hidey-hole which I'm less than delighted to learn is patiently sitting in wait for me.

So I said to God, "Blah, blah and blah; carp, complain and whine; and furthermore...."

And God replied, "Be not afraid, it is I."

Honest. Not ten minutes ago. I knew it to be true even as it came to me.

So here's my marching orders for the day: Upgrade my attitude...get grateful...shout hallelujah...laugh at  myself...roll on the carpet with Ruckus...call a friend...giggle just for the sound of happy...rest in the certainty that I love, I am loved.

Thank you.

P.S.  I just rolled on the carpet with Ruckus! God is sooo good to me.

THE PLACE WHERE LAUGHTER DWELLS

All of life is a spiritual experience if that be our choice. The dig-a-little deeper part of that is exactly how we find our sliver of gold. The painful (oh-so-human-feels-like-humiliation-to-me) experiences we each have, must have, are not, as they look on the face of it, evidence that we are "never going to get there" (which we aren't, but that's a whole 'nother story).

This is all about my two-and-a-half day stay at the hospital. I SO want to write "at the hospital from hell," but that's just staying in the material experience. Right there is my problem and the difference between going for the gold and staying with the brass. The gold is for my soul, but the brass is funnier. Plain and simple.

I have stories...OMG, I have stories. You will never believe the stories I have unless you have done your time there. Which makes my point. I will have to totally trash the place in telling my truth about it, and unless you've been there, what does it matter?  It'll be good for a hoot, you'll forget it, but in the telling, I'll have embraced it...made it mine to repeat...repeatedly. There is no love there, not to mention that the very retelling becomes addictive and corrodes the soul.

According to me, our life's direction is to Love AND Laugh...if we're loving and laughing, we're laughing with. If we're only laughing, chances are excellent that we're laughing at. Again, there is no love there.

As Fr Richard Rohr wrote in his today's "Daily Meditation," The all-important point, however, is that if your primary motivation is to love, there is no such thing as failure--except in your failure to draw love from an ever deeper level.

The ever deeper level may be the place where laughter dwells.

Thank you.

ACCEPTANCE

I spent the last couple days in the hospital. I just checked my e-mails, and this is the first one I opened. It came on angel wings from my beloved friend Katy. Don't tell me God doesn't know our needs: 

Acceptance

A magical potion is available to us today. That potion is called acceptance.

We are asked to accept many things: ourselves, as we are; our feelings, needs, desires, choices, and current status of being. Other people, as they are. The status of our relationships with them. Problems. Blessings. Financial status. Where we live. Our work, our tasks, our level of performance at these tasks.

Resistance will not move us forward, nor will it eliminate the undesirable. But even our resistance may need to be accepted. Even resistance yields to and is changed by acceptance.

Acceptance is the magic that makes change possible. It is not forever; it is for the present moment.

Acceptance is the magic that makes our present circumstances good. It brings peace and contentment and opens the door to growth, change, and moving forward.

It shines the light of positive energy on all that we have and are. Within the framework of acceptance, we figure out what we need to do to take care of ourselves.

Acceptance empowers the positive and tells God we have surrendered to the Plan. We have mastered today’s lesson, and are ready to move on.

Today, I will accept. I will relinquish my need to be in resistance to myself and my environment. I will surrender. I will cultivate contentment and gratitude. I will move forward in joy by accepting where I am today.

Thank you.

WISDOM

[The following is a reprint of my blog of August 17, 2009.]

This past weekend, I heard Bobby Kennedy, Jr., remembering his Aunt Eunice and speaking of what a gift she was. I do not remember what he was specifically saying when, in the midst, he uttered a simple, almost throw-away, line: “Wisdom is simply knowing God’s will.”

With my gift for complicating anything, I’ve tried to explain that more fully, flesh it out so to speak. Not for the first time, I see that the more I try to explain a simple truth, the more I personalize it. Then it is no longer a simple truth, it has become my opinion.

“Wisdom is simply knowing God’s will.”

Thank you.

HOW IT WORKS...SIMPLIFIED

I belong to a Fellowship, the place where my God lives, that, to me, is perfect in every way...with one exception. The problem with this Fellowship is that it works.

I mean, in my entire life nowhere else, on finding myself badly misused, have I been told to go look in a mirror and say, out loud, "I am looking at my problem." That's the stuff my people in the Fellowship tell me. The way I know this Fellowship works is that I do that...and I crack up. I know I have not been badly misused, I know I've just taken myself too seriously...still, yet, again.

Every time I find myself in my own pity, peeved or put-upon, it is always, always, always...in my own mind...her/his/your/their fault. And this Fellowship says, in effect: "You got a problem, Babe? Invariably [direct quote, that word "invariably"] you will find that you have made a decision based on self that later placed you in a position to be hurt."

In other words, "Physician, heal thyself."

Which advice, I must admit never made a lick of sense to me, but few things written in the Bible do to me on first read...or without an interpreter. So that's my interpretation of how it's done...how this Fellowship works. We take responsibility for our own hurt feelings, our own emotional ups and downs, our own opinions, our own self. We take responsibility by looking within to our Self.

As long as we're focused out there, we're looking for, and we will find, someone to blame. And never find healing.

As my God says, "Get over yourself, Babe."

Thank you.

SEEKING THAT WHICH IS ALREADY OURS

Whenever I get that ego-feeding feeling that I've fairly well got the answer...the answer is love, love is thank you, thank you is a grateful heart, a grateful heart is grace...isn't that a pretty thought?...I pull out a note I wrote to myself in 2000.

I wrote about a co-worker, another Gertrude, another day, another me trying to get over me: Love Gertrude and her true colors, which I believe are puce and brown, and all her ways. Seek love with a will or fall by the wayside.

I reread the note because it is my example to me that even in the midst of a good, honest, from the heart prayer, my ego is on its toes, tap dancing on my good intentions. The give-away, of course, is the "puce and brown." Smart-aleck. A gotcha, Gertrude, put-down.

The one fact of which I feel sure is I do not now know The Answer, nor will I know it in this lifetime. Or the next. It is unknowable. No...maybe it's not that it is unknowable, maybe it's that it's unbelievable...we know it, we just can't believe it. It, of course, being God and the ways of God.

According to me, we're born with the knowledge and spend our life trying to find that which is ours to begin with. And that's if we're doing it right. That's how every rue, regret and remorse is our little piece of gold...each being our proof that we were seeking, we were just looking in the wrong direction.

And I must add that my pretty thought is more than just a pretty thought to me...it's my mantra. It came to me fully clothed as a blinding flash of the obvious so I don't want to leave it out there disrespected. It serves me well.

Thank you.

THROUGH LOVE AND LOVE ALONE

We often hear that life is too short. Actually, a life well lived...a turned-over to God and others life...may seem too short, but a life lived with self as our singular focus will seem way too long. We tell our self that our primary concern is for our children, for our family, for our country...for whomever or whatever we believe it to be acceptable to be concerned, or overly concerned, about.

If our goal is still more spiritual growth, if we practice living that goal, we will one day be gifted with the grace of clarity. We will realize that all those concerns are self-centered, all about the singular "me." If we're committed to living a turned-over life, we will heed that moment of reality...our blinding flash of the obvious...and consider opening our hearts to the hard-to-love people in our life.

I once knew a wo/man who died at age 104...on his 52nd birthday. Without realizing it, she prayed for death almost all of her 52 years...bitching every step of the way. His sole concern was self and things of the self. She wasn't happy about a bit of it and sought only to find the person or the reason to blame for her misery. Never once did he look in the mirror and see himself. She was to be pitied but she even made that if not impossible then highly improbable. Thank God for reincarnation so he can keep coming back until she gets it right.

The rest of the story is that we all have that 104-year-old wo/man within us. At any given time, she can and will hitch a ride in our reasoning mind without even asking permission. He'll call himself by our name and commence doing our thinking for us.

It is our job, our obligation, our sacred duty to be open to him and his ways. Welcome her, kiss those bitching thoughts on the lips, hug him and assure her she is on the right track going in the right direction.

That's how she/he/we are going to get life right...through love, just love. There is no other way.

Thank you.

SHARE IT...AND LAUGH

I've been pondering the power of crash-and-burn...the necessity of it actually. When we allow self-will to lead us down that dark and lonely wrong road again, we all but guarantee our own crash-and- burn. (I mean, whoever heard of a crash-and-burn while soaring with angel wings on the righteous road to Heaven?)

In a sense, doing it wrong is doing it right...nothing else drives us to God quicker, deeper or more desperately. In that desperation we comprehend that we are the source of our own woes.

And...best part...we accept that we might as well get grateful about it because that's an immutable.

Since we cannot stay in a place bereft of spiritual light...and there is no spiritual light in self-will...we affirm again that God's will is more desirable than our will no matter how good, true and right our will seems to us...or not all that good God's will seems to our reasoning mind in the moment.

The easy to forget, must needs remember, is that the pain of crash-and-burn lasts only as long as we choose. It really is our choice.

What we do: Run into the bathroom, take a long look in the mirror there and say aloud, "I am looking at my problem." There. Proof that our own self-centered-will struck the match that started the fire that lit up our night.

What we get: To love it and laugh. Even better, we then get to share it. And laugh harder.

Thank you.

CLING TO NOTHING...FLY

I seek to know God.

I hear, "God is Love."

I answer, "Well, I know that."

I hear, "Then live it."

We can know all there is to know about all there is to know...from our eyebrows up;  however, until our tongues speak not, until our feet walk the new road, until our eyes see the glory, until our thoughts grow still, we know naught for we are stuck in self.

We must detach from the love of self which masquerades as the fear of others and begin to love all.

Cling to nothing...fly.

Thank you.

STILLING ONE'S MIND

[The following is a reprint of my blog of February 2, 2012.]

"All spiritual disciplines are done with a view to still the mind.”– Swami Ramdas

Unfortunately, one cannot still one’s mind by thinking about it.

And knowing that did not keep me from still trying…thinking of bluebirds and babbling brooks and running through fields of gold did not still my mind. It was nice to think of those things, but those thoughts inevitably led me to who I needed to set straight or why the government couldn’t get their act together for me...now, etc., etc., etc.

What a relief it was to learn that turning my thoughts to things of God like bluebirds and brooks with the conscious thought of focusing, say on a single word, would help me discipline my mind, my thoughts. And there was my answer…focus unto forgetfulness.

I learned that I only needed do this for two or three minutes at a time, but many times throughout the day, wherever I was, whatever I was doing.

There is my strength…consciously turning to God and things of God repeatedly, daily. Keeps my mind off the streets so to speak.

Thank you.

LOVE WITHOUT RESERVE

The first thing I read this morning: "Welcome uncertainty and paradox." 

The second thing I read this morning:  "Withholding love inspires fear in another...which redounds on the withholder."

My first reading was from Fr. Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation; my second was God Calling with the quote being my own note to myself from 2014. I'm still learning the lesson of that blinding flash of the obvious from two years ago...and probably will be for the rest of my natural life.

The lesson is made clearer by the instruction to welcome uncertainty...uncertainty being a soft word for fear. For don't you think it's fear, plain old fear, that causes one to withhold love?

It may feel like a dozen different things...payback, common sense, disinterest, the list could be endless. At the core, though, if we choose to look, we will find fear curled up tight as a tick waiting to bite.  ("If we choose to look" translated means "if we choose to grow spiritually...away from self toward God.")

Love of others, without reserve, is a sure-fire defeater of ego...no wonder it's so hard to give. Which explains why we need a heavy-lifter to help us do the giving. And there is none better at that than the Father within.

Thank you.

GOD IN OUR LAUGHTER

Remember that Truth is many-sided. Have much tender Love and Patience for all who do not see as you do. -- "God Calling," March 4

The above is excellent advice for our spiritual growth, and it is also purely practical advice in the walking-around world.

When we marry our self to our own measuring stick for truth in our daily life, to our mind the other person usually comes out wrong at best or a liar at worst. Based on the adage if you can spot it, you got it, we risk not being believed our own self. Holding others to our standard for truth gives others permission to hold us to their standard for truth. Makes liars of us all.

The fundamentalist folk, those some of us pejoratively think of as the piously rigid, righteous and right, are quite honestly the least of the daily offenders. If we constantly become upset with their rigidity, there is something wrong with us. It is not rigidity to them, and if we don't buy it, why carry on like we have? Walk on by.

The practicality of remembering that truth has many sides is that it frees our own mind of the need to constantly measure and judge the words of others. I have a friend who says she does not lie, she's just a great storyteller...and she is. And marvelously funny into the bargain. There. That's God in a giggle.

Thank you.

SEEK GOD, SEE GOD

Blinding flash of the obvious: Gertrude's wrong is not what rides me, it is my thoughts about Gertrude's wrong that live as a bramble bush in my head. She is not responsible for my thoughts...I am.

This is for all of us who have been wronged, starting at birth and moving forward, at anytime or ever...and, unconsciously or consciously, live in resentment about that wrong: His wrong is not what rides us, it is our thoughts about her wrong that live as a bramble bush in our head. They are not responsible for our thoughts and/or feelings...we are.

It is in taking responsibility for our own thoughts and feelings that we invite our higher power into our thoughts, our feelings, our doings, our very being. We have long since learned that we, on our own, are powerless to upgrade them...we can only downgrade them. Even though we know downgrading leads to our own misery, we venture there...yet again and repeatedly.

There! Hear the trumpets blare! For there's the good news...misery is not optional. It is staying in misery that is optional. It is through crash and burn that we realize: Your very deep sense of failure is a sure sign that you are growing nearer to Me. ("God Calling," March 3)

With still more spiritual growth as our goal, we learn from each and every crash and burn that we are powerless, but God is not. Seek God, see God...in everything. Piles of dollars or cow piles...neither are of any significance all alone. It is God in our viewing that changes all.

Again we are reminded:  Upgrade our attitude, upgrade our problem.

Thank you.

THE COMPLETE JOURNEY

My dream: I am in rugged country, on foot and afraid. I come to the Grand Canyon, and I look across...I can barely see the other side. I look down the length of it, and far, far away it seems there is a bridge. It is so far away I cannot be sure plus, since I can barely see the other side from where I'm standing, it is highly unlikely that is a viable bridge I'm seeing.

But the Grand Canyon is, after all, the Grand Canyon, and there is no walking down the side of a rock cliff to the bottom.

I can hear wild animals behind me, heading my way. To stay there is to die a grizzly (!) death, to attempt to scale downward is suicidal, so I head toward the hoped-for bridge.

With my first step, there it is right before me. I step up onto it, and I am immediately on the other side...with no bridge behind me. It has vanished. I am safe.

And God says, "The first step you take in faith is a complete journey."

Thank you.

ON UPGRADING OUR MIND

My almost unconscious desire for God is more effective than my voicing beautiful words to heaven, seeking.... --  Blinding flash of the obvious from 1995

The thing about a BFO, when I read it sometime later, is how true it is and, incredibly, how rarely I remember it.

That's why it is helpful to learn what "the God of our understanding" really is. A single God of our own understanding stops...or slows down at any rate...our conflicting wants, wishes, desires and disappointments.

I have come to believe that all desire is nothing more nor less than a search for God. It may look to our mind's eye like a million bucks or a hot fudge sundae, but, at root, it is God. I'm a believer that that is why all desire is good...when we change our mind about the object of our desire.

After a whole lot of praying and flailing and quitting and starting over (a.k.a., self discipline), we learn, finally, that God's will is more desirable than our will no matter how good, true and pretty ours sounds to us. Because in the end, if we stay the course, we will find the momentary trauma we were praying over to begin with was for our benefit.

Only our mind is changed. Upgraded as it were. 

You meant it for ill, but God meant it for good. -- Exodus 45:5

Thank you.