LIFE REALLY IS A PICTURE SHOW

....I am come that they [meaning you and me] might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly. -- John 10:10

All of our innermost desires, i.e., success, supply, serenity, are already ours...and they come, not in answer to urgent prayer, but naturally as light results from a lighted candle. ("God Calling," April 29)

But seek ye first the kingdom of God...and all these things shall be added unto you. -- Matthew 6:33

The hook in each of these is that "abundance" and "supply" and "all these things" instantly equate to money to my ego Lucy and me. Getting mad at myself, blaming and shaming and cursin' and worsin' have never changed that instant want (dressed up as a need).

Reminds me of my beloved Tom T. Hall's song about the only things necessary to his happiness: "Loose women, fast horses...money." It's come to this: I feel like I'm putting on airs when I compare myself to Tom T. Hall purely through that one word..."money." Which cracks me up...who's kidding whom.

And really isn't that the answer to all these failings and fallings...laughter. Especially since beating our self up and wailing has not worked...never has, never will.

The answer may be "loose women, fast horses...money" to Tom T., and good on him for knowing that, but it's laughter to me. Love and laughter...but then we can hardly have laughter without love, I'm thinking.

Geez, I sat down here all set to write a lengthy sermon on the need for more self-discipline or obedience to the rule of God or some such high-sounding drivel, and I get it...again. Life really is a picture show...grab some popcorn, a soft drink, sit back and enjoy it.

Thank you.

WE NEED NAUGHT...WE ARE THE MEEK

Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth. - The Beatitudes, Matthew 5:5

It seems to me that that one Beatitude is more resisted than all the others. Or it may just be my voice I hear. But who likes the idea of going for meek? That's just another word for weak, sniveling, coward...you know, all those words we so deeply fear apply to us.

Thank about it, though.

After the Beatitudes comes the rest of the Sermon on the Mount which, to me, is simply a set of instructions on how to surrender. How to give over, give up the fight, get over our own self, be at peace by giving peace.

It is in that surrender that we realize: I am the lamb; We are the flock...rejoice and sing hallelujah!...in our meekness is Our might. He is the Shepherd. The lion Aslan walks amongst us. The angel Ari hovers over us, around us, within us, without us. We need naught, we are One.

Thank you.

GET GRATEFUL...GET OVER OUR SELF

Some time back I read Deepak Chopra's book, "Jesus." It did very little for me but in the most profound way. I pretty much pooh-poohed every other word even as I read it, but I could not stop reading it.

To me, the punchline of the book is: Judas, Jesus's boyhood friend/antagonist, was God's appointed agent in helping Jesus getting over his own self. Without Judas acting as Jesus's "emery board," so to speak, Jesus may have been just another carpenter.

When I take a pratfall, even with the best instructions in my head and heart, the trick is remembering to be grateful for the fall...specifically, to be grateful to the perceived reason for my fall. My ego, a.k.a., God's fun-friend Lucy, together with my reasoning mind, will be looking for the person to blame before I ever hit the ground.

Gratitude for the warts. That's how we come to love our enemy, why we can willingly turn the other cheek and...the pearl of greatest price...how "resist not evil" leads to peace. There. Thinking on it, that book may well be my most valuable possession.

Thank you.

TURN IT OVER...LEAVE IT THERE

"Meditation and other spiritual disciplines are largely meant to give us the toughness required to take hold of our lives," Eknath Easwaran in today's Words to Live By.

This is really important to me because it reinforces another instruction that helped turn me from the idea that my will was to be gotten rid of...period. That instruction: "We must try with a will or fall by the wayside."

Again...paradox. I kept hearing (which is not necessarily what I was being told) that we must have a goal to live toward, but we must let go of goals. Over the years, I have been given to understand that a happy life does indeed have a goal to live toward...a spiritual goal. More money, a better job, more head knowledge is not going to get us the peace we seek.

The toughness required to take hold of our lives and trying with a will are all about aligning our will with the will of the God of our own understanding. We take hold of our life by turning our life over to that God...and trying with a will to leave it there. That two-pronged goal is a goal for the rest of our lifetime if we live to be 200 according to me.

Thank you.

NOT BY WILL BUT BY GOD

It is far better to go to God in gratitude for the opportunity to release my attack thoughts with love than it is to go to God seeking anything...no matter how good, decent and pretty the "anything" I seek sounds to me.

God is always on the field. Especially when we're running scared, forgetting that our life is not our problem. Our life is God's gift to us. Our only job is to bring that life back to God. Not by will, not by thought, not by want-to even...but by God.

Thank you.

CONTINUE LISTENING FOR GOD

There are two sentences that, no matter how often I read them, electrify me. For I know them as pure truth. I know and I know I know, and I knew upon first reading them:  The first, Most important is the discovery that all my problems can be solved by spiritual principles; and the second, Love will break down all my difficulties.

The third electrifier, the spiritual life is not a theory...we must live it, explains why the first two are useless if we're just being electrified in thought by them...useless unless we are actually living them.

Loving the unlovable, accepting the unacceptable...there it is. That is my quandary today. I'm half wrestling with my recent descent into pain when I admit my faith was about a quart low. I did not doubt God, nor the existence of God in my life...I doubted myself, my ability (my desire?) to get out of self and into God when all I really wanted was for the pain to stop.

My doctor's instructions are to rest, rest, rest and drink gallons of water. This will give me plenty to go to God with. The hardest part about going to God, of course, is the constant need to pull my own thoughts back...and that, too, is done with love. Hug 'em and kiss 'em and let 'em go crazy, then continue listening for God.

Thank you.

RESIST NOT; WANT NOT

[The following is a reworked reprint of my blog of February 13, 2012.]

All my adult life the one thing I knew that I wanted was peace of mind. I wonder why it is so hard to accept that I have, have always had, peace of mind. It is right there within me with two paths to it: 1) quit resisting…anything; 2) quit wanting…anything.

Simple as that...and why does simple so seldom equate to easy?

It is humbling to me to realize that from my eyebrows up I know the secret of life itself…for that matter, so does anybody who chooses to see it. It’s when I catch myself choosing not to use that which I know that is the humbler.

I can still get blinded by my own perceptions of what I need, what I believe to be best for me…even when I’m honestly thinking of how to be of service to another. The fact is my ego dictates its wants whenever it chooses...my freedom is in remembering that God has my back and turning from my ego's wants.

All this is about my seeing just this morning that I took a risk for the benefit of another, put myself out there (for which I am grateful). My problem is that my ego-victory mind has been toying with the result I want from having put myself out there.

My ah-ha moment: I have already received God's result…and it is nada to my reasoning mind. That is what I get to be grateful for, that is where true gratitude lies.

Thank you.

GOD AND LAUGHTER...LOVE AND LAUGHTER

I had such an important blinding flash of the obvious in the middle of the night that I had to write about it at length in my journal. It was in relation to Saint Augustine's prayer, Grant what thou commandest and then command what thou wilt.

I understood my recent experience with excruciating pain, and I knew that the agony that Christ felt on the cross was necessary...which I'd always wondered about.

The answer to all my problems was given to me, and I was in awe.

I continued to write, but the more I wrote the more I seemed pretty much like a fundamentalist...born again and breathing fire. Scared me silly.

With which another blinding flash of the obvious wrote itself out in my journal: The answer to all your problems is to quit taking yourself so seriously.

God is so good to me.

Thank you.

SO SEEK

Supply is the realization of God. -- Joel Goldsmith, "Letters," p. 631

Realization. That is the goal that is unattainable by our own efforts. In general, we must needs make our self available for it, but not always...Saul, a real reprobate, on the road to Damascus was knocked off his horse by a bolt of Realization and, from that, grew into being Saint Paul. (Take that as my short-form of a saint's transformation..."my" being the key.)

Realization is not just believing or wanting to believe, knowing or wanting to know. Realization is a gift from within...we realize from our toes to our nose to the roots of our hair to the broken ends of each strand of that hair. And that realization changes us...that is the proof of an authentic spiritual experience. We are changed. Not by our thinking, reading, studying, talking; we are changed spiritually by the cosmic hand of God...according to me.

That's when our work begins. The work of remembering. Remembering that our life is not ours to fix or even improve. We learn just what Goldsmith meant when he wrote, "Supply is the realization of God." We never again need to worry about...anything.

Supply includes health, wealth, wisdom...soul. Our "work" is in living that. A start is when we accept that there are two things with us 24/7...first, the God of our own understanding, and second Lucy, our ego, both of whom will be with us three days after we're dead.

Lucy will be there holding that football and God will be there assuring us "It is I, be not afraid" (or, for simple folk like me, "kissing the boo-boo") when we take her bait once again.

The change that realization brings isn't into a fear-free, worry-free, stress-free life. The change is that we are free to fear, worry, be stressed...but why? And we grow into our own spiritual peace through proving to our self the un-necessity of fear, worry and stress. Through proving to our self that God has our back.

Seek ye first the kingdom of Heaven....

Thank you.

ALL THINGS WORK TOGETHER FOR OUR GOOD

I may be seeing light with this ongoing pain...they may have found the cause, and I may be through with having yet another EKG which they gave me repeatedly...for the sole purpose, I'm convinced, of proving that I did not need an EKG.

Remembering God in the midst of this has been dicey. I'm saying for a fact that my faith was about a quart low.

And then he abracadabra's right before my eyes...in the person of the emergency room doctor who heard me...possibly the first doctor who actually heard me. He called the doctor I was trying to get in to see, arranged for an appointment, I saw that doctor yesterday, and I believe I'm breaking free.

Plus I've lost six pounds. Don't tell me all things don't work together for my good.

Thank you.

THERE IS NO ENOUGH

So, here's my blinding flash that this illness is my sliver of gold. I was in the ER Monday at 10:00 or 11:00 AM, and I remembered that it is said we only get to God through great love or great suffering. I had just experienced the greatest pain of my life, screaming into a pillow at 3:00 AM with Ruckus licking my tears, and my not even noticing him...just remembered it in the ER.

Apparently, without consciously knowing it, my subconscious had figured that my test was to be in learning to give and to accept love which does not come easy to me; that my great suffering had been taken care of more than sufficiently in the '60s and '70s.

I realized that which I already knew: Suffering works just like love works...it does not stop, is never marked "Enough" and put aside...there will always be another chance to experience great suffering and/or great love...that IS how our realization and our experience of God grows. We cannot keep God in a box just as we first realized him...not if we are growing. And we are growing whether we know it or not.

So I could sincerely say to God this morning, if more suffering is what I need, more suffering is what I want...for you, for you.

[Sidebar: My ego, a.k.a., Lucy, quickly added, "Just don't make me suffer at that first hospital I went to, OK?" Here's why we all need a God of our own understanding...my God loves Lucy and just grins when she's on parade.]

Thank you.

TRUST...AND KEEP ON TRUSTING

God does indeed work in wondrous ways his mysteries to perform.

I spent my entire yesterday in the ER, and it was there I got my blinding flash of the obvious that this illness is my sliver of gold.

Now the learning begins.

Thank you.

MY NEW TRUTH

OK, I'm going with the "there must be a pony in here" theory. I'm feeling like this pain is a continuing barn full of horse manure, and I'm mucking it out as fast as I can. And I'm here to say that there ain't a pony in here...there's a Palomino at least. Maybe two.

The problem(s) being: physical illness is hard to love; six weeks of steady pain is even harder making an attitude of gratitude a distant hope...and may I say (not too harshly I dare hope, she noted sarcastically) especially with self-centered friends who want to teach me a lesson by quoting their own self-sanctified ways of dealing with pain: "Just think of all the poor souls who lost limbs to LEDs and feel shame for whining about this little problem." No, it did not elevate my gratitude level, but that may well be because I do have an affinity for the whine...who's kidding whom?

So if you're looking to find God or even evidence of God here today...tough. Unless you're willing to suspend belief and accept that this is God just airing his personal peeves through me. Meaning, of course, that he agrees with me that it would be nice if Gertrude kept her self-sanctified ways of dealing with pain to herself..

I like that...I do  believe it's my new truth.

Thank you.

I SEEK ANEW...WITH HOPE

"Berenbaum said that God is to be found in the rubble." A friend sent me a writing of his that had that quote in it. It was exactly what I needed for my own self this morning.

Finding God in the less than wonderful...we are told that in so many places. That's one of the things that first drew me to the Sermon. When I understood the sentence, "He prepares a place for me in the presence of my enemies," I felt it personally and universally, and I knew hope.

I seek there now.

Thank you.

THE ENEMY WHO MUST BE LOVED, II

That I feed the beggar,

That I forgive an insult,

That I love my enemy,

These are undoubtedly great virtues.

But what if I should discover

That the least among them all,

The poorest of all beggars,

The most impudent of all offenders,

Yea, the very fiend himself,

That these are within me,

And that I, myself, stand in need

Of the alms of my own kindness,

That I, myself, am the enemy who must be loved.

What then?

 -- C. B. Jung

HERE COMES GRATITUDE

I am running on empty. No. I feel like I'm running on empty...and here comes Gratitude sweeping in on the wings of a prayer.

My gratitude list:

1. for Ruckus who is finally home (and I thank you, Jesus, Joseph, Mary, Gautama, Allah, et al.)
2. for my friends who took care of the boy for the first week and for other friends who took care of him the second week 
3. for those who love me
4. for those who don't
5. for those who don't try to correct me when I'm kvetching
6. for those who do
7. for those who toted me to the various doctors
8. for those who offered to and are still on my in-case-of list
9. for this on-going, never-ending, who knows what it is pain...more than anything this pain has sent me mentally to my knees more than anything else so it can't be all bad
10. for my seat at the tables

Thank you. Repeatedly.

MY ANGEL ARI...AND FRIENDS

My morning's blinding flash of the obvious: I must needs pray for Gertrude's peace of mind.

It is as easy as water sliding over a dam to interpret another's thoughts, to internalize, personalize and resist them. And by resist, I mean "sit in judgment of."

I have been running my mind in resistance to Gertrude. Bless her, bless her thoughts as I perceive them to be, bless my thoughts about her...and my interpretation of her thoughts.

I have long since learned that I must needs pray for the peace of mind of all the many and varied Gertrudes in my life. For daily remembering is that the Gertrude who is currently occupying my mind is the one I must release to God now.

It is a great comfort to me that the majority of the time I am freed from my own judgmental mind. It is a greater comfort to me that I am not blindsided by my own despair when, not if, I find my thoughts slinging mud and passing judgment.

Not despairing but accepting is my proof that my angel Ari is on the field, riding herd and reining in my ego.

ABTW, if you don't have an angel, Ari is available at any and all times...feel free to invite him in. Just know this: He'll bring friends.

Thank you.

FRIENDS

[This is a reprint of an earlier blog of mine.]

By all means, you must find at least one loving, honest friend to ground you, which might even be the utterly accepting gaze of the Friend. -- Fr. Richard Rohr, August 10, 2014

Aren't we blessed? We have a boatload of loving, honest friends we haven't even met yet.

Thank you.

LET HIM...AND FOLLOW CLOSELY

Every day I pray the prayer of St. Francis, and most every day I realize again that the prayer is all about others, about doing, giving, living for the benefit of others.

I am ever touched by the part where we specifically seek to understand rather than seek to be understood, seek to comfort rather than be comforted, seek to love rather than be loved.

The single, sole, lone, only thing that keeps us from doing (and quit "seeking" already!) is our ego. No part of us will be adversely affected by our giving understanding rather than seeking understanding, giving comfort, giving love, rather than wanting and waiting...only our I-legislate-for-me-and-me-alone ego.

The wild and wonderful part is that prayer is answered in the affirmative even as we breathe and with every breath we take...but only as we are doing it. If we do not give it, we will not get it.

Again, we must needs remember that on our own we cannot do this. Going against our ego on our own is just another spoon to a knife fight.

He goes before me to make the crooked places straight. Let him...and follow closely.

Thank you.

ON CHANGING OUR FOCUS

I was gifted this morning with the remembrance that there are two ways we can choose to look at our world...materially or spiritually.

It is natural that we will see first with our reasoning mind's eyes, i.e., materially. It is only through a deep desire and a lot of self-discipline that we learn to view from a higher place that which we're seeing...to look through the eyes of the God of our understanding, spiritually.

I was reminded of that today because of this illness that I have been wrestling with since March 2. The cardiologist told me on Friday that he really can't say what the problem is. Which, interestingly, sent me into a tailspin, mentally searching for someone to blame for being unfairly punished in 1947 by an uncle who has been dead since 1948. It only took a minute to get there.

So I took all day Saturday to wallow in the attack of my own slings and arrows...the old "it hurts so good" still works when self is driving the bus.

This morning (I love God so much) I "remembered" that I could view this illness as no more nor less than toxins being released...the old poor, pitiful, put-upon-me toxin, the ancient love of gossip toxin, the just a tish better/worse than you toxin. A deep desire and a lot of self-discipline can and will do for me what my reasoning mind will not even consider at first blush.

Note to self: Old and ancient? It's not old behavior if I'm still using it. (Don't tell me God doesn't pay attention to every jot, tittle, and mote.)

All of which brings me to a new level of understanding my illness...I'm not shutting down from heart failure, I'm opening up to a new freedom from self. That's my story, and I'm loving it.

Thank you.

WE CAN LOVE AND LAUGH...OR NOT

Just as God is invisible, thus allowing unbelievers to unbelieve, so, too, is the ego invisible. The trouble being your ego is very visible to me...my ego is blindingly apparent to you. Which makes ego really easy to believe in.

God in us is as visible as our ego is...the trouble comes with our inability to accept that it is God that we are seeing. It's easier than breathing to name ego when we see it, but God? We can accept that we are seeing "a thoughtful act," "a good, decent, kind, lovable, generous, etc.," act or even person...but God? Whoa. And no.

The fact of God defies the rule that each something-or-other has an equal (or opposite?) something-or-other. God is good period. There ain't no other in God's world.

Maybe that's what lifts God out of the material world. God is good, so when our lying eyes see bad we blame it on the nonexistence of God...rather than accept that it is our eyes, our thinking, that is at fault, that needs adjustment. Which would invite us to change our mind. Another whoa. And no.

According to me, this is the flat-out determiner of whether we're going to have a good day or not. A good life or not. Fun or not. We can see God in everything or we can see God not. We can love and laugh or we can piss and moan. The choice is ours. Ours alone.

Choose you this day whom ye shall serve. -- Joshua 24:15

Thank you.

GRACE CANNOT BE HELD...PASS IT ON

The gift of grace is a gift for the benefit of all or it is no gift, nor is it grace.

A gift of grace to me personally is for my benefit, of course, but also for the benefit of my dearest friend, not to mention for my snarkiest foe, plus all my unmet friends and as-yet unrecognized foes.

It is my pleasure, my privilege, my obligation, my sacred duty to pass it on. (Remembering always to laugh at how hard it is for me to do that for "Gertrude"...and to love myself for how hard it is.)

Thank you.

THROW IN WITH THE SPINACH

We receive, we do not get. We receive from within...our Soul speaks and the Word spreads throughout...from in, out. We get by going after...reading, hearing, learning. In the material world, getting is essential...in the mystical world, we intuit. - Blinding flash of the obvious

Eknath Easwaran has written that it is the ordinary choices that we make every day that changes the direction of our lives.Those ordinary choices are based on our reading, hearing, learning, experiencing. We come to understand that while the ordinary, daily choices we make really are the determiner of our fate, the final choice comes to: Trust God and do something about something.

Those choices are the dough that make the bread of life...our consciousness...which lifts us into a spiritual plane. We slowly detach from reliance on our material mind...we shuck our shields so to speak.

There will come a time, however, if not in this life, then the next, when "through great love or great suffering" we fail utterly and completely...left without a penny to bless our self with or a friend to borrow one from.

We will come to know that as our moment of grace.

For here comes God!..riding the wind and breathing peace, love, joy and forgiveness. Only it looks to our reasoning mind like spinach, and...well, you know. But it is in that moment that grace completely defeats our reasoning mind and our decision is made for us...throw in with the spinach, we have no choice.

And there it is...using our reasoning mind's inch-long yardstick, spinach could never be the right answer. But there is nothing God cannot use for our good...let go and let God.

Thank you.

GRACE IS IN THIS MOMENT...ONLY

Again I am reminded that there is no God in tomorrow, there is no God  in yesterday...there is God in the here and now and that is all.

Same goes with grace. Hoping, praying to have the grace to handle an upcoming (or a long-passed) encounter is wasted breath.

It is not grace we need, it is the will to detach from our ego. The discipline to use the already present will of God within us. To follow the instructions we already have, have been learning...the directions as originally spelled out in the Sermon and honed by God specifically for us, each and every word of which is about ego deflation in depth.

Our life today is all about concerning our self with the care and comfort of others...it must be if we are to rely on the fact that God has our back. We do not need, nor is it beneficial to us, to "stand up for our self," "to take our own part," to "go to the mat" for our self. That is God's job and he does it beautifully when allowed.

Our concern today is to be sure that another shares in that gift...that gift of surrender. We're no longer "in it to win it," but to show forth God in giving over...really, to know God in giving over.

To come to believe these words for my own truth has been the gift of my lifetime. To live them...ah, when do I start?

Thank you.

MORNING MEDITATION

We must give up...detach from...all ALL material desires...to clothe our body, to slake our thirst, to feed our belly, to have a little in our  rainy day fund, to protect our health, to save our family. We must prepare to loose it and let it go.

This, not as a self determined objective, but only after we get the call...we hear the word...we receive the invitation.

To give up everything without realizing the invitation, "Leave your nets and follow me," is still self in charge, dictating in the hope of getting. Our intention is good, but our eye will always be on the self-beneficial results. There is no God there.

Thank you.

I'M STILL LISTENING

I asked God's word for me today.

He said: Do the best you can with what you've got, pray for peace and keep on trucking.

That may be garbage to you, but it's gospel to me.

Thank you.

ALL THINGS ARE ANGELS IN DISGUISE

My head is pretty much missing in inaction right now, so I'm reading over my saved quotes of various spiritual writers. This is a parsed version of a quote of Fr. Richard Rohr from back in 2013.

St Francis [of Assisi] found the transcendent not “out there” but “in here”—the transcendent was largely revealed at the depth and “inner” of things. This is what we actually mean by “angels.” Angels are the transcendent within of things. Everything, therefore, has its angel or “messenger”! They make all things “fly,” as it were, and all things are messengers of deeper messages.

If there was a snowball's chance that I could ponder that and make inner sense of it, I'd not post it today. But it'll be there for me to come back to later because I saved it for a reason back in 2013, and I'm not up to getting that reason right now...but I love it still.

Thank you.

SPEAK, LORD

What if illness is just a well-disguised call to come to Jesus...or Allah...or Buddha...or, simply, God?

I do know this. God knows me, God knows my name, my shame, my glory and my ho-hum.  So if this illness is his well-disguised call, he also knows I don't read minds, I don't read lips, I'm singularly untalented in the reading of signs.

Speak, Lord, your servant listens. And, as you well know, her hearing is not wonderful.

Thank you.

MY BELOVED POGO

Don't take life so serious, son, it ain't nohow permanent. - Pogo

I can't decide if this is the good news or the bad news.  I'm just glad (and a tish relieved) that Pogo is still my Muse.

Thank you.