Yet the fact remains that we are invited to forget ourselves on purpose, cast our awful solemnity to the winds and join in the general dance.-- Thomas Merton, "New Seeds of Contemplation"
Everywhere...everywhere!...the message, the same message, comes to me: Love and Laugh.
And here's our blinding flash of the obvious: If we take that literally, we will be going down that wrong road again.
Nothing sacred is on the literal level. We must go beyond reason...to love.
As Rohr writes so often, literalism is the lowest and least fruitful level. To love and laugh is to find the gold in the tar and feathers. There will be times (note, timeS) when we will feel, say, as if we're about to be tarred and feathered and run out of town on a rail.
We have learned to welcome (i.e., not resist) those times by seeing them for what they are, our "get thee within to the Father." That is how we begin to divorce our self from our own opinion/fear...by sitting in the silence and inviting a higher view of being tarred and feathered.
We are looking for the gold...listening for the Word.
This is when we use our reasoning mind aright...to remind us that our opinion of being tarred and feathered needs an update. In that regard, our own thinking will never get us there for even when it is right, it is wrong...our reasoning mind will only ever get us a self-determined objective.
There. We are now facing the proverbial East: Each time we go back to pondering how to avoid being tarred and feathered, we halt, say our welcome, settle our self again, and listen for the still small voice. Be not dismayed when the still small voice takes its own sweet time speaking or speaks of sunshine and moonbeams...feel instead the grace of gratitude that we have learned to sit and wait on the Lord. Then wait. With a listening ear.
Thank you.
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