WHATEVER GOD WILLS...THANK YOU

If I don't love God for what I can get, why do I love God? -- thought on awakening

I suspect we have all read if we're going to God to get, we're not going to God. Meaning, we're going to our own idea of God, i.e., Santa Claus. That came to me this morning as I awoke when out of nowhere...pop quiz: If I don't love God for what I can get [or what he can give me] why do I love God?

We seek God, but what is it that we're seeking that we attribute to God? What are we seeking that we think can only come from God? We have long since let money, power and/or someone to love go...from our eyebrows up at any rate.

We pull the pretties out and parade them around in our head...peace, love (in a nebulous form), joy. [Cow-pile alert: When nebulous anything comes to mind as a viable want-to, we can be sure that Lucy's on the loose, again.]

We are learning...have been learning for a lotta, lotta years, it seems...that Soul-satisfaction comes from our care and concern for others...from giving to, from doing for. Lesson learned: That is true!

What we're not taught...can't be, I'm guessing...is that our ego-based reasoning mind goes right on wanting...for us, for our personal good, for our personal peace...for our I Got Mine. That's if we're doing it right!

There it is...there's the hardest lesson. We do live in a material world, we are gifted with material thoughts, wishes and wants, and our life is our education, learning how to live in that world happily and usefully whole.

Some of us take to the spiritual way, some go for formal religion, some become atheists, some don't care one way or the other. It makes no nevermind which path we choose to walk, but we're better off within our own self if we do it as a happy, useful person.

We are going to wind up where we wind up. My personal idea of Heaven is me doing high-fives with Jesus, giving belly rubs to Ruckus and strolling across Heaven with family, friends and lovers who have gone before me.

And I'll take whatever God wills for me here and now.

Thank you.

LIVING IN THE IMPERFECT NOW

Living in the imperfect now is the constant shucking of the personal...even projections of wants, motives, aspirations which are dressed up to seem for the benefit of others. 

We do for the benefit of others for the benefit of others. If we're doing it to get a closer step-up to God, we're doing it for glory...and doing for glory is entrenchment in ego. 

What is so hard to grasp is that we are already as close to God as we are ever going to be...only our realization of that fact needs honing, and that's not by us, but by God in us.

Union [with God] is not a place we go to later--if we are good; union is the place from which we come, the place from which we’re called to live now. -- Fr Richard Rohr, "Daily Meditation," April 29, 2019

Thank you.

THE WELL-DISGUISED BLESSING

We, all the people of the world, come in need. That is the cosmic nature of birth into the material world. We have but one need and that is God. God is our only need.

We also come with free will, an ego and a reasoning mind. Our egoic nature aligns with free will and our wants are born.

Our great block is those wants. We invariably mistake our want du jour for a need and go haring off trying to fulfill that want...usually praying God give it to us. The tripwire is our forgetter, our ego's most powerful tool. We forget we have but one need, God, and expend our self on getting our want. We learn, we forget, we relearn that our wants will be met or not...met through circumstance, karma, our self-driven machinations...or not met and forgotten in the drive for another want.

And that's if we're doing it right. That is the nature of life on this plane.

Those who seek God live their life seeking God...usually coming late to the realization that they have that which they seek. The only lesson to learn is how to get our own self out of the way in order to hunker down with him...for him to live our life, in short.

Those few will follow the same path until we come to the proverbial fork in the road. The one with the marker: Choose you this day whom ye shall serve. Then our selfless life begins...with our permission being required on a daily basis. Ah, there it is, the cosmic realization: That is the blessing.

Thank you.

AN UNREMITTING WILLINGNESS FOR PEACE...

The essence of all growth is a willingness to change for the better and an unremitting willingness to shoulder whatever responsibility that entails. -- Given me by a friend who does not recall where she read it.

Whatever is received is received according to the manner of the receiver.  -- Thomas Aquinas (Interpreted: How you see is what you see; the who that you bring to your reading of the Scriptures matters. -- Fr Richard Rohr)

Eyewitness testimony is one of the most unreliable forms of evidence. -- National Center for State Courts

I am not responsible for what you hear me say. Nor am I responsible for how you choose to interpret what you hear me say. -- response to a verbal attack from a person mishearing the speaker.

All of these quotes must be in our toolbox (and used daily!) if we are sincere in our efforts to cease fighting anyone and anything...if we are sincere in our desire to know and to show peace. Or, if love and laugh are ever going to be our go-to response...to life itself.

Thank you.

OUR NEED BRINGS OUR SUPPLY

Buddhism teaches us to skillfully discern the source of suffering, detach from our expectations and resentments, and end all suffering.  *  *  *  *  Things change and grow by dying to their present state, but each time it is a risk.Yes, I am saying that the way things work and Christ are one and the same.-- Fr Richard Rohr, April 26, 2019, "Daily Meditation" 

'14 - The God of my understanding is in my immediate need...NOW. It is my need that brings forth my supply, whatever that may be. -- my note in today's "God Calling"

What is brought forth, our supply, is rarely what we had self-determined our supply need be. As long as we resist that which is supplied, a spiritual understanding in the form of realization or acceptance is denied or, at best, delayed.

The answer for me today really is in Rohr's words, above, especially in the realization that  things change and grow by dying to their present state, That is our supply not as we wanted but as God determined. Say that we sought a friend and were given a tormentor. Ah, once we got over our own self, by moving closer in order to understand rather than to be understood, we began to build a friendship...and find the friend we sought. 

Isn't that the Buddhism teaching? Simply, to skillfully discern the source of suffering, detach from our expectations and resentments, and end all suffering.  

All our thinking has been done for us. Now we follow the road already mapped for us...you know, the one less traveled.

Thank you.

RESENTMENT PREVENTION

Have you ever been ghosted by a friend? Unfairly treated by your boss? Unjustly accused and then not believed?

What was your first response when it happened? It seems to me the responses are split between hurt and angry...X% want to weep, X% want to lash out, both staying stuck in victim. That's the conundrum...weep or fight, both sides are stuck in the same place, namely, victimhood. Which, face it, is resentment dressed in Unfair's clothes...poor, pitiful, put-upon me or rigid, righteous and right, often both at the same time.

The longer we stay there the more firmly entrenched we become in our victimhood. We become the Victim, the Martyr, the Downer, alone again naturally...or, the Bully, the Tormentor, the Smart Mouth, alone again naturally. 

Bottom line: our hurt, our anger...our victimhood...has become the God of our understanding. A god built on self-pity will take the builder down always and all ways. The only lasting way out, according to me, is a complete change of mind and heart, i.e., still more spiritual growth.

Best way to start making our U-bie is to pray not for the cause of our pain but for our thoughts about the cause of our pain. Keeping it simple, we pray our thank you. God knows the drill...we do not need to spell anything out. He knows our perception, and he knows the reality...often two entirely different matters.

It is in that great unknown-to-me that miracles materialize...we pray thank you and God's you're welcome transforms us and our problem. 

Ah, we love and laugh again, naturally.

Thank you.

ON PLEASING GOD

[The following is a reprint of my post of April 27, 2017, slightly reworked.]

I was mind-tripping earlier this morning, and my ego Lucy took control. She was running wild...which invited the worst of my rues, regrets and remorses to slither out, and out they came, hissing. There was one regret in particular that was causing me pain, and just as it was about to pierce my heart...again...I knew: and this, too, pleases God.

There it is...the result of our search for still more spiritual growth: We no longer feel the need to fight our own uglies. Once we accept that God has our back, we can quit trying to control our ego. We now live with the assurance that God is alive and well in our heart and in our Soul...ah, there is nothing to resist.

When (not if) Lucy starts her dizzying whirl, we can now hug her and kiss her and release her back into the wilds without any thought of asking for aid. We have become our own aid-station as long as we never forget who is the lead doc in that aid-station...that it is not you, it is not me, it is not us. And it never will be.

This, too, pleases God.

Thank you

WALK IT AUTHENTICALLY INSIDE OUT

[The following is a reprint of my post of January 28, 2018.]

We want, we seek, we need to pay attention to what [Jesus] actually taught and see how we can begin to walk it authentically from the inside.

There it is. The reason why we fall to our knees and thank almighty God for the ankle biters and body blows that come into our life. They come seemingly unbidden...some may appear to come with malice aforethought. We learn that even when meant for ill, God meant it for good.

Those biters and blows represent Jesus’ upside-down world where the last are first and the first are last, and all is for our spiritual good. We begin to walk our spiritual growth authentically from the inside.

When we're living in our reasoning mind world, we're in it to win it. Hard lesson a-learning: In that world, even when we win we lose for is no God there.

Thank you.

ON ACCEPTING OUR UGLY

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

C. G. Jung inscribed over his doorway, Vocatus atque non vocatus, Deus aderit, “Invoked or not invoked, God is still present.” (From Rohr's "Daily Meditation," April 22, 2019.)

Our answers are never where we look. If they were, we would need not be looking...even when our quest is to realize God. The human condition is such that we want to realize God in order to get supply...by whatever name we call supply at the moment.

As long as we want to realize God in order to get anything...peace, love and joy included (those are included at birth, all we need do is use them)...we are stuck in the rational mind, the egoic mind.

The spiritual learning tool is acceptance at a boatload of levels. To send our thank you prayer for our thoughts about another when s/he has sent us another snark is our first step up even though we're feeling less than pleased.

Ah, but feeling like smacking them is another to be accepted...not to stay there, but to stop nurturing the self-condemnation about it. We move away from nothing until we accept it just as it is...when we fight our ugly, our ugly wins, same as we can't beat hate with hate.

We go to God for God and that is all, because God is all. Just as Jung's inscription reveals, Invoked or not invoked, God is still present.

Thank you.

BE AT PEACE...GET GRATEFUL

God's gifts are given unto all of us impersonally and wholly without favoritism; there is no provision in the kingdom of God for leaving anyone outside of His love and grace. -- "The Gift of Love," Joel Goldsmith

No matter what we think about it, no matter how we feel about it, we can never be outside of the mercy of God.

Why not get grateful?

Thank you.

ON AIMING TO BE A FREE-OF-ME PERSON

Sometime ago I committed to myself to try "answering not a word" to perceived slights, snubs and snarks. And to carry that off in a pleasant manner...neither a huffy, nose-in-air, spin and leave, nor a happy-face facade.

Clearly, this would have to be God's work, and that was my hope, to give over to God from the inside.

I'm doing so-so...better than I should have expected but not even close to what I now know I did expect.

It may be that I did not follow that mental commitment through to imagining what answering not at all might realistically look like on the other end. Or it may be that this is as good as I can get...which isn't awful, it's just that it is really, really hard work to not work at making a good change...to just trust God and be the change I want. I just pray I keep trying.

Oh my, I just read my "God Calling," and on this day in 2011, I wrote,  BFO: if I seek and do as Jesus sought and did, I will be...a free-of-me person. Answered prayer.

Thank you.

THE PRAYER OF ABANDONMENT

On this Good Friday, this Prayer perfectly expresses my want-to:

The Prayer of Abandonment by Brother Charles de Foucauld (1858–1916) expresses openness and intention to give up control to God in the middle of life, even before our physical death:

Father,
I abandon myself into your hands;
do with me what you will.
Whatever you may do, I thank you:
I am ready for all, I accept all.

Let only your will be done in me
and in all your creatures—
I wish no more than this, O Lord.

Into your hands I commend my soul:
I offer it to you with all the love of my heart,
for I love you, Lord, and so need to give myself,
to surrender myself into your hands without reserve,
and with boundless confidence,
for you are my Father.

Thank you.

WHY CAN'T WE ALL BE MORE LIKE OUR DOGS?

One year ago today my little boy Ruckus went back to Heaven. I hug him, I kiss him, I let him go.

In looking back, I picture him this past year, passing out doggie delight to all the other angels and receiving same. He was an ace receiver...even better giver.

I don't doubt for a minute that he's connected with my two Maltese, Ari and Oats, not to mention Dot, my childhood Dalmatian.

They're all bounding across Heaven...Oats will be peeing on Saint Peter's robes every chance he gets, but he's always sorry about it. Ari will be looking for...and finding...love anywhere and everywhere. Ruckus will be looking for love in all the wrong places and making them the right places by his delight. Dot will be indulging them, majestically, with her proud and protective love.

It's a tish precious to fantasize all of them, every so often, peeking over a cloud to see if Mama's coming yet. Precious or not, I hold the picture dear.

Thank you.

LOVE...AND THAT IS ALL

[The following is a reworked reprint of my post of September 26, 2017.]

G. K. Chesterton, when asked what the trouble with the world is, replied, 'I am.'

When our actions are "less than" toward others, we are living in two worlds. Love = One.

What we see is always our self; what we receive is always sent by us to us...it is never her/him/them. There is no her/him/them.

The Father and I are One...we are one with the Father.

Thank you.

GOD'S HAND IS IN IT...TO AND FOR US

Many resist the idea that acceptance is the answer, never mind the question. Then extreme examples of hate, violence, the KKK, Nazi Germany, etc., are posited to bolster that resistance.

It seems to me this is starting at the end of a losing argument. We seek spiritual growth to avoid that end, to find a new beginning in fact. One basis for that new beginning is the Sermon on the Mount...to keep it simple, I hold to that.

For instance, agree with your adversary quickly is found in the Sermon. Right off that goes against the reasoning mind, detaching from which is a first requirement for our new beginning.  To agree with our adversary is to come to common ground with our adversary. We do not agree to avoid an argument...one cannot come to common ground by avoidance, only by coming together. And that's where God is...in our coming together, in our search for peace, for commonality.

Arguments between egoic humans rarely are eased solely by the efforts of the parties to the argument...probably because there is little honest want-to there. To begin, we must needs turn within to our own God-driven consciousness of good. It only takes one in the party to go there...and hold there...the majority of One.

When self-will drives our mental Mercedes, we cling to power and profit as our guide, and that guide ensures continuing hate and violence, and all they entail. When God's will drives our bus, we are freed to trust that the Father knows our need and has already supplied it to and for us.

There. God's hand is in it. Always and all ways.

Thank you.

EGO'S FAILURE IS GOD'S HAPPY

Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. -- Matthew 22:37-40

On those two commandments hang the truth of the statement, We have ceased fighting anything and anybody. How can we fight anybody or anything when/if we are following those two commandments? And by following is meant doing them.

Here lies the nut of still more spiritual growth: The decision to give up self-will is more deeply understood to be accepting God's will. Which cannot be known except in the instant, and then only on looking back. We look back and realize the miraculous nature of what we said, thought, did was unplanned but in the end...perfect.

The time between the happening and the end is our find-the-gold-in-it time...that time we spend detaching from our reasoning mind angle, seeking our Soul's slant.

As Fr Richard Rohr wrote in his "Daily Meditation" this morning,  Like most spiritual things, it cannot be understood with the dualistic or rational mind, but only at the level of soul.

That is the gut-bucket truth about Jesus' two commandments and, therefore, about "we have ceased fighting....."

Trying to reach acceptance of either of those by reason alone is guaranteed failure to our egoic mind,  which is the good and the bad news both together. Ego's failure is our new happy...and God smiles.

Thank you.

WHAT WE SEE IS ALWAYS OURSELVES

Most important is the discovery that spiritual principles can solve all of our problems. -- Anonymous

The point of living by spiritual principles is not to distinguish oneself from the ungodly, but to stand in radical solidarity with everyone and everything else. (This is a paraphrase most likely of Fr Richard Rohr.)

To stand in radical solidarity with everyone and everything...to actually stand with and not just preach about it...is to recognize our current Jailer as our scapegoat when, in fact, s/he is our own self, always our own self.

Ah, but the same goes for our current Lover...scapegoated with hearts and roses, albeit the same self-centered fear runs through.

Our Jailer is the manifestation of our projected fears...our Lover, the manifestation of our projected wants.

Physician heal thyself.

Thank you.

ACCEPTANCE IS TO LOVE AND LAUGH

I just came across the page in my "God Calling" with the message: Such wonderful things are coming to you, Joy - Peace - Assurance - Security - Health - Happiness - Laughter.

Then it goes on: Claim big, really big things now. Remember nothing is too big. And my mind immediately leaps to my want du jour. It can be a puppy, it can be a new bathroom, it can be any material things in the world, but nevernevernever is it peace of mind.

It has taken all these years for me to finally get it...I don't need to claim peace of mind because I have peace of mind. I live in peace today...with the usual temporary bugaboos and haints of the human condition.

The Father knows my needs...it is for me to align my wants with those needs. In other words, to seek God's will in my life as I breathe. Period. End of lesson. To remember that nothing is too big to claim is to go to God for God and that is all.

And to love and laugh with God when I forget.

Thank you.

ON BUILDING FAITH

It's an oldie but a goldie that knowing Truth is essential until we know it, then it's the block we must overcome to prove that same Truth.

We can know that He goes before us to make the crooked places straight, but until we start walking an unknown path, with apprehension and anxiety nattering in our ears, that is pretty much just knowing the words...what they mean, not how.

The blinding flash of the obvious: Feel fear and walk toward it is the way we build faith, the way we prove the truth of those words. Our problem is in our reliance on our reasoning mind. We refuse to detach from reason in order to start walking without beforehand faith.

We finally make our attempt...we hold our nose and take a leap of faith. Whoa! Here comes the knee-knocking shocker...we wind up feeling wrong, stupid, and dumped on...by God!

That's the place where the majority of us (I'm guessing) make our U-bie and turn back to self-determined objectives. Talk, talk, talk, think, think, think, over-analyze repeatedly...and feel safe, mainly because we're not running amok in public. No one need ever know is our warm and fuzzy blankie.

Comes another BFO...all that happens if we're doing it right. That is how faith is built.

We have answered an inner call to seek spiritual growth. That inner call keeps calling. Who knew?

Our watchword now is discipline, that dreaded word. But it is discipline that keeps us trying to show forth love, to do right, to be a better person...and failing in our self-determined attempts. As many times as we need to fail to come to utter egoic defeat.

We lie there in our splattered state until we are woke and somehow understand that this is the necessary place for us to be in order to hear the word. The word is: Listen. 

Our daily discipline has become: Sit and wait on the Lord. Listen. Pray Thank You. Walk out knowing He goes before me to make the crooked places straight. 

Thank you.

OUR GOOD MAY NOT COME AS WE EXPECT

The point is that no one should ever [do anything] merely in the hope of a reward because their reward may not come from that direction. -- Joel Goldsmith, "The Gift of Love"

There. That is the cosmic nature of thank you. We pray our thank you without regard to the reason...whether it be good or not appearing.

To the rational mind, thank you is extended for the good that has already been delivered into our head or hands. Spiritual growth teaches that all things come from God...God is love...love is good; ergo, we pray thank you for any and all things that come to us before we have our hands or head on it.

We are putting into place on a daily basis the lesson to trust God, not our own understanding. Practice this, and for a fact,  we will never again need fear being bored.

If we're still into expecting rewards...ah, another lesson in learning. Our reward may not come from the direction we expect. We're expecting a good, and a less-than-good arrives...thank you. And vice versa. Paradox alert: Once we've accepted the less-than-good and learned to live gratefully with it, almost assuredly, we will discover it to be a pearl beyond price. And sometimes vice versa.

Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. —Proverbs 3:5

Thank you.

WHEN BEING WRONG IS RIGHT

We know that there's much to be done. Yet we do naught. We have heard do the next right thing, but, caught in self, who knows what the next right thing is? Fearing doing the wrong thing, we ponder. We react in thought, and who's kidding whom? That's resentment putting on airs, reacting in thought...and resentment feels like action to the self-absorbed.

That is akin to waiting to act until we know for certain sure what God's will is. By thinking. Waiting for Godot.

I am convinced that just doing something about something is purely spiritual because it requires us to quit thinking and do...to risk being wrong.

We've got a fix for being wrong...promptly admit it. The word is when not if wrong, 'fess up. Not only that, but how else can we trust that God can and will intervene in our life in our behalf except by risking our ego's face?

Nobody ever got to heaven just thinking on it. Nobody ever got to heaven mistake free, either. Life's ultimate challenge: Hold your nose and take a leap of faith.

Thank you.

GO BEYOND REASON TO PEACE

We who fear are blessed for our very fear turns us toward a Higher Power. Those of us who also have been blessed with the gift of desperation know that the power we seek must be a power for good for we have already walked with the meanest power...and found fear beyond imagining.

We can accept (which happens in God's own time) that the fear we are feeling is that Higher Power whispering an invitation to come rest with him, our Father. Simplified, our new goal is to accept fear as God's calling card.

Accepting it as such by praying our thank you, we begin to know freedom from self-centered fear. From which, who's kidding whom, we will never be entirely free. There. We have come full circle: We who fear are blessed for our very fear turns us toward a Higher Power.

The secret to living in a peace that passes understanding: Whenever a dread, i.e., fear, comes to mind, immediately if not sooner acknowledge and welcome that dread as God's perfect gift to us personally. That eliminates our egoic itch to analyze it into reality.

We now have a spiritual focus, learning to live in the light of welcome. That singular focus can and will establish us in a love beyond reasoning.

Thank you.

EGO'S WATERLOO IS OUR SPIRITUAL GOAL

We work so hard to learn how to "stand up for our self," to "take no guff," to "push back."  For whatever reason, we have accepted the canard that our self-esteem rests there.

In pondering Proverbs 3:5, Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding, it seems to me that all that hard work bolstering our self-esteem is simply us leaning on our own understanding, serving our egoic wants as opposed to seeking our spiritual needs.

Clearly, trusting in the Lord with all our heart is not being ever prepared to stand up for our self, etc. Who's kidding whom? If that's our prep work, the cause will come to us, and it's off to battle we go. Who has given up fighting anything and anybody?

Trusting wholly in the Lord requires training our self to let the Father within do his perfect work, speak his perfect word, through us. That training is all about giving over, giving up, giving in...and for way long feeling just rotten about it. We question our own self or our own sanity, our own motives, as in, Am I being a chicken? Is this me copping out? Am I just currying favor?

So we stand up, take no guff, push back and, if we're doing it right, shortly thereafter feel rues, regrets and remorses. That's spiritual growth for you. If we've got that feel-good going for us, we're almost certainly going down that wrong road again...mainly because that feel-good usually comes from getting over on someone...setting her straight, making him pay, having the last word. There is no spiritual there...a boatload of ego, but no God.

We can tell we're on the right road going in the right direction by the tone of our response and our inner peace...say when we're pushed and our response is our truth spoken softly without defenses. We need never worry that God will expect us to feel  less-than in order for another to feel better-than. If s/he thinks they are, that's on them and not ours to accept or resist.

As it turns out, that will ever be the nut of our problem.  If we let it, ego will resist till three days after we're dead another thinking they won. It isn't necessarily their thinking they won, it's our believing they think that. That's ego's Waterloo and our spiritual goal...that's our within proof that our worst fear realized can be our saving grace.

The way there: Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding,

Thank you.

LOVING, LAUGHING, GETTING HUGGED BY GOD

Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. —Proverbs 3:5

There it is...the entire instruction book on how to live fret free. 

Again I come to this realization, and again one more teensy-tiny bit of understanding is opened to me. As in, the same instruction must needs come again and again and again. That's how we come to own it, or, more like, that's how it comes to own us.

We often hear what I consider to be a canard, that we can't have fear if we have faith. Yes we can. But we need to experience fear from a different angle. Stuck in our reasoning mind, fear can paralyze us, or cause us to run amok in public...our worst fear. 

If, however, we're following our fret-free instruction book, we will trust the Lord and not lean on our own understanding. We can come to realize that fear is God's calling card...that fear is the angels calling our wandering thoughts home. Trust that. At every opportunity. Over and over again. 

Soon...could be now...we will be loving and laughing at our own self and getting hugged by God.

Thank you.

OUR ANSWER IS UNKNOWABLE

Until we are led to the limits of our present game plan and find it to be insufficient, we will not search out or find our real Source. -- Fr Richard Rohr, "Daily Meditation"

I feel like I am being/have been led to the limits of my present game plan, and it feels insufficient. But what is sufficient? Just feeling good isn't it...it is, but it is way too temporary. Feeling peace, love and joy is comparable to the breeze of butterfly wings, speaking of temporary.

These feelings of mine did not start with my dear friend's recent death, but I suspect that brought them to the surface. He first felt ill around March 7, and he passed from this world on March 25. I call that grace of  God...ill just over two weeks, or just under three...which may be a good way to go since he didn't die in his sleep without feeling ill the first time. Which, no doubt, is the preference of the majority of us.

We may want to pass in our sleep without ever feeling ill, but it's likely we all want peace, love and joy without end, too. 

Maybe our serious spiritual work is to understand why that is not God's will. 

Why our "sweltering at the task" is God's perfect will. 

Why so often our very best efforts...our best spiritual efforts...wind up feeling like slung mud slowly sliding off our face...and for all our world to see.

We may find the answer. We may realize the answer. We may go out and preach the answer. But, guess what? That won't be the right answer. 

The right answer is unknowable. Until we know it. At which time, we'll be dead for three days. Or so I'm guessing.

Thank you.

ON BREATHING UNDER WATER

After her teenage daughter Jenny died in a car crash, Mirabai Starr described grief as being “suspended in the invisible arms of a Love I had only dreamed of,” “drowning” but discovering she could breathe under water. -- Fr Richard Rohr, "Daily Meditation," April 5, 2019

I was touched upon reading "discovering she could breathe under water." I felt God smile on me...again. 

Some years ago in a dream I saw me as a child at the ocean, and I was drowning. I was under the ocean's waters, seeing fishes float by, and I was half afraid but not yet panicked. And I heard? felt? knew? that I need be not afraid, that I could just breathe...I could breath under water. And I did.

Somehow I knew that dream was important and of God so I "pocketed" it.

[Sidebar: It wasn't until 2011 that I learned that Fr Richard Rohr had written a book entitled "Breathing Under Water," and its direct contact was confirmed...to me at any rate.] 

In 2009, a beloved friend was dying of cancer, and she called one morning, crying. Her fear of death, specifically not being able to breathe, was causing her to feel claustrophobic...and terrified. So I shared my dream with her.  

Although none of us above the grass know for certain sure about our happenings when we enter the ether of the next world, daily we accept God's secrets that he relays in his own ways...you know, intuitions and coincidences, those "is it odd or is it God?" happenings. Personally, I consider my dream one of those secrets God imparts. 

I told my friend that I choose to believe the way of the dream is the way it is in death...we are free, breathing comfortably under earth or water, with the wind or through the fire. 

The story allayed her fears and comforted her. I believe that is how God passes on his secrets...word of mouth by way of love and laughter.

Thank you.

TURN TO REASON, RETURN TO GOD

Spiritually speaking, you will be led to the edge of your own private resources. At that point, you will stumble over a necessary 'stumbling stone.' You must 'lose' at something, and then you begin to develop the art of losing. .-- from a "Daily Meditation" of Fr. Richard Rohr

The Buddhas do but tell the way, it is for you to swelter at the task. -- The Buddha

Too often when we're sweltering at the task, it feels that we must be "doing it wrong." And just believing from our eyebrows up what we have been told, that this is the "right" way, does not immediately calm our doubting mind.

But that is the way of still more spiritual growth, developing the art of losing. Of detaching. Of subtracting rather than adding on. Yet our reasoning mind will kick in: Put into words, that sounds doable, but put into action? Isn't that what once invited rues, regrets and remorses? Our learning of mirror image, the difference between spiritual and reason, stays our debate.

We must go down that wrong road again to realize we are on the wrong road. There...a clue that we're making progress...a paradox. It takes as long as it takes for us to become willing to turn from our own reasoning thoughts, to seek help, and to seek help not from out there but from within, from an invisible, inaudible Higher Power.

Maybe this is our great test: To walk our spiritual-growth way, stumble, slide over to reason, feel uncomfortable, return to spiritual, feel comforted...all the while with blinding flashes of the obvious to light our way.

Maybe.

If it is not, for sure we will be shown...if we continue to seek still more spiritual growth.

God can and will intervene in our life in our behalf.

Thank you.

OUR CRAPOLA, GOD'S GOLD

Some of us object to saying thank you "ahead of time," that is, before we get (or see) the results of what we're praying for.

The great lesson we learn is that the results are already in. As we live our life, the grace of God goes one step ahead making the crooked places straight. God performs our life and all its miracles in the Now.

We can quit praying for what we perceive we need, which is in truth simply our wants, and trust our thank you for gifts as yet unseen but simultaneously unfolding. Lift up our eyes.

I was humbled when I discovered, admitted and accepted that my most earnest desire had never been for love or for money...it had ever been for glory. Glory in the disguise of a simple atta girl, a pat on the head, a heartfelt Yes! now and then.

It was only through deep digging with my mentor and my friends, not to forget the grace of God, that I realized that I get those almost daily...we all do in one form or another. But, tell me, is it ever enough? Not to put too fine a point on it, but NO. A simple atta girl? Give me a break...after all I did and do? I get an atta girl? So says my ego Lucy, sotto voce.

I'm half humbled, half tickled this morning to suspect that what I am walking through right now is God's vision of my glory. The old mirror vision...I'm seeing crapola, God's seeing gold. The good news is that I know from my toenails up that we must walk through our own crapola, put our own name on it, kiss it on the lips, and laugh out loud...or at least giggle a little...at our own self.

If that be true, then God is pleased for me, for my soul. That's close enough to perfect for me.

Thank you.

BUT DON'T FORGET TO LOVE AND LAUGH

Blinding flash of the obvious:  Until I realize God in you, I pray idle words in blessing you.

I have come to believe, and am learning to live, what is daily in my face: The point of a spiritual life is not to distinguish oneself from the ungodly, but to stand in radical solidarity with everyone and everything else. (Rohr paraphrased.)

Living the spiritual life is unbelievably difficult because it requires us to willingly divest our self of knowing and to invest our self in unknowing. According to me.

We are seeking still more spiritual growth, and we are learning new and wondrous at God's own pace...we're feeling peace. Then, with no warning, we come to a spiritual cul-de-sac.

We've mysteriously landed way back yonder in spiritual grade school, knowing better but not knowing better. Because: this time it is not me, this time it is them, this time I need to push back, this time I have prayed for them, and it has not done a lick of good, and they are just toxic, dysfunctional and mean into the bargain. This time I'm riding herd.

We have slid into our own egoic quagmire. And getting out will take as long as it takes.

The only thing I'm fairly sure of is having "getting out" as our goal will keep us stuck in self...right, in a word. And self-righteous into the bargain. Plus rigid. We stay in our own fix-it mind, and we'll stay in our own fix-it mind.

What is hard to grasp is that this is the natural order of seeking still more spiritual growth. We lean on that which we have learned and say our thank you. We recall lessons learned, and we trust our daily readers that have stood the test of time. Readings such as: [I]f you are looking at honest men and women and neglecting to see the Christ in each one, do not think for a minute that here and there one of them is not going to trip you up. -- Joel Goldsmith, "The Gift of Love"

We go to God for God, and that is all.

Thank you.

OUR ONLY PROBLEM...SELF

Feeling out of sorts, Bunky? Feeling down, less than, agitated, irritated, peeved and put upon?

Do something about something. There. That is the miracle-working words given me by an old, snaggle-toothed, reformed reprobate years ago. The rest of his words are the gold: That's the sure-fire way out of self, and self is your only problem. I paid him no mind at the time, but I never forgot.

It was some years later before I experienced the truth of his words. Stuck in the mire of my own making, i.e., my life at the time. I felt paralyzed. I did not know, and I did not know what I did not know. So I thought about it, that which I did not know.

Then my personal light bulb flashed over my head: Mood follows action. I realized that until we do something about something, we are stuck in our own head chasing our own thoughts...kinda like being on a mental hamster-wheel without a prayer.

Blinding flash of the obvious: We must risk being wrong. We do nothing because we do not know for certain sure what to do. The quiet word is the too-seldom used, when (not if) wrong, promptly admit it.

Then do something else. Best run our intention by God and a friend or mentor, then just do it. The Oh rats! truth is...we can run it by God, by our mentor, use our best thinking, and it still be wrong.

We will know that we're growing spiritually when we realize that's us! On the right track going in the right direction. Out of self.

Thank you.