Tuesday, January 14, 2020

BY GRACE AND BY GOD

We shouldn’t confuse insight-gathering and introspection with contemplative spirituality. Contemplation is about letting go of what is false and incomplete much more than it is about collecting what is new, no matter how true, therapeutic, or helpful it is. In other words, if personal growth is still our focus, I do not think we are contemplative yet. - Fr Richard Rohr, "Daily Meditation," January 13, 2020.

That paragraph caused me pause...which was a good thing. It allowed me to think through what being a contemplative means to me, and, if that is what I seek, who I desire to be to my  own self.

So I went to Google, and found: Contemplative spirituality is a way of focusing one's life completely on God, through prayer, living in love, and an awareness of God's presence.

Well now. Comes my shocker...there's nothing to hate there, but all I felt upon reading it was...booooring. Which is precisely what I felt all those years ago when Mom was trying to get me to attend church.

Interestingly, earlier in my quiet time, I had reflected on why we find it relatively easy to believe in the devil and, with the same ease, difficult to believe in God. The straight-up answer seems to be the devil (which I choose to know as "my ego Lucy") is never booooring (no offense meant to God, tee-hee and blush-blush).

That for sure explains my less-than-easy time of living my want-to beliefs...i.e, walking my talk the majority of the time. The Google definition of contemplative spirituality is almost exactly what I say and believe I mean about what spiritual growth is to me, and what I seek on a daily basis. But put into words from the Google machine, and my egoic mind resists...freaks, not to put too fine a point on it.

Hmmm, it just occurs to me that in my memory's teen years, being bored was the absolute worst that this body should have to suffer. There seems to be a fine chance my teen memories, albeit dormant, get active when scratched.

Maybe I need to build on the idea, when my egoic mind gets stuck in Gertrude's mud, that my spiritual growth is getting filtered through my teen thinking. And the answer to that? The s.o.s.o.. Get. Over. Yourself

Even in the face of being called boring, God loves me.

Thank you.

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