GET CRACKIN', TIME'S A-WASTIN'

All this talk and turmoil and noise and movement and desire is outside of the veil; within the veil is silence and calm and rest. -- Bayazid at-Bastami (from Eknath Easwaran's "Words to Live By," July 3)

As I read that this morning, I thought of the Trump effect, the pandemic, the Black Lives Matter movement, the financial condition of so many, the condition of America itself...then, of course, how it is affecting me, then you, then the country, then the world. Apparently, we are stuck outside the veil, in the material world, the home of our reasoning mind.

I recalled what Dr. Barbara Holmes had written about the civil rights movement: You cannot face German shepherds and fire hoses with your own resources; there must be God and stillness at the very center of your being.... 

I knew that is the solution to a mind at fret, no matter the fret...a bad hair day, no food in the fridge, a pandemic..there must be God and stillness at the very center of our being. 

Then I read Fr Richard Rohr's "Daily Meditation," which told of Jesuit priest Walter Ciszek who spent five years in a Moscow prison, then was sentenced to fifteen years of hard labor in Siberian prison camps. Per Rohr, He is an example of someone whose life has been pared down to the 'one thing necessary' for he was able to live in deep peace knowing that God had stripped away from me many of the external consolations, physical and religious, that people rely on and had left me with a core of seemingly simple truths to guide me.

In short, he went on to say, The fullest freedom I had ever known, the greatest sense of security, came from abandoning my will to do only the will of God. 

My thoughts evidence my reasoning mind's path: First, that's for saints, clearly; second, even to try, I'd be setting the bar too high so why invite failure? 

Ah, and here comes God to save my day. Since he doesn't have my back only when adversity is coming from out there, he's also my golden goose when my own thoughts need help: Third thought, the Trump effect, the pandemic, the Black Lives Matter movement, etc., are my Siberian prison today...only we can begin to break free from our own self which, from experience, we know to be: Upgrade our attitude, upgrade our problem(s). 

Then Rohr (again) came to me with the question, What is your work to do today to bend the universe a little more towards justice?

My first step forward is to acknowledge that God has changed my mind: It's not just for saints. 

Thank you.