THAT NEWCOMER FEELING

Divine Mind and its wonder working is beyond your finite mind to understand. ("God Calling," January 31)

My thoughts are not your thoughts, my ways are not your ways. . . . As high as the heavens are above the earth, so my ways are beyond your ways, and my thoughts are beyond your thoughts. (Isaiah 55:8–9)

... the ego insists on certitude and perfect clarity (as if that were even possible with things divine). (Fr Richard Rohr, "Daily Meditation," January31, 2021)

I am feeling unmoored, insecure, stand-offish, uneasy...I have labeled all that my "newbie feeling." It may be my initiation into the cloud of unknowing, but I am willing to accept, and find it easier to believe in this my 50th year, that it is my initiation into Old Fart status.  

Whatever. 

I take comfort in being given those three readings today for they settle my searching mind...or, more exactly, they settle my ego that insists on certitude and perfect clarity! 

Don't tell me God doesn't have my back! (Remind me, though.)

Thank you.

OUR WONDER-REALM ATTRIBUTES WITHIN

It is in these wonder-realm attributes [Love, Joy, Peace], all success lies. You have to see your inner lives are all they should be, and then the work is accomplished.  - God Calling, January 30

The mental bell-ringer is that "these wonder-realm attributes, Love Joy, Peace" are ours as we breathe them, not as we will them. Ah, but it takes time, and more time, to have them as we breathe.

A positive beginning is opening up to even willing them...to be willing to be willing. It seems when we feel we're all set to show off our Love, Joy, Peace, someone or something will stick a spoke in our wheel...or Gertrude comes along and spits in our eye. There they go out the door and down the  street, and our mouth is left a-flapping.

Another hard lesson: Our willingness to know and show Love, Joy, Peace is our invitation to the spoke in our wheel, the uncalled-for nasty. How else could we discover those wonder-realm attributes within us if we never met a problem we could not resolve, a mental distress we did not deserve. 

The pearl beyond price...this is how we learn who our angels really are...our many-lived Gertrudes, for instance! It seems s/he is forever gifting us with uncalled for nasties...until we gift ourself with the realization that thank you has transformed those nasties...ah, no. Has transformed the originator of those nasties, and our very heart knows love for our Gertrudes. 

And who's the winner now? Why, God flowing through Gertrude and me! 

Love our enemies...they are our friends in disguise.

Thank you.

BOOKENDS...OR OUR STARTER LIBRARY

To be truly secure, we must begin to find a source of security within ourselves. - Eknath Easwaran, "Words to Live By" January 29

"To be truly secure...." There it is...the inner need, no doubt, of every single soul on this earth, to be truly secure. 

I thought of changing "be" to "feel" but, learning to live in the Now, to feel is to be...Now. Face it, five minutes from Now, someone with a gun (a.k.a., our attack mind) may break in and whoa! There goes our security...which is specifically and positively why we will never be or feel truly secure unless and until we tame (change) our very own mind. 

We fairly quickly learn we are incapable of doing that all on our own...we need that "source of security within," to find that "source of security within," and who's kidding whom? It is God, by any holy name we choose to use, that we need to get us over our own self.

Through trial and retrial, we discover that the source of security within ourself has naught to do with self-confidence or self-knowledge. In fact, if reliance on self is involved, we're heading down that wrong road again...still. 

The source is within ourself...in many different places, we will read that it is sealed up within ourself, explaining why  the reasoning mind is defeated at the outset...the seal cannot be broken by thinking, pondering or analyzing. 

Bingo! The seal is already open, has never been closed to those who have eyes to see...and a want-to. To those of us married to our own intellect, that's a stretch. Ah, and there's our beginning.

Trusting intellect alone, we can ponder Einstein's words (from Fr Richard Rohr today): "Albert Einstein once talked about the illusion that is created by [the] belief in separation. He described it as a prison that restricts our awareness of connection to the whole: 'A human being is a part of the whole, called by us “Universe,” a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest—a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.'"

There...Easwaran and Einstein, our starter library.

Thank you.

THE HUMAN CONDITION...LOOSE IT, LET IT GO

They do not believe who do not live by their belief. --Anonymous

When you seek to follow Me in all, it means a complete reversion of the way of the world you have hitherto followed. -- "God Calling," January 28

It seems to be the human condition that when we find ourself less-than-happy in our life, we seek a new way...a "fix." Then, when we get our self-determined "fix," we fight it tooth and toenail. 

The key is in those two words "human condition." The human condition is the ego's Motel 6 with its  leaky roof, lumpy mattress and day-old coffee, but what the hey, it's home...or our hidey-hole.

We stumble-bumble again into possibly the hardest thing life is ever going to ask of us...that we change our mind. The life that is asking this is our own! We, our very own self, know that "something ain't right"...we're walking around feeling like our skin's on crooked, that can't be right.

All the while, the secret to peace of mind is sealed up within us...all the happiness there is is already ours. That sense of security we gained sometime back...well, it split. Without even a buh-bye. 

The great and glorious news is that false sense of security had to split, had to leave us. It was built on self-determination, luck and love...as we understood it at the time. 

Now we are at decision time...that place of "complete reversion" for which we unknowingly dread and pray. Our reasoning mind could never be a party to this...ah, but God can. 

We are in the process of proving that God can and will intervene in our life in our behalf. 

All we need do is crash-and-burn, have nowhere to go, no one to turn to...feel unloved unwanted, unneeded and unappreciated...completely powerless and completely unplanned. 

It is only in looking back at our life, at the precious gift of our life, that we can recognize, realize, I am Now and ever was a beloved child of God.   

Now we do believe. Now we do live by that belief. And imperfectly if we're doing it right. 

Thank you.

NOT FOR GLORY BUT FOR GOD

I can understand at the end of her life how Mother Teresa could write in her diary that she did not feel that she knew God at all...in this my 50th year of seeking still more spiritual growth, I can feel like I only know the right words, that I am a laggard in living those words. (I can also grin at me for putting on airs by comparing myself to Mother Teresa.)

I also wonder, speaking of comparing, if our Congress, once seen as Thomas Jefferson in his glory days, hasn't missed that those days have passed...that it is now Alexander Hamilton in his shot-dead-in-a-sordid-duel days. Going with my fantasy, we, along with Congress, need follow Jefferson/Hamilton through unto today when Jefferson's life is getting hammered as racist, and Hamilton's life has garnered a Pulitzer.

Short form, this, too, shall pass...or right is might and truth prevail. 

As George Washington wrote in 1794, "Truth will ultimately prevail where pains is taken to bring it to light."

It is our...We, the People...our duty to take the pains to bring truth to light...to send honest people to Congress to see that truth ultimately prevails by taking the pains to bring it to light. Not the light as I see it, as you see it...no. As it has been proven for centuries upon centuries before us...under the Bodhi Tree, on Bunker Hill, on the beaches of Normandy, on the Edmund Pettus Bridge...on the Tree of Calvary...by the well-known and the unknown. 

We, the people, are the unknown who, led by a Higher Power, can and must take the necessary pains to bring truth to light again...and again...and again. Not by our thinking, not by our wishing, but by a power greater than ourself...neither for our profit nor for our gain, but for the glory of that Higher Power

That is our calling. That is our legacy. That is God's will. 

According to me.

Thank you.

THE WORLDWIDE WE AND GOD IN IT

We are led to believe...promised really...that when we discover our Kingdom of Heaven within, we are transformed: It is not possible for you to think ill of anybody or to hurt anybody. You strive to live your life in a manner that never infringes on the happiness of anyone. You make a contribution to solving the immense problems that trouble people today. 

The tripwire is our reasoning mind, ever with us, which cottons to that promise and by self-determination decides to think ill of no one, hurt nobody, strive, etc., etc., etc. There...right there is the bane of God's good will. 

Our reasoning mind, sharp as a tack and proudly so, takes over for God. And p.d.q. finds that it is too possible to think ill of any bloody body, not to mention those who don't hesitate to infringe on our happiness. 

Another hard lesson: Get grateful, we're doing it right when we're doing it wrong...we don't get to God if we don't realize we need Him, and face it, who needs God more than one caught on the barbed wire of self-will?

Long/short...we are singularly blessed if we do discover our Kingdom of Heaven within...and it's not our own fantastical thinking. We are doubly singularly blessed if we listen to that still, small voice that tells us to sit and wait on the Lord. 

On our journey out and through our life, free will is pretty much all about me, myself, and little i, how to please/appease it. It is not until we make our U-bie, journeying back Home, that we can appreciate that personal need to sit and wait on the Lord. For there is the key to the rest of our life...we sit, we listen, we learn, we wake. 

Lesson learned...we are given unlimited love, we are not given unlimited "how to" love unless and until we exchange our free will, all about me, for God's will, all about thee and me. 

If the worldwide We doesn't come out the winner, God isn't in it.  Alone again...unnaturally.

Thank you.

OUR WALK IN THE PARK

Yesterday I wrote about experiencing intense rues, regrets and remorses for not knowing...and being given inner-forgiveness for not knowing. 

Yesterday afternoon, I laughed at how very serious my not knowing sounded...like I'd robbed Fort Knox but I shouldn't regret it, I didn't know that was wrong. No. I have amorphous regrets...free-floating, attached to nothing, thus to everything. 

The good news is, exactly as happened yesterday, they are transmuted into God's enfolding me in love...and laughter.

I have learned...more like, I am learning...that this is my way, the path I personally chose for me to build faith unto trust.

Life requires that we walk through the unknown...the unknown being the rest of this day, tomorrow, all the days after. We greet what we meet with what we got. It eases the way if we accept when all we got is our own reasoning mind, we're running on empty. Which can't be filled by our reasoning mind. 

We never for certain-sure know ahead of Now what we are going to meet. 

Our reasoning ears hear that we need take no heed for tomorrow, that tomorrow will take care of itself, and our reasoning mind may even like the sound of that but, what if...? What about...? Uh-oh, I think....

Our spiritual ears hear, and we believe based on our own experience that our Father knows our needs. It's been written that God can and will intervene in our life in our behalf...which we experience daily when we're paying attention.

There it is...for this we can welcome intense rues, regrets and remorses for this is sometimes the Way of Our Cross, sometimes Our Walk in the Park...either way, we are never alone.

Thank you.

NOT IF, WHEN...NOW!

Lately I have been experiencing intense rues, regrets and remorses for not knowing: I did not know, and I should have known, others knew or would have known. Over and over and over. 

I was inner-forgiven this morning for not knowing. 

As I was preparing for my quiet time, forgiveness, smiling, slow-walked through me. I did not clutch, I did not deny, I did not grab hold; I did naught but smile back and continue into my quiet time. And I knew peace.

This, I'm thinking, is my sliver of gold for when (not if) the remorses call again. Based on my own experience, they will call again...they need to call again. But, no! I may be over-thinking. My Father is walking me down a new path...the rues coming again may this time be an if, not a when.

If there is a need, it is mine. and I am ready. I can welcome it...hug it and kiss it, loose it and let it go.  

Now, however, I hold my nose and take a leap of faith...I am ready now. That's what I experienced this morning in toto with a God-loves-me ribbon on it.  I go forward accepting that as mine.  

Resist not, Beloved, God is on the field. 

Thank you. 

UNDERNEATH ARE THE EVERLASTING ARMS

It seems we all want to love and to be loved...but according to our own perpetual-motion notion of love. In our reasoning mind world, few others ever meet our mark...for long, but same goes that we meet few others' mark...for long.

There it is...the egoic perpetual-motion notion of love. Even blessed with the inner assurance of God, when I See Me through my ego's eyes, I long for "the feeling" of God (really truly, God) in my life. There is no enough then. 

Lest we forget, temporary ups and temporary downs are the stuff the material world is made of. Up being Love, down being Fear. 

We seek a dispensation through grace, and quick learn that in this life, we are constitutionally incapable of staying in grace. Having no true idea of what grace is, we secretly want it to be Perfect Peace For Me. Which we deny even as we want it. 

Comes the day when we glimpse that nothing turns us to God faster than fear. We awake in a whole new world...we see fear as God in camouflage and are opened to "Go toward it," "Resist not," "Love and laugh." 

All the temporaries of life become life itself...all are God in camouflage with our name on it. 

Know this, fear will come. Never forget this: God never leaves. 

Underneath are the everlasting arms. -- "God Calling" (and somewhere in the Bible)

Thank you.

ON ACCEPTANCE AND KISSING IT ON THE LIPS

Many years ago, when I was begging God to fulfill  my unlimited wants (and calling that prayer), I had a blinding flash of the obvious. I realized that I was trying to get God to see through my eyes when my need was for me to see through the eyes of God. 

It was an ah-ha moment, as in, that's what Thy will, not mine means! My inmost desire since then has been to live there...and "very imperfectly" counts. 

Fr Richard Rohr's "Daily Meditation" this morning quotes German theologian Dorothee Sölle who writes: It is a mysticism of wide-open eyes. . . . God calls upon the soul to give away its own ears and eyes and to let itself be given those of God. , , , Allowing God to fully inhabit our senses does not mean we close ourselves off from the world but open ourselves more fully to it. We are free to be fully ourselves but not to exist only for ourselves.

"We are free to be fully ourselves." There it is...our unknown to us dream come true. In my case, I always wanted to be freely myself only I neither knew nor sought to know who I was in my goodness. 

In my less-than self, I knew and sought to know more so I could correct me. I never accepted the possibility that I was...Warts And All...what God made me to be. My mouth knew that, my  rational self never got the word...I was too busy trying to change, upgrade, perfect God's work.

The rest of that sentence, "but not to exist only for ourselves," is my recent BFO. I still weigh my efforts as compared to the efforts of the giants of the world...and fail, repeatedly. I do not work the breadlines, collect for charity, teach the children...and I do admire those who do. 

However, I am available. This has never been a choice I make, it is what I do. What I am happy doing, or, no surprise, I'd be on the breadlines, complaining. Teaching the children, complaining. Because that is not me; however, somebody must be available...someone needs to listen. 

In that long-ago gene pool, when God was passing out attributes, He came to "available," and my tadpole shouted, Here's me, God! Choose me!  

There...the essence of acceptance. I let go my attachment to "not enough" and kissed my tadpole on the lips. And God kissed me back.

Thank you.

REASON...JUST ONE MORE OF GOD'S TOOLS, II

[The following is a reprint of my post of December 28, 2012.]

We cannot solve the problems of the mind with the mind. -- The Buddha

Whenever I come across that quote, I know it for true...then I spend the next ten minutes pondering how it is true, why it is true....

Our reasoning mind will not retire quickly, nor quietly. It is interestingly pathetic how long we will cling to the belief that reason is our safety net...that "victory can be ours for the thinking." When it is the detachment from reliance on our reasoning mind that sets us on the path to freedom.

Reason is essential on the long and winding road to the realization that reason is just one more tool of God's, not our safety net, not our security. Reason, if used properly, clears the channel for God's thoughts to pour through. Reason is God's Roto-Rooter, if you will.

Our mistake is relying on the Roto-Rooter instead of God.

Thank you.

OUR FIRST NEED...FOR OTHERS

For good or for ill, our choices as individuals have a collective impact on others and future generations. How we treat each other is a marker of our freedom in God. -- Fr Richard Rohr, "Daily Meditation," January 20, 2021

Be the first to give over, give up, give in...I don't recall when I had that blinding flash of the obvious, but I can guess it was when and while I was wrestling with trying to do We have ceased fighting everything and everybody.

It matters not when, what matters is that I believed give over for true. I knew that was the way of my cross. I'd come to see that it is the teeny-tinys in my life that are my bane and my boon, my good news/bad news both together. I knew without a second thought that to cease fighting everything and everybody would require ego-deflation in depth...reasoning mind: Wonderful! Impossible!

Hard, hard lesson learning...ego-deflation in depth cannot be done by self alone nor by God alone. We  must needs turn our will and our life over to the care of our God, not by our thoughts, not by our words but by our actions. 

The invisible God of my understanding has no hands, no feet, no voice but mine...which I must entrust to the God of my understanding. See? It's not for the reasoning mind. There. That's what faith is for.

Our faith's foundation is the trust in our invisible God that we build daily. Ah, and we begin building our faith after he has gone before us to make the crooked places straight. We make mock of hindsight, but, face it, it is perfect 20/20...voila, trust, our building block. 

Our first need is to upgrade our treatment of others to allow others to upgrade their treatment of others with our own self a side bennie.  

How we treat each other is a marker of our freedom in God. 

Thank you.

ON BREAKING FREE OF ME

As we engage in contemplative prayer and allow God to transform us through great love and great suffering, we are reminded of our inherent connectedness. We are liberated from thinking of ourselves as somehow separate from everyone and everything else, including God...There is no authentic freedom if we do not also consider the rights and well-being of others. -- Fr Richard Rohr, "Daily Meditation," January 19, 2021

Making a people mistake (as in, snarking) and, for appearance sake, promptly apologizing is a penny's worth of nothing toward our spiritual growth.

If our heart is not hurt by our own error, we  will repeat the error in as many different forms as it takes to realize we are stuck in self, heading away not toward God...or our own peace of mind.

According to me, the "great love and great suffering" we find in spiritual growth is pretty much the exact opposite of what our reasoning mind thinks it is. The great love is not what we receive, it is what we give; the great suffering is not our punishment, it is our gift. 

Lest we feel bummed by our great love not being what we receive, remember we can't give what we don't have...the great love we are giving is already within us and...hey, BFO...is what causes great suffering in its need to burst forth for others. (That may be a BFO or a passing thought, whichever, I like it.)

Life seems to me to be all about trading up, as in swapping our preoccupation with self for care and concern for others. We think of care and concern for others as spiritual growth, but no...that is the purpose of life itself. That is not the separate concern for spiritually leaning folks...that is the purpose for which you were born, I was born, we are born. 

Each of us at birth receives the gift of free will. On life's journey we use that free will until it marches us into the arms of God or until we crash and burn, both being one and the same they just feel way different. 

Ah, and here's our U-bie. On our redirected journey, we come to understand unto belief that we are all One...here to serve whomever without fear or favor...to serve with gratitude by grace.

There is no authentic freedom if we do not also consider the rights and well-being of others.

Thank you.

WITH GOD, I CAN PROVE MY TRUST

Whatever reconstruction we’re going to do cannot be based on fear or on reaction. It has to be based on a positive and fully human experience of God as a loving Presence. True religion is ready to let God be God, and to let God lead us into a new future that we do not yet understand—and no longer even need to understand.--  Fr Richard Rohr, "Daily Meditation," January 6, 2021 

Notice the date of that Rohr quote. How prescient! That very afternoon, a misguided mob determined to inflict on America one of the most un-American  events in our history descended on Washington, DC. It strutted through our Capitol, doing  destruction, murder and mayhem, leaving five dead and innumerable injured. All in its self-determined notion of justice.

Blinding flash of the obvious: That Rohr quote is directed at me...for me...for my personal benefit...for my necessary spiritual growth. 

It is a fact that even as the ugly was happening, I was watching it play out on television with my thoughts churning...how to punish these fools, these killers...how to make them writhe in shame and sorrow, regret and remorse for their actions...for their very thoughts that birthed their actions.

I recall how I have for sometime now been pondering the importance of our thoughts...how our every thought determines our life. Hate begets hate, love conquers all, etc., etc., etc. 

My concern today...my sliver of gold...is to hold to those truths. Hate does beget hate, love does conquer all...but only when (not if) we lose the hate, find the love within. Loose them and let them go...hate to the dustbin of uselessness, love to whomever stands in need...including me, my own self.

I know that is the "right" answer, of course; I also know there is not a snowball's chance I can do it based on that knowledge alone. Preach it, yes; do it, no.

Precisely as Fr Richard wrote, "Whatever reconstruction we’re going to do cannot be based on fear or on reaction. It has to be based on a positive and fully human experience of God as a loving Presence."

The always answer, still more spiritual growth, soothes my angry gut. I have made my decision to be a forgiving person...consider the instigator of all this chaos and consciously seek to find forgiveness of him. Consider the crowd, each member of the crowd, and seek forgiveness for them. 

Kiss thoughts of retribution on the lips, hug shame and blame, pray thank You, and let them go. 

There...that is the prize I must keep my eyes on...forgiveness. Nonresistance. Love. All stored within me. With God as my guide, I can prove my trust.

Thank you.

THE PLACE OF UNKNOWING

Morning blinding flash of the obvious: We must come to that place of unknowing...and know that is the place.

Trying so hard to know (i.e., feel) the Father within is staying in the reasoning mind. Like "the hypocrites," I want to see (God) and be seen (by God) before I will let It be.

I don't know...I don't know what I don't know...I need not know. 

Trust...love and laugh. 

 …experience our own liberation by God, which is both an outer freedom and an inner freedom or it is not real liberation. -- Fr Richard Rohr, "Daily Meditation,"  January 17, 2021

Thank you.

GOD'S GOT IT, AND IT IS GOOD

From Thomas Merton's writings: When I am most sickened by the things that are done by the country that surrounds this place I will take out the [Hebrew biblical] prophets and sing them in loud Latin across the hills and send their fiery words sailing south over the mountains to the place where they split atoms for the bombs in Tennessee.

I am seeking (worrying) about what I can do, what actually can I do, to help our beloved Country now in its tortured time of need. I doubt not that many if not most of us are asking ourselves...what can I do?

Blinding flash of the obvious: This is when our trust in the unseen power of God is coming to fruition. Or, when our dependence on our rational mind is coming to crash-and-burn...again. 

I love Merton's way, singing...sending out the words of the prophets, loud and proud, into the atmosphere for all to hear but most especially toward the place where atom bombs were being built. I feel that right down into my bones...it feels so right, nonviolent, positive...of God. 

That is how we begin...when we have not a clue what to actively do, we hold nonviolent, positive thoughts in our head and heart.

We seek to find the good in any person we less than love...and forgive them by upgrading our thoughts about them.

We sing "Down By the Riverside" with it's God-message-chorus, ain't gonna study war no more. 

We pray Thank You...thank You for everything exactly the way it is right this very minute. Which is our affirmation that God's got it, and it is good. 

We trust God. We trust God because we know and affirm that He has already made right our world, and He is leading us to and through our part in it. 

We trust we will know what else we are to do and on His timetable.

...we must one day pass beyond discursive thinking and enter into a higher mode of knowing. -- Eknath Easwaran, "Words to Live By" 

Thank you.  

ON BEING EVER TURNED TO GOD

I read the following somewhere but did not note where, and to me, plain and simple, it is a short-form of the Sermon on the Mount broken down into plain English:

• Don’t focus on external conformity to moral codes but on internal transformation in love. 
• Don’t have anxiety about money or security or pleasure at the center of your life, but trust yourself to the care of God. 

There. It seems to me that external conformity to moral codes before we have sought unto realization  and been raised into an internal transformation in love is the leading cause of rigid, righteous and right, the birth of self-determined objectives. 

Plainly put, not lying is good; not lying to the point of being hurtful to others is not good. Anything, without the inner transformation of love, or left to the reasoning mind alone, can be weaponized, even telling the truth. 

Then there is anxiety about money or security or pleasure at the center of your life. There it is...self-centered fear. 

Money in particular internalized is "profit" which to spiritual growth is "oh-no" aborning. Who's kidding whom? Anxiety about money is not concern for yours but for mine, my getting /keeping it. With all the highest motives we can muster...for food, clothing, shelter, necessities for heaven's sake!...we're praying for self. Self-centered fear in martyr's clothing.

The cure-all is not more money, security or pleasure, but trust...trusting ourself to the care of God before we have money, security, pleasure. 

We get that trust, not by self-determination but by holding our nose and taking a leap of faith. When (not if) life hands us a big raspberry. 

We build our trust when we feel we are stepping out on that frayed-rope bridge because...finally...our reasoning mind has come up empty; we can think of no other way to go. 

  

I must confess that in the end, this short form of the Sermon is my proof that the simpler the direction, the harder it is for me actually to do. Which, BFO, is the good news...it keeps me ever turning to God.

Thank you.

THE SACRED SLIVER OF GOLD

For whatever reason, I'm thinking a lot this morning about the gift I was given back in the day when I  so desperately needed it...that being the sacred sliver of gold. 

There's a story of the ancient king who asked his wise men to come up with a phrase that would be true in all situations...in times of war and in times of peace, in illness and in health, in poverty and in wealth. After studying the situation for as long as it took, the wise men came back to him with the phrase, This, too, shall pass.

I never asked for a forever phrase, a guarantee if you will, but I was gifted with what to me is the equivalent. It stands me in good stead no matter the cause, and I don't quibble with the workings of it.

In my early ego-deflating years (as opposed to the ego-deflating of today), I pretty much lived in a state of anxiety. 

One day, in the midst of I remember not what my self-invited disaster was, I saw a sliver of gold in it. I concentrated on that sliver of gold, held it tight, and came out the other side...what can I say other than "the better for it." I don't remember the specifics, but I do know from that moment, when I perceive an "oh, no!" I look away from the "no" to find me a "yes," or at least an "ok," and there's my sliver of gold.

It can take some time turning the situation around to find that sliver of gold, and that's a benefit. The search keeps my attention centered on the unknown good that I know is there for me rather than drifting toward the singing Siren in my ear.

I maintain that this is the basis, the foundation, for building trust in the goodness of Providence. Of Providence as Love. Of Providence as Love as God. There. That's what I call shucking the shields...it takes some doing to break down the reasoning mind's defenses without breaking the reasoning mind.

Well, it takes some doing without breaking the mind until we learn that our mind isn't going to break...it might take a hike or two, but dependence on our mind is unnecessary when we have experience trusting God. It is not only unnecessary, it is superfluous for it draws down our very trust in God.

Oh, blinding flash! That's probably how I was moved away from my dependence on my reasoning mind up to a deeper dependence on the Father within. Which, I quickly add, is an ongoing state...just as is trust which must deepen daily. 

God is so good to me. To us.

Thank you.

HOW TO COME OUT THE WINNER...SURRENDER

We are all looking for a larger and more loving story in which to participate. This is what God gives us! Our ordinary lives are given an extraordinary significance when we accept that our lives are about something more meaningful than winning and succeeding inside of a very small plot line. -- Fr Richard Rohr, "Daily Meditation," January 13, 2021

We are all looking for a larger and more loving story in which to participate. There it is. Our "looking for" is our want. A "larger and more loving story" is the result we want. 

It is the want of our result we finally come to learn...to totally accept...that is our nemesis. We can never gut-bucket seek to know and to do "Thy will, not mine" until the result we want is in second, third...no. Until actually it has no place in our life.

This does not mean we shall never want again...we cannot not feel want. It is that our want, like our fear, will be just another thank you as it flows through our life...to experience at an ever-deepening and higher level. 

Slowly. Very, very slowly.

It is the slow act of recognition that births the realization that our thinking, feeling, doing...Being...are for the benefit of others. Ah, but our living cannot be at the expense of our self for the benefit of others...that all but ensures self-will in the driver's seat. No. When a life is lived by the grace of God, all sides find a larger and more loving story in which to participate.

Which is probably never by the way we envisioned. God's will is not for us to foresee...it is for us to live Now. That's how each side comes out the winner.

Thank you.   

KISS IT ON THE LIPS AND LET IT GO

You must say "Thank You" for everything, even seeming trials and worries. -- "God Calling," January 12 

It matters not who represents the thorn that turns us around...Gertrude 1 or Gertrude 51, whoever or whatever...each was but the thorn. We do not need to blunt the thorn to call it friend...its effectiveness is in its thorn-ness. There. That's what we must needs kiss on the lips. That's what we must needs make peace with. That's how it serves its Now purpose. By our thank you, we hug it and kiss it and and let it go.

If the only prayer you ever say in your life is Thank You, that would suffice. -- Meister Eckhart

Thank you.

NOT FOR ME, FOR THEE

We seek still more spiritual growth. That search has been our motivating goal for many years. Looking back, we understand that it takes as long as it takes to nail the idea of our goal...not to put too fine a point on it, but to just agree with it is tough enough.

I give myself airs when I think that I've been studying the Sermon on the Mount for years and years. I've been reading it for years, but studying it, no. But always I have read it with the goal of coming to agree with it...and that, trust me, has not been easy. 

According to me, The Big One, the verse that turns us around or leaves us behind is Matthew 5:38-42: "You have heard that it was said, 'An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,' But I say to you, Do not resist one who is evil. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the  other also, and if any one would sue you and take your coat, let him have your cloak as well; and if any one forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. Give to him who begs from you, and do not refuse him who would borrow from you."

Thank you! Welcome! Yes! or Whoa! Stop! No! Choice-making time...choose or lose.

Here is the complete break with the egoic mind...the sacred U-bie...where we exchange our free will for God's will. When we accept this one as truth, and not from our eyebrows up but within our entire being, we can make the decision to turn our will and our life over to the care of God and begin our journey back to God.

There it is, the kicker...agreeing unto accepting unto doing nonresistance. That requires a subservient  reasoning mind since, face it, none of it makes a lick of sense to our rational mind. Which is precisely why we must willingly exchange our reasoning mind for the mind that was in the Buddha, Christ Jesus, Gandhi, Martin Luther King and others. 

That is the mind that I want to be in me. Which I expect to get several lifetimes from this one. That's why I seek it now...to shorten the timespan if for no other reason.

ABTW, another Sermon verse too tough for the unaided mind to comprehend is Matthew 5:11-12: "Blessed are you when men revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so men persecuted the prophets who were before you." My BFO clue: Look to the words, on my account. They tell the tale.

Here's my today's glimpse of glory: Getting out of the reasoning mind is an everyday ideal until it becomes an everyday option until it lives every day in every way in our heart, our soul, our body, our newly refurbished brain.

With that as our everyday goal, we walk forward welcoming our humbling missteps, errors, flubs and fibs...grateful that we get to God by doing it wrong, not by doing it right (with thanks to Fr Richard Rohr).

Thank you.

THE POWER OF LIVING FORGIVENESS

Release the need to hate, to harbor division, and the enticement of revenge. - John Lewis

Make a decision to be a forgiving person. - Sandy Beach

Again, and yet again,  I know the words of John Lewis and Sandy Beach to be the spiritual solution to all my reasoning mind woes, a.k.a., my fears.

Reasoning mind fear of getting covid, of the collapse of our beloved country, of not being able to [fill in], of the need to [fill in]. 

We must fully, heart-unto-soul realize that hate, division and revenge are in need of forgiveness first before we consider anything else. 

Ah, here comes the dawn: Until we know forgiveness as nonresistance, we will live an unforgiving, resisting, life. That life may be only five percent unforgiving, but that five percent will rule us. That five percent, to the reasoning mind, has more power than God for that is where our reasoning mind has found its safety. That's where it feels free to thumb its nose at a so-called Higher Power. 

The other ninety-five percent of our utterly unaware rational self will wonder why we cannot trust God fully...and we will worry.

All the pretty words...He goes before us to make the crooked places straight and God can and will intervene in our life in our behalf...are meaningless without our proof of the pudding. That is by living our own personal forgiveness of others...and of our self. Without exception.

We can come to believe in a decision to be a forgiving person, to believe in and  to release the need to hate, to harbor division, and the enticement of revenge but the actual doing is ours. Only, surprise, surprise! We can do none on our own...as in, without the intervention of almighty God.

He perfects that which is given us to do.

Thank you.

THE CARE AND FEEDING OF OUR THOUGHTS

We are what our thoughts have made us; so take care about what you think. Words are secondary. Thoughts live; they travel far. -- Swami Vivekananda (from "Words to Live By," Eknath Easwaran, January 9)

I suspect upgrading my thoughts is going to be my spiritual priority this year. Just yesterday I wrote that our spiritual growth begins and ends with our thoughts. It is the discipline of our thoughts that must get first call.

Blinding flash of the obvious: My spiritual priority...that first call...is to be in lovingkindness for others.

It will be interesting to see how well I do...how well I remember to do is more like it. I trust my thoughts to be directed in lovingkindness toward others...which is not a stretch. I'm more a kindness  thought person than not...specifically for the one(s) I am resisting. But then that's more for my own benefit than another's.   

Today's Easwaran and Rohr both are about the importance of the care and feeding of our thoughts. 

Rohr today quotes Tibetan Buddhist teacher Pema Chödrön: Tonglen practice, also known as 'taking and sending,' reverses our usual logic of avoiding suffering and seeking pleasure. In tonglen practice, we visualize taking in the pain of others with every in-breath and sending out whatever will benefit them on the out-breath.

Ah. I feel like I just got my marching orders...for January anyway. 

Thank you.

SUFFER THE BURDEN OF OUR OWN SELF

Life with Me is not immunity from difficulties, but peace in difficulties....Joy is the result of faithful trusting acceptance of My Will, when it seems not joyous. -- "God Calling," January 8

There. Our peace must be in our unceasing thank you for our thoughts are stayed on God. I suspect that's how Sandy became a forgiving person, and he could in truth say, when he heard his daughter had been murdered, "I forgive him (the murderer)." 

We cannot afford the rabid luxury of hate, fury...resentment, in a word. Resentment is not in our spiritual how-to manual...the one about how to become and be a loving person. 

Geez, I just wanted to show love toward the Gertrudes in my life without spending a lot of time around them. Now, here's me with this platter heaped with worms before me.

He prepares a place before me in the presence of my enemies.

We say that it's so easy to say the right thing, as in love your enemies, do good to those who persecute you, but truth to tell, easy it ain't. It is not easy for me this morning to say I love the cabal on Capitol Hill Wednesday.  Oh, wait. Who's kidding whom? I'm not resisting loving the cabal, I'm resisting loving or even saying that I love the President of the United States...Donald J. Trump. Hiding behind "cabal" and hoping God won't notice.

Again it is clear that our spiritual growth begins and ends with our thoughts. It is the discipline of our thoughts that must get first call. That discipline that turns us first and repeatedly to God until we no longer turn our thoughts, they are stayed on God. 

Only then, like Sandy, can we truthfully say, "I forgive him." Until then, I must pray, "Father, forgive me for I know exactly what I do, and I do it anyway." And suffer the burden of my own undisciplined thoughts.

Thank you.

PRAISE IS OUR WELCOME MAT, II

[The following is a reprint of my post of October 13, 2015.]

Things I try to remember:
   
The first step in avoiding a resentment is to not respond in kind. To respond in kind to another's jibes, slights and snubs is to become the other's puppet...we detach from our sacred self and attach to the other's ego self. Or, bluntly, we become a mule for someone else's anger.

Whenever we think "I can't," substitute "I choose not to." Because we can...with God, all things are possible.

Whenever I'm feeling proud of myself...or of another, for that matter...I substitute "I am pleased." (The very word "proud," through no fault of its own, has been co-opted by ego and usually is met by resistance.)

The path to happy is through praise...the road to a head full of free is through praise...the way to a faith that works is through praise. Thank you to whatever comes works the miracle.

Praise is our welcome mat...always out, always stepped on, still welcoming.

Thank you.

OUR SPIRITUAL GOAL...HUMILITY

[We] let God lead [us] into the fullness of Reality; not away from dilemmas and paradoxes, but right onto the horns of the human dilemma! --  Fr Richard Rohr, "Daily Meditation," January 6, 2021

We hear...have ever heard...that old age isn't for sissies, but we never heard the specifics...the whys, the how does it come to be so? "Never heard" translated: We didn't pay attention because we knew it wouldn't apply to us. 

Here's a tish of what my friends and I are learning in our 80s: 

When we lean on our reasoning mind more, our self-confidence takes flight. We become unsure. Who's kidding whom? We're dealing with a dicey memory, with ebbing ability, even our want-to curls up in a corner of our mind. 

Then spiritual-muscle memory kicks in at a turtle pace, and in a hopeful glimpse of the obvious, we  double down on our known experience with God. We remind ourself that just because our sense of self-confidence has gone missing does not mean we have lost all of our abilities or our capabilities. We pray our thank you and try. 

We accept the loss of friends and partners through their moves "to be nearer family" or "to Florida" or, face it, to death. We go forward slower now, feeling the drag of aloneness, doing what is before us to do. Praying our thank you, hopefully.  

But we gain a surer awareness (with patience!) that the Father within really does do the works, really is doing the works. Only with healthy reverence do we find confidence and coherence...if we let go and let God. If, however, we stand in the way, we are the way...uh-oh.

What I believe today is that we are the unearned but born-to-be beloved child of God/healthy, loving human that we ever were. It is the natural process of aging that our ego links with. Our ego, the same beloved bane it ever was, is just as powerless before God as it ever was. There...thank you made whole. 

I must remind myself...a lot...that all the perils and the gifts of old age give us our spiritual goal, humility. For this we go through the crucible to come out the other side, gold...a.k.a., gratefully humble.

Old age is more proof that God loves us...and is not for sissies.

Thank you.

GOD COMES CALLING...REALLY

I awoke this morning not doubting that fear is God in camouflage, but with an expanded view...it is the me-specifics that rattle us completely...the unease, worry, doubt over self. Nothing turns us to God faster than our anxiety for self.

Experiencing the new levels of both age and spiritual growth...change in a word...feels scary, threatening.  

Ah, but here's the new light: All the scary threatenings are God coming from God to us to turn us to God, or to return us to God. 

It is our misinterpretation that causes our disturbance...our reliance on our reasoning mind that keeps us bound to our ego, to self-centered thinking. 

Our dawning realization is God calling...that we alone were never meant to be our source of security. The human condition is reliance on the reasoning mind, on our own thinking, feeling, doing, being.  We nurtured feelings of our own imperial strength...even half willing to believe in a nebulous  God, we relied on our own ability to "stand up for myself," to "take my own part," to "find my own way."   

It's a hard lesson learning...to trust that the unseen God is on our side, has our back, all the while we are wrestling with the seeming reality of our scary threatening doubts. Resist not. Each doubt is God's  invitation to burrow ourself in the safety of His love.

Then, and I love when this happens, I read Fr Richard Rohr's "Daily Meditation," and there's my "proof of purchase":

When people are attuned and awake, reality is often 'unveiled' for them.....that moment when the heart has to find its way not through external conditioning but through a raw immediacy of presence. Only there—in 'the cave of the heart,' as the mystics are fond of calling it, does a person come in contact with his or her own direct knowingness. And only out of this direct knowingness is sovereignty born, one’s own inner authority. -- Reverend Cynthia Bourgeault (from Rohr's January 5, 2021, "Meditation.")

Thank you.

BRINGING LAUGHTER TO GOD

 Release the need to hate, to harbor division, and the enticement of revenge. - John Lewis

Make a decision to be a forgiving person. - Sandy Beach

Our ever hopeful (or just denying) mind clings to the thought that if we would but do those two things, we would have peace of mind...forever! "Forever" to our reasoning mind means not a minute, not a second, of lapse in our believing else no peace of mind...ever. 

Clearly, to the egoic mind, our peace is totally under our control. Ah, there's the conundrum...our peace of mind rests in our control; there is no peace in control. 

I'm putting on airs when I compare my understanding of the writings of Mother Teresa found in her journals after her death...that she did not feel she knew God at all. I've been seeking still more spiritual growth going on fifty years now, and although I am aware that I know the right words, more often than not, I feel a laggard in the living of those words.

I suspect neither John Lewis nor Sandy Beach lived in perfect peace the majority of the time much less forever...but each brought peace to many, many people...and the words and thoughts they left behind still bring peace to those in need. I won't even touch Mother (now Saint) Teresa.

My hope is that our thoughts and words bringing peace to others long after we are no longer present is an assurance of a fraught-free afterlife. Of course, my hope is based on my desire for the afterlife. Ah, still seeking future peace of mind...and God grins.

I say again, if it weren't for humans being human, God wouldn't have any laughs at all.

Thank you.

WE ARE ALREADY SPIRITUAL

Well, here's a brand new thought as spelled out by Rohr: We still think of ourselves as mere humans trying desperately to become “spiritual.” The revelation was precisely that we are already spiritual (“in God”), and our difficult but necessary task is to learn how to become human.

I am not an outwardly thoughtful person. Unless I am asked, I do not feed others when they are in need, I don't run errands for others when they are laid up. I am not deliberately unthoughtful, it simply does not occur to me to actively do.

However, I am available. I have an inner ear that listens well...I suspect it is that inner ear that invites others to share their pain, and they do. I do not pick it up, I do not make it mine, I listen...whatever comes back to them is theirs as and if they choose it. Apparently, that is quite often helpful.

The low/high bar of my listening ear is it does not sooth me...in my time of self-perceived troubles, my listening ear is on mental-health leave. Which is the low bar to my want, and the high bar for my need.  

Little other than need leads us to bare our unexpressed pain to others...if we could fix ourself without exposure, wouldn't we? Of course we would. 

It's hard enough to expose our hurt to the unseen God, much less to an actual human face with ears to hear and eyes to see...and a mouth to say, "Beloved...you are the source of your woe. Hug it and kiss it and let it go." 

Well, we know that. But...ah, the old standby, "Yes, but...." 

That's where God, the unseen God, whisks away our blind eye...ah, we can see clearly now: We are the source of our woe, and it has been loved enough...we have already let it go, we just didn't realize it till we spoke it to another. Just another step in learning how to become human.

Who knew we are already spiritual (“in God”)? Now to enjoy being human (in God).

Thank you.

TIME TO UP OUR GAME...TRUST. PERIOD.

I'm coming to believe that it was a mistake to believe that which we learn, and learn to do, and learn to pass on, and learn to stand on...is permanent without fail as our walking around guide. No. How can it be when still more spiritual growth is the always answer up to and including three days after we're dead. 

With "still more" as our entire instruction manual, we can, must and will ever be raised to a higher level deeper, and, apparently, it can, must and will feel like another crash-and-burn experience if we're doing it right. And, with each new level, we will gain a whole new book of knowledge that feels like a veritable Primer. 

In short, we will be humbled.

I am first-hand learning that I cannot trust my feelings...right now. I can (because I must) trust my Father within...ah, there's the tripwire...I must trust my Father who currently feels AWOL. There. That's why I cannot trust my feelings right now. I can trust my own experience, and my own experience more than a few times has left me feeling lost, left alone, uncertain and not a bit happy about it. 

Each and every time I've chosen to stay the course (thank you), and I expect to stay the course this time. 

It occurs that this lifetime might not be for personal enlightenment. This life might be for the discipline of living...daily...that which I have learned, am even now learning.  Ah, to live a life of care and concern for the feelings of others...learning to love others, their warts and all. 

Equally important, learning unto living the fact that we will not always be heard. Here's freedom...we simply shake their dust off our feet and move on.

I can and do trust that the Father knows my needs, that God has my back, that indeed He goes  before me to make the crooked places straight. I can and do walk that most of the time. Apparently it is time to up my game. It's walking it daily now...or at least more often that 51 percent of the time. 

Thank you.

GOD LOVES US ENOUGH...TRUST THAT

I start this new year with a blinding flash of the obvious: In the silence, I hear, I am barren, give, give, give. 

My BFO translated: I feel barren, left alone, with nothing...I must give. 

I ponder: Barren means letting go of December 31, 2020, back through the years...all the way back to my day of birth...there is nothing I need to hold onto...what I give will be given to me as needed.

There. Those are my marching orders for 2021...I'm halfway to love and laugh already. Because I really, really want to follow those orders as I sit here this morning, but who's kidding whom? I am thinking, whaaa? How?

But all I'm being asked to do is Let Go. Detach. Hug it and kiss it and let it go. Who preaches that more than I do? Now, I Am asking it of me. 

God loves me so much that I am reminded:  He performs that which is given me to do.

Thank you.