WHEN WE STUMBLE...REDUX

[The following is a reprint of my post of December 31, 2018.]

When you've stumbled--and the guilt, loneliness, and fear come to assault you--if you don't have at least one good friend, or if you have not developed a prayer life where you know how to find yourself in God instead of in your own feelings, you will simply retrench and reassert your correctness. -- Fr Richard Rohr, "Daily Meditation," June 13, 2016

The big reveal to me there is the need to know how to find yourself in God instead of in your own feelings.

I recall the shock I felt when I recognized a large part of my life had been premised on petty irritations, snap judgments and push-backs. Actually, it wasn't so much shock as it was a feeling of unease...I don't know at the outset that I could take in its fullness. It kinda simmered there in my thoughts, from my eyebrows up, not moving for a long time...there just enough to cause me pause then dart away.

Based on my own experience, I do believe that learning unto doing thank you has been the turning point, the saving grace, the pearl beyond price to me and my life. Mainly because the habit of saying thank you started with petty irritations, snap judgments and push-backs. I'm thinking trial balloon. That's probably how I got started...thinking to myself, say it and see what happens.

* * * 

The lesson in praying thank you and that is all is it does not keep the dreaded thing from happening, it brings us peace in the midst of the dread. It is that peace of mind, i.e., finding our self in God, that keeps us from retrenching and reasserting our correctness. Which is also known as doing the same thing over and over, expecting different results...sometimes defined as insanity, sometimes as self-will run riot, both definitions work.

Another thing I like about Rohr's quote is that he says, "When you've stumbled...." When, not if.

We will stumble, we are not only allowed, we are expected to! Where's the need for all our spiritual seeking if stumbling isn't allowed? For that matter, where's the need for God? If we be perfect, there's no God necessary.

And God grins at the folly.

Thank you.