GOODNESS HAS NO BOUNDARIES

Take nothing personally. 

That has been my inner goal for my last thirty even forty years...it has taken me the last twenty-five  years to even get a fix on what that really means.

I was talking with a friend yesterday who was telling me about the generic Gertrude, this one a childhood friend with whom I have had no contact since high school. 

It seems Gertrude married a gorgeous guy who has money up the gumpstump; they live in a fabulous old mansion on the Upper Side of Downtown and have a couple of beautiful and successful children. 

The gorgeous guy, as it turns out, is a serial wife-cheater...liar and thief therefore also applying. To put the period to it...Gertrude adores her husband, she is known as goodness itself, loved by all and is just as happy as if she had good sense.

Well.

Appalled, I was. Only I couldn't decide if I was more appalled at Gertrude's obvious oblivity or her husband's perfidy. My tongue was like hung in the middle and clacking at both ends.

Comes now God to the rescue...my morning blinding flash of the obvious: Gertrude is wide open to the love for her husband...my egoic mind calls it "blinded by" but she's happy. There. That is the essence of taking nothing personally. She takes not personally his behavior or the judgments of others about his behavior...she does not see it, or recognize it to personalize it. That which I judge as his perfidy is on me, not him or her, but on me. It is not wrong for me to not want that behavior in my life...my wrong is judging it and them. My wrong is judging.

The good news is, that BFO relieved me, set my mind free to experience depersonalized thoughts for Gertrude and her husband. On the material level, I have not seen her since high school and only saw him a couple times during that period...I know them not. It is no great feat to fuggedaboutit. 

Looking deeper, I see that spiritually God is ever on the field. To be released from a self-generated resentment aborning is my inner evidence that God can and will intervene in my life in my behalf, as in, has my back. 

Clearly, Gertrude is blessed. Goodness has no boundaries...grows where it goes and goes where it is needed. Gertrude's goodness has come back to bless all of us. And her husband's  business is her husband's business.

Thank you.

P.S.  "Her husband's business" reminds me of the story of the man desperate to learn how to love. Long/short: He dropped acid, a hideous monster came to him, he freaked and tried to get away, and the monster said, "What was it you thought needed to be loved?" Lessons learned.