WE BEGIN AGAIN...AND YET AGAIN

Our rough and rutted road becomes our rough and rocky road...the rocks become pebbles, the pebbles become grains of sand. Each rut, rock, pebble, grain being the will of God leading us back to him. Curse them not, praise with thank you, for we cannot move from rut to rock to pebble to sand before we realize God in each, each time. -- A recent blinding flash of the obvious

Reading this morning of Dr. King's consciousness of nonviolence, reminded me of that recent BFO. Nonviolence is nonresistance is living our self, stripped of self. Offering impersonal rather than personal love, understanding, acceptance. 

Personal love seeks to get...impersonal love only gives. 

There it is, the entirety of our thinking that we seek still more spiritual growth. We read Rohr, Goldsmith, et al., we try to practice what we read, we expect spiritual growth...an unrough, unrocky road...which is simply our idea of the good life. 

We discover spiritual growth does not deliver our idea of the good life, i.e., sex, society and security wrapped in sunshine, rainbows and roses. 

Spiritual growth delivers our self, our less-than-wonderful self, that me that so needs to discover within the love we  seek. We are the friend who betrays us, the love who leaves us, the sure-thing investment that goes broke, the stranger who robs us. Each and every time. 

We need to quit kidding ourself that we are seeking still more spiritual growth while we hold to any idea of what that looks like to us personally...no matter what spiritual treatises we follow, including the Sermon on the Mount. We read in order to get the right idea which we attempt to walk....until we crash and burn. 

Even common sense knows that humbly does not come dressed in diamonds and pearls for all the world to see. If we're doing it right, we experience pain, shame, hurt, humiliation...or, the shucking of our shields. That is the way as...if...we humbly seek the God of our own understanding. 

When we realize that God lives within...not just know, but realize...we have kissed our own self on the lips, hugged her and kissed him, and let them go.  

Our search for still more spiritual growth has just begun.

Thank you.