Looking back, I can see that being 80 and then some has opened me to what my still more spiritual growth has been building within me these last 51+ years.
I recognize profound changes that at the time of their birth seemed small irritations or merely interesting. As they accumulate, I recall reading Goldsmith, Rohr, Easwaran, Watts, the Sermon, and others that describe the markers I am seeing in my spiritual growth.
I freely own me today, looking nothing like I envisioned me as I read Goldsmith, et al. Specifically, I am nothing like I pictured me when I achieved all I read and aimed to become. I'm still me, same-old-same-old, only with enough sober living to not be the insecure rabble-rouser I was then.
I'm still me...only knowing that I have God at my back makes a world of upside difference in me today.
No doubt about it, my greatest change is inner which must needs affect my outer...less mouthy so less insecure, more concerned for other than me, still immensly grateful for my own golden rule, I just try not to be as nasty as I want to be, lifted from a Henry Mitchell column in The Washington Post in the early '80s.
To paraphrase Fr Richard, At 80+, I often feel that I can and do leave the full field of the future in God’s hands and whether I know it or not agree to humbly hold the present with what can only tentatively be known for sure.
Or, love and laugh. No one needs be 80 to get that.
Thank you.
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