WE MOVE UP, WE MOVE BACK, WE MOVE UP

To have faith, to grow toward love, union, salvation, or enlightenment, we must be moved from order to disorder and then ultimately to reorder. -- Fr Richard Rohr, Daily Meditation, January 21, 2024

We love the truths that we have had to walk through, thoroughly experience and finally crash and burn into. We believe them to be ours forever...primarily because we reasonably believe we've got that lesson learned. Well, yes...that lesson for that time. 

Ah, but students of the spiritual nature of life learn...very slowly if we're doing it right...that these lessons come back. Repeatedly. In a different guise, of course. That is the basis of spiritual growth...all that we learn in the moment is for that moment so we can continue to grow. 

That's why the Sermon on the Mount is my particular favorite. No matter the problem we're faced with...itsy-bitsy or humongous...the basic answer is always the same...resist not evil. 

Personally, I've had to allow the word evil to take on many different meanings...resist not hassles. Resist not disagreeable people. Resist not being misunderstood, slandered, disliked. Etc., etc. etc.

My early spiritual growth was necessarily bass-ackwards...I agreed with everything and everybody. And gathered a boatload of resentments...which I could not resist not. There it is...God's sliver of gold.

My self-determined objectives all failed me, and I was forced to dig deeper within my own self to find God's will, God's way for me for you for them. 

God's gift to me was the deeper understanding of resist not evil. Among other things, it's learning how to disagree without being disagreeable.

A couple of side bennies of that are learning how to state my truth softly, to listen without a mental rebuttal forming. Maybe the best is the warm feeling that comes when, without faking it, we can say, "I see...you are right." I hasten to add, that feeling does not come often...and never too early.

I know this...all that I know, all that I have written, can and will be mine to learn again...at a higher level deeper, at a deeper level higher. And I will resist...just not as long, not as hard, 

Proving yet again Fr Richard's wisdom, We don't get to God by doing it right, we get to God by doing it wrong.

Thank you.