NOT BY WILL BUT BY GRACE

We are created with an inner drive and necessity that sends all of us looking for our True Self, our true home, whether we know it or not....God creates the very dissatisfaction that only grace and finally divine love can satisfy. -- Fr Richard Rohr, Daily Meditations, May 9, 2024

We find living primarily by spiritual principles can lead us to deeper spiritual growth than we ever dreamed of...or wanted for that matter. Who's kidding whom...we learn, if we're doing it right, to give over, give up and give in not by will but by grace. 

There's the beginning of our test run...the test being, how ready are we really to live our life by our major spiritual principle, namely, agree with your adversary quickly. 

That is one steep climb which we will fail often. Ah, but the test is not to ace it and forget it, the test is to live it until three days after we are dead...if that be God's will. 

Expect to fail...welcome failure...for that is how to shuck our shields, the way to let go and let God.

Again from Fr Richard: We don't get to God by doing it right, we get to God by doing it wrong...which, according to me, is the open secret of living by spiritual principles...the willingness to show our bum in public. And that can never be done intentionally (looking for a shortcut to spiritual growth)...that's just another self-determined objective. 

Inadvertently we show our bum in public and, from our toenails up, feel the burn of personal humiliation, accepting without resistance the sneers and snarks...real or imagined...of others. 

That is still more spiritual growth. That is the by-product of looking for our True Self, our true home, whether we know it or not....God creates the very dissatisfaction that only grace and finally divine love can satisfy.

Thank you.