ACCEPT OUR WARTS, THEY LEAD US TO GOD

Recently I have written...seems like a lot...that I am living through a period of intense anxiety...free-floating anxiety in that it is not specifically attached to anything I am dreading, but I'm dreading most anything upcoming. More interesting to me...the littler it comes, the harder it hits.

Today's Daily Meditation informed the problem. As Sarah Kendziorm, an expert in authoritarian regimes, wrote, We are heading into dark times, and you need to be your own light. ... But most of all, never lose sight of who you are and what you value.

I felt validated, comforted and touched by higher wisdom on reading that. According to me, if we aren't anxious in today's world, we aren't paying attention. Anxiety being my cross-to-bear, I get to feel it, pray thank You and be renewed...anew. 

Blinding flash: Losing my material mind is my mind being changed...away from the material world toward the spiritual. Whether I feel it or not, I am on the right road, heading in the right direction.   

The message-gift: The anxious mind has been with us forever...let it be. Knuckle not, renew by acceptance of myself just as I am...warts and all. 

Anxiety is just another wart to God...as with God, so to me (with fingers crossed, I say).

God loves me so much...you, too!

Thank you.

BELIEF WITH NO VISIBLE EVIDENCE IS FAITH

Morning blinding flash of the obvious: Just because the outworking of God's will is not apparent to us doesn't mean it is not present. 

This came to me when I read my note in my daily reader: '23 Trump indicted...praise God. This morning, I added: '25 - no apparent consequences. 

The word "apparent" is the key...we know not what God's perfect will has already effected. That may not become visible to our naked eye anytime soon...if ever.

The consequences work within each of us for our own benefit. We know naught of Trump's inner workings nor how long it will be before he knows...and he may never know it much less show it.

The true blinding flash: The road to faith growing up is belief without visible evidence of God's will working for good. 

We might try accepting that any act of ours or others is God's will working for the good of each of us singularly and for all en masse. 

Here's a thought: Thy will, Thy way can only be for spiritual good...ego's material good gets to take the backseat. Now to practice that.

Thank you. 

DETACHED FROM EGO, HUGGED BY GOD

One of the main works of contemplation is detaching from the ego, but it isn’t really that meaningful unless that detachment is accompanied by an attachment. Do we have an increased attachment, sympathy, empathy, and compassion for the suffering of the world? –Richard Rohr, Daily Meditation, March 29, 2025

Oh, blinding flash: The many little trips, slips and corrections that make up our daily life are in fact detaching us from the ego. We think of them as rues, regrets and remorses and try oh-so-hard to correct ourself, yet those comprise the steps up to higher consciousness.

A recent experience of mine tells my truth that I missed as it was happening:  Recently I needed to go to my retina specialist whose office is a half hour away and I usually go by Lyft. As I was sharing this with a friend, she interrupted before I finished, saying that she knew exactly where the office was, and she would give me a ride, no problem. Up front admission: I doubted she knew exactly, etc., because I had not even finished my share. But, and for whatever reason that I did not examine, I agreed to her giving me a ride. Came the drive out there and we got so lost, I'm surprised we were still in our home state. A friendly passerby, using her app, gave us directions to my doctor's office, and we got there right on time to the minute.

The punchline: I did not feel upset, angry, afraid of being late (a favorite fear of mine), even minorly peeved...I held no grudge, felt not a whit superior (another favorite), and all but forgot about it until I read Fr Richard this morning...and felt a blinding flash of the obvious: I had felt no resistance to the moment...my ego was detached entirely.

There it is...no resistance to the moment is being spiritually present...mentally, ego reduction in depth, which road we must walk to get to the other side...no shortcuts.

The important fact that I almost lost here...I was unaware of the spiritual transformation taking place within me...my nonresistance in a word. It being a given my human state of mind has ever been anxiety-driven, yet I had no negative or ginned-up positive feelings toward anything or anybody.

As I look back, I realize I was in a state of mind of What Is...period. No frills, no fears. Hugged by God comes to mind, and I love it.

Thank you.

ANXIOUS GRATITUDE...LOVE AND LAUGH

I come again to my March 26. 2021, blinding flash of the obvious: No matter the upset, the breakdown, the calumny, the answer is the same: Know that this is for your benefit. Trust God and wait. 

.

I am living through a period of high anxiety. I am not running scared in my mind, I am more-than-less welcoming it. 

I know from my toenails up that this is the Father within proving that all my lessons in learning to live still more spiritual growth are here...in my life...right now. I've even named this period "the 80s." From the day I turned 80, my inner life changed. I began experiencing anxiety that I could live with by the simple change of my perception to love and laugh.

Until we live and breathe that which we preach, that which we preach is just so many words.

It was not until I got to live through the oh no, Mr. Bill! opportunity to surrender that my life's perspective changed...seemingly downward to go upward. I began to understand that surrender is of God, good, resistance is self-determined, not good. 

I live a life of anxious gratitude today...loving and laughing and praying my thank You.

Thank you.

RESIST NOT EVIL...PRAY THANK YOU

As I watched my children move through the primal metamorphosis of adolescence, I made a decision to be fascinated rather than terrified. I’m trying to impose the same discipline on my reaction to myself on this end of aging’s metamorphosis. --  Journalist Krista Tippett

I identify so completely with Tippett's article on aging that I had a hard time finding just one sentence to ponder. 

Her decision to be fascinated rather than terrified spoke true to me since I did make a decision on the day I turned 80 to find something each day to smile about...to ensure I kept my focus upward on I Am rather than downward on i am. 

I'm finding a-smile-a-day a lot harder than I expected.  

On occasion my friend Anxiety, with her inordinately loudmouth, can, will and does take over my thoughts. She has been on her soapbox these last few days...I pray thank you as I rely on the fact that nothing turns me to God faster than fear. 

I am aware of the world situation...more to the point, my Country's situation...and I do factor that into my anxiety. That helps me choose to accept any less-than-wonderful feelings as necessary aids to my still more spiritual growth, warts and all.

Old thought still good: Happy thoughts last for the moment, welcome them; less-than-happy thoughts are the manure that feeds our spiritual growth, welcome them.

Blinding flash of the obvious: Resist not evil...kiss it on the lips, pray thank you, and keep on truckin'.

Thank you.

ON THE ART OF BEING STILL

First, we must learn to be quiet, the art of being still must be practiced. -- Howard Thurman in Fr Richard's Daily Meditation today. 

Newly on my mind yet again, my need for calm, is the subject of Fr Richard's Daily Meditation today. This is God-guidance to me, and I feel graced.

As I stayed in bed this morning, half awake, I heard me whispering "Be peaced...calm...get calm." I could feel my anxiety still on high alert, and I welcomed my angels' quiet words, "be peaced." 

This period of time in America's history invites high anxiety. Personally, I wonder if this isn't God's will, God's way, bringing us back to the need to help return America to her original ideals, welcoming your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free. 

It has been too long since we, the just-plain-folks, have felt free to welcome others to God's healing land-of-plenty-and-pass-it-on. Not just to give money, which too few of us have an over-abundance of, but to give a helping hand, a kind word of care and concern, to a stranger in need. Or to accept that help from a stranger when we are in need...ah, there be the rub, as the old saying goes.

I once had a blinding flash that the bum on the streetcorner begging was God giving us the golden opportunity to share...to share love, and a warm smile qualifies. 

Maybe that's what we have here today...in all the conflicts around the world, in America's daily drama and trauma, in our own daily frets, we have the love of God for us to pass on.

Here's our old lesson relearned: Whatever is, is God's will, God's way, i.e., the mirror-image of our will, our way, or the veritable opposite of the material mind's view. 

I still take comfort in the first words of the 23rd Psalm: The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want.

If we shall not want, we have enough...we shall never not have enough with the Lord as our Shepherd. Having enough, we can pass it on...keep the spiritual supply chain open...growing by flowing.

God is so good to us.

Thank you.

FEEL THE FEAR AND DO IT ANYWAY

We must try with a will or fall by the wayside. -- Anonymous

That sentence is still playing its trumpet in my mind. Followed, immediately and as usual, with:  Let go and let God.

Both of these thought-sentences have been on my mind, in my heart and soul, playing constantly for some time now. 

It is fear. of course, that is dictating my thoughts...I think that I "just recognized" but "just acknowledged" is the truth. I've known it was fear, I was afraid to acknowledge it. 

I do not doubt that many, if not the majority, of us today are suffering the tortures of free-floating fear, trying to it figure out, pray it away, think it over, talk it to death, etc. That is our life daily and our life with the politics of today's world factored in.

My Now-life interpretation: Fear along with the ups and downs of daily life comprise the gift of still more spiritual growth.  The basic fact of which is: The reverse of our self-interpretations is probably God's will, God's way for us. 

I'm reminded of the cartoon of the little child being fed dinner, his punchline being, I say it's spinach, and I say the hell with it. That's our first thought when God gifts us with a specialty of his...or, why second thoughts are priceless.

Feel the fear and do it anyway is still calling my name so here goes me into my day, doing, dammit, doing1

Thank you.

FEAR...UNKNOWINGLY, GOD'S GREATEST FRIEND

This may be a great gettin' up morning...on the other hand, it may be another Oh No, Mr. Bill. 

I'm feeling all sixes and sevens, with the all-but-touchable fear of losing my mind riding me. Ah, here comes God to comfort me...nothing turns me to God faster than fear. 

This feels exactly like my experience nearly 50 years ago when I sat on my bed and wept, pea green-purple petrified that I was losing my mind. 

I say again what I said then, Lord, if I need to lose my mind, then take it...do with it as You will, use it or don't, Your choice. 

The difference between then and now...now I have earned faith. Fear doesn't differentiate...it likes having a cause but to thrive it needs only our lack of faith. I have faith and earned faith kicks fear's butt every time.

The God of my faith comforts me when I feel fear...I know God is here, and I am graced. 

Fear is not eliminated, but God again is shown to be greater than fear...proving the saying, feel the fear and do it anyway. 

This has just turned into my great gettin' up morning! 

Thank you.

MAKE THE DIFFERENCE...BY GRACE AND BY GOD

A prayer practice—contemplation—is simply a way of maintaining the fruits of great love and great suffering over the long haul and in different situations. And that takes a lot of practice—in fact, our whole life becomes one continual practice. -- Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation, Marh 23, 2025

A prayer practice—contemplation: The above quote of Fr Richard's describes the life of my Fellowship...what it offers to those in need of doing, practicing, living, breathing that which is.

The Fellowship was birthed by sufferers, got its first light and life by grace and by God, survives on spiritual principles, thrives through those of us who need, thus live, what is offered. 

In short, we are enabled to maintain the fruits of great love and great suffering over the long haul and in different situations.

Or, quitcherbitchin', do.  Make the difference.

Thank you.

JUST AS I AM...OH, RATS

We must try with a will or fall by the wayside. -- Anonymous

Let go and let God. -- Anonymous

For whatever reason, I'm feeling all sixes and sevens this morning...remembering What'shername, about my age, who was an acquaintance in my early years. She was totally self-absorbed...later years, still totally self-absorbed, but always open to finding herself a husband. Finally, five or so years ago, fairly late in her life, she found him..."not handsome...big nose"...but they married.

In short, she made a 180, and I'm guessing is living happy, joyous and free with the overcoming of human glitches on all sides...living life right. 

And then there's me...feeling all sixes and sevens this morning. 

I made a "man-need" remark of my own yesterday and am regretting it ever since. Regretting that it was overheard, truth to tell.

My prayer earlier this morning was a request that the Lord fix me as He knows I need be fixed, or gift me with acceptance that I am fixed just exactly as I am...living life right. 

Thank you.

FEAR TOO IS A TOOL FOR GOOD

From the time of my being lifted up from my crash and burn in 1971, I have been seriously seeking within for the kingdom of Heaven. This has not always been consciously, but unconsciously is better anyway...God guided is ego eased.

I suspect...I hope...seeking still more spiritual growth is the most difficult dig we will ever have. Ego does not go gracefully...and never completely.

Without doubt that is the most rewarding...possibly our greatest...gift, and it has no promise of money attached. Our need for still more spiritual growth is what pulls us up...with ego riding herd every inch of the way.

There it is...the reason we can love ego. Let it dress itself in fear...nothing turns us to God faster than fear...so thank you, ego, for the proof that all things work together for good.... (Romans 8:28)

If the only prayer you ever say in your lifetime is 'thank you' that would suffice. -- Meister Eckhart  

Thank you.

LOVE, JUST LOVE, I

[The following is a reprint of my post of October 18, 2018.]

I have read, and I do believe, that all of our problems can be solved by spiritual principles.

If, indeed, that be true, why do we not apply spiritual principles to our everyday life? Or to corporate problems? Or national and international problems?

Elementary question, complicated answer...actually, the answer is equally elementary, i.e., ego. The problem being that ego is individualized. Each person has one, and each one is legislating for itself.

I suspect the nut of the legislation for self boils down to each one's understanding of God...starting with whether one accepts that there is a God and then whose God has the most power, does it right, can beat all others in nuclear war or in arm wrestling, etc., etc., etc.

New rule: All problems are ego-based. Get over our self, we get over our problem. Or, love.

Better rule: Love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and love thy neighbor as thyself.

Thank you.

NO WRONG WAY TO GROW SPIRITUALLY

I am grateful that I early-on realized that there is the active way to spiritual awareness or the contemplative way. I use both, or both use me, and Eknath Easwaran in his "Words to Live By" describes it well:

We require both the active and the contemplative ways. They are phases of a single rhythm like the pulsing of the heart, the in-drawing and letting go of breath, the ebb and flow of the tides. So we go deep, turned inwards in meditation to consolidate our vital energy, and then with greater love and wisdom we come out into the family, the community, the world. Without action, we lack opportunities for changing our old ways, and we increase our self-will rather than lessen it; without contemplation, we lack the strength to change and are blown about by our conditioning.

That comforts me still.

Thank you. 

WE SHALL FIGHT NO MORE FOREVER

Blinding flash of the obvious: To fight hate is to give it a voice.

Ah, resist not evil is clarified and born anew within me; and this is my 80s again singing my song...a virtual clarion call now.

I resist not my niggling fear for I need to let anxiety lead me just as it did some 50 years ago when I sat in the middle of my bed sobbing in fear of losing my mind. I finally wailed my surrender by inviting insanity "to take me, take my mind...get it over with," or words to that effect. 

I believed I was going to go running out of my home, ripping my clothes off, foaming at the mouth. I sat and waited...and nothing happened. 

To be clearer...nothing outside of me happened; inside me, and unbeknownst to my reasoning mind, a spiritual revolution had taken place by my surrender. My saving search began with my failure to get my wants met...which failure birthed my need, spiritual growth, plain and simple.

The core of my spiritual growth is in those three words, resist not evil. As I have often opined, resist not evil is the source of love. I know that I claim that, and I natter about it way more than I live it...but, probably only Jesus toed the line. 

That, of course, does not give us leave to stop trying...to quote from a favorite book of mine, we must try with a will or fall by the wayside.

We are called again to Chief Joseph and his edict: I shall fight no more forever. 

Thank you.

NOTHING HAS POWER WHEN WE FIGHT IT NOT

Blinding flash of the obvious: It is not dementia, it is anxiety.

As that thought flashed this morning, I felt it to be true...with the following qualifier: Probably true if I let it be. Ah, there's the rub. Trust and do the next reasonable thing rather than trying to prove it in my head. 

I suspect I need to let anxiety lead me just as it did originally...in 1970-something, when I sat in the middle of my bed sobbing in fear of losing my mind, and I finally wailed, "Come on then...take my mind, get it over with," or words to that effect. I truly believed I was going to go running out of my place, ripping my clothes off, foaming at the mouth. I sat and waited...and nothing happened. Except my mind changed.

In looking back I remember and fully realize that was my first surrender to anxiety...and the oh-so-slow awakening to the reality that anxiety has no power when we fight it not.

Ah...lesson learned: Nothing does. Nothing has power when we fight it not. Resist not evil realized. 

Those are no longer just words, they are my walking-around Truth...my breath of life. Resist not evil finally made mine. This is not new news to me...it is remembered truth and still gold.

I will forget, I will remember. 

Thank you. 

LIVE THE WORD OF THE LORD

Pope Francis as quoted in Fr Richard's Daily Meditations, March 16, 2025: We all … are called to welcome our brothers and sisters who are fleeing from war, from hunger, from violence and from inhuman living conditions. *** The only path to a solution is through solidarity. Solidarity with the migrant, solidarity with the foreigner. [Me:…. solidarity with our fears.]

Blinding flash of the obvious: To find solidarity with our fears is to learn a secret of love. 

When we learn to love without self-censoring, we will live solidarity. Follow the word of the Lord. 

Thank you. 

GOD CAN AND WILL IF SOUGHT, I

[The following is a reprint of my post of March 26, 2017.]

Blinding flash of the obvious: Don’t be afraid of darkness, of the things that look like they’re going in the wrong direction.

That very well may be the best advice one can receive. It is paradoxical to me, and I call paradox my spiritual tuning fork, so of course I love it. Plus, it invites us to relearn from our own experience...and is there a better teacher? Not to me, there's not. But consider, when we go back in our memories and bring up that which looked so dark a-coming, it most often turned out to be our light when we accepted it.

Possibly the hardest thing I ever did...consciously with this as my intent...was to invite insanity to come get me. I was living with intense anxiety which felt like insanity anyhow, and the thought occurred that maybe this was God's will, that I lose my mind in order to find it. So I sat myself down in the middle of my bed, sobbing all the while, and said right out loud, "Welcome, madness! Come on in!" My heart was pounding like a tom-tom, I was shaking all over and my hands and head were soaked with sweat.

Believe it when I say that I fully expected to go running out the door, frothing at the mouth, tearing my clothes off, and screaming like a banshee.

Nothing happened.

After I got calm, hope began to awaken within me. Slowly hope grew into belief...belief that my fear of insanity was just that...my fear. I have never again had anxieties as debilitating as those were then...which is not to say I have not had anxieties. I just have the formula for living with them today: I welcome them, say my thank you, and think of God and the things of God...Pope Francis for example. I'm not even Catholic, but I know "of God" when I see it.

Over time and continuing to this day, I build my house on the rock that God can and will intervene in my life on my behalf.

Thank you.

PROVED NOT BY RATIONAL LOGIC

This is the nature of mature, mystical religion—simple and clear. ...reground religion on one lone conviction—a divine love that can only be experienced and not proved by rational logic....Anything that gets in the way of this divine and absolute love must be shaved away. -- Richard Rohr's Daily Meditations, March 13, 2025

The need for divine and absolute love means nobody, no thing, nothing goes unloved. 

Mentally, here comes Donald Trump leading my prove-it pack.

I am about halfway convinced that at this time Donald Trump was led by divine grace to his place in this world, and led not by a spiritual urge, but by his self-obsession...a degree of which is in all of us. 

That degree of self-obsession is fear, and that fear is God in disguise...which opens me to my self-identifying hook that I hang my prove-it on. 

If not for the fairly constant failure of self-determined objectives, it is unlikely we would ever seek a God of our own understanding. That is, a higher Power, a power greater than ourself, to peace our mind. The very idea is too "whoo-whoo" for the rational mind. (I have an ongoing debate with myself as to whether God is in "rational.")

Our acceptance of the fact that anything that gets in the way of our need for the God of our own understanding may well be the hardest fact and act we will ever meet. It helps when we accept that we will never make 100 percent, 100 percent of the time. 

The grace of God, our sincere want-to prayers and upward actions will keep us heading in the right direction...with the touch-and-go of God bringing the occasional pearl beyond price.  

Thank you.

WORST TO FIRST...WITH GOD

I have thought, talked, written...a lot...about the worst day of my life turning out to be the best day of my life. 

Back in the day, coming to my spiritual awakening, I had to be entirely broken without a hope or a prayer...without a self-determined objective, in short. Mentally, I had nowhere to go, and mentally was my go-to, my imagined safety and security. 

That blessed day I felt naught but sick, sad and sorry...as it turned out, God in disguise was there all along. Unknowingly, I was given the gift of reverse thinking (my term). In five short/long years I came to realize my crash and burn began my spiritual awakening. 

As Fr Richard has written, the Word we heard mainly fit the downtrodden as opposed to the uptown people. No doubt that was my first acceptance of the idea that my "bad news" might be beneficial, a gift from God in fact.

Ever since I heard the word that nothing turns us to God faster than fear, this thought has flitted in and out: Fear of the perceived "bad news" is God's will, God's way hovering in the shadows, awaiting our invitation to enter.

Grace doesn't enter with a brass band...she enters silently, sacredly, and most often we do not recognize her until we look back...in gratitude.

My now watchword: Fear is here, God is near...get grateful.

Thank you.

 (aka, our crash and burn) to raise us up. 

A CHANGED MIND...A CHANGED LIFE

His message of good news is not likely to be sought after or heard by the comfortable and the secure, he seems to say, but by the poor, the captives, the blind, and the oppressed—which fully explains Jesus’ behavior throughout the rest of his ministry. -- Fr Richard Rohr, Daily Meditation, March 12, 2025 

Fr Richard's column today sets out my core belief; namely, that the spiritual message of good news is the reverse of what the comfortable want...and is heard best by the hopeless, the helpless...the down-and-out.

In essence, that is the message I got long ago, that the reverse of my wants (my will, my way) is the heart of the higher Purpose for us...God's will, God's way.

As life has turned out for me to date, the way higher began with the crash and burn of my will, my way, all hope, any prayer...even down-and-out seemed like a step up for me. To be sure, life for me has been as daily as it would have been sans spiritual growth...only I have lived at peace, not peeved. 

Lesson learned: Only our mind needs to be changed.  A changed mind, away from self toward Self, brings a feeling of serenity into our life. Turned by the Spirit toward the spiritual, we live happy, joyous and free. 

Hear our hallelujah!

Thank you.

THE GIFT OF FEAR, THE GRACE OF GRATITUDE

God does not stay at a distance from us but constantly seeks to transform our lives by asking us to awaken to the divine presence. -- Theologian Serene Jones

I learned long ago that nothing turns me to God faster than fear. This is easy to forget when fear is riding herd...and that, too, is God's will, God's way. 

Fear cannot be swallowed. ignored or dismissed. It is allowed to live in us for us to realize that fear is another of God's tools bringing us home to Him.  

It is my fear that is riding me now. Fear it is that God is using to transform me by awakening me to His presence.

To laugh in the face of fear is to not understand the situation. To fall to our knees and pray thank You in the face of fear is God in our life.

To ponder: Maybe fear is God in divine disguise to turn us to the grace of God.

Thank you.

ON PAYING THE CONSEQUENCES...GOD-GUIDED

My blinding flash of the obvious this morning: I must pay the consequences for my inactions. 

I cannot deny to myself that it was my decision to not get doctor-ordered checkups...probably decided by depression which I still deny as real to me...yet use it as an excuse. 

Add to that my inaction by not getting and maintaining socialization...simply calling others to chat, invite to lunch, etc. I am inactively aware that my reaching out is what I need to do now more than ever.

From my eyebrows up, I can say that all of this that I am seeing is already healed by the Father within. But those are just so many words, unrealizable, of course, until after the fact.  

To benefit I must walk it through in real time...call for doctor appointments, go to doctor, take all the materially necessary steps...and stop any CYA excuses from leaving my mind for a walk-around. 

This is for my own benefit...benefit being for my own spiritual growth. 

The question is whether I will do it...this is an unanswerable question until I do or do not do that which I have committed myself to. 

Uh-oh...comes the light: When our answers are found in looking back, we're going down that wrong road again. When we do what we are committed to do, our mind is centered in the Now where regrets are invitations to change.  

Thank you.

GOD'S GOLDEN GOOSE...THANK YOU

As the mystics have often said, God 'hides.' Every moment is not obvious as God, as grace; it looks quite simply like another ordinary moment. But our willingness to recognize it as gratuitous—as a free gift, as self-revelatory, as a possibility—allows it to be that way. God’s hiding ceases. God and grace become apparent as a gift in each moment. And those who learn how to receive gifts keep receiving further gifts. -- Fr Richard Rohr, Daily Meditation, March 9, 2025

When I read Fr Richard's Daily Meditation, I felt gobsmacked for that is precisely what I have been assuring myself is true, praying that it be true...with God hidden in the underbrush of the reasoning mind where fear abides. 

As we can expect, this came at the exactly right time...just after I had journaled, I am feeling fearful...of losing my mind, of dementia, Alzheimer's, Lewy Body Dementia. 

God's direction: Focus our gratitude there...on God hidden in our fear for our benefit.

Long-time question: How can thank you be the only prayer needed? 

Question answered: By nonresistance. In nonresistance, there is naught but God. 

I chose to believe, admittedly a tish shakily, that the Lord hears my prayers and ensures they are my reality, not just my words. (I feel grateful for the "shakily" for that is the golden goose that keeps me coming back.)

Thank you.

RISE IN GRATITUDE, HOME AGAIN, NATURALLY

Blinding flash of the obvious: Our fear is our greatest friend.

When we fight fear, we lose...and there it is: God's gates open to let us in...powerless, defeated, and...unknowingly...already on the rise.

We rise in gratitude...thank You, our forever watchword, welcomes God's will, God's way, and we are Home again, naturally. 

Thank you.

OUR MINDSET EXCHANGED FOR GOD'S

The mystic can never be certain that union with God will be the outcome of longing for God. They must rest in unknowing. * * * And yet that emptiness, that waiting, that liminal space is sacred. -- Mirabai Starr, Fr Richard's Daily Meditation, March 7, 2025

This way, i.e., resting in the unknowing, previously accepted by me as waiting on the Spirit to move me, I can now accept as my eyes being lifted...to see anew.

It is not that I did nothing when "waiting." I've inner known (before realizing) that this was not a self-determined want but somehow a need, ergo of God because quite simply it fit me. 

This then is the a result of the long-ago commitment I made to seek still more spiritual growth in all things that come to me. The majority of the time I have succeeded...that's 51 percent of the time, hitting sometimes higher, never lower. 

To seek still more spiritual growth in all things that come to me became real when I accepted that my spiritual growth was most often realized when I looked back...usually with regrets. The God-change came when I looked back and saw the results of my regrets had benefitted another. To see God's finished product, our name not even on it, is the pearl beyond price.

What a gift it is to look back and realize, or just glimpse, spiritual growth in much of our daily life born of our reasoning mind's rues, regrets and remorses. 

We very likely receive our greatest gift when our mindset is exchanged for God's.

Thank you.

FEEL THE FEAR, TRUST...LOVE AND LAUGH

Blinding flash of the obvious: We are the host; fear is the supplicant.

We openly welcome fear without bravado or hoopla; we show it our welcome as royalty shows commoners courtesy...in peace. 

I ponder my BFO. It is not the object of our fear, dementia, that is the source of our disturbance.  It is our fear of what unknown thoughts, feelings, behaviors can be wrought by dementia.

The question is: Can God lift us above the acts brought by dementia? 

In short, are all my pre-80 beliefs shot down by age? Including my favorite, With God all things are possible. 

My question: Are they? Are all things possible with God? 

My answer: I must needs live it to find out. Or, SOSO, same old same old (that's God in mufti).

I believe that I believe the only thing I need strengthen is my faith in the God of my understanding. The God that lives in my heart, my soul, my body and my brain. Living there, the Father and I are one'd. 

Are these just words, then, after all? Here's the fact of the matter: I have no choice but to live my life just as it comes from me...I would need to change my whole life structure not to believe, not to trust. That would not be of God, that would be self-will on the hoof. 

Trust...why would that which has walked me through my life to date, not now? God cannot not be with me, so I do what I know is God's will, God's way for me. I trust and be not afraid...or I be afraid.

Fear will not keep God away...nothing brings God to me faster than fear. Feel the fear and love and laugh. 

Thank you. 

PEOPLE SOBBING WITHOUT SOUND

[The following is from Fr Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation, March 5, 2025. I read it and felt a tingling in my gut for I see it telling the future for each and every one of us in this world.]

The Palestinian poet Mosab Abu Toha expresses the devastation of grief and the longing for peace:

I wish I could wake up and find the electricity on all day long.
I wish I could hear the birds sing again, no shooting and no
buzzing drones.
I wish my desk would call me to hold my pen and write again,
or at least plow through a novel, revisit a poem, or read a play.
All around me are nothing
but silent walls.

and people sobbing

without sound.

God bless us all, everyone. 

Thank you.

THE FATHER AND I ARE ONE'D

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. -- 23rd Psalm

This morning's blinding flash of the obvious revisited: Because the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want, I have enough. I shall never not have enough.

I have enough even should the likes of dementia, poverty, incurable disease come to me...enough gets me to God who supplies any and all needs...not wants, needs.

To feel a need is spiritual recognition of God's presence knocking. I pray thank You and am one'd...by my raised consciousness, the Father and I are one'd.

Thank you.

I BELIEVE I BELIEVE...AND THANK YOU

What items from the past are tied to unprocessed grief? -- Pixie Lighthorse in Fr Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation today

I have long inner realized, but never eyebrows-up known, that my brother's death dictated my inner self back then and in some manner no doubt to this day. 

I have been to therapy more than a couple of times, yet I do not recall ever mentioning Paul's death...or my trauma around it. Not on purpose not mentioning...it simply did not occur to me. 

There...that is an inner on purpose which I choose to accept as God's will, God's way. We, God and I, knew I needed to get my spiritual growth from within, and be it ever so slow to my reasoning mind, I am growing at God's perfect speed for me. 

I feel comfortably assured that I will keep coming back till I get it right...I can look forward to my next life as me hard slogging with a wholly peaced mind. Ah, my fantasies, I love them!

Lighthorse also assures us the underground river within each of us is becoming more conscious. 

My reasoning mind shrugs but does not resist. I believe I believe...that is close enough to perfect for me. 

Thank you.

NOT TO DISCOVER BUT TO RETRIEVE, I

[The following is a reprint of my post of December 30, 2013.]

It is such a comfort to me, when a problem looms, to remind myself that that problem has already been solved.

I usually want to get in the midst of it, figure it out (to my advantage), get all concerned to agree with me, but I need to quiet my mind, to listen. To listen...not for the answer to my perceived problem (for in God's world, there is no problem), but for the discipline of simply sitting quietly and listening.

As Fr. Richard Rohr writes, "...spiritual knowledge is more like retrieving than discovering."

Whatever answer we need (which likely has not an iota to do with what we're thinking we need) will come to us. That answer may look less than wonderful and a butt-biter into the bargain, but it is, in truth, our gold mine.

All we need remember is the promise: "Be not afraid...it is I."

Thank you.

THE ART OF ACCEPTANCE...LET GO AND LET GOD

To help us understand Meister Eckhart’s teaching that we are the image of God: Eckhart says, 'The image owes no allegiances to anything except that of which it is the image.'… There is nothing that has the authority to say what it is except that of which it is the image. And so it is with us, Eckhart says, that we are the image of God. Without God, we are nothing, absolutely nothing. -- Fr Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation, February 28, 2025

I read that and understood it completely...so I pondered it and lost any understanding at all. And so far, have not gotten it back. 

The art of acceptance: Think not, let.

Thank you.