FREED OF SELF, WE ARE FREED

...transformation begins with learning to see and love the world as it is. -- From Fr Richard's Daily Meditation, April 29, 2025.

Upon reading that, my immediate thought was, "Ain't that the truth!" 

I recalled that began my travel time between first thought, taking action, learning the lesson of resist not and finally letting go...the majority of the time. 

Many years ago when that realization first came to me, I was thinking only of self transformation. At the time, I was overweight so I joined Weight Watchers...which was right just not the deeper right I needed and would come to.

I have come to accept that no travel time...no self-realization travel time...is wasted. Looking back, the memory confirms my spiritual growth...or, sometimes better, it's good for a laugh.

Self transformation to me today is the gutbucket acceptance that my warts are God's gold...without my warts, my less-thans, my self-centered objectives, I would have spent my life wandering in the wilderness of my own thoughts, wondering what-to-do, what-to-do...or, relying on that which first got me stuck to get me unstuck, my will, my way. 

There is no God in that...he hovers nearby, but self-will blocks all but self-want.

The great and glorious happening is, fueled by self will, we crash and burn, ready at last to be lifted by grace and by God to a changed mind. 

That's it. Our mind is changed! 

We accept our work to do, we are gifted with willingness...and in God's good time, we are happy, joyous and freed.  We pray thank You.

Thank you.

ON PRAYING "THANK YOU," THE PEARL

We have to find our inner authority through Christ in us; we have to find our purpose in our love of God and neighbor, and actions of mercy and justice. Otherwise, we’re not offering anything that the world doesn’t already have or can’t find in other places. —Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation, January 4, 2025

To me, finding...or recognizing?...the Christ in us is our most difficult task since self-will is useless...meaning, duh, our most difficult task is not our task...it is our gift. 

Looking back, we feel a bit gob smacked, a bit dumb, blessed...it is so obvious after the fact of living it. Only "looking back" takes as long as it takes...we slowly learn the gift of thank You when faced with a less-than...an I-don't-wanna...or more truthfully I don't think I can. 

There it is! There's the lesson. Unknowingly, we know at the outset. I don't think I can is pure truth. Only when we realize it is God speaking, do we know and grow. 

I can't, God can, I let him...and pray 'thank You.' 

Thank you.

THINK SMALLER...TRUST GOD'S TIME

For anyone walking through the political mishmash in America today...we need to trust. 

Trust that which we say we believe...God has us in the palm of his hand. That takes a lifetime of walking it, not just talking it. 

A reminder: The three-minute exercise that we try to do daily: Pray Dear God, For America...then let God do the rest. 

In trust, we stay in the silent prayer of thank You. 

The reasoning mind...or even the spiritually fit human...will resist. Our minds are born to think...except that thinking delays trust. 

These are some of the steps we take to become entirely ready, willing and able to accept unto doing God's will, God's way...in God's time.

Thank you.

THY WILL, THY WAY...BY UNEARNED GRACE

None of us crosses over this gap from death to new life by our own effort, our own merit, our own purity, or our own perfection. Each of us is carried across by unearned grace. —Richard Rohr 

This is the time of remembrance for Pope Francis and his goodness. He...his goodness...is much on my mind along with our president...his less-than goodness and what that is foretelling...for America, for the world.

By unearned grace, America stands for the consciousness of the world...the best in each and all whether we know it or not. America does not stand alone, America stands with and for the world. 

According to me.

Thank you.

OUR TIME IS NOW...PRAY THANK YOU

What if we never stopped making Easter claims about Jesus in AD 33, but always continued by making Easter claims on us today—declaring that now is the time to be raised from the deadness of fear, hostility, exclusion, and violence to walk in what Paul called 'newness of life'? -- Brian McLaren, "Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation," April 25, 2025

This describes metaphorically our mental/spiritual transitioning, giving us the time when we declare our seeking complete. The time is Now. 

Our lost self is found in Self, and the Christ lives through us. 

Now we began anew...raised higher to be awakened deeper.

Thank you.

WE ARE ON THE MARCH WITH GOD FOR AMERICA

I awoke this morning feeling listless, unsettled, discomfited, all alone. This is not my first rodeo, I have been here before but this seems darker. I recall the reason for my discontent...it is wrapped in my perception of our president and his followers...which is scarifying.

We learn to take conscious note of how world events impact our thinking, feeling, doing, being. They can negatively or positively play us, but negatively does the harm.

To me, today's American presidency, i.e., the president and his unqualified "team," have an aura of "by the prickling of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes."

The thing is, whether something wicked actually gets here, its forecast is the black cloud over our head and heart. Dread has legs of its own that can walk, talk and mock us...ah, but signifying nothing! 

We are God's hands and feet, and we are on the march with God. 

My heart, my soul, my body and my brain all believe that no matter what we will be called to walk through, with God America and her believers are on the side of God's will, God's way. That which appears less-than is self-centered fear strutting its stuff...we resist it not. We know it for nothing and less than nothing with God at the helm.

Lord, hear our prayer, thank You.

Thank you.

HOPE IS NOT AN ILLUSION, IT EMPOWERS...NOW

Sisters and brothers, especially those of you experiencing pain and sorrow, your silent cry has been heard and your tears have been counted; not one of them has been lost!... The resurrection of Jesus is indeed the basis of our hope. For in the light of this event, hope is no longer an illusion.... That hope is not an evasion, but a challenge; it does not delude, but empowers us. —Pope Francis (1936–2025), "Urbi Et Orbi," Easter, 2025

I feel touched by the spirit of Pope Francis this morning...this Easter message was his last, and it touched me deeply. Unusually deeply considering that I am not a religious person, much less Catholic...but I feel blessed that I was...am...so touched by his message.

I wonder if my new friend Gertrude is in my life, and I in hers, for a special reason, spiritual in nature. It seems to be, then reason takes hold and doubt comes running.

There is truth in hope. Trust the message...that hope is not an evasion, but a challenge; it does not delude, but empowers us. 

Now, let that lead us...now.

Thank you.

THROUGH SOLITUDE GOD LEADS US TO LOVE

Solitude is a courageous encounter with our naked, most raw and real self, in the presence of pure love.  -- Richard Rohr, "Daily Meditation," April 10, 2025

Is it solitude, then, that is/has happened within me?...this altered sense of being alone, but with new and different feelings that began around my 80th birthday, so I am calling "my 80s."

I suspect it is the phrase in the presence of pure love that is the ghost that bars me. The bar being the absence of knowingly having any feeling of pure love within me. 

Maybe solitude is simply an encounter with the Father within, which encounter can only be pure love and uses courage we are unaware we have. 

It may not be the absence of any feeling of pure love within me...it maybe I never learned to name it that. 

I can accept as pure love my feeling warmed, wanted, special in the physical, mental or spiritual company of various people and pets...but I have no feeling of God's love present here and now, only my intense desire for it.

On this I rest my comfort: All of these jumbled facts about feelings are of God, too, leading me to love and to be loved.

Thank you.

AND GOD IS GOING TO MAKE IT SO

To believe in Jesus is to believe that all of this is going somewhere and that God is going to make it so. All we have to do is stay on the train, stay on the wave, trusting that by our crucifixions, we would be allowed to fail, fumble and die, and be transformed by grace and by God. -- Richard Rohr's Daily Meditations, April 21, 2025

Blinding flash of the obvious: I believe I got it...this is just what I am walking through today:  All I have to do is stay on my path, the path I have been set on, trusting that by my rues, regrets, remorses, I will be allowed to fail, fumble and die, and be transformed by grace and by God. 

I do believe. 

Thank you.

P.S. Bon Voyage to Pope Francis, and thank you, Father, for leading the Way with Truth and Love. 

LOVE AND LAUGHTER FOLLOWS WHILE LEADING

Every message about Jesus is a message about all of us.... -- Richard Rohr

I suspect that quote is for me to prove for myself...not prove for others, prove for me. Face it, "to prove" is actually "to live."

Every message about Jesus is a script telling...teaching...us how to live our lives.

Rather than complicate the issue, why not just accept that every message about Jesus boils down to love...pure and simple: Love one another as I have loved you. --  John 13:34

In the vernacular...get over yourself. 

To get over our self is very likely the reason we are born...to get over our self is to return Home to God. No wonder that takes many lifetimes to achieve.

The hardest lesson to learn is that is not our job to do...it is God's. Our job is to get out of God's way believing with faith in our heart and soul while we pray thank You.

Talk about a tall order for the human being...still more spiritual growth earns its stripes. With love and laughter leading the way and bringing up the rear.

Thank you.

FEAR OR SPIRITUAL GROWTH?

Some form of suffering or death—psychological, spiritual, relational, or physical—is the only way we will loosen our ties to our small and separate self. Only then does the larger self appear, which we could call the Risen Christ, the soul, or the true self. -- Richard Rohr

This morning's Journal entry: Early this morning.... 3:00 AM...intense discomfort...was it pain?...in both arms...have no aspirin which surprised me...I thought I always kept aspirin (a clue for me?)...there was only a couple of out-of-date baby aspirin which I took...I wondered if this was a heart attack but I did not panic (another clue?), and I even made an attempt at scaring me into action, i.e., 911. Nada, which is yet another clue...this could be another level of spiritual growth or another aspect of the 80s, completely new and different reaction to old stuff. In short, common sense or still more spiritual growth?  Lord, hear my prayer...thank You.

This morning, the memory of my 3:00 AM intense discomfort in both arms has my reasoning mind in an unpanicked quandary...physical or spiritual? 

This was Good Friday moving into Holy Saturday with Easter tomorrow. I note this is the holiest time of the Christian year, and that I have had most if not all of my intense spiritual experiences at this time of year. 

The one I most clearly remember happened some 30 years ago. I was awakened around 5:00 AM by the ringing of a small bell I had in my kitchen. For whatever reason, I groggily asked, "Are you an angel of the Lord?" And the bell rang again. I woke up p.d.q., sat up in bed, and asked again, "ARE you an angel of the Lord?" And the bell rang again. This happened a third time.

Interestingly, "nothing happened" after that, meaning nothing happened for me to exhibit to the outside world. Looking back, however, I came to realize that was the beginning of a new path to my deeper spiritual growth that changed my actions, reactions, responses...me. 

I choose to believe the happening this morning is for my spiritual growth...fear wants to do my thinking, faith stands for me. More will be revealed. Amen. 

 Thank you. 

KISS FEAR ON THE LIPS AND BE SET FREE

Today's gifted word:  No matter what human fear materializes...comes to me...God knows it and shows it for naught...evil cannot exist in God consciousness, but it can be enlightened, raised, lifted, uplifted, sacrificed unto sacred...kinda like, kissed on the lips and set free.

The counterintuitive word of God is that will not keep fear of it from blooming in the human mind. There...that is the blessing. Nothing turns us to God faster than fear.  

It seems that dementia in all its forms is riding herd in the human condition today. Resist it not...welcoming it lessens the voice of fear. Poke it not, live at peace. 

Our living proof of that is our own story: We crashed and burned, were thoroughly beaten, admitted that to be so, and in that admission, we unconsciously invited a Power greater than our self to live in, with, for us. 

Our Higher Power graciously accepted that invitation, and we thank You...repeatedly.

We have ceased fighting everything and everybody.  -- Anonymous

Thank you.

ON GETTING OVER OUR OWN SELF

Out of love, the Father abandons the power to perpetuate suffering because the deeper and more authentic power is what redeems, heals, and restores. -- Rhineland mystic Mechthild of Magdeburg

I suspect this is my gifted theory of the reasoning mind (the power to perpetuate suffering) versus the spiritual mind which is the reasoning mind abandoned by God with love.  

Learning to accept that we are already loving persons may be life's hardest lesson. Hardest because it requires first that we get over our own self.

Here's our first and our last lesson, I'm guessing: We'll be getting over our own self three days after we are dead. If we are doing it right. While God grins. Lovingly.

Thank you. 

STILL MORE SPIRITUAL GROWTH

...in letting go, something new comes, is born, begins, grows: a sense of connection, of not-aloneness, of communion and union and belonging. We descend from the ladders and pedestals we have erected, and we rejoin the community of creation, the network of shalom…. The loss is no small thing, ah, but the gain is incomparably greater. -- Brian McLaren, Richard Rohr's Daily Bulletin, April 16, 2025 

Blinding flash of hope...my persistent low-grade anxiety, new to me, may be a deeper sense of love aborning. I got a strong sense of "coming home" from McLaren's words. I choose to believe this is my continuing detachment from ego's protective shell, or accepting life on God's terms. 

 

I ruefully admit that I still get a slight jolt when I acknowledge love...that is, when I sincerely speak of the love I feel.... It seems my egoic self cannot yet openly release that word in its deepest meaning. 

My coverup is to sling the word around like confetti so that it hits all but touches none...ergo, no responsibility attaches.

A hard lesson I am still learning...there is no "put a period on it" to still more spiritual growth...and everything is more spiritual growth. Ah, there be God's blessing.

Thank you.

GRATITUDE...NOT TO TALK IT, TO WALK IT

The abundant life promised us in still more spiritual growth comes not from grasping but from releasing. It comes not from striving but from relinquishing. It comes not so much from taking as from giving. Surrender is the foundational dynamic of spiritual freedom—surrender of my efforts to live my life outside of the grasp of God’s love and surrender to God’s will and gracious Spirit. -- [From a quote of David Benner in Fr Richard's Daily Meditation today with two changes, i.e.  "still more spiritual growth" was substituted for "in Christ" and "spiritual" for "Christian."]

When I quit praying for my wants, material and spiritual, and began praying thank You for all things that came, my inner life changed. I became quieted...not quiet, but quieted. I make special note of that for that is the place where God changed me. 

I had always prayed (begged) to be relieved...completely relieved...of anxiety. Over time, with God and grace, I realized that nothing turns me to God faster than fear. Unconsciously, I began to whisper my thank You when anxiety came slithering around. It was thank You pure and simple that lifted me up and over into God's arms.  

The sliver of gold: I was not relieved of anxiety, I was relieved of my dread of anxiety. I walk with thank You flowing within me...not talk it, walk it.  Today, I live fret free with anxiety visiting whenever...not mine to worry about. 

Live gratitude and walk with God...walk gratitude and live with God. Can I get an Amen!

Thank you.

OUR BFOs LIVE US...TRUST, LOVE AND LAUGH

Father Richard Rohr reflects on Jesus’ surrender to God through a path of descent.... Daily Meditation, April 13, 2025

It was a solid Yes! for me when I read Fr Richard's words. I know when it was that I realized the path of descent was my rocky but righteous road to God, but it took some serious spiritual growth before my common sense could give over to that realization.  It has been my North Star ever since. 

This way of accepting life on life's terms has softened my existence...anxiety became a cocoon for my life. I do not recall when I stumbled on the name, the path of descent, but it surely fit. I did not resist my apparently opposite way toward spiritual growth, in fact I welcomed it...proof to me that it is of God. 

That was a first blinding flash of the obvious, and I have since come to accept my BFOs are of God and for me to live. Face it, the proof of a blinding flash of the obvious is in the life we live.

Trust the down, and God will take care of the up. -- Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation, April 12, 2025

Thank you.

UPGRADE YOUR ATTITUDE...PRAY THANK YOU

In the secret hour of life’s midday the parabola is reversed, death is born. The second half of life does not signify ascent, unfolding, increase, exuberance, but death, since the end is its goal. The negation of life’s fulfilment is synonymous with the refusal to accept its ending. Both mean not wanting to live, and not wanting to live is identical with not wanting to die. Waxing and waning make one curve. -- C. G. Jung (1875–1961)

I was thrilled to come upon Jung's quote recently. I knew my long-held belief was validated, my belief that God's will is in reverse of the reasoning mind's will...that less, littler, smaller are God's will, God's way, not more, larger, largest.

I remember when I realized my error in believing that the worst thing that had ever happened to me in truth was the best thing that could ever happen to me. Amazing to me, that was some fifty years ago.

That insight back then one-pointed my journey toward still more spiritual growth.

When life hands us a less-than, the human condition is to pray for God to get it gone. This time I saw that whatever came to me looking less-than, only needed my willing welcome...via thank You...to change my life around the experience.

It would not change the problem, only my thinking about the problem needed to change...and I heard: Upgrade your attitude, you upgrade your problem.

Thank you.

GOD'S WILL AND WAY ARE BEYOND REASON

Blinding flash of the obvious: If dementia be mine, then dementia is a spiritual gift...let it lead me, fear it or not, accept it, and be open to the deeper side of it...still more spiritual growth.

My April 12 morning Journal entry: "Fear of dementia is riding me hard...very anxious...my today's God Calling entry came for my benefit via the Father within: Man's need is God's chance to help...is God's golden opportunity for him of letting his faith find expression. The expression of faith is all that God needs to manifest His Power. Faith is the Key that unlocks the store-house of God resources."

Ah, my fear of dementia is God manifesting His Power leading me free...of me. And if it be true, that God's will, God's way is the reverse of reasoning mind's way, then material-mind hate in reverse is spiritual love. There. That is the path we must learn to walk. That which or those whom toward which we feel antipathy, dislike, are our angels, sent to us to bring us through our material consciousness to God's will, God's way...spiritual consciousness, our rightful place. 

The more alone we are drawn to be, the closer to God consciousness we are. -- Blinding flash or material mind? Ponder not, it will prove itself.

Thank you.

GOD CHANGES OUR MINDS, I

[The following is a reworked reprint of my post of December 9, 2013.]

Struggling with one’s own shadow self, facing interior conflicts and moral failures, undergoing rejections and abandonment, daily humiliations, experiencing any kind of abuse or your own clear limitations, even accepting that some people hate you: All of these are gateways into deeper consciousness and the flowering of the soul. -- Fr Richard Rohr, Daily Meditation, December 8, 2013

I am so glad that God doesn't hold resentments. Just yesterday, that quote of Fr. Richard had me irritated, resistant and not happy about it. I could not...would not...let it lift me. It was a downer to my ego, and that was good enough for me.

This morning I read it, and my heart sang. What a wonderful gift for it confirms that all my rues, regrets and remorses really are gateways into my deeper consciousness and the flowering of my soul. 

God is so good to me...He can and will change my mind...and heart!...for me. 

How Great Thou Art.

Thank you.

ON LIVING A TURNED-OVER LIFE, I

[The following is a reprint of my post of December 29, 2018.]

Except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it. -- Psalm 127

So the difference between 'the boys and the men' is the difference between striving for a self-determined objective and for the perfect objective which is of God. -- Anonymous

So the difference between relying on the reasoning mind and relying on spiritual consciousness is the difference between striving to build our inner house by our own devices and not striving but trusting our Father within to perfectly lead us through the building and then our living therein.

According to me.

Thank you.

UNAWARE, TRUST TAKES ROOT

Morning blinding flash of the obvious: Go for less...more is a fallacy...do not reach for, offer -- from mates to mercy to money.

I feel a tish resistant to that BFO which is the good and the bad both together...I'm gifted with a blinding flash, and I want to argue with it. 

Here's spiritual a-growing: We do not argue, we are no longer in it to win it. We let it stand and look forward to understanding, i.e.,  to getting the meaning of the message under the words.

Life is not for us alone to do...it is for God in us, One'd, to do whether we realize it or not. And trust takes root.

Thank you.

WORST TO FIRST...SELF-WILL TO GOD'S WILL

Inevitably, the journey takes each of us in different directions; however, by virtue of circumstances or choice, each of us will at some point in our lives find ourselves on the outskirts of society listening to the silence coming from within. -- Laura Swan 

In my early years of soul searching, I was awakened to the truism, I am the source of all my woes.  

A while back, I had been beaten down by my own less-than-good habits when that thought bloomed...I was torn between Oh, No, Not Another Change and Thank You. As it happened, that turned my self-searching around...I began to seek answers inside my own self.  

By way of my first resistant-but-willing thought, I was lifted into higher consciousness where I found the God of my understanding...worst to first in a heartbeat that is still beating strong.

Today, I am the source of all my woes is my go-to whenever my life seems to be going in the wrong direction...which, no matter the camouflage, is for material benefit, away from spiritual growth.

As an aside, that is no doubt how I am staying reasonably calm in the midst of the political climate in America today. On awakening, I pray my three-minute prayer, For America.... Then in silence I give over to God to fill in the rest.

Perhaps contemplative spaces can be found wherever people skirt the margins of inclusion. -- Rev. Dr. Barbara Holmes

Thank you.

GOD IN US DOES THE HEAVY LIFTING

Blinding flash of the obvious: I am slowly coming to the awakening of my Being. 

I sense my consciousness is being raised before my thoughts get there to dissect and misdirect.

Our Innerworks are of God, they need not be changed, just awakened...but awakened through our raised consciousness. That is necessarily slow, slower yet, God-in-I business.

We need to get it God-right...trouble is, we settle for self-right. Early on, we are half-wrong but willing to accept it as God's will, God's way just because spiritual growth doesn't make a lot of sense to us...to our reasoning mind.  

There is the key: Our reasoning mind...it needs to change, and only God can change our mind.  

Our reason needs to give over, give up, give in, and we need all of our spiritual growth to feel the fear and do it anyway. 

The hard-to-remember, yet always good news: God does the heavy lifting...ah, but we must work with Him.

Again, and yet again, God is so good to us.

Thank you.

ON FINDING OUR CORE...REVISED, I

[The following is a reworked reprint of mine from December 29, 2021.]

The following, by Joan Didion, is excerpted from her essay, On Keeping a Notebook, at p 126. That, more than anything I've ever read or heard, describes me and my being in my world as I live it:

"I tell what some would call lies," Didion wrote. "How it felt to me: that is getting closer to the truth...."

As I read that, from my toenails up, I felt accepted, partnered...twinned! And I heard my innards laughing for I could freely admit that is me. I tell how it looked, felt, was...looks, feels, is...to me, 

and that often does not even resemble another's view. 

The great lesson to learn...that does not mean the other is lying, any more than I am. 

Here is the nut as Didion wrote it: "I always had trouble distinguishing between what happened and what merely might have happened, but I remain unconvinced that the distinction, for my purposes, matters." [My emphasis added.]

It seems likely...to me at any rate...that it is our manner of communication that won Didion Pulitzers and has won me friends, each of them my Pulitzer and the pearl beyond price.

It may be...to me anyway...that finding freedom within through the freedom of a like Soul proves true self-acceptance is the acceptance of the other in Self. 

Too convoluted? Ah, but true to me, and I'm loving it.

Thank you.

GOD LIVES GOD'S WILL, GOD'S WAY...REJOICE!

In a sense, our culture, our society is dissolving. We are collectively entering the chrysalis, and structures we have come to rely on and identify with are breaking down. We are in the cocoon and we don’t know what the next phase will be like. Learning to surrender to the unknown in our own lives is essential to our collective learning to move through this time of faster and faster change, disruption, and breakdown. -- Buddhist teacher Kaira Jewel Lingo

Whoa! What a gift! That paragraph is describing us and our inner life today...it gives us hope, allays our fears, rights us.  

Breaking it down: In a sense, our culture, our society is dissolving. To me that reads, In a sense, my very self...my mind...is dissolving. 

Then comes, We are collectively entering the chrysalis, and structures we have come to rely on and identify with are breaking down. We are in the cocoon and we don’t know what the next phase will be like. To me: We are feeling all alone and terrified of the oncoming unknown. 

Comes the Answer:  Learning to surrender to the unknown in our own lives is essential to our collective learning to move through this time of faster and faster change, disruption, and breakdown. To me: We need to give over, give up, give in to the scary unknown....it is not just right, it is essential to our collective learning to move through this time of faster and faster change, disruption, and breakdown.

Ah, this is all about what our hardest lesson taught us: God's will, God's way is the opposite of the reasoning mind's best thinking...that is the blessing. 

God does not live in the reasoning mind only. There is nowhere that God does not live...protecting, enwrapping, loving...God lives. Period. 

Thank you.

FOR AMERICA...RESIST NOT, PRAY THANK YOU

There is a really deep well inside me. And in it dwells God. Sometimes I am there, too.... Dear God, these are anxious times.... We must help You to help ourselves. And that is all we can manage these days and also all that really matters: that we safeguard that little piece of You, God, in ourselves. -- —Etty Hillesum, An Interrupted Life 

I continue to feel gobsmacked when I stumble again on Etty Hillesum's An Interrupted Life. To me her story as a Jew in Nazi Germany in the late '30s, early '40s sounds eerily...scarily...like the birthing of our story today. 

There. That is my grateful reminder that nothing turns me to God faster than fear, and comparative thoughts of Nazi Germany then and America today is...fear unthinkable. 

It was fear that led me to my morning practice of giving God my three-minute prayer for America. (I know me...more than three minutes, and I'd begin to harangue God.) 

My prayer consists entirely of Dear God, For America..., and I let God consciousness take it from there. That is my attempt to prove more deeply my belief that God needs no instructions from us, just our trusting belief. 

I believe that God knows the needs of the Universe...has already perfected the outcome, and the outcome is for the benefit of all...no matter how it appears to us. Pray thank You and resist not.

In this time, I suggest some form of public service, volunteerism, mystical reading from the masters, prayer—or, preferably, all of the above. -- Fr Richard Rohr

Thank you.

FIGHT NO MORE FOREVER...CHIEF JOSEPH LIVES

From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever! -- Chief Joseph, Nez Perce tribe, Surrender Speech delivered 5 October 1877, Bears Paw Mountains, Montana

Morning blinding flash of the obvious: I will fight no more forever. -- Chief Joseph ... BFO: I shall seek forever more.

Those six words, I will fight no more forever, are with me this morning giving me cause to suspect the thought comes to me when my inside trepidation is fighting a dreaded upcoming.

My dread is the bane giving birth to the gift, I shall seek forever more.

There...I needed that clearer understanding...free-floating anxiety creates deeper free-floating anxiety...peace comes with acceptance of anxiety. 

I will fight no more forever does not mean that now I will live worry-free. No...I'll just not need to live in dread of life as it comes calling. An old lesson refurbished actually.

God loves me...us...so much!

Thank you.

THROUGH DEFEAT, SPIRITUAL VICTORY

Blinding flash of the obvious: Spiritual victory comes via material defeat.

It was early in my spiritual growth that I first heard unto acceptance that I am the source of all my woes. I was really pleased to realize that the Father within must be the source of all my happy, too.  

Ah, the beginning of my resistance being turned around...righted, in a word. 

That's the Tell...when God is doing our thinking for us, there is little to no resistance on our part. When our self-determined objective is first in line, crash and burn lifts its serpent's head.

There it is...the proof that spiritual victory comes via material defeat. The serpent's head becomes the detour sign for us to make a mental U-bie...turn around, away from self toward Self. 

Overcoming our material objectives transmutes them, and they become our spiritual victories...God's will, God's way.

Thank you.

THE TELL...SHARING OUR FEAR INVITES LOVE

We must form squads of love and make a path through together … no matter how fearsome the mob. Only a community—even one that goes unnoticed in the crowd—the band that refuses to join the rabble—can keep us from going completely over the edge. -- Diana Butler Bass 

The new realization, the spiritual insight, is that the fearsome mob is our fear and by grace for our benefit...it got birthed with the blinding flash that nothing turns us to God faster than fear.

This rough and rugged road paved with anxiety that we are walking today is our blessing. I know this from my eyebrows up...as my heart pounds and my stomach churns. 

There...that is the Soul's call for company! Tell a friend...share the "benefit"...invite the "squads of love" that is at our elbow, sitting on our shoulder, clinging to us body and soul. That's where the love of God lives...with us, within us, without us. 

We must needs open our self to that love.  If it looks like a mudpie to us, it is a miracle aborning to God. Our opening to it is the Tell.

Paraphrasing Thaddeus Golas: We must go beyond reason to love...to the Tell, to God.

Thank you.