PONDER, PRAISE AND GO FORWARD, I

[The following is a reprint of my post of June 24, 2020.]

The thought flits by whenever it wants to that I need...something. "Fixing" seems to be the filler there with which I chat God up with little hints like: You've got the power, Lord...use it! Fix me already.

God always answers, You are fixed. This is you at your best. Pray your thank you.

Many years ago I had a blinding flash of the obvious that I was not a leader, would never be a leader, and, except from my egoic mind, had never wanted to be a leader. The relief I felt was unbound freedom.

I saw again this morning that mine is to realize my right size...teeny, wee, smaller than small. I can rest in that knowing that my inner Self is doing for me. 

Another thought flies by: Study the Saints Francis and Clare.

I am freed to ponder, praise, and walk toward the inner edge.

Thank you.

I SHALL NOT WANT, I

[The following is a reprint of my post of June 30, 2020.]

A worldview of enoughness will predictably emerge in us as we realize our naked being in God instead of thinking that more of anything or more frenetic doing can fill up our infinite longing and restlessness. -- Fr Richard Rohr, "Daily Meditation," June 30, 2020

Meditating on the 23rd Psalm is an ever-changing lifting up within me. I suspect I knew from my eyebrows up when I started my journey taking care of the IRS that the phrase I shall not want would be my base for a peaceful mind. Ah, but it is by looking back that I realize its truth.

Now that I am able to see the whole pattern, I realize how I got through that so basically unruffled...it being a given that anxiety has ever been my go-to tool. (I call it my BFF for it is anxiety that sends me to God quick, fast and in a hurry, so how can I hate it?)

The fact that after the opening words, The Lord is my Shepherd, comes I shall not want tells me now how important those words were then, are now. I shall not want means I have enough...I shall never not have enough as long as I know and show by my living, the Lord is my Shepherd.

Follow the Lord, kill self now...all those words and phrases that we often read just to get beyond them...then learn by rote just to quote...are truth and must be lived. The more we just quote them the less they mean to us personally.

We must live them and be quiet about it for it is in our living...not talking, not thinking...that we realize our naked being in God.

Thank you.

BY FAITH...OR BY GRACE AND BY GOD

 Morning blinding flash of the obvious: Every step forward I take the waters open...

The Red Sea did not open all at once...it opened one step forward at a time...faith is what made that one step forward possible...and thus the opening of the Sea.

Our personal Red Sea does not open all at once...it opens as we take one Step at a time...faith is what makes possible our using the Steps...and thus the opening of the Sea...slowly but inevitably, by faith or by grace and by God.

Thank you.

BE FAITHFUL...GO TO THE EDGE...BELIEVE!

So be faithful! Go to the edge, find the beloved community, build the alternative, the parallel culture, in small communities. -- Fr Richard Rohr, Daily Meditation, June 26, 2025

It seems I learn pearls of wisdom and immediately I know of another person who needs to hear that wisdom...rarely at first does it apply to me. Until I sit and wait on the Lord.

In today's world, to sit and wait on the Lord is considered by some as meditation. That's all well and good but it misses my interpretation of meditation. Meditation to me is that which I haven't gotten right yet. 

Ah, but I can...and do...have my daily (often hourly) chats with the Lord. I chat; He listens. Then, for unknown to me reasons, on occasion, the Spirit speaks, and I hear. Those are my High Holy Days.

I admit my unsettled feeling is still with me. I'm calling this God's holding room. I do not get to decide How Long, Oh Lord, I just get to believe. And there it is...my personal logjam: Coming to believe...to Believe...honestly, no holds barred...Believe.

No doubt we've all been there more than a few times...maybe that is the end of the story. Coming to Believe is the rest of our life...for there will always be more we do not know until we know. Then, there's more. 

So be faithful! Go to the edge, find the beloved community, build the alternative, the parallel culture, in small communities.

Thank you.

JOY...A NONVIOLENT WITNESS OF LOVE

Once you experience joy, once you find those inner pathways, it leaves markers toward those inner resources so that you never lose sight of them again…. Dr. Barbara Holmes, "Fr Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation," June 20, 2025

The joy Dr. Holmes refers to is a joy beyond the reasoning mind, beyond the human ability to manufacture it...or birth it.

The human mind usually does not think of joy as anything but feels good, gives me pleasure...until joy in the form of crash-and-burn lifts us from self and opens us to Self.

The spiritual discovery...the pearl beyond price...is our awakening to that which we have never not had! Just as we were born with the potential ability to walk and talk, we had to grow into our capability to use them.

Never discounting the miracle-work of God, we discover our capability is up to us...want-to and belief are the determiners. Enough to just get by? To seek a deeper path? To dare take that path? Still more spiritual growth makes itself known.

It is another God-gift when we discover within our own self that the dark night of the soul is God calling...resist not evil comes of age. This is the first step in loosening our dependence on our own reason. It is a very slow process when, not if, we're doing it right.

Try with a will or fall by the wayside rings true...we are lifted into God-consciousness where God's will, God's way is answered prayer, and all our striving earns its keep.

In the end, all we have is our integrity. So let us stand in it, grounded in the One who renews us each moment and calls us to a nonviolent witness of love. -- Episcopal priest Adam Bucko

Thank you.

THE GIFT OF GRATITUDE, I

[The following is a reprint of my post of June 29, 2017.]

Today my plan is to take a risk...a personal, inside, no-big-deal-to-you-but-huge-to-me risk.

As I opened my "God Calling," the words with God all things are possible were there before me. It just so happens that seemingly every time I have a challenge to meet, those words are given to me, and sometimes from the most unlikely places.

It's not surprising I'd find them in "God Calling" but on this particular day with no preplan or thought? When in doubt, assume the best is my mantra...my risk just transmuted into God's will which makes it feel less risky. Thank you, Lord.

Now, even if my action turns out less than wonderful to my ego's eyes, I can know God's hand was in it...meaning, there will be bennies. I get to sit and wait on the Lord.

If the results are close enough to wonderful, I'll have the gift of gratitude to wrap me in...no better feeling.

God is so good to me...to us.

Thank you.

SPIRIT-INSPIRED REIMAGINATION

...as the wealth gap is only increasing in our world—because those in power want to make it so—we need a radically new way of belonging to one another -- from Fr Richard's Daily Meditation

To use Fr Richard's words, we need spirit-inspired reimagination. I sincerely believe that is what we each need to lean into...to invite the God of our own understanding to inspire our imagination. 

Every morning I pray a prayer For America.... That's the entire prayer. That is inviting the Spirit to flow forth...for America. It being a given, for America is for the world. 

According to me, until we let money do our thinking for us, that's how America rolled. Not to put too fine a point on it, that is it...until we moved money into first place before God, country, family and friends, we were better...people.

Trust God, use your common sense, and quit your bitchin' is my new watchword.

Thank you.

EGO ALWAYS LEGISLATES FOR ITSELF, I

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

Things we learn, love and forget in a heartbeat [and both are from God Calling]:

"It is not necessary that you see Me as others see Me...it is necessary that you see Me, each of you, as supplying all that you personally need."

"It is not circumstances that need altering first, but yourselves, and then the conditions will naturally alter."   

I suspect that the truth in those quotes is so easily forgotten because it is filtered through our reasoning mind...our ego-based reasoning mind, with our free will as its advocate. 

Our ego will ever legislate for itself; God's promises be damned.

Thank you.

CEASE FIGHTING, SUBDUE THE ENEMY WITHIN, I

[The following is a reprint of my post of June 26, 2020.]

We have ceased fighting anything and anybody. -- Anonymous

When first we read or hear that statement, if we're doing it right, we think it is a misprint. It is not. It is truth, and one how-to is in the following statement of Saint John of the Cross: It is great wisdom to know how to be silent and to look at neither the remarks, nor the deeds, nor the lives of others.

Face it, all disagreements, arguments, fights, wars begin with a simple difference of opinion. One judging the other as wrong, the other judging the one as wrong. Fight!

It is fear, of course, that holds judging close. We find we must seek the cause of the fear within us, then seek to understand the thing about the person we are judging...for that, not the person, is the cause of the fear. The thing we fear is within us...what we see is always ourself.

Our help comes in seeking (whether we find it or not) to understand that which we are judging. The seeking is the changeup. Seeking to understand changes our mind...from self, deeper to a higher level within.

When we are perceiving a problem, count on it, it is our interpretation of what we are seeing that is the source of our upset. Upgrade our attitude, upgrade our problem.

To win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the acme of skill. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill. -- Sun Tzu

Thank you.

RIGHT OR WRONG, DO SOMETHING AND TRUST

I am inordinately glad this morning that I learned long ago that feelings are not facts. I feel like I am running on empty, a long-ago saying that I once lived.

This morning, I am realizing that the downer feeling is not the problem. It is the return of sciatica to my right side that is doing my hurting, thus my thinking. 

Since sciatica is doing its thing again, I make it welcome by not resisting...proving for myself all over again that resist not is my spiritual cure-all. 

Why would I continue to go to doctors for heavy duty drugs? I don't, but I almost always think of that first. I'm just going to call that having an open mind as opposed to stupid.

When you're feeling a quart low, lift up your head and sing. Such good advice. Like most good advice, easier to say, etc. 

Here's me...mentally walking atop a barbed-wire fence, giving good advice, and breathing fear.

Feel the fear and do the next thing...right or wrong, it's the doing that sets us free.

There...God calling.

Thank you.

REVOLUTIONARY GOOD NEWS

I suppose there is no more counterintuitive spiritual idea than the possibility that God might actually use and find necessary what we fear, avoid, deny, and deem unworthy. This is what I mean by the “integration of the negative.” Yet I believe this is the core of Jesus’ revolutionary good news. --Fr Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation, January 19, 2025

I remember when I first read that...it was akin to an unseen hand, righting me, lifting me. There it was spelled out...that which it had taken me years to fully accept about myself; namely, that I get my spiritual growth from the negative view of life events 

My spiritual mantra has long been: If my incurable disease can be a good thing, and it is to me today, then so can this be. "This" of course being whatever I am fearing and trying to pretty up.

That Fr Richard told us its name, the “integration of the negative,” filled me not only with hope but with courage...the courage to accept that if my "negative" way was acceptable to Fr Richard, it must be good enough...period.  The pearl beyond price was his affirming that this is the core of Jesus’ revolutionary good news.

If my ancient legs would allow it, I'd be jumping up and down while singing Hallelujah...but writing it out, owning it, is close enough to perfect for me.

God is so good to us.

Thank you.

GOD'S MYSTERIOUS WAYS...OUR WONDROUS, I

[The following is a reprint of my post of November 22, 2021.]

When you've stumbled--and the guilt, loneliness, and fear come to assault you--if you don't have at least one good friend, or if you have not developed a prayer life where you know how to find yourself in God instead of in your own feelings, you will simply retrench and reassert your correctness. -- Fr Richard Rohr, "Daily Meditation," June 13, 2016

I love to note and note again: "When you've stumbled...." When, not if.

We only parade our victim-self when we stumble and call ourself all manner of ugly...or find someone to blame and shame for our ugly. There is no God there. There is only self, glorified in our own feelings of less-than...unloved, unwanted, unneeded, unappreciated...and loving our hurt of it. Why would we ever let that go?

I'm a believer that it is the stumbling that is the root of thank you.

When, not if, we stumble, trip, fall, make a blithering fool of our self, thank you is the Velveteen Rabbit that hugs us, kisses us, calls us Beloved. Ah, and opens us to God's love and laughter...now ours.

God works in mysterious ways to ensure our life is wondrous.

Thank you.

IT IS FEAR THAT AWAKENS US TO GOD

Consider it pure joy whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. -- Dr. Barbara Holmes from James 1:2–3

This resonates with me today because I am just coming out of one of my dark nights of the soul.

On reading that, my heart jumped (or pumped) for joy...because I realized as I went through this nearly month-long dark night that it was for my spiritual growth. Realizing that even while living through it does not give peace to our fearful mind...face it, fear is fear and knowing it is for our benefit is a plus but does not negate the feelings of gutbucket panic. And why would it?

It is the fear that we must walk through that brings God inro our heart, our soul, our body and our brains. It is our assurance that God has us in the palm of his hand...no deeper gift is needed.

I'm well on the road to peace of mind, but I invite fear to hang in there with me...I'm living proof that nothing turns us to God faster than fear. Who can hate that?

Thank you.

LOVE AND LAUGH WITH GRATITUDE

 Now we're reading that AI is about to wipe out human life...humanity as we know it will be gone.

Artificial Intelligence...according to me, its name rebuts the current contention...was born in the human mind...human intelligence is of God. 

Which isn't to say that AI won't wipe out human life as we know it. It might be the next step up in human life...just like when we feel at sixes and sevens, upside-down and backwards, and we get to the other side and realize we were heading in the right direction all the time.

We need to go through the maze of what we know to find the unknown before us...to continue to walk through to the far side, the unknown, or need to know, side.

There is no peace without surrender and surrender is the scare tactic that keeps us striving to stay in place...lost in self-will as it were.

AI's ways are as mysterious as God's ways only God's ways are always for our good, and AI's ways are dicey at best. According to me.

These are the ramblings of a person just coming into AI consciousness...reminds me of my go-to line when I'm in over my head: Knowing nothing, I speak freely. 

God is so good to us...face it, without God's grace. we'd never know to first laugh at our own self.

Thank you.

LEFT WITHOUT A HOPE...GOD FILLS THE VOID

The biblical revelation is about awakening. It’s about realization, not performance principles. We cannot get there, we can only be there....  [Fr Richard's Daily Meditation, June 8, 2025]

This tells us we are already there...when we wake up to it which often feels like three days after we are dead.

To come to believe this as our own truth is to live in elevated consciousness...I wonder if living in elevated consciousness means we still have worries, frets, self-centered fears, only with a sense of spirituality...fancy words for a more-or-less peaced mind.

We pray for perfect peace but in this world...in the material world...I doubt that perfect peace is what we really want...mainly because we would not recognize it if we got it. We'd probably start taking our temperature p.d.q. for fear of covid or worse.

According to me, perfect peace is living in this world with less self-centered fears, but those we still have are for our benefit...they head us toward God. 

Their only purpose, self-centered fear's only purpose, is for our still more spiritual growth. Without its push-pull, we'd no doubt wind up robbing banks or shooting our own self in the back of the head. Because, why not? Where's the double-edged sword when we have our own idea of perfect peace, and it comes up boring?

Going for God's will, God's way is our ever-opening mind to Uh-Oh, Look Out!, Detour! and on the other side, finding this, too, is for our benefit. Ah, but we must walk through the danger-zone to get to the other side, and we cannot walk through it alone...it only feels like that. 

There...the basic source of our fear: Left all alone without even a hope left for us.

There, too, is God's will, God' way...left without a hope, God fills the void, and we are Home. 

Thank you.

THE WAY WE WERE...WHAT A HOOT!, I

[The following is a very slightly altered reprint of my post of June 14, 2012.]

An Englishman thinks he is moral when he is only uncomfortable. -- George Bernard Shaw

Every time I read that, I crack up, and since it is in one of my daily readers, I read it once a year. Of course, the reason it tickles me is I can see the truth of it...about Englishmen. Really all I need do is change the "moral" to "spiritual" and put my name at the top of that, and there's me.

There's the gift...because I do know that is me and that is funny, and I wouldn't have always known that. Given that one of my greatest fears was being thought a fool and laughed at for it, I can now know relief that I see me there and giggle.

I guarantee that is nothing I ever prayed for...or knew that I was praying for. Just another of God's mysteries...if we will turn our will and life over to the care of God, He will clean us up. Ah, we are now free to crack our own selves up laughing at the way we were!

Thank you.

REALITY IS OF GOD WITH US, WITHIN US, I

[The following is a reprint of my post of February 11, 2024.]

Blinding flash of the obvious: It is not positive thoughts that determine our fate, it is the reality of God in those thoughts that is the determiner...God, with us, within us, that we are dependent on whether we know it or not.

What about our negative thoughts? They, too, determine our fate. Ah, but they are egoically directed downward into the stagnant pool of self-interest. There is no love there.

Positive thoughts are directed, led and guided, by God...for the benefit of all.

Thank you.

UN...NOT BY SELF-WILL BUT BY GRACE

God's will is not about protecting us from parading our arrogance, God's will is about learning humility when we get caught parading our arrogance. 

There's an excellent example of why God's will is not something without thought we pray for...to get caught parading our arrogance is a natural fear. To seek to parade our arrogance in order to get still more spiritual growth is a corruption of spiritual and natural instincts. 

To show our ignorance (which is arrogance stripped bare)...inadvertently, from neither fear nor favor...is to live naturally, humbly if you will...not by pondering nor by self-deducing...the bottom line of which is usually what's in it for me?...but by grace.

Grace...undefinable, unself-willable, un...that may be my new definition of God's will, God's way...simply un. Ah, therein perfect.

Thank you.

ON THIS NOTHING WE NOW LIVE

You have come to that point in consciousness where you are seeking for what the world calls the intangible. When you came to a spiritual teaching, you knew in advance, or soon learned, that you were going to obtain nothing in the external realm. What you were seeking was the Invisible, that which cannot be seen, heard, or known. And yet you were seeking to be able to see, hear, and know just that. Through that seeking, you are coming to know that which is unknowable, see that which is invisible, hear that which is inaudible. And on this Nothing you now live. -- Joel Goldsmith, "Leave Your Nets"

It seems that Joel Goldsmith quote calls to me on a fairly regular basis. 

I have posted it more than a couple of time, and here it is again...speaking clearer, sinking deeper, enveloping my Soul. 

All of that feels as scary to my reasoning mind as it did the first time I experienced it. The difference being, today I inner-hear it for what it is...the clarion call acknowledging this less-than life experience I am growing through is God's will, God's way.

Ego needs question: If this is God's will, God's way, when does the sense of peace, love and more peace step up and out?

The spiritual answer: This is it...that is why it is known as 'the old rugged cross.'  

There...enough said.

Thank you.

THE WELCOMING PRAYER

The following, today's post, was shared with me by a friend...thank you, so much, Pastor Mac!

The Welcoming Prayer

—Mary Mrozowski

Welcome, welcome, welcome.

Welcome everything that comes to me in this moment

Because I know it for my healing.

I welcome all thoughts, feelings, emotions, persons, situations and conditions.

I let go of my desire for security.

I let go of my desire for approval.

I let go of my desire for control.

I let go of my desire to change any situation, condition, person, or myself.

I open to the love and presence of God and

The healing action and grace within.

Thank you.

TRUST, FAITH AND HAPPY DESTINY, I

[The following is a reprint of my post of December 15, 2019.]

Trust in our Father is not eyebrows-up knowing how or when or where His perfect work will be performed. No. Trust is inner knowing that it has already been performed...and all is well.

All is well when to our reasoning mind's eye it looks scarifying. Or not what we want at any rate.

I quote (again) Fr Richard Rohr's line, Grace isn’t a gift for getting it right but for getting it wrong!

There's the road we trudge to trust, to faith in our Father which leads to our happy destiny.

Thank you.

GOD'S WILL, GOD'S WAY...THANK YOU

I feel I have made a breakthrough in consciousness. The tell is how light I feel when I speak of that dark three weeks, as opposed to how bleak and dreary...not to mention scared...I felt as I lived through it. 

I now am freed to let God's will, God's way come to fruition just as it would have anyway...but my mind is not cluttered with fear...as in, the fear of moving...where?...when?...stay in this area?...or?...etc., ad nauseum. 

The outcome of my freed-up mind is the re-realization that the Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want.

That was the quiet word that came to me so many years ago and has carried me since. Let me be clear...that realization did not leave me; it enwrapped me even as fear shouted in my ears. 

I suspected then, I do not doubt now, that this was part of the initiation process we are advised of even as we start on our still more spiritual growth journey.

The material-mind gift is the realization that I need to buckle down with my newly realized need for people in my life...as in, moving my body out, inviting others in.

God, You are so good to me.

Thank you.

LIVING WITH TRUST AMID LIFE'S UNKNOWNS

In 2025, we invite you to reimagine Jesus’ timeless metaphors, exploring how to live deeply and with trust amid life’s unknowns — Richard Rohr's Daily Meditations, June 7, 2025

There...sanity described: exploring how to live deeply and with trust amid life’s unknowns. That describes my life since coming to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. 

This may well be what I've been living through since the sharp pain in my belly at 3:00 AM on April 30th. "This" being the process of being restored to the sanity of the God of my understanding. 

At one time, my idea of sanity was to never have a worry, fret, doubt or fear...I suspect that is fairly opposite to God's idea of sanity, else why would we need God?

My blinding flash of the obvious, nothing turns me to God faster than fear, speaks true.

We don't welcome fear for that's a fool's prayer, nor do we deny fear with affirmations, bells and whistles. We feel the fear even as we are enwrapped in God's love...physically fearful, mentally safe in the arms of the Lord.

According to me.

Thank you.

GOD'S WILL ALWAYS PREVAILS...IN TIME, I

[The following is a reprint of my post of June 29, 2012.]

When our free will counters God's will, our free will always wins...but God's will always prevails in time.

Since God's will is going to prevail, why not accept it first thing? Probably because the ego, where our free will lives, always needs something to go up against...to get over on.

That's the bottom-line reason for discipline, discipline, and still more discipline. Why we consciously try to put the other person first, why we try to admit our errors asap, why we want to want God's will, rather than our own will, to be done in our life.

We have learned that our will is not our friend, that God's will is. We rein in our ego wants so that God can "go before us to make the crooked places straight."

We have to start somewhere, and we will seldom start when we're faced with a real ego-reducing crisis.

Thank you.

ON UNKNOWINGLY KNOWING...PRAY THANK YOU

 At the table that Jesus prepares, all may assemble: In his body we are made anew, a community of faith—the living and the dead. In our presence, the Son of Man gathers up the remnants of our memories, the broken fragments of our histories, [and] judges, blesses, and transforms them. His Eucharistic banquet re-orders us, re-members us, restores us, and makes us one. -- Theologian M. Shawn Copeland, Richard Rohr's Daily Meditations, June 5, 2025

For whatever reason...for whatever reason unknown to me...as I read that paragraph, I knew, and I knew I knew, its meaning...its inner, true, meaning.

I very much doubt I'll be able to express that insight...to write it out...to make it clearer than it already is to those it speaks to. 

It spoke to me...deeply and truly...and I cannot even think of the first word to write to explain it for another to understand. Face it, it explains itself to whomever it explains itself to, all others get in line...it will come when, not if, we are ready.

I am not church people nor am I a so-called religious person, but I do believe. I believe what I believe by the-God-of-my-own-understanding...which, the older I get and the deeper my inner-person consciousness is raised, is what Jesus taught. I'm good with that, so be it. 

The inner person is the soil in which God has sown the divine likeness and image and in which God sows the good seed, the roots of all wisdom, all skills, all virtues, all goodness—the seed of the divine nature. -Meister Eckhart

Thank you.

TO HAVE AN ACTUAL CHANGE OF HEART

What we need is a requirement that those who wish to enter actually have a change of heart—that they don’t sneak in to accomplish their own agenda, but rather that they genuinely want to learn a new way of thinking, feeling, living, and being in 'the pastures of God.' -- Brian McLaren, Fr Richard's Daily Meditations, June 4, 2025

Awareness of this "change of heart" is what I believe I have been living since 3:00 AM, April 30th, when I was awakened by a sharp jab in my stomach. Unknowingly, my change began.

As I have been writing, this is and has been a scary journey. But I have not turned back...on I walk with doubt, without doubt, scared, peaced...up until this past week when a sureness settled on me (with shaking hands remaining).

I am not wholly peaced, I am settling. Settling in the new mindset that has been given me...I do not have the words yet to adequately tell my feelings...scared while sensing peace underneath? 

This I believe: Peace underneath is the Christ within.

Thank you. 

REASON JUDGES; SPIRITUAL LAUGHS AND LOVES

Unbeknownst to me, my silent prayer has been "Let me blossom."

The silent answer this morning, "This is me blossomping."

I only love it...I am blossomping. God's will, God's way!

I'm just going to see blossomping as me, as mine as I blossom, bloom and flower. With all the manure necessary to get me to full blossom, sans ping. Or with ping leading the way...what do I know?

My reasoning mind just kicked in...to let me know this is nonsensical, "don't publish!"

Pish-tosh...God's will, God's way seldom makes sense aborning. I mean, give over, give up, give in? There...blossoming full grown.

We get God's answer by doing God's will, God's way.

Thank you.

BE WILLING TO SEE DOWN AS UP, I

[The following is a reprint of my post of May 29, 2019.]

Say we make a decision to turn our will and our life over to the care of God as we understand Him...the hard lesson we learn is that leaves all to God. Every jot and tittle, every breath we take is left to the care of God.

God will ensure a happy return to all of our endeavors...ah, but it, that happy return, will not be all in our singular favor. It will be in the favor of all, which, to our reasoning mind, does not look like we've come out the "winner." It may well appear that we've finished at the end of the line.

That's how we learn if we're asking God to help us "win," meaning to fulfill a want or to come out ahead, we are ego-talking and only our self can hear.

God's will for each of us benefits each of us...the pearl beyond price is when we realize our happiness lies in the fact that God favors not one but all to our individual need.

In losing, we win...and the meek shall inherit the earth.

Thank you.

FEEL FEAR...LOVE AND LAUGH...AND FEEL FEAR

'Where can my negative energy go?' is the enduring human question; it must be exported somewhere. Sadly, it never occurs to us that we are the negative energy, which then sees and contributes to that negative energy in others. The ego refuses to see this in itself. -- Fr Richard's Daily Meditations, June 1, 2025

As I have written recently, I have been experiencing a time of trial in the extreme...as in feeling pea green purple petrified most of the time with the possibility of more hanging fire. I know this has been my well-earned experience, necessary for my growth...spiritual and mental.

On the surface, it was all fear of dementia. A blinding flash of the obvious has hinted that there is a deeper cause...my job, before I ever start, is to quit digging. 

There's the gift...the feeling of fear is not removed; realizing the presence of God is strengthened.   

Not knowing, not seeking the answer, just letting whatever comes be from God for my benefit is accepting that I shall feel fear. The long-ago gift of I feel fear, God is here bears fruit...still, yet, again.

Trust. I get to put to use the trust I have, that I have earned through hard work, through harder earned faith, and grace. Probably in the reverse order. 

Count on it...more will be revealed. Meaning more love and laughter are already in line, ready for my need. 

Thank you.