BEING PEACED IN THE MIDST OF FEAR

H]ave patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language. Do not now look for the answers. They cannot now be given to you because you could not live them. It is a question of experiencing everything. At present you need to live the question. Perhaps you will gradually, without even noticing it, find yourself experiencing the answer, some distant day. -- The German poet, Rainer Maria Rilke

I first posted this Rilke quote on March 29, 2016. 

It is particularly fitting for me today what with my current resistance to my personal fear of dementia...my fear that I may be coming into full-blown dementia. (Personally, I prefer to refer to it as old-age forgetfulness.) 

Words are comforting, we rely on them to sooth our jangled nerves. Ah, but they come into reality when we try to use them to fix our perceived broken place. Soothing is nice, but it doesn't fix. 

Comes the blinding light: Only God can fix, and only God's will, God's way can do that. 

Comes the dire reality, seldom if ever does God's fix arrive looking personally comforting. The lesson we continue to learn: We must needs walk through our pain...or, more aptly, the cause of our pain.

Forever lesson, relearned as needed, sometimes daily: If it is appearing to us, welcome it. The cause of our pain is our resistance to what and how we are perceiving our life's problem.

Again, and yet again: Hug it and kiss it and let it go.

There. There is the proof that words are comforting, but they do not fix. Living through our trauma, be it a broken fingernail or the death of a loved one, is the way of the Lord. 

How else can we build faith if we never have a reason to have faith?

I feel fear...I pray my thank You for the fear for it is truly turning me to God.

Thank you.

ALL ONE IN THE GOODNESS OF GOD'S LOVE

It is such divine extravagance, a philosophy of love them into loving me back, that sets the pattern for all the prophets to follow. -- "Richard Rohr Daily Meditation," March 2, 2026

To me, "a philosophy of love them into loving me back," is the baseline from which all spiritual growth follows. When, without thought, we are living that, we know God's will, God's way as our own...as we breathe. 

Clearly, I forecast that without one hundred percent living experience...but my head hopes, my heart knows, my gut is good with that...so I walk it very nearly as much as I think it today. 

God knows my limitations, and I go to God to learn them which is spiritual growth. I used to seek my answers from whomever stood closest to me at the time. Kinda one-shot-deal spiritual growth. I regret it not...it was a starting point, and to start is ever God's grace.

My comfort today is that I know, and I know that I know, God loves me (and you) personally without qualifiers, and we are One in that goodness.

Thank you.

LESS-THAN AS MORE THAN ENOUGH

Throughout the Gospels, we find numerous teachings promoting downward mobility. The most familiar of these may be, 'The last shall be first, and the first shall be last.' (Matthew 20:16) "Richard Rohr Daily Meditation," March 19, 2026 [ABTW, happy birthday to me.]

Don't tell me God isn't in my thinking, my feeling, my doing, my being...and exchange "my" for "our." 

Looking back, I vaguely remember when it was that I came into my realization that less-than was right for me. I do know that it simply fit so I questioned it not; I built on it, and (gratefully) I still do.

Today, I joyfully accept that was when I gave up the will to win! To the reasoning mind, that has loser written all over it...spiritually ir all but sings "Peace in the Valley." 

For my own self I accept that I have barely begun...but I have begun, and I thank You, Lord. 

Thank you.

DO NOT LOOK FOR THE ANSWERS

[H]ave patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language. Do not now look for the answers. They cannot now be given to you because you could not live them. It is a question of experiencing everything. At present you need to live the question. Perhaps you will gradually, without even noticing it, find yourself experiencing the answer, some distant day. -- The German poet, Rainer Maria Rilke

I have put this Rilke quote out before, and I'm fairly certain I will again for there it is, the answer...his,  It is a question of experiencing everything. 

Ah, experiencing. 

We get to...we must...accept and walk through all that our own life offers us. Lest we forget: All that comes to us, comes by our invitation only.

 

End of mind-nattering questions pretending to be discussion.

Thank you.

ON LIVING ABOVE REASONING

My blinding flash this morning:  We are being led...whether we know it or not. 

There is a spiritual reason and a material reason for our being exactly where we are...ours to choose. When, not if, we choose spirituality, we begin to live anew.

Just as The Man needed water from the well, we need material-world aids, too. The underlying reason for the need is spiritual, our own inner treasure:  It is still more spiritual growth that brings one to that essential realization...the reasoning mind resists the idea.

Thy will, Thy way. Our will is of self; Thy will is of Self.

Thank you.

RADICAL UNITY...LOVE, AND THAT IS ALL

Radical unity with God and neighbor is the only way any of us truly heals or improves. -- "Fr Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation," March 2, 2026

We go to God for God and that is all...for that is all.

Thank you.

THE WELCOMING LIGHT OF GOD

I do not believe that sin is the enemy we often make it out to be, at least not when we recognize it and name it as such. When we see how we have turned away from God, then and only then do we have what we need to begin turning back. Sin is our only hope, the fire alarm that wakes us up to the possibility of true repentance. -- Author Barbara Brown Taylor, "Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation," March 10, 2026

I suspect that the inner meaning of that quote is the insight with which I was gifted way back when; i.e., "wrong" is not the enemy..."wrong" is what turns us around to do "right."  

Blinding flash...that gift has been growing me ever since and still is...please and thank You.

When we get stuck in the remorses of our self-described "wrong," we seldom find God's way of accepting that which is gifted us. 

My life took me down the dark hole until I gave over, gave up, gave in...surrendered in a word...to come into the anonymous light of God.

My continuing life lesson: Find the good in the bad appearing...there the light of God welcomes.

Thank you.