LEARNING TO LOVE REQUIRES UNLEARNING

God does not demand that we all agree. God only asks that we love one another well. -- Rachel Held Evans, "Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation," March 21, 2026

Learning to love...dispassionately, with no "giftee" promised...is the most difficult thing I've ever attempted. I realized that when, looking back, I recognized my lack of unselfed love.

I am grateful that I learned and still live with the realization that there are only two emotions: Love and Fear. Apparently, I lived under the assumption that any "feel good" passed for love, and that was close enough to perfect for me. Mentally expanding the two emotions entered and saved me. It has been...admittedly, still is...a less than easy slog. 

"It" being the effort required to change my mind. In truth, to upgrade my mind. To feel repulsed by any mouth-breather...repulsed unto bad-mouthing them if only in my mind...is my turning point. That realization was the origin of my finding the gift of thank You. Resist not, with thank You following, became my inner mantra.

I have been on this journey for over fifty years, and I suspect I've only just begun...but I do believe: If not in this life span, then the next...always moving upward.

Thank you.

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.