WE, OF OUR OWN SELVES, CANNOT, I

[The following is a reprint of my post of February 28, 2014.]

Acceptance. The very word is inviting. It has that huggable sound...that “Oh I want one!” sound. Well, get ready for a shock to the old hemorrhoids. Acceptance is just surrender wrapped in pretty paper.

And, who’s kidding whom, we know what surrender means. Not to put too mean a point on it, it means You Lose. Stop Fighting. The war is over, and you lost.

Until we surrender to the very fact that we've been resisting, the fact with all the hair on it, we will never reach the tra-la-la pretty. The paradox is that we have to kiss it on the lips in order to reach that part. We have to kiss it on the lips while it still looks like the frog it is...and feel in the doing totally alone, bereft, hopeless. And kiss it anyway. Because we have no hope. And here comes another paradox! As Walter Brueggeman says, "The home of hope is hurt.”

It is in that very hopelessness that we find God…who has been trying to get our attention all along. Fr. Richard Rohr says, "Divine love is received by surrender instead of performance or perfection."

The perfection of acceptance is that it does not change the fact that we've been resisting...it changes our perception of that fact. From worst thing ever to God is so good to me. The essential ingredient? Our realization that we of our own selves cannot make that change. We go to God for God.

Thank you.

GOD'S WILL, GOD'S WAY...BRING IT ON!

We have to turn to God and allow ourselves to be led on this faith journey. -- "Richard Rohr Daily Meditations," February 22, 2026

Fr Richard's lesson continues: We have to be willing to experience the Exodus in our own lives and enter into our own desert wanderings. We have to let God liberate us from captivity to freedom, from Egypt to Canaan, not fully knowing how to cross the desert between the two.

I suspect I am experiencing the Exodus in my own life, and trepidation hangs heavy within me... on the horns of a dilemma fits me this morning. Am I willing?...ready?...able? to walk my own desert wanderings.

When I committed to still more spiritual growth some fifty years ago (versus every new wonder drug the medical profession could and would offer), I was blessedly young(er) and "knew" considerably more about God than I do now. The untested always know more it seems. 

But there it is...there's the proof of my puddin'...I do not know as I once knew, but I believe from my toes to my nose, and I believe based on faith and experience...God has never failed me. His journey for me has just been lengthier...unknowable in a word. 

We come to believe we are on God's journey when we find our self whispering, Are You sure this is the Way? 

The answer does not come until after we have felt every rock on our road, felt every thorn, lived through every doubt all while believing (or wanting to) that this, too, is God's will, God's way. 

I'm there again. I'm grateful still. Thy will, Thy way, Lord...bring it on!

Thank you.

ON LEARNING TO LOVE...TO GIVE OF 0UR SELF

My inner message this morning was that I do not know how to love. I do not and have never realized how to love...only as I feel it and that is dependent on who, how and/or what I am getting. 

I am realizing again...or still...that I do not know how to love.

I do not and have never realized how a feeling of love in general feels. Other than good. 

I'm not even sure that good isn't how a feeling of love in general feels for everybody. 

Blinding flash of the obvious: A feeling of love is a simple need to give of our self for the benefit of another. 

An unknown at the time example of pure love: My sister, age 13-14, sick in bed with the flu, me. age 10-11, doing all I possibly could to bring happy to her. To get a smile, to know I was helping her in whatever way possible. And she smiled. and I knew happy. 

There...God's gift of remembrance to me this morning.

Thank you.

ON WELCOMING CRASH-AND-BURN, I

[The following is a reprint of my post of February 21, 2018.]

It is in the devastation of surrender that we are gifted with the sweet taste of impersonal victory. It is that impersonal victory that is a brief glimpse of the 4th dimension, and we know peace.

Never having known true peace, our reasoning mind mistakes it for nuthing' happenin' here so we self-determine various actions based on self that we must take...thus blocking our realization for as long as it takes for us to become entirely ready to give over, give up, give in.

There it is. The golden key to the 4th dimension...surrender of self to Self...give over, give up, give in.

Thank you.

MY ONLY JOB...DETACH, I

[The following is a slightly reworked reprint of my post of February 10, 2015.]

Thank you, Father, for the mini blinding flashes of the obvious that I randomly receive. The flashes are so short and come so quickly that I can't commit them to memory. I rest in Your assurance that they are with me, within me, awaiting the time for my need of them. When I am in need, my perfect BFO can and will flow forth for my benefit.

My only job is to remain detached from my reasoning mind, trying to figure it out which only holds the BFO at bay.

Thank you.

UNFINISHED...STILL GROWING

The ancient path of the desert mystics invites us to disrupt the patterns of ego and empire through the courageous pursuit of inner liberation. —Stephen Copeland 

Inner liberation. I ponder those words. I ponder those words until they become mine...until I realize a transformation within/without me, specifically my Soul. My Soul of which I feel nothing physically, but I realize to be sense is my everything.

Looking back on my spiritual awakening, some fifty years now, I am amazed at my singular effort. For that is not how I knew me to be...I was ever a one-shot deal person. 

In my freshman year at college (where else!), I learned a cynical take on trying: If at first you don't succeed, quit...don't be an ass about it. 

Most folks laughed at that; I took it to heart...one-shot deal.

Today, I am realizing ever more fully my self over the years becoming My Self. I am that I Am. 

There it is...the gift of gold in turning 80 and still growing. 

I am 80+ today and content to be...unfinished in order to stay fresh in God's gift of new growth.

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

Thank you.  

THE BLOSSOMING OF FAITH

The real test of spiritual maturity ... is whether we have been transformed so that our maturity plays out in regular life. -- "Richard Rohr Daily Meditations," February 20, 2026

In short, that is the actual practice of living our life by the grace of God...to know it is to show it. If we are not showing it, we are knowing the words but denying our self the action.

In my spiritual growth, I am a far cry from where I want to be...but nearer, my God, to Thee.

My recent blinding flash of the obvious: Living by a self-imposed standard of one hundred percent right or one hundred percent wrong is self, parading self...there is no Self in it.

Often it seems as though spiritual growth consists of contradictions. Yet it is in the contradictions that we find the proof we seek...by grace and by God

That's how faith blooms and blossoms...by grace and by God. But doesn't everything?

Thank you.