FAITH AND OBEDIENCE...THE KEY, I

[The following is a reprint of my post of March 28, 2019.]

To see our petty problems from a different angle may well be the answer to all our problems. Indeed, if it be true that what we see is always ourselves, then being willing to refocus could be our answer. To see you as right and me as not so much is an enormous step to just consider...in a positive light.

That may be the key to working with God to change our own mind. I'm convinced a mind cannot be changed through self-will alone. We might say it, but...like acceptance, just saying that we're giving up or letting go does not get us there...we must needs work with God.

Yet again, "God Calling" has the answer. Today's entire entry is short, simple and direct: Faith and obedience will remove mountains, mountains of evil, mountains of difficulty. But they must go hand in hand.

That's it.

It doesn't take a mystic to know that the key word there is obedience. Faith, of course, but that goes almost without saying. I mean, who's seeking still more spiritual growth without at least a tish of faith as their golden goose? But obedience? The actual how-to is all about obedience...studying, pondering, striving...to give over, give up, give in. Ah, to not talk back or defend yourself too much against accusations, whether false or true, a.k.a., to agree with your adversary quickly.

That can only come to us through our doing it...actually, through our willingness to give it a start. And failing. Trying again. And failing...but not so totally this time. With a modicum of peace in our heart and our head the next time.

We are building faith and obedience within so we can walk it without. Ah, now we're beginning to know our Father on earth (without) as He is in Heaven (within).

Thank you.

WE GO TO GOD FOR GOD

I suspect that we get the leaders who mirror what we have become as a nation. They are our shadow self for all to see. -- Fr, Richard Rohr, "Daily Meditation," March 24, 2026

Whoa! There it is, my unacknowledged worst fear walking: we get the leaders who mirror what we have become.

I am the source of all my woes. When that idea flashed through me, I knew it for Truth. I knew in that moment that we each are the source of our living, thinking, doing, being, that a Higher Power lives within each of us to guide our every thought and action when we turn away from self to It.

Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find.... == Matthew 7:7

The hard part for most of us is remembering to ask, to seek...that is the I want what I want when I want it living of the self on parade.

It seems to take a long time to, in truth, come to believe...even when we are sincerely trying to come to believe. It is our surrender that leads us to acceptance...to finally accept that it is our trying that blocks God's will, God's way

To remember. To remember God. To remember and believe from our toenails up that God is with us, within us. That God can and will if sought and has a better way than we do, no matter how much we love our way.

This fairly well describes my still more spiritual growth to this day...try with a will, surrender, which transmutes into acceptance, pray thank You, and know peace. 

Until the next time. 

There is the comfort...there is no cheap spiritual growth, but the price is paid for us by our spiritual growth.

God is so good to us.

Thank you.

GOD'S WILL, THE PEARL BEYOND PRICE, I

[The following is a reprint of my post of March 31, 2019.]

Something in you dies when you bear the unbearable. And it is only in that dark night of the soul that you are prepared to see as God sees and to love as God loves. —Ram Das

I'm betting there are a gazillion unbearables in our life...egoic snags and snarks that we wrestle with, praying God to take them, all the while we are refusing to release them.

If that be so, ponder this: They, our ego's issues, would comprise the steppingstones to the Big Unbearable that eventually leads to life everlasting...i.e., God. Or, our ego is our well-hidden gold.

Coming to that realization unto acceptance is transforming.

There is a promise that holds the key to that transformation. The promise is that God can and will intervene in our life in our behalf. Our transformation is all about our realization that his intervention is not a guarantee that we will get our want, that likely we will not get our want...and we will be the better for it. (This is what Rohr describes as developing the art of losing. I only love that.)

We are transformed when our head and our heart know God's will for the long-sought cosmic pearl beyond price.

Thank you.

ON BECOMING PEACED...HURTS

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 in 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 lifted the above from previous posts of mine...it expresses well where I am in my head and heart today. That is to say, worried...into self...all atremble...scared.

There are reasons aplenty, of course. When...not if...I sit in silence and let thank You flow through me, I am quieted. For that moment in time. 

Ah, but fear rejects quiet...and There It Is! My long-ago realization, my forever answer: Nothing turns me to God faster than fear. 

I will not know peace until after I have walked through my perceived problem. The way there is to resist not. Lean into knowing that this, too, is for my benefit.

I am being peaced. God is so good to me.

Thank you.

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.