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.

NOT TAUGHT BUT CAUGHT

Live simply, forgive deeply, and love fearlessly. --  David W., "Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation," February 19, 2026

I am experiencing a deeper understanding of what I have been learning these past many years. David W.'s quote fairly well describes the Word I hear. 

To be very clear, the It that I seek, that I am beginning to experience, is as Trappist monk Thomas Merton taught: The way of simplicity, to recapture some of the way of the desert fathers. By grace and by God, I know I am a rank beginner, and I rejoice in that.

That is to say that my heart, my Soul, my body and my brain all know that I go to God for God and that is All. That is The Way, and I am living it...less than one hundred percent but heading in the right direction. 

The essence of the spirituality of the desert is that it was not taught but caught; it was a whole way of life...the Desert Fathers did not have a systematic way; they had the hard work and experience of a lifetime of striving to re-direct every aspect of body, mind, and soul to God. -- Benedicta Ward

Thank you.