[The following is a reprint of my blog of December 16, 2014.]
Sometimes I feel like I'm learning spiritual principles just so I can beat myself up for not living by spiritual principles.
It was a heartbreaker and a mindbender when the writings of Mother Teresa were published after her death. I identified way more than I wanted to. And in what world is that an acceptable reality...I identified too much with Mother For Heaven's Sake Teresa! And I rued that! But she was some kind of hard on herself for not living up to her own God standards.
That's one of the giftees I get from journaling...I can look back a year or more later and read about what I was mentally arm-wrestling with back when. It is usually a jolt when I realize...and fairly often...that that problem has been cleared...either resolved in my favor or transmuted as another piece of gold for me to learn to love.
And there's the joy...recognizing a personal rue, regret, remorse as the gold I get to love.
I'm probably putting on airs, but I'm reminded of Fr. Richard Rohr's writing in his "Daily Meditation" of December 4th: However, as a person ripens in unsayable intimacies in God, they ripen in a paradoxical wisdom. They come to understand God as a presence that protects us from nothing, even as God unexplainably sustains us in all things.
Thank you.
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