BUILD OUR STAIRWAY TO THE STARS

How not to get a resentment: The message is so simple...just don't pick it up. It is not ours, it belongs to the one who said it, sent it, thought it...or it could just be the weather. Makes no never mind, if we pick it up (that is, personalize it), we own it.

A resentment is our tar baby. Remember the Pottery Barn quote: "You break it, you bought it." We even touch our tar baby, and its stain is ours. It takes serious spiritual work to remove that, and it will ever be a puzzlement why we are rarely ready for spiritual work, serious or not. Probably  because we must be willing first to get out of our own head.

Unfortunately, our go-to place, even for spiritual growth, begins with thinking. That's why we have a brain...to use for thinking. We're forever saying we think too much. No, we don't. We worry too much. The fine line between the two is the very essence of life itself...it is where we go to build our stairway to the stars or to not build but to kvetch and cry.

The hard lesson we're learning is that it is not wrong when we have less-than-wonderful happen and our first thought is not of God and gratitude, but of resistance. It is only wrong if we remain there. It is resistance that brings the false feeling of self-protection when actually we have become opaque. That becomes the harbinger of the good for our spiritual growth is based on being transparent, and all our spiritual growth comes to our aid...we recognize that false feeling as our "wrong-way, go back" sign.The quicker we recognize that we're going down that wrong road again, the sooner we make our U-bie, and head up...toward God's hills.

Tarry not, to coin a phrase, for it is in the tarrying that our tar baby is so very tempting...it sounds so understanding with its "Oh, poor, pitiful, put-upon you. This is not fair." That is a tish hard to give a nod to while passing on by. But pass we must, or kvetch and cry we will...all the while sinking deeper into our own pile of self...a.k.a., resentment.

Again we realize: All things work together for our good.

Thank you.