ON KNOWING YOURSELF IN GOD

When you've stumbled--and the guilt, loneliness, and fear come to assault you--if you don't have at least one good friend, or if you have not developed a prayer life where you know how to find yourself in God instead of in your own feelings, you will simply retrench and reassert your correctness. -- Fr Richard Rohr, "Daily Meditation," June 13, 2016

"When you've stumbled...." When, not if. 

"When wrong, promptly admit it...." When, not if.

We will stumble, we will be wrong...we are not only allowed to, we are expected to! 

Where's the need for all our spiritual seeking if stumbling, if being wrong, weren't allowed? For that matter, where's the need for God? If we be perfect, there's no God necessary. Even God grins at the folly.

Even when in our childhood we actually were mistreated, picked on and put upon, we learn that using those memories as our justification for who we are today is just another tale of poor, pitiful, put-upon me...boring to anyone but our own self. And a stone block to our spiritual needs.

Having someone to blame...from our teachers to the family to the family dog...allows us to never take responsibility for the life we are living, that we chose for ourself. 

To paraphrase Rohr, if you haven't accepted full responsibility for who and what you are and how you got here...for yourself in God instead of in your own feelings as Rohr puts it...you will simply retrench and reassert your correctness.

We learn again, feeling like for the first time, that what you see is always yourself. How you got to be that self was by your invitation only. There. That is the freedom of knowing yourself in God instead of your own feelings. 

Thank you.