GOD'S GRACE OF ACCEPTANCE

Our practice, whatever it is, must somehow include the problem. Contemplation is not the avoidance of the problem, but a daily merging with the problem, and finding some resolution. -- Fr Richard Rohr, Daily Meditations, September 27, 2024

That from Fr Richard is the answer to my quiet time request this morning. I consciously, without qualifiers, gave my thoughts over to God, asking that he do with them for me as he saw fit. 

I recognize what I unconsciously already knew that when my thoughts go for a walkabout, I take ownership by negatively trying to change them, upgrade them...without God's interference. 

According to Fr Richard, we can't have one without the other:  I can’t risk losing touch with either my angels or my demons. They are both good teachers.

Again, acceptance. 

It is repeatedly proven to us that acceptance is the answer to all of our problems. Yet acceptance is seldom if ever the first place we go for solace. The first place our reasoning mind goes is how can I fix this for my comfort right here and now.

I suspect acceptance is so difficult to actually do...not think about or talk about or analyze, each will point us in the right direction...it is the honest-to-God doing acceptance that is the bane of our reasoning mind. If we're mind-wrestling with how to accept a problem, we already believe we are either right or not wrong at any rate.

Here comes Fr Richard with the answer...which we recognize as already known to us but never fully realized:  By nature, I have a critical mind and a demanding heart, and I am impatient. These are both my gifts and my curses. Yet I can’t have one without the other, it seems. I can’t risk losing touch with either my angels or my demons. They are both good teachers.

Negative self-help sans input from our Higher Power stays us in self...feeling unloved, feeling unneeded, feeling unwanted, feeling unappreciated...in short, feeling unprotected. 

Know this: We are not unloved, unneeded, unwanted, unappreciated...not unprotected...what we are feeling is self-centered fear at feeding time. Only God's grace of acceptance can feed that beast.

Thank you.