FOR THE UNFORGIVING...PLEASE & THANK YOU

I'm having less than loving thoughts about our president this morning. I have been led to my blog right after the killings in New Town, CN, which I need again...or still:

My uncomprehending thoughts and my deepest prayers are for his soul. Pray God it does rest in peace. I have prayed for Hitler's soul, for Ted Bundy's, I pray for this man's...as has been said before, else what's forgiveness for.  

This morning, I pray the same for America's president...and for those of us unforgiving Americans. 

Please and thank You.

Thank you.   

LOVE AND LAUGHTER...GOD'S PANACEA FOR LIFE

Blinding flash of the obvious: We need resist not our fears and dreads for they are the rough and rugged that plows our field of inner resistance and lifts us up to God. 

I suspect that all desire for other than still more spiritual growth is a desire for a self-determined objective, a want in fact. The want can seem...and sound...spiritually motivated, without any selfish for-me in it. But of course it is...for me. If it is as spiritually exalted as I'm feeling that it is, it has already been done and done repeatedly since 0 B.C.  

That is not all bad, and a better habit to have than finding fault with everything. We just need be aware that it is of self, not a secret directive from God. Ah, unless it is. 

That fairly well explains why still more spiritual growth is never ending. Rule of thumb: If it makes common sense, we're probably going down that wrong road again. 

Paradox: If it makes common sense, we're probably going down that wrong road again, but if it doesn't make a lick of sense, we're probably going down that wrong road again. 

My experience is that I usually know for certain sure God's will for me when I look back at my life. I see, I realize, I've been led when I felt the most unsure. When I had to hold my nose and take a leap of faith...and as often as not, felt the immediate result was wrong, as in: I shoulda, woulda, coulda, and where were You when I needed You?

Here's me in my 80s now, looking back at my life, and I honestly know I have lived a good life, a blessed life, a life I can rest at peace with. Purely and simply because the God of my understanding is, was, ever has been in my life...whether I knew it or not.

The path I walked was God-led all the while...including the detours His gift of free will allowed me, which I learned to make amends for with love and laughter.

Love and laughter...God's panacea for life.

Thank you. 

GUIDE DOGS...GOD'S OWN, I

[The following is a reprint of my post of August 19, 2020.]

We don't get to God by doing it right, we get to God by doing it wrong. -- Fr Richard Rohr

I love that quote because it is the essence of counterintuitive. According to me, life is counterintuitive. I wonder, is that God's plan? No. I'm counterintuitively certain that it is not since God is not in the future, not in the past, is only here and now...a plan as such is not possible.

That may be why mystics and prophets, pastors and popes...and guide dogs...are necessary. The mystical discern more through spiritual consciousness than through the reasoning mind. Which is never 100 percent right, but nothing on this earth is...they just head us in a better direction. And guide dogs are of God with no need to discern.

Face it, the Sermon on the Mount is counterintuitive...which in this case, plain and simple, is ego deflation in depth. The same is true of the Steps we take when we seek to live an unselfed life. Right down in the dirt, an unselfed life means to go beyond reason to love.

That is the essence of counterintuitive...beyond reason. Maybe the only place beyond reason is love. It is fear that it is insanity that builds the egoic mind's mouse trap.

When we seek so hard to Do It Right...to never step on another's toes, to never bad-mouth another, to always let snarks and snubs fly right on by...we're heading in the wrong direction...we are relying on our reasoning mind. There is nothing counterintuitive about never, always and should. There is no God there either.

To live an unselfed life is to live and breathe by the unfathomable Word of God. Or, to go beyond reason to love. And few there be who wholly succeed...to try is its own reward. I'm hoping.

Thank you.

GO BEYOND REASON...TO GOD

If you follow the example of Jesus and listen for your destiny and fate, you will have to go your own way, adapting the simple, radical teachings to your own calling and circumstances. You will evoke the kingdom in your own style, making your own life a tiny mustard seed, cultivating the weeds of your thoughts, making yourself the embodiment of the moral beauty and spiritual intelligence found in the Gospels. -- Author and psychotherapist Thomas Moore

In short, if you follow the example of Jesus and listen for your destiny and fate, you can and will, safely, go beyond reason to love...to God.

Thank you.

GOD...ENTIRELY HEART FELT, I

[The following is a reprint of my post of December 23, 2016.]

Love is endlessly alive, always flowing toward the lower place, and thus life-giving for all, exactly like water. -- Fr. Richard Rohr, "Daily Meditation," December 23, 2016.

"Love is endlessly alive, always flowing toward the lower place exactly like water." Like water, love seeks its own level...filling every nook, cranny and crack until there is nothing but love.

I am blessed with a blinding flash reminding me that God is love, and I understand that God is always flowing toward the lower place because there is no higher place. God seeks its own level, is everywhere, is in everything...filling every nook, cranny and crack until there is nothing but God.

God is invisible to the naked eye, unhearable by the natural ear, unreachable by the reasoning mind...is known only through the heart.

I am guessing that's why faith was born...to help us trust our heart.

Thank you.

THE DAWN BREAKS...WE ARE FREE

A simple truth that resolves resistance: 'whether we know it or not.'    

I realize again that we are in the 4th dimension whether we know it or not. Living this truth alters, i.e., makes peace with, our reasoning mind's ever seeking to control.

"Makes peace with," of course, is when we give up, give over, give in...with gratitude and grace..

Apparently, it is the natural order of things that reasoning mind is geared to stay in control of our life, while spiritual consciousness lives that control.  

Ah, the dawn breaks: In the process of being lifted to a higher plane, personal control of our spiritual life is nonexistent...we simply live by spiritual principles and be happy, joyous and free. God's will, God's way.

Thank you.

A HIGHER TRUTH IS ALREADY OURS

Emotions are, first of all, a gift from God so that we can touch upon reality by a way other than our brain. — "Richard Rohr Daily Meditation," August 23, 2025

This points the way to a new goal...to touch upon reality by a way other than by our brain.

I love that this comes at my 54th anniversary time. But...and it is a big but...what does it mean to me personally? As in, how do I go about touching upon reality other than by my brain?

We let it. of course, and therein lies our rest-of-life aim and goal, i.e., to let go and let God.

This realization already occurred within me...I have been seeing deeper, understanding more clearly, knowing a higher truth than my reasoning mind deals with. This is proof that it came not by my thinking but by my awareness...the pearl beyond price.

I look forward to continuing to live it.

Thank you.

HOLD YOUR NOSE & TAKE A LEAP OF FAITH

[The following is a reprint of my post of September 28, 2019.]

Primary paradox...our reasoning mind can agree with spiritual truths, but because it can't figure out how to do spiritual truths, it doubts spiritual truths.

We feel safer identifying spiritual truths and their cosmic nature as coincidence, or serendipitous, or even lucky! That is, we cling to our feeling of security, refusing to step out of our comfort zone, thus keeping reason in control.

Going beyond reason to love is a scary journey...albeit completely nonhazardous. Which we cannot realize until and unless we get to the other side, a.k.a., hold our nose and take a leap of faith.

Thank you.

THE SPIRITUALITY OF THE ACTION WE TAKE

On action alone be thy interest, never on its fruits. -- Bhagavad Gita

To be focused on the "fruits" of our action is to be in the self-centered control of our reasoning mind. Not to put too fine a point on it, there is no spiritual growth there...face it, the reasoning mind most often is self-centered fear driven. 

Yet, to ponder: What other kind of fear is there?

We live today knowing the roots of our spiritual knowledge are love and/or fear...thus our spiritual growth flows from either of those two roots. 

If...since...action is our only interest, the fruits...results...of any action we take are spiritually born and bred. Thus, by our actions daily, the promise of living fret free becomes fulfilled...the promise of living spiritually becomes fulfilled.

Thank you.

ON DISCOVERING THE TRUE SELF

Seasoned contemplatives like Thomas Merton describe letting go, letting be, letting come, and setting free as discovering the true self. -- Brian McLaren, "Daily Meditations," August 20, 2025

There...letting go, letting be, letting come, and setting free...that may tell the tale of our seemingly unending search to live not from our head but from the Power within, the Power within each of us. The more we search out there for the Power, the farther away we take us from its discovery.

Our search is another self-determined objective, or our block. It is akin to searching for breath even as we breathe...we stop breathing, looking for our breath. Uh-oh.

We do not obtain the most precious gifts by going in search of them but by waiting for them. -- French philosopher and mystic Simone Weil

Thank you.

GOD, GRACE AND GRATITUDE

Brother Lawrence’s guidance, 'Live constantly in the experience of that sacred presence, the ground of all being.'

I gotta wonder, does the Brother's guidance include living with and within incurable illness? Incurable, as in dementia, my ongoing fear that looks like is no longer a fear but a fact. 

Let it be....

If only.

I return again to my perfect panacea, i.e., the worst thing that could ever happen to me, did happen...and turned out to be the best thing that has or can ever happen to me. 

That being true, then so can this be...another best thing. 

All it takes to turn a worst to a first is God, grace and gratitude. I have all three...now they get to earn their keep, with me remembering that their keep is mine to walk. 

I walk not alone...I walk with God, he holds my hand.

Thank you.

THE ROUGH AND RUGGED ROAD...GOD'S GIFT

Persist at that deeper place in yourself where the “both-and” is located. This is the place of the soul and the place of wisdom toward which we have to move. -- Richard Rohr, Daily Meditation, August 8, 2025 

According to me, most desires for other than still more spiritual growth are the reasoning mind want dressed up as a spiritual need. 

God's will, God's way is for our benefit always and all ways...the rockier it feels, the surer our Way. It is the rough and rugged that plows our field of resistance, i.e., self-will. 

When I was blessed with the realization that the seed of spiritual growth is in detachment...specifically, detaching from reasoning mind wants...I realized that does not negate wants, for they, too, are God given. Ah, but their place is never first in line. 

Our spiritual growth thus begins when we make a decision to turn unborn wants over to the care of a Higher Power. As they are born daily, we resist them not as we remember what we resist, persists...we leave them to God's care. 

There...that is the rough and rugged self-will plowing our field of resistance...unbeknownst to us, with God at the helm.

The good news, a.k.a., the God news: The more we detach from self's wants, the deeper our spiritual comfort grows so the more we detach.

God loves us so much.

Thank you.

RESIST NOT...MOVE IN WITH

Pure consciousness is never just me, trapped inside myself. Rather, it is an observing of “me” from a distance—from the viewing platform kindly offered by God (see Romans 8:16), which we call the Indwelling Spirit. -- Fr Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation, August 17, 2025

My morning blinding flash of the obvious: Resistance is acceptance in a hair shirt. 

Ah, it is the hair shirt that we resist. We must needs resist not but move in with, i.e., seek deeper, welcome...resist not.

To move in with is found in our still more spiritual growth...spiritually we cannot move in with as it appears to our reasoning mind eyes in the moment. Our gift is in our raised consciousness...the realization that nothing is personal to us. 

All is of God...the gold in our dreams, the worms in our fears...all in, around, between, above and below are of God and for our spiritual benefit.

Resist not evil. -- Matthew 5:39

Thank you.

IT'S ALL IN AN EXCHANGED MIND, I

[The following is a reprint of my post of August 3, 2021.]

Simone Biles is still teaching us. She competed again for the first time since she hit the wall with the Twisties, which I take to be a gymnast term for pea-green-purple petrified in the midst of a required upside-down contortion.

This being the last women's gymnastics event for this Olympics, the apparatus she got to compete on was the balance beam, known to be the hardest of all.

She won the Bronze.

I can't think any Olympic contender ever prayed to win the Bronze; yet, according to me, for Simone Biles today, her Bronze can forever be her most cherished medal.

By bowing out, simply letting go, she hung on, hung in, and hung tough, and won an Olympic medal first time back. There, that is showing the world how it's done...with God, grace and guts, the not-just-for-Sunday Trinity.

Don't tell me God's will isn't perfection wrapped in toilet paper. All we need do is change our mind, and lo! it's now toilet tissue. Love and laugh.

Thank you.

ON 'THINKING BACKWARDS' OR GOD'S WILL

Paul is dictating a letter to some people he loves on a subject he loves, expressing the honest, unedited, natural flow of his thoughts and feelings…. If we read Romans keeping these realities in mind, I think we will become more sensitive than ever to the wonderful dace of the Spirit of God and the mind of a man in the context of a community in crisis. -- "Richard Rohr's Daily Meditations," August 15, 2025

To me, this explains the gift to me of "thinking backwards" being the Way to God consciousness, i.e. the wonderful dance of the Spirit of God and the mind of a man....

My "thinking backwards" floated into my consciousness many years ago...I did not question it, nor have I over-talked the concept. To the best of my inner knowledge, I have lived it without questioning.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but my "thinking backwards" is putting the reasoning mind in its rightful place...behind my spiritual insights while ever letting it have a say in my life. God allowed our reasoning mind, too, so our job is to keep it finely tuned...ready for God to use when, if or as the need arises.

In short, this is our life today: God's will, God's way.

Thank you.

 

*************************************

@8/15/25 Brian McLaren: Paul is dictating a letter to some people he loves on a subject he loves, expressing the honest, unedited, natural flow of his thoughts and feelings…. If we read Romans keeping these realities in mind, I think we will become more sensitive than ever to the wonderful dance of the Spirit of God and the mind of a man in the context of a community in crisis. [To me, this explains the gift to me of "thinking backwards" being the Way to God consciousness, i.e.  the wonderful dance of the Spirit of God and the mind of a man....] 

RELEASE TO RECEIVE, I

[The following is a reprint of my post of August 13, 2012.]

If we are to have any lasting spiritual growth, we must learn to get closer to those who irritate us.

There is the place, that is the way we learn to live patience, forgiveness, freedom from personal wants...the either/ors, the likes/dislikes of life...freedom to love...unconditionally.

It is in letting go of protection of self...which is different from self-protection...that one finds the freedom to love...unconditionally. Until we realize unconditional love is within us right now, we will ever seek and not find unconditional love.

We must release it to receive it.

Thank you.

THANK YOU...REPEATEDLY, I

[The following is a reprint of my post of August 23, 2017.]

If I would remember any one of the following blinding flashes of the obvious, I'd never suffer another resentment:

Just because s/he is wrong doesn't mean I am right.

God has to go slow in order for me to keep up.

Acceptance is simply giving God the courtesy of letting him go first.

Thank you.

FOR THE BENEFIT OF OTHERS

A participatory theology says, 'I am being chosen, I am being led, I am being used.' After conversion, you know that your life is not about you; you are about life! You are about God. You’re an instance of both the agony and the ecstasy of God that is already happening inside of you, and all you can do is say yes to it. That’s conversion and it changes everything. -- Fr Richard Rohr, "Daily Meditations," August 12, 2025

Apparently, my spiritual growth now is in my more fully realizing that I am changed. Interesting that it seems like my change is taking me back to the untalking one I once was. 

Of course! What was our path is our path. God's will is ever guiding us as our freewill walks with us. 

It is continuing spiritual growth that lifts us up and over freewill (a.k.a., self will), only now it is to get us fret-free to the new place of God's will, God's way for the benefit of others.

Thank you.

OF GRATITUDE AND GRACE...STILL, YET, AGAIN

Father Richard teaches to become wise, we must move into life itself, encountering people and places that challenge our ways of thinking.

I sense a change in me all but fighting to get out...is the change in my active participation in my still more spiritual growth? I am not sure, but not knowing can be a cop out. I wonder if mine is not wanting to know so I can sit and wait on the Lord to do it for me.

Ah, blinding flash: He is already doing it for me...I just don't real-time realize it. 

Acceptance time again...I get to accept that I will sit and wait on the Lord because that is how I learned to live spiritual growth. And He does...lead me to the place I need to be to do the work I need to do. 

Proof of the pudding: My experience with the IRS when all my business partners split, and I got the gift of paying off the bankruptcy. That is not an exaggeration, and I am still grateful.

My younger years' fear was of being bored; my elder years' fact is that bored does not enter still more spiritual growth...another gift of gratitude.

Thank you.

I AM THE BEING OF ALL SAINTS, ALL SINNERS, I

[The following is a reprint of my post of August 9, 2020.]

Blinding flash of the obvious: I am the wolf stalking the night...I am the skunk stinking up the place.

Thoughts flow:  I am the wolf stalking the night...I am the skunk stinking up the place. I am the lion whose roar reverberates across the Serengeti...I am the jackal doing the dirt, carrying the water.
I am the soul of my most revered saint, I am the conscience of my most resented enemy...I am the Being of all the saints and sinners in between.

Parents, siblings, friends, enemies, The Church, the employer, lost loves...none get the credit, none get the blame...for each is the wolf stalking the night, the skunk stinking up the place...just as I am.

I Am that I am.

Thank you.

OUR JOURNEY AWAY FROM SELF BEGINS, I

[The following is a reprint of my post of December 4, 2021.]

Matthew 5:38 Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: 39 But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. 40 And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also.

Matthew 5:38, 39, 40 are my "forever" verses that I love, but oh the doing of them...there's my mare's nest.

We are told that God loves a seeker, so we can know we are loved; but, face it, God loves a non-seeker too. Wait...what's the "but" about that? God loves. We just need to accept that without any "buts."

The wonder is that it is easier to accept God's love by doing God's will, as in, resist not evil, turn the other cheek, etc., than by staying with the reasoning mind birthing our analytical mind trips.

Blinding flash of the obvious: It is our not doing that which God wills, specifically, resist not evil, turn the other cheek, etc., that keeps us from accepting (trusting!) God's love.

This acceptance is our turning point. This is where our transcendent journey, our journey away from self, begins.

Thank you.

WISDOM IS WITHIN

Father Richard teaches that to become wise, we must move into life itself, encountering people and places that challenge our ways of thinking. *** Persist at that deeper place in yourself where the both-and' is located. This is the place of the soul and the place of wisdom toward which we have to move.

I wonder if all desire for other than still more spiritual growth isn't a desire for a self-determined objective no matter how prettied-up the "other" seems to us.

I heard me say today, I wish I were in love again, and I realized that underneath what I really wish is that I knew love...I really don't have a clue. Blinding flash: I wonder if anybody truly does...know love. Well, there I go down that wrong road again...overanalyzing. 

Our lesson for today: God's will, God's way is for our benefit always and all ways...the rockier it feels, the smoother our Way...it is rough and rugged that plows our field of resistance, i.e., self-will. 

We need to recognize that, among other things, the real purpose of self is to move into life itself to encounter people and places that challenge our ways of thinking. Ah...still more spiritual growth.

Thank you.

THE GRACE OF GOD, I

[The following is a reprint of my post of February 24, 2013.]

The grace of God is a wind which is always blowing. -- Sri Ramakrishna

We cannot get the grace of God...we can only give in to the grace of God.

Thank you.

SCRUPULOSITY...WHAT A HOOT!, I

[The following is a reprint of my post of August 23, 2016.]

The literal level is one of the least fruitful levels of meaning....A heart open to the power of metaphor ("that which carries you across"), a heart open to the feminine and open to intimacy, will leap every time. A heart trapped in historical literalism, or closed to the power of poetry, will remain bored, reactive, and trapped in critique. -- Fr. Richard Rohr, "Daily Meditation," September 28, 2015

That, I believe, defines those of us who talk in exaggeration. We are poets, weaving fun in and out of the daily-ness of life. Which reminds me of the point made in The Cloud of Unknowing by an unknown 14th century monk to "be wary of the overly scrupulous."

The overly scrupulous use a one-inch yardstick to measure us by...and our saving grace is we let them because that's the stuff we use to weave our fun when telling of it.

God loves you and me so much...and the overly scrupulous, too.

Thank you.

BLESSED BEYOND HUMAN MEANS

The following is from CAC faculty emerita Cynthia Bourgeault and speaks to me of raised consciousness...raised without our personal thoughts or actions...raised through higher consciousness itself:

 

 ...he stayed close to the ground of wisdom: the transformation of human consciousness. He asked those timeless and deeply personal questions: What does it mean to die before you die? How do you go about losing your little life to find the bigger one? Is it possible to live on this planet with a generosity, abundance, fearlessness, and beauty that mirror Divine Being itself? These are the wisdom questions....

There it is...the ground of wisdom: the transformation of human consciousness. That is the pearl I have been seeking, chasing in fact, since I began my spiritual journey August 24, 1971. 

Gratefully, I seek still, and I expect that to be so until three days after I am dead if...no, since...I am blessed beyond human means.

Thank you.

DOUBTS AND FEARS ARE GOD'S WILL, GOD'S WAY

The following is from my journal...I believe that I need to realize this as more implicit directions, i.e., God's will, God's way:

From July 10th entry: Quoting Rabbi Dr. Shmuly Yanklowitz: The prophet is neither cool nor popular; the prophet is not the life of the party. The prophet is an anxious personality juggling the demands of God with the needs of humans. Constantly risking alienation or even death, the prophet is isolated and lonely. But we are not allowed to turn away. 

From my entry today, 8/3/25: What if I am the prophet? Ah, blinding flash of the obvious: I am MY prophet...I am neither cool nor popular; I am not the life of the party. I am an anxious personality juggling the demands of God with the needs of humans. Constantly risking alienation or even death, I am isolated and lonely. But I am not allowed to turn away. 

That for sure describes my upside down, inside out feelings since 3:00 AM, April 30th. Still, I move forward...forward with doubts, fears, what-ifs ringing in my head.

I take comfort in a long-ago blinding flash: I cannot know God's will, God's way before it is time for me to know, and my trust must come in living that...ah, with doubts, fears, what-ifs ringing in my head. Apparently.

Thank you.

T0 SPARK OUR CONSCIOUSNESS

The study of truth is the smallest part of our life's demonstration. Far too many students study too much. It takes a very small statement of truth to spark our consciousness into action, and it is that action that brings about the development of our spiritual consciousness. It is not what we read that does it,; it is what we do with what we read that does it. -- Joel Goldsmith, "Consciousness Is What I Am," pp 67-68

Thank you.

LORD, HEAR MY PRAYER

I am feeling...nada. Nothingness. An off-and-on headache. A free-floating fear underlying me. Sleepy...uh-oh.

Comes now my secret mantra...we must try with a will or fall by the wayside. 

I feel like I'm running on empty...a feeling is not a fact, thank you very much. 

Geez, I am deep in this blah, so much so that I'm starting to consider getting a cat...two cats. Seriously. Even mentioned it to another person recently but only conversationally, I thought. Which...if God loves me...will be as far as I get with that. 

Face it...this is fear of dementia...might as well spit it out, let it strut its stuff. If this is dementia, it'll strut its stuff without a by-your-leave from me. I note I'm still "if'ing" it. And I will until I get to where I need be...God's will, God's way.

Whether I feel it or not, whether I know it or not, I am held up by His everlasting love...we all are. If Since that be true, use it, rely on it, Let It Be. 

Try with a will or ball by the wayside.

Thank you.