SEEKING OTHER GRATEFUL HEARTS, I

[The following is a reprint of my post of  October 31, 2013.]

Gratitude must be lived. A living attitude of gratitude shows forth as a beacon and draws others to It. It especially draws grateful people who are as yet unaware...seeking they know not what.

I have read that the measure of our gratitude is in proportion to the amount of time and effort we give to others, to other seekers.

That for sure keeps our gratitude replenished. In that way, it's like a hug: You give it to get it. Which is the best reason in the world to live in gratitude, knowing It will seek other grateful hearts.

Thank you.

SPIRITUAL GROWTH...NEVER ENDING

We must go beyond reason to love. -- Thaddeus Golas

My morning blinding flash: To go beyond reason has been...is...my inner being without my intellect directing.

The rest of that story is that we all f up. That's how we get to go beyond reason without rues, regrets and remorses...which, doubt not, takes time, a lotta, lotta time. 

Fully realizing the need for time is God at work...to be led through our own self to our Self cannot be done by self alone, Then of course we must come to believe until we are walking it. Early belief is based in hope. 

We must stay with the hope until it transmutes into fact. We know it when we realize we are acting without thinking it through but as we breathe. 

Our life now is to let that be...ponder not but give over, give up, give in. We will realize we are doing just that when we look back. There we see us agreeing with our adversary quickly when we know our adversary is not right, or more specifically we know that we are not wrong. And, without thought, we have let the other person "win." 

This happened for me just yesterday. I did not fully realize it until this morning in my quiet time. God is so good to me for that kept me from going directly to ego...with that how great I art feeling slithering around in my brain and shame hanging my head in regret.

Spiritual growth...never boring! 

Thank you.

MOVE ON ALREADY, I

[The following is a reprint, slightly altered, of my post of December 20, 2015.]

It was Saint Augustine who said, "What I needed most was to love and be loved. I rushed headlong into love, eager to be caught. Happily I wrapped those painful bonds around me, and sure enough, I would be lashed with the red-hot pokers of jealousy, suspicions and fear, by bursts of anger and quarrels."

It was that same Saint Augustine who is reported to have said he expected to be feeling lust three day after he was dead.

The most important word...I'm talking vitally important...in both of those quotes is the word "Saint."

The man was canonized, lifted up, sainted...by the Catholic Church! That's the same church all the p.o.'d Catholics use to justify their bad behavior...the rest of us use our mothers.

In our youth no doubt the majority of us felt the need to love and be loved, not having a clue what to love or to be loved meant. In fact, it was usually lust. But as we aged, lust gave over to other things to get hung up by...most of them leading to the rues, regrets and remorses we suffer from today.

And that's the point. Saint Augustine suffered the same pangs, pains and pitfalls...why do we hold ours so dear and feel so hopeless of ever overcoming them? Why not accept, just as the Saint did, that we may well have these till three days after we're dead?

I mean, who's kidding whom? If we could have removed them, we would have by now. I say we fall to our knees and thank God Almighty it's not a lot worse...quitcherbitchin' and move on.

A less than spiritually uplifting message...but my truth nonetheless.

Thank you.

RIGHTEOUS WONDER

We Westerners have lost the ability to frame the significance of our own little lives. -- Fr Richard Rohr, "Daily Meditations," October 26, 2025

Talk about stuck between a rock and a hard place...Fr Richard's quote describes me now. I feel as if I have lost the ability to frame the significance of my life. 

Actually, today, and for some time now, I am focused on America...For America. For America, land of the free, home of the brave, God bless America and all who live here and love it. Or want to. Live here and love it.

I am a World War II baby...a passing thought of that time in my life and I am there...not even three years old but knowing Something Ain't Right but Daddy and Mommy would take care of my sister, my brother, me and America. As time passed, we sang God Bless America a lot...and believed in America.

Oh, how I wish that today we could all have that sense of righteous wonder without the fighting, the hate, War. 

We can all have that sense...we just need to lay down our sword and shield, i.e., change our mind. Which we cannot do on our own...we must go to God for God, with a want for peace in our heart and trust in our head. 

That is a small order masquerading as holy. It is not; it is of God is all...Is All.

Thank you.

AN UPGRADED MIND IS PEACE OF MIND, I

[The following is a reprint of my post of October 31, 2019.]

Many years ago a nutritionist gave me a short formula for healthier eating: What goes in hard comes out soft; what goes in soft comes out hard.

It occurs to me a like formula could apply to our inner life...what goes in bitter comes out sweet, what goes in sweet comes out bitter.

For example, we perceive an incoming remark, action, tax bill, etc., as nasty, hurtful, unfair...bitter in a word. As long as we stay in our reasoning mind with our perception, it is a bitter pill, and we take it personally...resentment aborning. However, when we resist not but trust our inner connection God to lead us peacefully through this, we open our self to a new way of responding...not reacting but responding. How sweet it is!

Same goes when we receive a lovely compliment, delightful gift, unexpected lottery win...and that feels sweet. Then the compliment sours, the gift ain't what it looked to be, the lottery win turns costly...now we're growing resentments.

Peace of mind begins with our change of mind...from seeking a self-determined objective to seeking God's will whatever that may be. We find peace of mind in an accepting mind when we resist not but trust our inner connection, God.

Believe. Trust. Love and laugh.

Thank you.

GRACED AND BLESSED, I

[The following is a reprint of my post of December 30, 2014.]

I am convinced that the only thing blocking our doing God's will consistently is our resistance to what he's offering. And, of course, that resistance is based on our own idea of what he's offering.

We hear, "Let go and let God." We say it...repeatedly. Nine times out of ten, even as we pray for God's will, we're picturing our want, our self-perceived need. Then we're gifted with what appears to be the exact opposite of what we perceived we needed! In fact, it often seems to be the one thing we're praying it won't be.

Having no choice, we accept what we got, and, through gritted teeth, thank God for it. Then, YOWZER. it comes to be that what we got was and continues to be much...oh, so much...better than our initial desire. We are forced to realize and accept that only God could have pulled it off.

A thank you prayer: Thank you, God, that I want your will done in my life more than I want my own will done in my life no matter what. Open-ended. Knock yourself out, God. Do your thing. You got the power, use it. You're nothing but good so nothing but good can come from you no matter what it looks like to my eyes. You'll make it clear to me when it needs to be clear to me. I am graced with gratitude and blessed with love. Amen

Thank you.

THE UNFAILING GOODNESS OF GOD

I have discarded a lot of what I consider religious baggage. I now tell people that I am a “follower of Jesus,” trying to live by the “terms and conditions” of the Sermon on the Mount. —Eric F., "Richard Rohr's Daily Meditations," October 18, 2025

I connect with the Sermon more than with anything else I've read, but I still have a mental hesitancy in owning the proposal that I am a follower of Jesus. It is naming Jesus that causes me pause. 

Whoa! Blinding flash of the obvious: I need to accept the truth of the matter which is that is my teen rebellion never allayed.

Factually, I am a follower of what Jesus taught, but not a follower solely of Jesus. But who is kidding whom? It seems that everything that calls to me originated with Jesus's teachings. 

So, why do I quibble? 

What does it matter whether I credit Jesus? Believers know it, and non-believers deny it, so let it be my truth and fret not. It came to me from God by whatever circuitous route God chose. 

God is so good to me...to us. God is so good.

Thank you.

GOD'S GIFT...AND WANTING IT, I

[The following is a reprint of my post of October 27, 2015.]

I believe that life's spiritual test is how well we can comprehend and live the promise that the God we seek is already ours...already within me, within you, within us which includes every living thing, and every living thing includes stone and steel. Cats even. Everything. Everywhere.

The word is that there cannot be a place that the living God is not. This becomes ours to prove, and the battle begins...within. Between the reasoning mind's view and the spiritual view.

"Ours to prove" takes a lifetime for most of us. It is life itself that teaches us that only through surrender do we reach our gold. The paradox is that we learn to resist not, yet the only way to surrender is to resist! For how are we ever going to surrender if there is naught to resist?

We can accept that our road to God is to resist a little less each day. To find within our self daily the love necessary to give over to another, specifically to give over to the one we are resisting...there's always someone to our ego-victory mind.

Maybe God's gift to use is an attack mind and the spiritual tools to overcome it. We get to supply the want to.

Thank you.

LET THE SILENCE BECOME THE BRIDGE

The following is lifted entirely from October 18th  "Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation." I regret I neglected to note the author:

I wake in the morning and sink down into the quiet Center.

Before the news and the heartbreak. 
Before the world becomes all fire and brimstone. 
Tell me, is this salvation? 
I could stay here, alone and away. 
I could place my life in the company of the undisturbed. 
But if I do, I will surely lose You. 
Friend of Sorrows. Acquaintance of Grief. 
Let this silence, then, become a bridge. 
Let me walk it to where Love is. 
At the edges. Amidst the rubble. 
Trudging among the bones 
Where the prophets call to the four winds 
And a Voice cries out saying Live! Live! 
Let this silence become a forgotten thing 
If it does not lead me to the hill 
Outside the camp.

Thank you.

WE MUST GO BEYOND REASON

Thy rod and thy staff they comfort me...thy rod and thy staff are love and laughter...or, tears and travail. 

Interesting to me...the first part being named "love and laughter" came to me many years ago, but the "tears and travail" flashed just this morning. 

I'm guessing whether we are consciously aware of it or not, our inner prayer is for love and laughter with tears and travail never on our wish list.

Yet, as we mature in faith, we realize that without tears and travail, where is our soul's need for the hand of God?  We may have the egoic want, but the God-given need is a faith-driven imperative. 

This is most often the very thing we pray God relieve us of...and gift us with our own self-determined objective dressed up in our mind as God's will, God's way

We must go beyond reason to love, to God's will, God's way.

Thank you.

BEYOND GRATEFUL...BLESSED

 ....pain is physical discomfort, but suffering comes from our resistance, denial, and sense of injustice or wrongness about that pain. -- Fr Richard Rohr, Daily Meditation, July 5, 2023 

This gives proof of truth to resist not evil, a quote from the Bible, which makes no sense to the reasoning mind. I probably wrestled with that quote, resist not evil, longer and harder than with any other teaching presented to me. 

I kept coming back to: It does not make a lick of sense. Truth to tell, there isn't a boatload of truth in the Bible that does make sense to the reasoning mind...virgin birth? Uh-huh. 

To me, that's paradox, and accepting paradox for a learning tool has opened my mind...which has opened my life. I now accept...or do not resist...a questionable statement or theory. I kinda let it explain itself to me rather than breaking a sweat trying to disprove it. 

This has proven to be an invaluable tool for my acceptance. My first thought is no longer, I doubt that...it is now that may be so. That way I can let it perc awhile to see what comes, and what comes is rarely what my first thought was. I don't always accept it, but it's usually for an entirely different reason than my first thought presented.

Truth to tell, that is precisely how I came to accept Jesus...I'm not the Jesus-freak I feared I'd become if I let him in at all, but I've found nothing to reject in his thoughts, words and deeds. For which I am beyond grateful...blessed is the word.

Thank you. 

THE PUNY GLORY OF SPIRITUAL GROWTH

Action without contemplation is the work of hamsters and gerbils. It gets us through the day, it gives us a temporary sense of movement, but the world is not made new by spinning wheels going nowhere. --  Fr Richard Rohr, "Daily Meditations," October 15, 2023

Action without contemplation is the work of hamsters and gerbils.  That is a good definition of a self-determined objective.

My personal trouble with a self-determined objective is that it nearly always feels so right...as in, no need to think this over, or even ask for God's input...it is right.

I have learned, even often remember, that that is my ego on the stroll...admiring its kingdom, i.e., self.

It has taken me over fifty years coming to my personal gut-bucket acceptance that any original right idea of mine is wrong. That is to say, it is wrong for my spiritual growth, especially when it is right for my walking-around world.

There...that is proof of progress for my spiritual growth...puny to my egoic mind, glorious beyond dreaming to my inner Self.

Thank you.

ON USING FEAR TO LIGHT OUR PATH, I

 [The following if a reprint of my post of December 31, 2019.]

Fear is never lifted out of us. Praying for God to take away fear is a waste of our breath and God's time. No, God does not take away our fear...He imbues us with the power to walk through it to get to Him. Face it, we are the source of all our woes, and God is the cleanup crew.

Our ego seeks to be absolved of all blame always...but blame is just fear with a new haircut. We are slow to learn that is where God's glory lies...blame (fear) is spiritual growth aborning for to lift us deeper. Time set aside daily to meditate, to journal, to ponder on the mysteries of the spiritual is the new GPS we are gifted with.

We slowly realize the nature of the path we have been set upon. It is a path that leads us ever forward guided by ego's denial of its determined hold. The many bumps in our road are our hard-earned giftees; equally important, they benefit others at the same time. Thus, we all come out of self free.

Fear is never lifted out of us...it is used to light our path out of self into God's hidey-hole.

Thank you.

ON LIVING HAPPY, JOYOUS AND FREE

 At its best, Franciscan life is not words or even ethics. It is flesh—naked, vulnerable flesh—unable to deny its limitations, unable to cover its wounds. Francis called this inner nakedness 'poverty.' -- Richard Rohr's Daily Meditations

I choose to believe that all words have two meanings, the good and the not-so-good, the words of peace or love and the words of hate or hurt, 

Maybe all acts fall into those two categories...keep it simple being our best intention. Keeping it spiritually simple...ah, there be the Self stripped bare.

My recent revelation...the reasoning mind is incapable of keeping it simple.  We go to God or we live in self-centered fear, which we suspect is the natural state of the reasoning mind. 

The great and glorious news is: We do not need to live in that state...we can and do trust God. We can have faith and live happy, joyous and free!  

Thank you.

THE GIFT OF UNKNOWING, I

[This is a reprint of my post of December 31, 2015.] 

 The more we know the more we know we don't know...reasoning mind weeps, Spirit exults. 

 Thank you.

ON LIVING HAPPY, JOYOUS AND FREE

 At its best, Franciscan life is not words or even ethics. It is flesh—naked, vulnerable flesh—unable to deny its limitations, unable to cover its wounds. Francis called this inner nakedness 'poverty.' -- Richard Rohr's Daily Meditations

I choose to believe that all words have two meanings, the good and the not-to-good, the words of peace or love and the words of hate or hurt, 

Maybe all acts fall into those two categories...keep it simple being our best intention. Keeping it spiritually simple...ah, there be the Self stripped bare.

My recent revelation...the reasoning mind is incapable of keeping it simple.  We go to God or we live in self-centered fear, which we suspect is the natural state of the reasoning mind. 

The great and glorious news is: We do not need to live in that state...we can and do trust God. We can have faith and live happy, joyous and free!  

Thank you.

THE GIFT OF LOVE AND LAUGHTER

In order to be free for a full and authentic life, we must quite simply be free from our smaller selves. -- Fr Richard Rohr Daily Meditation, October 3, 2025

According to me, there is no greater task than to be free from our smaller selves. Probably because our smaller self looms so large in our mind. 

I can't help but appreciate the old saying, I don't think much of me, but me is all I ever think about. How true, oh Lord, how true. 

Comes the dawn...that is so true that all we can do is laugh. Proving yet again, our worst fear, thought, reaction comes as a gift wrapped in laughter.

Love and laugh, live happily ever after...with mini breaks for taking oneself too seriously. 

Thank you.

THE MAGIC OF WHEN

 I suppose there is no more counterintuitive spiritual idea than the possibility that God might actually use and find necessary what we fear, avoid, deny, and deem unworthy. This is what I mean by the “integration of the negative.” Yet I believe this is the core of Jesus’ revolutionary good news.... "Richard Rohr Daily Meditation," January 19, 2025

I've written about that before...probably more than a couple of times...yet it speaks to me louder each time I am met with it. 

I recall when the still small voice first came to me with you gotta find the good in this bad situation, and I knew that to be a direct message to me from my own Higher Power, i.e., God. That was many years ago. 

It is the mystical realization of that fact that turns us around...heads us in the right direction which at first feels like the wrong direction. 

As a young teen, I realized that I had a different daily pattern to live by. God's gift was the vital point: I knew and accepted that I could not set the new pattern for me; I could only live it as It presented Itself to me. 

That was my first glimpse of the New Way. Over the years, that led to my knowing...knowing when I am doing God's will, God's way...when conversely this is ego's choice. 

When...the pearl beyond price. No greater gift.

Thank you.

KISS...KEEP IT SIMPLE, SWEETIE

Righteous violence ultimately leads to self-justifying monologues, rather than the continuous love dialogue that reflects the Trinitarian nature of God and, by extension, the entire universe. -- Richard Rohr Daily Meditation, September 27, 2025 

Righteous violence is violence in fancy dress. 

I write that without any thought behind it so it's subject to change. I wonder, though, if that isn't how wars begin...a spat leads to an argument leads to a fight leads to war...with no memory of what led to that first feeling of resistance. 

It could be that all that leads to a war is one person's first feeling of resistance.

That certainly clarifies the "magic" of thank You...feel a twinge of resistance, promptly pray thank You, and there, a peaced mind. 

That is simplified in the extreme, but if Keep It Simple, Sweetie isn't our mantra, it does qualify,

KISS...what could be easier to remember? And with God's grin thrown in to bless us.

Thank you.