TO STAY DETACHED FROM THE TEMPTATION, I

[The following is a reprint of my post of February 24, 2018.]

The grace of God is a wind which is always blowing. -- Sri Ramakrishna [from Eknath Easwaran, "Words to Live By," today]

Isn't that a comforting thought? That the grace of God is an ever-present wind blowing in, around, through us. All we need do is stay our mind on Thee, and the grace of God walks us free.

The block to the grace of God is our self in the form of our self-determined wants that we choose to believe are needs. Those wants, depending entirely on our attachment to them, become the God of our understanding in the moment. No matter how insignificant they appear (running late? the green light is our God right then) or how significant they appear (unexpected and steep medical expenses turn the dollar into our higher power without another thought).

According to me, any perceived lack that we consider essential to our life becomes our entire focus, our God, and grace blows by unrealized, unaccepted, unfulfilled.

"God Calling" note dated 2/24/12: BFO - realized 'the kingdom of heaven' as our worst fear/greatest glory signifying nothing - Jesus in the wilderness being tempted and staying detached from the temptation.

Thank you.

WE, OF OUR OWN SELVES, CANNOT, I

[The following is a reprint of my post of February 28, 2014.]

Acceptance. The very word is inviting. It has that huggable sound...that “Oh I want one!” sound. Well, get ready for a shock to the old hemorrhoids. Acceptance is just surrender wrapped in pretty paper.

And, who’s kidding whom, we know what surrender means. Not to put too mean a point on it, it means You Lose. Stop Fighting. The war is over, and you lost.

Until we surrender to the very fact that we've been resisting, the fact with all the hair on it, we will never reach the tra-la-la pretty. The paradox is that we have to kiss it on the lips in order to reach that part. We have to kiss it on the lips while it still looks like the frog it is...and feel in the doing totally alone, bereft, hopeless. And kiss it anyway. Because we have no hope. And here comes another paradox! As Walter Brueggeman says, "The home of hope is hurt.”

It is in that very hopelessness that we find God…who has been trying to get our attention all along. Fr. Richard Rohr says, "Divine love is received by surrender instead of performance or perfection."

The perfection of acceptance is that it does not change the fact that we've been resisting...it changes our perception of that fact. From worst thing ever to God is so good to me. The essential ingredient? Our realization that we of our own selves cannot make that change. We go to God for God.

Thank you.

GOD'S WILL, GOD'S WAY...BRING IT ON!

We have to turn to God and allow ourselves to be led on this faith journey. -- "Richard Rohr Daily Meditations," February 22, 2026

Fr Richard's lesson continues: We have to be willing to experience the Exodus in our own lives and enter into our own desert wanderings. We have to let God liberate us from captivity to freedom, from Egypt to Canaan, not fully knowing how to cross the desert between the two.

I suspect I am experiencing the Exodus in my own life, and trepidation hangs heavy within me... on the horns of a dilemma fits me this morning. Am I willing?...ready?...able? to walk my own desert wanderings.

When I committed to still more spiritual growth some fifty years ago (versus every new wonder drug the medical profession could and would offer), I was blessedly young(er) and "knew" considerably more about God than I do now. The untested always know more it seems. 

But there it is...there's the proof of my puddin'...I do not know as I once knew, but I believe from my toes to my nose, and I believe based on faith and experience...God has never failed me. His journey for me has just been lengthier...unknowable in a word. 

We come to believe we are on God's journey when we find our self whispering, Are You sure this is the Way? 

The answer does not come until after we have felt every rock on our road, felt every thorn, lived through every doubt all while believing (or wanting to) that this, too, is God's will, God's way. 

I'm there again. I'm grateful still. Thy will, Thy way, Lord...bring it on!

Thank you.

ON LEARNING TO LOVE...TO GIVE OF 0UR SELF

My inner message this morning was that I do not know how to love. I do not and have never realized how to love...only as I feel it and that is dependent on who, how and/or what I am getting. 

I am realizing again...or still...that I do not know how to love.

I do not and have never realized how a feeling of love in general feels. Other than good. 

I'm not even sure that good isn't how a feeling of love in general feels for everybody. 

Blinding flash of the obvious: A feeling of love is a simple need to give of our self for the benefit of another. 

An unknown at the time example of pure love: My sister, age 13-14, sick in bed with the flu, me. age 10-11, doing all I possibly could to bring happy to her. To get a smile, to know I was helping her in whatever way possible. And she smiled. and I knew happy. 

There...God's gift of remembrance to me this morning.

Thank you.

ON WELCOMING CRASH-AND-BURN, I

[The following is a reprint of my post of February 21, 2018.]

It is in the devastation of surrender that we are gifted with the sweet taste of impersonal victory. It is that impersonal victory that is a brief glimpse of the 4th dimension, and we know peace.

Never having known true peace, our reasoning mind mistakes it for nuthing' happenin' here so we self-determine various actions based on self that we must take...thus blocking our realization for as long as it takes for us to become entirely ready to give over, give up, give in.

There it is. The golden key to the 4th dimension...surrender of self to Self...give over, give up, give in.

Thank you.

MY ONLY JOB...DETACH, I

[The following is a slightly reworked reprint of my post of February 10, 2015.]

Thank you, Father, for the mini blinding flashes of the obvious that I randomly receive. The flashes are so short and come so quickly that I can't commit them to memory. I rest in Your assurance that they are with me, within me, awaiting the time for my need of them. When I am in need, my perfect BFO can and will flow forth for my benefit.

My only job is to remain detached from my reasoning mind, trying to figure it out which only holds the BFO at bay.

Thank you.

UNFINISHED...STILL GROWING

The ancient path of the desert mystics invites us to disrupt the patterns of ego and empire through the courageous pursuit of inner liberation. —Stephen Copeland 

Inner liberation. I ponder those words. I ponder those words until they become mine...until I realize a transformation within/without me, specifically my Soul. My Soul of which I feel nothing physically, but I realize to be sense is my everything.

Looking back on my spiritual awakening, some fifty years now, I am amazed at my singular effort. For that is not how I knew me to be...I was ever a one-shot deal person. 

In my freshman year at college (where else!), I learned a cynical take on trying: If at first you don't succeed, quit...don't be an ass about it. 

Most folks laughed at that; I took it to heart...one-shot deal.

Today, I am realizing ever more fully my self over the years becoming My Self. I am that I Am. 

There it is...the gift of gold in turning 80 and still growing. 

I am 80+ today and content to be...unfinished in order to stay fresh in God's gift of new growth.

God loves me so much...God loves us so much.

Thank you.  

THE BLOSSOMING OF FAITH

The real test of spiritual maturity ... is whether we have been transformed so that our maturity plays out in regular life. -- "Richard Rohr Daily Meditations," February 20, 2026

In short, that is the actual practice of living our life by the grace of God...to know it is to show it. If we are not showing it, we are knowing the words but denying our self the action.

In my spiritual growth, I am a far cry from where I want to be...but nearer, my God, to Thee.

My recent blinding flash of the obvious: Living by a self-imposed standard of one hundred percent right or one hundred percent wrong is self, parading self...there is no Self in it.

Often it seems as though spiritual growth consists of contradictions. Yet it is in the contradictions that we find the proof we seek...by grace and by God

That's how faith blooms and blossoms...by grace and by God. But doesn't everything?

Thank you.

NOT TAUGHT BUT CAUGHT

Live simply, forgive deeply, and love fearlessly. --  David W., "Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation," February 19, 2026

I am experiencing a deeper understanding of what I have been learning these past many years. David W.'s quote fairly well describes the Word I hear. 

To be very clear, the It that I seek, that I am beginning to experience, is as Trappist monk Thomas Merton taught: The way of simplicity, to recapture some of the way of the desert fathers. By grace and by God, I know I am a rank beginner, and I rejoice in that.

That is to say that my heart, my Soul, my body and my brain all know that I go to God for God and that is All. That is The Way, and I am living it...less than one hundred percent but heading in the right direction. 

The essence of the spirituality of the desert is that it was not taught but caught; it was a whole way of life...the Desert Fathers did not have a systematic way; they had the hard work and experience of a lifetime of striving to re-direct every aspect of body, mind, and soul to God. -- Benedicta Ward

Thank you.

THE SEEK

Seek and ye shall find.... Matthew 7:7

I realize this morning that I am on my own Seek...my own journey into my inner unrealized self...where My Self lives.

I am not a Bible reader as such, but, surprising to me, I do quote the Bible more than most anything else. So, thus, apparently, and by grace and by God, I rely on the Word of the Bible more than I ever realized. I am not even going to attempt to analyze that...it speaks for itself.

My reading this morning opened my eyes and my mind. I read of the vision quest, i.e., a path of descent, or journey into fierce landscapes.

I identified completely with the described journey and suspect, hope, know that is where I am, the path I am on, the path I have been on for the last 50 years...the reason the cop-out line looking back and longing for the freedom of my chains sings so loudly in my head when I am nearing another unknown breakthrough.

The reason of course is the path of descent is a journey into fierce landscapes. We were promised sunshine and roses! As we heard the rest of the story...being about fierce landscapes and hard traveling...we learned but ignored that that applied to us personally. Our egoic self clung to sunshine and roses.

Still more spiritual growth brought the dawn...the dawn of a new day, new way...God's will, God's way. All of a sudden, 50 years in, we awoke! The path of descent is God's will, God's way. All that is required of us is that we give over, give up, give in.

Once we try it all the way through to success through failure, we are freed...we know it and we show it. We know this is not a one-shot deal...this is for us now to practice every day. Period.

We detach from self to attach to Self in order to freely live by grace and by God.

Thank you.

NOW JUST DO IT

I wrote yesterday of my rues, regrets and remorses over my fear of doing...of doing anything, ergo doing nothing. 

God is so good to me...after I wrote yesterday of my judgment on me, I was gifted with the facts around my life in the past four to six weeks: Memory problems? or my anxiety disorder again?, my sister's death, the suicide of a friend's husband, the serious illness of a dear friend, the possibility of needing to move to assisted living, and more...the list seems endless. 

Of course, I know The Right Answer to each and all items on my list...let go and let God. 

I realize once again: The answer is not the solution; the solution is doing what it takes to get us to the place in our heart and soul of letting go to let God. 

In short, surrender. That hated/feared act: surrender. 

Surrender may be the most feared word in my world...yet it is the actual act of surrender that brings us to peace, to the peace of mind we've so longed for. We surrender by doing that which we fear to do. We walk through It. There is the proof of God in our life...our fear has become our peace.

All of these are pretty words...true words, but, until action is taken, just words. 

Now, today, I make the appointment for a neurological test to learn that I have my well-known anxiety on parade or the dreaded dementia. 

Even as I write, I realize I have taken over God's job. I have two diagnoses in mind...God may have a half-dozen or even more! Let go and let God is not just good advice, it is the only useful answer.

This I know...from my own personal experience, this I know: Whatever comes to me, comes for my benefit. 

Now, to just do it.

Thank you.

ON BEING FEAR-FROZEN IN PLACE

Blinding flash of the obvious: Whatever I am doing or not doing right this minute is what I am supposed to be doing. I am living God's will, God's way whether I am conscious of it or not. I am grateful; I pray thank You.

That BFO came to me just as I was about to go full-out panicking, as in, what to do, what to do?

I have been feeling stuck, knowing what I need to do but not doing it...like frozen in place. 

Not to put too fine a point on it, but I need to take the test for mental cognition. I was given a neurologist's name and phone number back in April or May...I have done nothing with that information.

My hold-back (excuse)? Do I go with meds or do I continue to trust God? 

I am aware the answer is fairly elementary...trust God and take the mental cognition test. 

On the surface, that is easy to know, easy to say, easy to judge, easy to regret. But I have learned to trust the inner voice, and It has a hold on me. It is the hold that I trust...when It says sit and wait on the Lord, I've learned to sit and wait on the Lord. 

I have also learned that my self-will can and does do my thinking for me without a by-your-leave...as in I'm often the last to know that was not God's will, God's way, it was wishful thinking plain and simple. 

Good advice I was once given for when I'm stuck: Hold your nose and take a leap of faith.

It is my truth that there are only two basic emotions: One is love and the other, fear. All other emotions are born in one or the other of those two. Ergo. I am afraid. Afraid to take that leap of faith.  

Ah, it is not that I sit and wait on the Lord...it is that I sit and wait in self-centered fear, ignoring the Lord.

Doing nothing is not my problem...doing nothing is hiding my problem. I am afraid to get over myself...the ultimate act of faith. So there. 

Now what? and when? 

Thank you.

GOD IS OUR KEEPER OF THE KEYS

We all walk in the garden whether we know it or not. We came from God and we will return to God. Everything in between is a school of conscious loving. — Richard Rohr, "Daily Meditations," February 14, 2026

I heard me talking to myself this morning. I was repeatedly saying, "I'm a mess. I am a mess." 

When I finally got my own attention, I heard me saying, "And what better place to be? God has my mess, my cluttered-by-self mess, for me to shuck."

I love when God talks to me through me...I can be very clear then.

As an aside, the husband of a friend of mine committed suicide this past week...he had been very ill for a long time with no hope, except death. Ergo...the relief, the blessed relief. Followed by the guilt, the damned guilt. Followed by the relief, etc., etc., etc.  I wonder if all of the conflicted feelings around self-inflicted death aren't God's distraction tool...coulda, woulda, shoulda seems to rule family and friends in suicides. A long-time prayer of mine...to go when my time comes as determined by God alone.

My sister died recently of natural causes three days passed her 91st birthday. I am reminded...re-reminded...that with her passing I am the last member of my family still standing. Being "the baby" of the family, little heavy lifting was ever demanded of me. I am getting the picture...all the leftover lifting is now mine by grace and with God.

God is my keeper of the keys. I accept when, as and if needed, the perfect key will be given to me to unlock whatever gift awaits me. 

Lesson a-learning: Everything needed, opens for our benefit...by grace and by God.

Thank you.

FEAR...RESIST IT NOT FOR IT TOO IS OF GOD

According to me, there are two ways of seeing life even as we live it...materially, from our self-centered fear perspective or from our Soul-sight, i.e., spiritually...God's will, God's way.

We live primarily from self until something happens to us...usually something to our reasoning mind that is awful, terrible, unacceptable...and yet in the end we find it to be the pearl beyond price...that which brought us out of self into Self.

My personal experience moved me deeper: I lived by self-determination until I lost my belief in my own self and was turned within to the Power greater than self, to Self.

Looking back, I realize I was lifted by my decision born of fear...my decision to turn my will and my life over to the care of the God of my own understanding. To let go and let God...to trust.

I am at another turning point in my life. I am in my eighties now. and dementia is running older peoples' lives or trying to at any rate. Or, more honestly, fear of dementia is the culprit...large and in charge, trying to fill that place where God lives.

To the best of my ability, I am letting it...I resist it not. I am learning still, yet, again to welcome any and all appearances in my life...coming to or flowing from me, my thoughts, my fears. They are all under God's protection and for my benefit.

If my incurable, progressive disease can be a good thing, and it is and has been so in my life for over fifty years, than so can dementia be. 

Knock yourself out, dementia! We love ya, Baby...or will soon since love is God's will.

Thank you.

THE FATHER WITHIN...OUR SINGULAR SOURCE

The recovery of paradise takes place for the adult in humility and in spiritual nakedness. In other words not self-consciously but as the small child who just is present and just is vulnerable. - Thomas Merton -- "Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation," February 12, 2026

Before the recovery of paradise, consciousness is of the small self where our want to know all there is to know rules. More to the point, our want is to be lifted into spiritual consciousness where we know it all unselfconsciously...piously in a word. Without effort, by God's will, God's way alone, which describes a self-determined objective.

I believe I just found my Rosetta Stone: Without our effort, by God's will, God's way alone.

Never has that been a conscious thought of mine; but, apparently, I am afraid to trust that God's will, God's way needs our actual efforts to get us where we seek to be. We can liken it to standing at the foot of Mt Everest and praying that we can get to the top...never moving a muscle to get there, just repeating words, praying God will do it.

This is the first lesson we ever learned only it is here now at a deeper level...less intellect, more trust.

God is so good to us. From our eyebrows up, we are not where we seek to be...but from our heart and in all directions, we are exactly where God needs us to be. In order to move deeper inside our own self, to God's will, God's way, we need to trust God and do something about something.

Ah, blinding flash: We need to do something about something, and our trust in God will follow...reminding us the Father is and has ever been our singular Source.

Thank you.

RESIST NOT...LOVE AND LAUGH

There is a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in. -- Leonard Cohen

That is one of my favorite lines...I recall when first I heard it, I felt flabbergasted. I had thought...really believed...that was a secret known to me alone. Wishful thinking, I reckoned, so keep it secret...don't risk being thought a fool or, worse, getting laughed at.

To be clear, or more honest anyway, my thinking was not as polished as Cohen's...but I had the same line of thinking. That is how I so quickly caught Cohen's words, his meaning behind the words....they were mine, too!

I came to realize I was lifted to that truth through my beloved Fellowship where, in effect, we are taught to live peace, love and joy and to pass it on. 

It takes time...a lot of time...to live our end goal: To cease fighting everything and everybody. 

To the human mind, that is not smart, not practical, not realistic...NOT. 

To the spiritually attuned mind, that is God's will, God's way...and our very hope of Heaven.

It has taken me over fifty years to live that, and to stumble ever so often...ah, but to love the stumble and laugh. That's when I hear, She's got it, by George, I think she'd got it! Then I know love.

I know of no way for hearts to be softened other than by a combination of love and suffering. -- Rev. Dr. Ruth Patterson, February 11, 2026

Thank you.

THE HOLY PLACE OF UNKNOWING, I

[The following is a reprint of my post of February 11, 2023.]

Still more spiritual growth begins with our seeking spiritual answers...to learn, to find out, to get a spiritual mindset.

The longer we are on this journey, heading in the right direction by doing it wrong a lot, we are heading for the place of unknowing...of which we are unconscious. There...the essence of spiritual growth.

The difference between unknowing and not knowing is unknowing shucks our shields, keeps an active letting go of what we think we know. The place of not knowing holds little to no curiosity...we don't know, whatever, end of the discussion.

To be in the place of not knowing is stayed in the material mind.

To get to the place of unknowing is Oned with God. Only we don't know it. We are unknowing. But our consciousness is raised.

According to me.

Thank you.

TO BE HAPPY, LIVE GRATEFULLY. I

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

Thank you, dear God, almighty force for good, that you work through me as you worked through Mohammad, through the Buddha, through Christ Jesus. Amen

Thank you that I do thy will always whether or not I know it...that my reasoning-mind mistakes are your right-road-to-Heaven for me. For it is in my mistakes that my rues, regrets and remorses are born, those very rues, regrets and remorses that you have shown me are, transmuted, my good, my gold.

Those very mistakes are my Teacher's tools, designed for me personally that I may grow from them by learning your will, your way. ..and thereby find my happiness.

Thank you.

THE NEW COLOSSUS GONE BEGGING. I

[The following is a reprint of my post of December 29, 2023]

'The New Colossus' by Emma Lazarus

Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me:

I lift my lamp beside the golden door.

We come again to our need to recall the promise of America to the 'wretched refuse' of other teeming shores.

Again, and yet again, we trample that promise without so much as a backward glance as we roll on...and who cares if we're going in the right direction? We're strutting our stuff, showing 'em how it's done...and who cares if we do not have a clue our own self? Throw another log on the fire.

I miss Kate Smith singing 'God Bless America,' and America standing with its hand over its heart and tears of gratitude in its eyes.

Father, Forgive us for we know not what we do.

Thank you.

ON BEING SET FREE

....as Desmond Tutu says, those who have been oppressed are free from oppression, and those who have done the oppressing are free from being the oppressor, everyone is set free.  -- "Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation," February 6, 2026

Over the years, it has been my occasional challenge to mentally compare Tutu's actual state of oppression with my self-perceived state of oppression.

I suspect that helped me gain an ability to laugh at and with myself in my self-diagnosed "oppression," or, more honestly, in my rues, regrets and remorses.

Better than that, it helped me develop a sense of empathy for others...others who had less than...and best of all (so far) it has been the key that opened the compassion so well-hidden within me. Not just the feeling of compassion, but the ability for me, with God's grace, to compassionately do for others in need.  

In my eighties now, I do less actively but my thoughts are more consistently prayerful...less self-centered (not wholly just less, which is proof of God's will, God's way in my life). 

Thank you.

LOOKING BACK AND LONGING

Snow and frigid temps kept me house-bound for over a week, but I got out yesterday for an hour or two and still feel remarkably better...clearer...for it. Which reminds me of a long-ago blinding flash of the obvious: mental resistance is the only block. 

Apparently, I needed to find that reminder this morning. What other kind of block could there be to the personal experience of a loving God in our life?

A favorite line from a song from yesteryear...Looking back and longing for the freedom of my chains.... comes to mind.

That is a well-nigh perfect description of rues, regrets and remorses...looking back and longing for the freedom of my chains.... 

It doesn't get any clearer than that...to me at any rate.

My long-ago flash, mental resistance is the only block, when followed by thank You, is the mind's golden door. It opens us to the grace of gratitude, the most comforting answer to our reasoning mind's questions. 

Ah, a rush of gratitude just visited me...God is so good to me, and I am so grateful.

Thank you.

GRATITUDE...A HIGHER INVITATION

Imagine if all of us who know the Lord’s Prayer by heart took the challenge embedded in it seriously? .... This revolutionary prayer is a place to begin, now, wherever you are, whoever you are.... -- Author Kelley Nikondehal, February 4, 2026. [Lifted from today's "Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation" and reworked...with gratitude...for my meditation.]

Anyone who does not know the Lord's Prayer by heart, can just give over, give up, give in and pray Thank You. Consider that a higher invitation to learning. According to me.

Gratitude: God's word, God's way. 

Thank you.

RANDOM THOUGHTS...TO DELAY DOING

Snow and frigid temps have kept me house-bound for over a week. I realize that I am feeling crazy as a cockroach which is no exaggeration.

I am reminded of a God-gift to me from some years ago; namely. mental resistance is the only block....

There it is, written in my "God Calling" as if it were news: Mental resistance is the only block. That feels like news to me today,

But what other kind of block could there possibly be to the personal experience of a loving God in our life?

I am reminded of a favorite line from a song from yesterday...Looking back and longing for the freedom of my chains....

That is a well-nigh perfect description of rues, regrets and remorses...looking back and longing for the freedom of my chains....

It doesn't get any clearer than that...to me at any rate.

I am rambling...putting off going outside where I get to knock the snow off my car, then drive to the store, shop and return home. 

There...put down in black and white it doesn't seem that daunting. But I'm going nowhere, doing nothing toward that end for a few more hours. I got sober, I didn't get stupid.

Ah, a rush of gratitude just visited me...God is so good to me, and I am so grateful.

Thank you.

CHEAP SHOT AT GRATITUDE, I

[The following is a reprint of my blog of  January 31, 2014.]

God is so good to me.

I've had a bad case of I See Me for the past X number of days, and God has not lifted me out of it. Has not gifted me, has not punished me. There. That's how it's done. That's how we become transparent to our perceptions, our self-determined problems. Do as God does. Which is to laugh...as in, I wish!

I feel an attack of my mother coming on: "You have only yourself to blame." 

Oh, Mom, if you only knew. I have a whole cast of characters that I can blame...and will if left to my own devices. There's my cheap shot at gratitude...I'm never left to my own devices today.

That's how I know God is so good to me...I aspire to be God, and He sends Mom to set me straight. Hoo-boy.

Thank you.

I AM THAT I AM

 As I meditated this morning, I realized: I am as You need me be. 

Thank you.