GETTING TO GOD IN REVERSE...PERFECT PEACE

The reversal of powers, this movement from being a community that scapegoats to a community that liberates, is how we can participate fully in remaking the world. -- "Daily Meditation," March 31, 2026

NOW...now is the time for me to fully accept through realization that my fears have come true and are my gift of gold...not to overcome but to come over to!

If dementia be my gift today, I embrace it and invite it to get comfy with my primary disease which has turned out to be God's gift to me.

Acceptance of the unacceptable...God's path to peace, i.e., resist not evil.

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

Thank you.

ON WORKING TOGETHER FOR OUR GOOD

History has shown us that authority itself is not a good guide. Yet for many people, authority figures soothe their anxiety and relieve their own responsibility to form a mature conscience. We love to follow someone else and let them take the responsibility. -- Fr Richard Rohr, "Daily Meditations." March 30, 2026

That surely speaks to my maturing process...I grew up willfully following my sister's guidance...I made no decisions for myself. 

It took me years to fully change after I first came to realize that...or to begin to realize that.

Yet, I had the full-throated opinions, the tone of my voice was commanding (I was told, and not in a complimentary way). As I grew deeper into my spiritual growth, I recognized much about my fears that I hid behind my sister, which I now see comforted both my sister and me. 

The personally good news is I have no rues, regrets or resentments...we worked together for our mutual good. Don't tell me God wasn't in the midst of that...anonymously. since neither my sister nor I had a clue.

There is great comfort in that realization for me as I live my way through the fear of dementia today. 

God is in place doing His good for each of us however we each need His good which rarely looks individually the same. Face it, my good could hardly peace, say my dentist, and vice versa.

Today I am comforted in what I consider a blessed gift...that which comes to me looking not welcome is a gift to be welcomed; that which I seek, which I self-determine as for my good, seldom is. A self= determined objective is just that...self-determined. God is rarely found there.

But if we would look, we'd doubtless find God there. God is everywhere...preserving our Souls.

Thank you.

ON RELEASING RESENTMENT...DON'T PICK IT UP

Unless scapegoating can be consciously seen and named through concrete rituals, owned mistakes, shadow work, or repentance, the pattern will usually remain unconscious and unchallenged. -- Fr Richard Rohr, "Daily Meditation," March 29, 2026

Ah. scapegoating. Back in the day (when I was way younger), scapegoating was my thing; but, face it, to young peeps, scapegoating was the smart way to be. Blame was the name of the game. Find someone to blame for our own...um, let's call them errors in judgment...especially if the one we're blaming is not present. Remember?

Moving into today's world, how free from scapegoating are we in our own mind...in our free-floating thoughts?

I used to jokingly say that finding someone to blame was perfect peace. I did not consciously find peace in blaming; it was finding the point/place/person of origin where my peace began. Often, I did not even realize it...it was after spiritual growth came into my consciousness that I began to earn peace by owning, not blaming, my problem.

My peace of mind came by sharing the ownership of any upset with God. Forgiveness then enwrapped me...no fault attaches made a home in me. Best part...I learned to train that belief on whomever I was resenting. I'm talking freedom.

Truth be told, there is no cheap freedom...letting go of a prized resentment requires that we release it before it becomes prized. Hug it and kiss it and let it go...God's will, God's way.

Thank you.

BEING PEACED BY THE THOUGHT OF GOD

We must not imagine that political changes of themselves will ever bring about the goodness, charity, or transformation that the gospel offers the world. -- Fr Richard Rohr, "Daily Meditations", March, 24, 2026

Looking back and longing for the freedom of my chains...." from "Loving Arms" by Tom Jans

I find it strange but interesting the things one reads that speaks to us. The line from "Loving Arms" is a good example...the freedom of my chains. Wow. That says it all.

Just letting that sit in my head, its meaning changed for me more than a few times. Maybe that's why I like the song so much...it changes my mind almost every time I hear it. I like that.

I like that maybe because that's fairly close to my relationship with God. He changes/my mind changes almost every time I think of Him, and I feel peaced in a different, a better, way.

I'm going to ponder that.

Thank you.

GOD LOVES US ALWAYS AND ALL WAYS

That old familiar feeling. the feeling that there is something wrong with me, is with me this morning.

Ah, blinding flash: That is the gift for it turns me to God quick, fast and in a hurry.

That is the feeling that birthed the realization of fear as my friend, Specifically, when I was gifted with the realization that nothing turns me to God faster than fear, I was made whole. 

Fear wearing horns can and will return. and God with His angel wings can and will peace fear, and I am freed again...always and all ways.

God loves us so much. God loves. God is love.

Thank you.

FAITH AND OBEDIENCE...THE KEY, I

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

To see our petty problems from a different angle may well be the answer to all our problems. Indeed, if it be true that what we see is always ourselves, then being willing to refocus could be our answer. To see you as right and me as not so much is an enormous step to just consider...in a positive light.

That may be the key to working with God to change our own mind. I'm convinced a mind cannot be changed through self-will alone. We might say it, but...like acceptance, just saying that we're giving up or letting go does not get us there...we must needs work with God.

Yet again, "God Calling" has the answer. Today's entire entry is short, simple and direct: Faith and obedience will remove mountains, mountains of evil, mountains of difficulty. But they must go hand in hand.

That's it.

It doesn't take a mystic to know that the key word there is obedience. Faith, of course, but that goes almost without saying. I mean, who's seeking still more spiritual growth without at least a tish of faith as their golden goose? But obedience? The actual how-to is all about obedience...studying, pondering, striving...to give over, give up, give in. Ah, to not talk back or defend yourself too much against accusations, whether false or true, a.k.a., to agree with your adversary quickly.

That can only come to us through our doing it...actually, through our willingness to give it a start. And failing. Trying again. And failing...but not so totally this time. With a modicum of peace in our heart and our head the next time.

We are building faith and obedience within so we can walk it without. Ah, now we're beginning to know our Father on earth (without) as He is in Heaven (within).

Thank you.

WE GO TO GOD FOR GOD

I suspect that we get the leaders who mirror what we have become as a nation. They are our shadow self for all to see. -- Fr, Richard Rohr, "Daily Meditation," March 24, 2026

Whoa! There it is, my unacknowledged worst fear walking: we get the leaders who mirror what we have become.

I am the source of all my woes. When that idea flashed through me, I knew it for Truth. I knew in that moment that we each are the source of our living, thinking, doing, being, that a Higher Power lives within each of us to guide our every thought and action when we turn away from self to It.

Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find.... == Matthew 7:7

The hard part for most of us is remembering to ask, to seek...that is the I want what I want when I want it living of the self on parade.

It seems to take a long time to, in truth, come to believe...even when we are sincerely trying to come to believe. It is our surrender that leads us to acceptance...to finally accept that it is our trying that blocks God's will, God's way

To remember. To remember God. To remember and believe from our toenails up that God is with us, within us. That God can and will if sought and has a better way than we do, no matter how much we love our way.

This fairly well describes my still more spiritual growth to this day...try with a will, surrender, which transmutes into acceptance, pray thank You, and know peace. 

Until the next time. 

There is the comfort...there is no cheap spiritual growth, but the price is paid for us by our spiritual growth.

God is so good to us.

Thank you.

GOD'S WILL, THE PEARL BEYOND PRICE, I

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

Something in you dies when you bear the unbearable. And it is only in that dark night of the soul that you are prepared to see as God sees and to love as God loves. —Ram Das

I'm betting there are a gazillion unbearables in our life...egoic snags and snarks that we wrestle with, praying God to take them, all the while we are refusing to release them.

If that be so, ponder this: They, our ego's issues, would comprise the steppingstones to the Big Unbearable that eventually leads to life everlasting...i.e., God. Or, our ego is our well-hidden gold.

Coming to that realization unto acceptance is transforming.

There is a promise that holds the key to that transformation. The promise is that God can and will intervene in our life in our behalf. Our transformation is all about our realization that his intervention is not a guarantee that we will get our want, that likely we will not get our want...and we will be the better for it. (This is what Rohr describes as developing the art of losing. I only love that.)

We are transformed when our head and our heart know God's will for the long-sought cosmic pearl beyond price.

Thank you.

ON BECOMING PEACED...HURTS

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 in 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 lifted the above from previous posts of mine...it expresses well where I am in my head and heart today. That is to say, worried...into self...all atremble...scared.

There are reasons aplenty, of course. When...not if...I sit in silence and let thank You flow through me, I am quieted. For that moment in time. 

Ah, but fear rejects quiet...and There It Is! My long-ago realization, my forever answer: Nothing turns me to God faster than fear. 

I will not know peace until after I have walked through my perceived problem. The way there is to resist not. Lean into knowing that this, too, is for my benefit.

I am being peaced. God is so good to me.

Thank you.

LEARNING TO LOVE REQUIRES UNLEARNING

God does not demand that we all agree. God only asks that we love one another well. -- Rachel Held Evans, "Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation," March 21, 2026

Learning to love...dispassionately, with no "giftee" promised...is the most difficult thing I've ever attempted. I realized that when, looking back, I recognized my lack of unselfed love.

I am grateful that I learned and still live with the realization that there are only two emotions: Love and Fear. Apparently, I lived under the assumption that any "feel good" passed for love, and that was close enough to perfect for me. Mentally expanding the two emotions entered and saved me. It has been...admittedly, still is...a less than easy slog. 

"It" being the effort required to change my mind. In truth, to upgrade my mind. To feel repulsed by any mouth-breather...repulsed unto bad-mouthing them if only in my mind...is my turning point. That realization was the origin of my finding the gift of thank You. Resist not, with thank You following, became my inner mantra.

I have been on this journey for over fifty years, and I suspect I've only just begun...but I do believe: If not in this life span, then the next...always moving upward.

Thank you.

BEING PEACED IN THE MIDST OF FEAR

H]ave patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language. Do not now look for the answers. They cannot now be given to you because you could not live them. It is a question of experiencing everything. At present you need to live the question. Perhaps you will gradually, without even noticing it, find yourself experiencing the answer, some distant day. -- The German poet, Rainer Maria Rilke

I first posted this Rilke quote on March 29, 2016. 

It is particularly fitting for me today what with my current resistance to my personal fear of dementia...my fear that I may be coming into full-blown dementia. (Personally, I prefer to refer to it as old-age forgetfulness.) 

Words are comforting, we rely on them to sooth our jangled nerves. Ah, but they come into reality when we try to use them to fix our perceived broken place. Soothing is nice, but it doesn't fix. 

Comes the blinding light: Only God can fix, and only God's will, God's way can do that. 

Comes the dire reality, seldom if ever does God's fix arrive looking personally comforting. The lesson we continue to learn: We must needs walk through our pain...or, more aptly, the cause of our pain.

Forever lesson, relearned as needed, sometimes daily: If it is appearing to us, welcome it. The cause of our pain is our resistance to what and how we are perceiving our life's problem.

Again, and yet again: Hug it and kiss it and let it go.

There. There is the proof that words are comforting, but they do not fix. Living through our trauma, be it a broken fingernail or the death of a loved one, is the way of the Lord. 

How else can we build faith if we never have a reason to have faith?

I feel fear...I pray my thank You for the fear for it is truly turning me to God.

Thank you.

ALL ONE IN THE GOODNESS OF GOD'S LOVE

It is such divine extravagance, a philosophy of love them into loving me back, that sets the pattern for all the prophets to follow. -- "Richard Rohr Daily Meditation," March 2, 2026

To me, "a philosophy of love them into loving me back," is the baseline from which all spiritual growth follows. When, without thought, we are living that, we know God's will, God's way as our own...as we breathe. 

Clearly, I forecast that without one hundred percent living experience...but my head hopes, my heart knows, my gut is good with that...so I walk it very nearly as much as I think it today. 

God knows my limitations, and I go to God to learn them which is spiritual growth. I used to seek my answers from whomever stood closest to me at the time. Kinda one-shot-deal spiritual growth. I regret it not...it was a starting point, and to start is ever God's grace.

My comfort today is that I know, and I know that I know, God loves me (and you) personally without qualifiers, and we are One in that goodness.

Thank you.

LESS-THAN AS MORE THAN ENOUGH

Throughout the Gospels, we find numerous teachings promoting downward mobility. The most familiar of these may be, 'The last shall be first, and the first shall be last.' (Matthew 20:16) "Richard Rohr Daily Meditation," March 19, 2026 [ABTW, happy birthday to me.]

Don't tell me God isn't in my thinking, my feeling, my doing, my being...and exchange "my" for "our." 

Looking back, I vaguely remember when it was that I came into my realization that less-than was right for me. I do know that it simply fit so I questioned it not; I built on it, and (gratefully) I still do.

Today, I joyfully accept that was when I gave up the will to win! To the reasoning mind, that has loser written all over it...spiritually ir all but sings "Peace in the Valley." 

For my own self I accept that I have barely begun...but I have begun, and I thank You, Lord. 

Thank you.

DO NOT LOOK FOR THE ANSWERS

[H]ave patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language. Do not now look for the answers. They cannot now be given to you because you could not live them. It is a question of experiencing everything. At present you need to live the question. Perhaps you will gradually, without even noticing it, find yourself experiencing the answer, some distant day. -- The German poet, Rainer Maria Rilke

I have put this Rilke quote out before, and I'm fairly certain I will again for there it is, the answer...his,  It is a question of experiencing everything. 

Ah, experiencing. 

We get to...we must...accept and walk through all that our own life offers us. Lest we forget: All that comes to us, comes by our invitation only.

 

End of mind-nattering questions pretending to be discussion.

Thank you.

ON LIVING ABOVE REASONING

My blinding flash this morning:  We are being led...whether we know it or not. 

There is a spiritual reason and a material reason for our being exactly where we are...ours to choose. When, not if, we choose spirituality, we begin to live anew.

Just as The Man needed water from the well, we need material-world aids, too. The underlying reason for the need is spiritual, our own inner treasure:  It is still more spiritual growth that brings one to that essential realization...the reasoning mind resists the idea.

Thy will, Thy way. Our will is of self; Thy will is of Self.

Thank you.

RADICAL UNITY...LOVE, AND THAT IS ALL

Radical unity with God and neighbor is the only way any of us truly heals or improves. -- "Fr Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation," March 2, 2026

We go to God for God and that is all...for that is all.

Thank you.

THE WELCOMING LIGHT OF GOD

I do not believe that sin is the enemy we often make it out to be, at least not when we recognize it and name it as such. When we see how we have turned away from God, then and only then do we have what we need to begin turning back. Sin is our only hope, the fire alarm that wakes us up to the possibility of true repentance. -- Author Barbara Brown Taylor, "Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation," March 10, 2026

I suspect that the inner meaning of that quote is the insight with which I was gifted way back when; i.e., "wrong" is not the enemy..."wrong" is what turns us around to do "right."  

Blinding flash...that gift has been growing me ever since and still is...please and thank You.

When we get stuck in the remorses of our self-described "wrong," we seldom find God's way of accepting that which is gifted us. 

My life took me down the dark hole until I gave over, gave up, gave in...surrendered in a word...to come into the anonymous light of God.

My continuing life lesson: Find the good in the bad appearing...there the light of God welcomes.

Thank you.

BLESSED BEYOND THE MIND'S IMAGINING

I do not believe that sin is the enemy we often make it out to be, at least not when we recognize it and name it as such. When we see how we have turned away from God, then and only then do we have what we need to begin turning back. Sin is our only hope, the fire alarm that wakes us up to the possibility of true repentance. -- Author Barbara Brown Taylor, "Daily Meditation," March 10, 2026

The inner meaning of the Taylor quote is the insight I was gifted with way back when, i.e., wrong is not the enemy...wrong is what turns us around to go for right, a.k.a., God.

That blinding flash has been developing within me ever since...and is still developing me.

When we get stuck in the remorses of our self-described "wrong," we rarely find God's will, or acceptance of that which is gifted us. 

My early life took me down the dark hole into the anonymous light of God. There I learned to find the good in the bad appearing...there God awaits.

My life today...now in my 80s...is my pearl beyond price. 

I do not have many of the "things" I prayed for back in the day, i.e., money, a man, money. No, but I do have the pearls beyond price, i.e., peace of mind, love for others, the God of my own understanding. 

I am blessed beyond the mind's imagining.

Thank you. 

PEACE OF MIND BRINGS PEACE ON EARTH

We have ceased fighting everything and everybody. -- Anonymous

Comes the light! 

We realize unto acceptance that the "fight" begins in our head...in our thinking...in our first resistant thought.

The need to cease resisting everything and everybody is but a beginning. Now the thought must be raised up into action. 

Our choice is not to resist but to overcome...to overcome "my way" thoughts, not to ignore for others to deal with but to overcome within using the Sermon as our guide. 

We no longer opt to set others straight. By grace and by God, all sides are lifted into the God space where all are in agreement...God's will, God's way. 

With God's will, God's way leading us out of self, we find peace of mind...thus, peace on earth.

Thank you.

OUR CHANGED LIFE IS GOD'S GIFT

....a whole new set of behaviors and lifestyle will emerge. It is not that if I am righteous, then I will be loved by God; rather, I must first come to experience God’s love and then I will—almost naturally—be righteous. -- paraphrase of "Fr Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation," March 7, 2026

From my own experience, I believe "to experience God's love," we must experience the mess of our own making. We must crash and burn which we have so arduously been attempting to avoid...by denial mostly.

There is no God in denial...there is, however, an invitation to God to come save us from our self.

There it is...God's gift to the down-and-out: Realization unto admission unto acceptance of our utter powerlessness, and Help! is born.

The beginnings of faith is trust. In trust, we go to God for God, that is all...and unknowingly we are healed. Our changed life is our daily proof.

Thank you.

RADICAL UNITY: GIVE...ONLY GIVE

Radical unity with God and neighbor is the only way any of us truly heals or improves. -- Fr Richard Rohr, 'Daily Meditations,'' March 2, 2026   

Give over, give up, give in. There...the blinding flash of the obvious that came to me some years back.

I have been open to learning how to do that (to give, only give) ever since. By open, I do not mean I have actually achieved it. I mean I have been gifted on occasion, and I remain willing to continue to try for it. to receive it.

I know I cannot, of myself, do that, give only give, but that we can. With God as our guide and goal, we can and do practice giving. "All" that is required of us is that we be willing to try. 

God's gift of insight: We are not in it to win it; we are in it to give it. Ah, we can only give what we have earned with God as our teacher, leader, guide and goal.

The underlying wonderment: We have given over, given up, given in on occasion...and not realized it until sometime later. It cannot be a self-determined objective; it is God's gift plain and simple.

We "win" when our reasoning mind is into regrets, and we realize spiritual peace...both at the same time.  There: radical unity.

Thank you.

GOD CONSCIOUSNESS FROM WITHIN

My morning gift of consciousness:

Some of our biggest mistakes come when we are trying really hard to do God's will...only we have self-determined, without asking, what God's will is, and we are not even close to the Truth.

We willingly accept something we don't even want, calling it God's will when in truth God doesn't want/need it either. 

Lessons we learn: Stay open, keep an open mind, invite God's will to flow freely in consciousness--"to do with me and to build of me as Thy will. Thy will, not mine, be done."

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Thank you.

TO KNOW LOVE, SOW LOVE

An invaluable living-tool which I have earned is the gift of welcoming...looking back with my mind full of love and laughter...no regrets.

There's a line in the song "Loving Arms" which describes too well my once-lived attitude about life in general, i.e., looking back and longing for the freedom of my chains....

I doubt not I have written about this...probably recently...but that attitude has been upgraded by God, and I live with a new perspective on life...a happy perspective.

Now, it's looking back and laughing in freedom from my chains...or my rues, regrets and remorses. Those three r's once ruled my thoughts, my feelings, my life.

My upgraded attitude has grown slowly but ever upward on the winding road of still more spiritual growth. Awakening to the fact that my life is not about me, it's about letting go and letting God...for the benefit of others.

The great and glorious discovery has been that when we live our life for the benefit of others, we know peace, love and joy. Which, in order to keep, we freely give away.

God loves us sooo much.

Thank you.

IN TRUST, DO...THEN JUDGE NOT

I am still heading in the right direction whether I know remember it or not!

My memory is in God's care, too...trust and judge not.

There...henceforth, mine to do daily: trust and judge not. 

Like most directions, easy words to say, but the doing is the hidden gift. To do is mine to give my thank You for as I do the next thing. And if the next thing I choose to do is not the right thing, we've got that covered, too.   

If it's not the right thing, promptly admit it. 

We can now do the next thing that appears to us...right or wrong, we are aiming in trust in a new direction. 

Trust God, and move out of self. It is to trust...ah, we are to trust.

Thank you. 

WE GO TO GOD FOR GOD AND THAT IS ALL

Taking responsibility for the common good is the more important moral mandate..-- "Fr Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation," March 2, 2026

Further, per Fr Richard: When the common good is the focus, preaching is not about imposing guilt and shame on individuals, but about giving vision and encouragement to society.

There. That is the center of my seeking still more spiritual growth...to live for the benefit of others is to live self-centered-fear free. Living for the benefit of others lifts our egoic nature...kisses it on the lips and sets us free.

Be prepared: This is a lifetime of crawling, to stumbling, to walking, to running, to Free At Last with stumbles and bumbles guaranteed...why else would we joy just knowing we have God at our back?

I have needed every second of every hour to God-honest-want to walk this truth. I have not been walking blind, just instinctively the majority of the time...led to go for the spiritual, away from the self-determined.

Release self-will and open to God's will, God's way...ah, greener pastures...living in the love of God again. 

Thank you. 

GETTING IT WRONG TO GET IT RIGHT

We are invited to] take a journey of faith. It may be plagued by uncertainty, but we can trust in God’s presence along the way....The way of faith is not a way of certitude. -- "Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation," February 27, 2026

I have long felt that self-confidence needs to be a building block to Self confidence; i.e., faith in a word. Fr Richard's quote nails it...the way of faith is not a way of certitude.

That's how I (finally) awoke to getting it wrong to the reasoning mind is often getting it right spiritually.

I often quote the Thaddeus Golas line, We must go beyond reason to love...only I like the last word to be "God"...we must go beyond reason to God.

We must come to total dependence on God...we cannot get there by relying on our reasoning mind alone...or. quite often, at all. Our reasoning mind is self on the hoof, and its singular purpose is to protect self, which is according to our own idea of protection. 

There is no God in self-protection...or more truthfully, there is no God awareness in self-protection. God is there, our awareness of God is missing. There is only the feeling of fear and reliance on self to protect us.

To reiterate, we must ever build our trust in God being present along the way, knowing that the way of faith is not a way of certitude.

Thank you.