THROW IN WITH THE SPINACH

We receive, we do not get. We receive from within...our Soul speaks and the Word spreads throughout...from in, out. We get by going after...reading, hearing, learning. In the material world, getting is essential...in the mystical world, we intuit. - Blinding flash of the obvious

Eknath Easwaran has written that it is the ordinary choices that we make every day that changes the direction of our lives.Those ordinary choices are based on our reading, hearing, learning, experiencing. We come to understand that while the ordinary, daily choices we make really are the determiner of our fate, the final choice comes to: Trust God and do something about something.

Those choices are the dough that make the bread of life...our consciousness...which lifts us into a spiritual plane. We slowly detach from reliance on our material mind...we shuck our shields so to speak.

There will come a time, however, if not in this life, then the next, when "through great love or great suffering" we fail utterly and completely...left without a penny to bless our self with or a friend to borrow one from.

We will come to know that as our moment of grace.

For here comes God!..riding the wind and breathing peace, love, joy and forgiveness. Only it looks to our reasoning mind like spinach, and...well, you know. But it is in that moment that grace completely defeats our reasoning mind and our decision is made for us...throw in with the spinach, we have no choice.

And there it is...using our reasoning mind's inch-long yardstick, spinach could never be the right answer. But there is nothing God cannot use for our good...let go and let God.

Thank you.

GRACE IS IN THIS MOMENT...ONLY

Again I am reminded that there is no God in tomorrow, there is no God  in yesterday...there is God in the here and now and that is all.

Same goes with grace. Hoping, praying to have the grace to handle an upcoming (or a long-passed) encounter is wasted breath.

It is not grace we need, it is the will to detach from our ego. The discipline to use the already present will of God within us. To follow the instructions we already have, have been learning...the directions as originally spelled out in the Sermon and honed by God specifically for us, each and every word of which is about ego deflation in depth.

Our life today is all about concerning our self with the care and comfort of others...it must be if we are to rely on the fact that God has our back. We do not need, nor is it beneficial to us, to "stand up for our self," "to take our own part," to "go to the mat" for our self. That is God's job and he does it beautifully when allowed.

Our concern today is to be sure that another shares in that gift...that gift of surrender. We're no longer "in it to win it," but to show forth God in giving over...really, to know God in giving over.

To come to believe these words for my own truth has been the gift of my lifetime. To live them...ah, when do I start?

Thank you.

MORNING MEDITATION

We must give up...detach from...all ALL material desires...to clothe our body, to slake our thirst, to feed our belly, to have a little in our  rainy day fund, to protect our health, to save our family. We must prepare to loose it and let it go.

This, not as a self determined objective, but only after we get the call...we hear the word...we receive the invitation.

To give up everything without realizing the invitation, "Leave your nets and follow me," is still self in charge, dictating in the hope of getting. Our intention is good, but our eye will always be on the self-beneficial results. There is no God there.

Thank you.

I'M STILL LISTENING

I asked God's word for me today.

He said: Do the best you can with what you've got, pray for peace and keep on trucking.

That may be garbage to you, but it's gospel to me.

Thank you.

ALL THINGS ARE ANGELS IN DISGUISE

My head is pretty much missing in inaction right now, so I'm reading over my saved quotes of various spiritual writers. This is a parsed version of a quote of Fr. Richard Rohr from back in 2013.

St Francis [of Assisi] found the transcendent not “out there” but “in here”—the transcendent was largely revealed at the depth and “inner” of things. This is what we actually mean by “angels.” Angels are the transcendent within of things. Everything, therefore, has its angel or “messenger”! They make all things “fly,” as it were, and all things are messengers of deeper messages.

If there was a snowball's chance that I could ponder that and make inner sense of it, I'd not post it today. But it'll be there for me to come back to later because I saved it for a reason back in 2013, and I'm not up to getting that reason right now...but I love it still.

Thank you.

SPEAK, LORD

What if illness is just a well-disguised call to come to Jesus...or Allah...or Buddha...or, simply, God?

I do know this. God knows me, God knows my name, my shame, my glory and my ho-hum.  So if this illness is his well-disguised call, he also knows I don't read minds, I don't read lips, I'm singularly untalented in the reading of signs.

Speak, Lord, your servant listens. And, as you well know, her hearing is not wonderful.

Thank you.

MY BELOVED POGO

Don't take life so serious, son, it ain't nohow permanent. - Pogo

I can't decide if this is the good news or the bad news.  I'm just glad (and a tish relieved) that Pogo is still my Muse.

Thank you.