LEARNING TOOLS AND LEADING STRINGS

Your hour of need is the moment of My Coming. -- "God Calling," August 5

I could sure simplify my life if I would remember that the hour of my need is Now. Always. The hour of my need is always now.

It is never too late or too early. Now is the time to remember and to rejoice in the fact that I am in need now...more important, to call to mind that the God of my understanding has already answered my need. 

More important than that is to remember not to beat myself up for not remembering...that may only be the human condition. Or...here's a thought...it may be exactly as God programmed us at conception.

What if our "forgetting" is God's leading string that ever brings us back to him? And we're cursing it! No! This may be the very place where our welcoming the apparent bad along with the good put down roots. 

I don't know if that's true so I'm going to accept that it is and use it until I'm given reason to believe otherwise. Why let a possible gem go wanting? And it has no ill in it.

God is so good to me...and you...and Gertrude who can be a royal pain, but she's my best learning tool, so thank you, Gertrude.

Thank you.

ON THE ART OF DETACHMENT

He who would be serene and pure needs but one thing, detachment. -- Meister Eckhart

Some years ago,  I was listening to a friend. A friend who was bitching, kvetching, beating her breast and wailing...still, yet, again...about the Man Who Done Her Wrong. No, not a love, a guy at the filling station! A week before! Or a month, maybe!

I didn't listen to her the entire day, week or month...she went from friend to friend, and we all made listening noises until we couldn't anymore, and then we'd blow and blame her. The fact is we became her. Our blowing up at her was just our condensed form of bitching, kvetching, beating our breast and wailing.

For a long time, we'd feel guilty and spend our energy regretting...if not our lack of courage in  speaking up, then our bad behavior in blowing up.

It was a great gettin' up morning, when we realized we were in the process of learning the art of detachment. Think about it...how, why would we ever know the need to detach if we were living detached from irritations and aggravations to begin with?

A lot of free-floating guilt trips can be cut free when we realize unto acceptance that their base is simply our tool for learning a different way, God's way, to respond to life on life's terms. Also known as detachment.

The trouble with detachment, we learn sooner or later, is that the only thing we need leave behind is  our judgment of the complainer...it is the noise s/he leaves behind that we use to feed our ego-sense of superiority.

At some point, if we are sincere in our desire to detach, we will get a blinding flash of the obvious. We will grin, then laugh, then dance a jig, then praise the Lord...for we have just heard the quiet word: Just because s/he is wrong does not mean I am right.

Thank you.

TO KNOW IT IS TO SHOW IT

I know that God is with me and will help me to think and say and do the right thing. -- "Twenty-Four Hours A Day," August 5

I do believe if we took that very quote and held to that until we realized from our toes up the absolute truth of it, we would never have another fretful day. Also, we'd never have a need for any of the hundreds of books we read trying to find The Right Answer For Me. Which isn't to say we shouldn't read, we could just quit reading in order to find a new and different answer.

The fact is I do believe that God is with me and will help me to think and say and do the right thing. It's just that my ego Lucy is faster on the uptake than my God is. I know the why of that too, of course...the why is just as God so graciously once whispered to me, I must go slow in order for you to keep up.

Lucy has no such strictures...quick, fast and in a hurry is all she knows.

Whoa! There's my blinding flash of the obvious:  I doubt not that there's the seed and sum total of all my spiritual growth...to learn daily (and relearn the next day) to discipline my own self to hold the reins on Lucy, to give over to God always and all ways, and to know that to fail is God's will for it brings me back to God and still more spiritual growth.

Thank you.

FREEDOM IS LOVE AND LAUGHTER

The Prayer of the Unready: Lord, if I must be humbled in this, I invite it to be so...just don't let anybody else find out. Thank you.

The Sign of Acceptance:  Love and laughter...love our ego-wants, laugh at our own self.

The Sign of the Ready: To freely laugh at our own self as we pass it on.

The Prayer of the Ready: Lord, thank you for letting me in on the humbling joke...and for laughing with me. 

Thank you.

THIS ONE'S ON YOU, LORD

We will focus on maintaining order by sanctified violence instead of moving toward a higher order of love and healing—which is the very purpose of the Gospel. I forget from whence that came, but there  it is...my vision for me; i.e.,  to move toward a higher order of love and healing.

Interestingly, these past few weeks, I am meeting my vision in my daily life only it is wrapped in invitations to fight...or to resist at any rate.

I have walked away from one situation, accepted an invite into another, and whoa! look out, Nellie, here comes a demand for sanctified violence. Mentally my fists are already raised, my tongue is already spring-loaded, and my feet are already heading for the door. This situation looks to be more resistible than the first one.

Clearly, I am proving to myself that avoidance is just another form of "sanctified violence" because there surely is no love or healing there.

I tossed and turned most of last night pondering being denied by friends, being accused by foes, being punished, and saying not a word. Somewhere around 3:00 AM, I got the great gift of realization that that is impossible to me. Not just the doing, which is obviously out of my plain-old-people reach, but it is impossible for me to mentally grasp, to get it, to realize it. So I spoke my piece to the Lord: If I could get that, I would have by now...knock yourself out, Lord...this one's on you. And I slept.

Fr. Richard Rohr's "Daily Meditation" this morning has this line: We must be led to an experience or situation that we cannot fix or control or understand. That’s where faith begins.

And the Lord didn't even have to knock himself out, wasn't even heavy lifting for him...he just lets drop the message we need when and where we can and will freely recognize it as ours.

God is so good to us...always and all ways.

Thank you. 

NOTHING NEED BE ADDED...DETACH, DETACH

If I'm trying, I'm lying...if I'm flowing, I'm showing.

There it is...a blinding flash of the obvious from a few weeks ago that just this morning fits me from my toenails up.

I am trying to adjust to (surrender to, accept) a change within me. I am talking as if it were already set, completed and finished off.

It is not.

I am feeling rocky, wrong and half peeved (rocky) /half scared (wrong).

That's why the song says, This little light of mine, I'm going to let it shine, not I'm going to make it shine.

Let go and let God.

Thank you.

ON SLINGING MUD IN OUR OWN FACE

If we do not learn to love the unlovable within us, we will live in a world of judging...blaming and shaming...our own self. All the while believing it is him, her, them that we are cursing, that they are the source of our pain.

We are never angry for the reason we think.

Thank you.