GOD IS GOOD

Blinding flash of the obvious: The one who slanders me is the one I need to praise. (By praise, I suspect that means be grateful for.)

The minute that came to me, I consciously elevated my thoughts in re Gertrude, and I saw her in a new light.

If it is true that everything works together for our good, then how can we dislike, fear and/or slander anyone? Especially with the justification of “payback.”

The Father knows my needs…and hers. This may all be incidental to me and God’s special gift to her…fulfilling a fear she must needs face, and I’m the perfect (imperfect?) vehicle.

God is good...God is love.

Thank you.

THE WONDER...THE JOY!...OF A GOD-GUIDED LIFE

I'm identifying this morning with the "Peanuts" character, Pigpen. He's the one who was always depicted with a cloud of dust over his head. I wonder if that isn't how we look to God...all of us walking around with our worries and wonders in a cloud over our head. All of us totally focused on our cloud and what to do about the worries and how to use the wonders.

Today's "God Calling," entitled Perpetual Guidance, is so full of promise...promise that we have all experienced as fact. It is an assurance, a promise actually, that we can rest in knowing that every detail of your lives is planned by Me....

It ends with Oh! the wonder of this...a God-guided life.

Yes!

Thank you.

NOW IS WHEN WE BEGIN

We must go deeper to go higher. Deeper within to find our new consciousness at a higher level of realization. To realize what is already there, has ever been there, will ever be there. Life in the spiritual lane is all about pitching out, loosing and letting go...detaching. 

Ego will fight this process every step of the way for it is ego that is the block to our realization of what is buried deep within. Ego is upfront, out there, leading the parade, tooting its own little horn...then regretting every step of the way. Which, of course, leads to starting over...analyzing, thinking, talking about where we went wrong and how we're going to do it different this time. Then doing the same thing over again expecting different results.

The thing is, for the overwhelming majority of us, that is when we're doing it right! That is our right road to crash-and-burn. We, of course, do not know crash-and-burn is where...if we're doing it right...we need to end up. That's what ego is trying so desperately hard to avoid.

The light comes on when we remember that this is all about life in the spiritual lane. We stay in the reasoning mind world, relying on our own intellect, for as long as we want to. If, however, we sincerely want still more spiritual growth, there will come the day, the hour, the minute when we know that we don't know, and we never will.

Now we begin.

Thank you.

ON BEING HOME FREE IN OUR HEAD

We learn and we relearn and we learn yet again. The same thing. Only deeper each time. Fuller. Hopefully, with less me, more I in it. That came to me when I read my "God Calling" this morning. There on 12/11/89, I had written, I welcome the opportunity to be thought wrong without any opportunity to set the record straight...to be thought wrong by all or any of my peers.

Beside that note, is another note dated 1998, Ditto AGAIN! 

And beneath that is one dated 2007, Me now.

On this very day, 12/11/17, I wrote, Still...thank you.

I remember each of the reasons for my welcoming such an opportunity, and each one had to do with my being misheard or misinterpreted. Any attempt to correct the misunderstanding would have most likely created an unnecessary brouhaha, so I would shoot a silent thank you, and remember back in the day when I had first learned that lesson.

That was probably in 1975 when a man misheard me at an open forum and loudly agreed with his interpretation of what he had heard..which was so far from what I had said or believed that I felt my head and heart near to exploding.

Fortunately, before I could get my mouth in gear, I glimpsed a lady at the table very gently shaking her head, letting me know I needed to say nothing, he was the only one who misheard. She came to me after the discussion to say, people hear what they want to hear...let them...just don't get their mud on your skirts. Isn't that wonderful? I've never forgotten that, and the majority of the time over the years, I have heeded those words.

The fact of importance is that I still must needs fight my own self, my ego Lucy, to do the right thing. I See Me in that, and I am grateful. Grateful for it is when I See Me that I know to step back, that the God of my understanding has my back. I'm home free in my head.

Thank you.

TO TRY IS TO TRUST

I was mentally beating myself up this morning for having done something and came out looking like a doofus. My apparently favorite line, "When will I ever learn?" was racing around in my mind.

And then...here came my blinding flash of the obvious: I tried, I trusted.

There it is, when still more spiritual growth is our sole goal, we can know I tried, I trusted as our forever self-forgiveness mantra.

God is so good to us.

Thank you.

NOTHING IS PERSONAL TO US

[The following is a reworked version of my blog of April 24, 2013.]

He prepares a place before me in the presence of my enemies....from The 23rd Psalm.

My enemy is not Gertrude who bad mouths me, who is ugly to me, who treats me with contempt...my enemy is that within me that shows forth as Gertrude's uglies that I resist by bad mouthing her, being ugly to her, treating her with contempt.

It is for me to realize Gertrude as my angel who carries these uglies of mine in order that I may see and recognize them as my own...for me to accept without resistance, by neither cursing her/them nor currying her/their favor.

I see me, and I realize We...ah, the miraculous comfort of Oneness.

Thank you.

TRY WITH A WILL OR FALL BY THE WAYSIDE

Jesus says, “If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also” (Luke 6:29). Buddha says, “If anyone should give you a blow with his hand, with a stick, or with a knife, you should abandon any desires [to hurt him] and utter no evil words” (Majjhima Nikaya 21.6). [Lifted from Fr Richard Rohr's "Daily Meditation," December 8, 2017]

"We have ceased fighting anything and anybody." (Anonymous)

The puzzlement to me is how I can be on the spiritual path, truly believe each of the above statements is necessary for me in my life, and still get in such mental fistfights with anyone who "strikes me on the cheek," or "gives me a blow with his hand." Or is simply nastier than they ought to be...to me.

I have heard that described as "part of the process" and "growing in God" and lots of other hoo-ha, but who's kidding whom...that is self-will on a roll. Knowing better is all well and good but until we're doing better, we ain't growing in God. End of sermon.

Although I do believe my sermons give God a giggle.

Thank you.