THE COSMIC GRACE OF GRATITUDE

'82 - It seems like ever since I started seriously trying to do the Sermon on the Mount, I have never looked uglier or felt more alone...what if this is the way God wants me to look, and I am doing it right? -- a just-found note to myself 

How wonderful it is to find these notes scattered in my books. I get to see myself as I was then and ponder how I am...how I feel about me...today. I felt graced when I read that note. That I had the barest glimmer that "this" may be the way of God fills my heart with joy. That I might be "doing it right" was very, very far from my personal prayers...which, obviously, were based on how I thought I looked.

Even better, this may be my personal Rosetta Stone.This is evidence of my first entertaining the possibility that the way I am just might be God's will for me. I had started on the path toward self-acceptance...heading in the right direction. 

I have long held that self-acceptance is the first baby step toward spiritual growth. According to me, self-acceptance is to accept myself just as I stand with all my warts, blemishes, tongue-tied and tarnished and without excuses, albeit with a single desire: to love and to be loved. 

I intuited that if I did not accept me just as I saw me, I'd never pray aright for I would always be praying for God to change me in some way. There is no gratitude in that, and gratitude paves the way for grace to do her cosmic thing.

Thank you.

BELIEVE IT...LIVE IT

The paradox of praying "thank you" without ceasing is we are thanking God for our good before we see the good not that we seek but that we need. Quite often those are two entirely different things.

Hard truth: We may never see the good we are personally seeking. The gift is coming to realize how blessed we were not to have received the good we were personally after. But then we get to glory in the good we got which looked less-than-wonderful arriving.

What we receive, whatever it is, is the good we need. We know that to be true because it is what we got. Our new way of thinking allows us to accept...or to not resist...that truth, but it takes as long as it takes for us to live that turned-over life.

Harder truth: We learn nothing if we live a resigned life...to think of whatever comes as just another Cross we have to bear. That is ego all dressed up in its Sunday best...looking good to no one but self.

God is good, has naught but good for us, believe it...live it.

Thank you.

GRATITUDE PASSES ON...AND SAVES THE DAY

Old Quaker saying, 'Let your life speak.'  Before you tell your life what you intend to do with it, listen to what it intends to do with you. Before you tell your life what truths and values you have decided to live up to, let your life tell you what truths you embody, what values you represent. -- Fr Richard Rohr's "Daily Meditation" quoting Parker Palmer, a Quaker teacher and activist.

According to me, we live by our ego-driven free will until we realize a need for more...for something...something other than what we are relying on, i.e., self. I think of that as ego crashes and burns. For some, that crash-and-burn is simply a realization that the selfish way is not the best way, and they make their U-bie and head on Home.

For others, and I'm convinced we are the lucky ones, that crash-and-burn means exactly what it sounds like...painful beyond endurance. That's why we're the lucky ones...our choice is toast. No more self-debating, we make our U-bie and head home.

In making that U-turn, we unconsciously make our decision to live by spiritual principles. It takes time to catch up with our own self which makes living what we are learning very often a surprise...only discernible after the fact. And, who's kidding whom, we're not always entirely happy about it.

It's akin to looking back and longing for the freedom of my chains. That's my interpretation of finally settling in to not being as nasty as I want to be and wishing I could still be as nasty as I want to be only without regrets.

Ah, and here comes God to save our day...we are reminded of the unendurable pain of our crash-and-burn, We get un-nasty right quick, and we feel gratitude from our toenails up. Which itself passes on. There...gratitude tells you what truths you embody, what values you represent. 

Thank you.

THE JOY OF LIVING UNSELFED

I'm fairly well convinced that the way to a fret-free life is the way of depersonalizing...taking nothing personally. Feel a nip of resistance? Say "thank you," find the sliver of gold in it...then build on that.

Depersonalize, detach, loosen, release, let go. In the long-ago words of my beloved mentor, Cling to nothing, fly!

I'm becoming more convinced than ever that to get a contented life we must live a turned over life...our free will turned back to God. When we turn our will over to God, we are graced with the spiritual care and concern of and for others. Meaning, our thoughts are for them, their well-being...especially those we don't have a natural affinity for. You know, those we once called dirt bag.

And why not? We are secure knowing we are God's care and concern which, in order to live it, we must pass it on.

Isn't it amazing? All we need do to have a contented life is to develop an attitude of gratitude...and live in it.

Thank you.

ON BEING AT ONE

[The is a slightly reworked reprint of my post of January 27, 2016.]

Everybody's scandalous flaw is mine. -- Rumi

This to me is the exemplar of Oneness.

We talk being at one, we seldom walk it. We walk it when we least know that is what we're doing. We're looking to become the Lily of the Valley when we already are...and also the Thorn of the Rose.

If it is true, "everybody's scandalous flaw is mine," then everybody's pearl of great price is mine, too. We are the flaw and the pearl...there is no scandalous flaw apart from me, nor pearl of great price separate.

According to me.

Thank you.

GIFTED BY GRACE THROUGH DAILY DISCIPLINE

I find the difference between resignation and acceptance fascinating. I know it as the difference between relying on self-determined objectives (ego) and relying on spiritual principles (God).

To me, resignation is driven by self-will and acceptance is graced through God's will. We can know to the last dotted i what resignation brings. We can never know with any certainty what God's will may bring...plus it can take years for us to get a clue that God's will is always for the best for us personally. It's just rare that on its face it looks like it.

In short, resignation keeps one in self-will...we resign our self to what we perceive, even though what we perceive is not what we want. We usually identify it as "our rotten luck,"  which belief keeps us stuck right there, looking no further because we do believe in "our rotten luck."

Acceptance usually comes from the same place of pain; however, it is only in our crash-and-burn that we accept our powerlessness. It is in not resigning but accepting that we turn in despair from self to Self.

The help we seek is often the mirror image of God's will for us. We're hooked on cigarettes, booze, a love, sugar, gambling...broccoli! The help we seek is to be able to keep smoking, drinking, etc., but to suffer no adverse consequences. God's will is that we cut that crap out and start living by spiritual principles. To the enlightened mind, there are no adverse consequences in living by spiritual principles. Ah, but getting that enlightened mind is our work for the rest of this life and the next if we're doing it right.

The paradox: We must make our self available for it on a daily basis...it is a gift of grace; it opens in a heartbeat.

Thank you.

MY LORD, WHAT A MORNING!

'13 BFO: I dig the ditches that allows God a cleared road.

Giving my reasoning mind its righteous props was/is a steep climb for me. For ever so long I was taught ...or I thought I was taught...that the reasoning mind is our bane and not to be trusted. Which I still believe is about half right...speaking of my own reasoning mind only. But the half that is right is good, necessary and as righteous as it's ever going to be.

For instance, my blinding flash of the obvious from five years ago, I dig the ditches that allows God a cleared road, speaks of the inside work I must do to begin to be free of me...the necessary ditches to be dug to go through my ego Lucy's tools and toys and tamperings.

That inside work cannot be done alone; it requires another person, a lot of other persons usually, to hold us honest. As has been said, going it alone in spiritual matters is dangerous. And going alone on a dig within is perilous.

We need our reasoning mind not only to choose a reasonably fitting person to do our dig with, but for all the other non-digging times...to decide between ice cream and sugar-free yogurt, for Pete's sake.

It is the melding of our reasoning mind with our still more spiritual growth that needs hands off, or  quieted mind, but also...and here's the hook...an open mind. We sit in the silence with our intention and attention focused on...nada. Which lasts a nanosecond. Refocus...bring it back home. Focus on nada.

And then...and THEN...we experience a teeny-tiny shift, and it feels as if the entire Book of Revelation has just been revealed...in a heartbeat. And we know, and we know we know: He goes before me to make the crooked places straight.

My Lord, what a morning...when my sun began to shine.

Thank you.