THERE IS ENOUGH

Free-floating thoughts this morning:

To see the error of our ways is to see the ego of our ways.

To turn our will and our life over to the care of God, we cannot turn over tomorrow's will, tomorrow's life (our want)...or, for that matter, yesterday's (our regrets)...for there is no God in tomorrow just as there is no God in yesterday. God is only in the Now. God is Now. We turn our will for this moment, our life for this very instant. over to the care of God...and the next moment, we turn them over not again but by our open-ended decision to live a turned-over-to-God life. (It is forgetting that, or relying on ego!, that trips us up.)

It is a fundamental law of nature, that there is enough and it is finite. Its finiteness is no threat...(from Fr Richard Rohr's "Daily Meditation," July 7, 2018).  It is a comfort to me that the finiteness of enough is no threat for its very finiteness is what opens the flow from the hidey hole of God within to fulfill the now of our need.

I will go before thee, and make the crooked places straight…. -  Isa.45:2

Thank you.

OUR CALLING: GIVE

I am a believer that it is our inner desire...no, need...for spiritual growth and still more spiritual growth that is the counterbalance to our ego-catering free will...the panacea if you will.

Our hope of heaven comes in realizing unto breathing that who we are, what we are, how we are, right this very minute is enough, is good enough. That there is no more, better, higher, deeper to pray for...we are enough, and we have enough. And that we must give from that consciousness of enough...that is our calling: Give.

We will not fully realize our consciousness of enough unless and until we become willing, then ready, then active by giving from there...with open hands, mind and heart. Not focused on what we can get from giving, but with an unquestioning certainty that we were born to be channels for the flow of the goodness...God-ness...within us. That goodness which is love, peace, empathy, joy, kindness, patience, generosity, sympathy, courage, care and concern for others...the others being all humankind, animals, minerals...animate, inanimate...breadboxes and/or bordellos. 

Makes no never mind which part of the God within we are giving, for to give is to love. And there it is: The God of our understanding, Love.

Thank you.

THE CONVERSION OF CONSCIOUSNESS

...for each blow to the life of self you must at the same time embrace and hold fast the new Life, Life with Me. - "God Calling," May 3

I wonder if our free will doesn't always supersede God's will, at least in the egoic mind?  But isn't that where free will lives, in the reasoning mind? I wonder, too, if our conscience isn't...hasn't always been albeit ignored...our divining rod for God's will?

In my material world, the world of my ego, my want-to seems to always supersede God's will. (That's why spiritual discipline is so necessary.) In my inner world, the world of my Soul, God's will speaks. To me, the inner world is the mirror-world of the Lord where the naked eye sees in reverse...self sees ugly, calls it bad and resists, Self sees the same thing, knows it for good and welcomes.

I suspect that it is our decision to renounce the free will we were gifted with at birth that turns us upward toward the God of our own understanding deep within. That decision does not come from thinking, analyzing or reasoning it through...it almost always comes only after a deeply personal experience sometimes known as "crash-and-burn" for it is excruciatingly, crash-and-burn, painful.

This is known as a consciousness raising. Our consciousness has been transmuted...or converted, if you will...for the the care and concern of others and, most importantly, without our egoic self having anything to do with it.

To quote my beloved Fr. Richard Rohr, We change consciousness and operate from mercy and graciousness.

Thank you.

ON BRINGING GOD FREE LAUGHS

I belong to a fellowship, spiritual in nature, that has a membership consisting entirely of self-willed, self-driven, self-absorbed people seeking to be less self-focused. (Which, of course, keeps us focused on self.)

According to me, we tend to put the horse before the cart every chance we get. An example: We pray the Lord's Prayer at the end of our meetings. Some time ago, after the "Amen," we added. "Keep coming back!"

That was all well and good until, after awhile, someone further added, "It works!"

Which was all well and good until someone further added, "If you work it!"

Which, etc., until we further added, "If you don't, it don't!"

Then, possibly because all those added bumper stickers were taking too much time, someone decided we should stop praying the Lord's Prayer. That is now under discussion in many rooms. 

Don't tell me God doesn't hold a special place in his heart for us...we're his love-and-laugh track.

Thank you.  

OBEY, ACCEPT, WALK FREE

Except ye become as little children ye cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven. -- Matthew 18:3

To become as a little child is good for both material and spiritual mind. My material mind's first thought on becoming as a little child is of a child who is sweet, lovable, cute...and silent. Well, a little child is not always sweet, lovable, cute, and SILENT..they squawk a lot, that's how they get the attention they seek.

That's also how they get the discipline they need. Ah, that's the important part that is left out of the  reasoning mind's picture and opens us to the spiritual's daunting invitation toward acceptance through discipline.

We learn early enough that discipline is a necessary component in learning. It is in learning to obey that which we've learned that twists our knickers. And not for either a short period or a long period of time...for EVER.

All the spiritual axioms that have ever been written are rooted in obeyance...I'm betting. The ones I know are at any rate...they are all about (a) thinking of the other person first and (b) with love. I am here to testify that letting go of self-centered anything takes discipline. Letting go of self covers it...but, then, what doesn't that cover?

Becoming as a little child is to become and to stay teachable. There it is...the marriage of the material and the spiritual mind. Both need us to be teachable....for EVER.

Teachable through every step we take, or for every step we have taken, in the wrong (self-centered) direction. Makes no never mind if good was our goal when we took that step, what matters is that we let go of our justification and accept the lesson learned. We made a decision based on self that later placed us in a position to be hurt. 

Obeyance unto acceptance of that spiritual axiom is the gateway to Heaven. Discipline walks us to and through.

Thank you.

THIS, TOO, SHALL PASS

Nothing gets between me and my God like physical pain...meaning, this morning it feels to me like God is asleep at the wheel or my faith in God is running on empty or any other clever little phrase that says, out loud and whiny: Where's God when I need him? Where's your vaunted power now, Old Man? 

I've strained my back, I know not how, and I really do not care how. I want the pain to go away...stop...not exist in me. Now already. Now, if now were yesterday, last night all night, and/or immediately.

I ask for so little and I get so much less than I ask for...or why me, Lord?  Also, how long, oh Lord?

Again, I'm getting the quiet word: What we want and what we need are two entirely different things. Which words are only comforting when we're passing them on to someone else.

Interesting that I'm remembering what I once smart-mouthed (in 1968!) to a hurting friend: No use crying over spilt milk, look for the silver lining, there'll be a brighter day tomorrow. Karma is a hard-driver...has no time limit...can and will exact her due.

I hope you're satisfied now, Big K, but I must say I thought I'd paid that off at least a gazillion times before. Oh, wait...no time limit. I'd best start reeling in all my snarks before I do serious harm into my next life.

I'm saying my thank you, a tish jaundiced, but I'm saying it.

Thank you.

NO WORDS, NO SILENCE...GOLDEN

A pearl beyond price is the realization that giving over, giving up, giving in is the path to peace.

Ah, but there's always another pearl following...or there'd better be.  

Our deeper peace comes not in simply giving up, giving over, giving in. No, deeper peace comes when we release our personal giving-up objectives...then we are opened to receiving God's perfect objectives. 

I suspect we must needs stay awhile at the giving-up level until we realize that in the giving we actually do have our own objective. Often that is our want to do God's will without waiting on God to elucidate. 

We are learning that we can neither remain silent out of fear (self-centered fear and what fear isn't?) nor can we speak out from our own self-glorifying wants.

We sit and wait on the Lord, and in a just cause, it is God's objectives...God's will...flowing from within that we speak. We can plan no words for we trust the words we speak are his stating his just cause. 

As an aside, derision may follow. We shoot a silent thank you and know it is not ours to fix for that is what is known as an unjust cause. Remembering silence really is golden, we know our lesson is learned when we do it...hush, in a word.

With God's voice, there are no words, yet no silence either. We speak what is spoken through us. With love and laughter in our heart.

Thank you.