UNFORTUNATE FACT...HIDDEN BOON

The new is always by definition unfamiliar and untested, so God, life, destiny, suffering have to give us a push—usually a big one—or we will not go. We tend to avoid any conflict, inconsistencies, suffering, or darkness and therefore opportunities for transformation. -- Fr Richard Rohr, "Daily Meditation, " August 14, 2020

It is an unfortunate fact...thus hidden boon...in my life that I resist doing anything the first time. 

It took a long time before I could accept that about myself, then longer before I shared it with others. When first I admitted it in a group, I expected eyerolls and snickers. There again, beware of our own expectations for they will stifle us. What I got instead was a lot of people nodding in agreement or murmuring a warm and wonderful, "Oh, that's me." 

When I first heard, Feel the fear and do it anyway, I felt fairly certain that I'd found the key to unlock this particular prison door of mine. I doubt not that is why I was so open to the thank you prayer. I can feel the fear, pray thank you (i.e., toss it over to God who has already fixed it), and do that which I am fearing. 

The sliver of gold is that it works. The nugget is that it works on many levels. First, just as it is said; then we find the more we trust it, the deeper it raises our consciousness...the pearl. 

It is our own realization of that gift that takes time, likely because it happens without our thinking, pondering, analyzing. There. That's building our trust in the Father within...without working it. 

In looking back we accept that we are freed by grace and by God. We are grateful that our finest thinking will never be a match for the grace of God...or we'd wear ourself out worrying and calling it thinking.

Thank you. 

RESIST NOTHING, LOVE ALL

The three most important words in the Bible to me today are Resist not evil. If I'm doing it right, if I continue to grow spiritually, that no doubt will change, but for today....

Resist not evil. To resist not evil is to be ye perfect even as your Father in Heaven is perfect. Plain and simple, resist not...love all...be ye perfect.

A helpful how-to is spelled out by Eknath Easwaran's "Words to Live By" about difficult people being like an eyelash in our eye: ....this 'lash in the eye' is an opportunity for learning the skills that matter most in life: patience, forgiveness, and freedom from likes and dislikes.  [Nonresistance?] They go and put their arm around someone who has given them a really difficult time, and say sincerely, 'Without you, how could I ever have learned to be patient? How could I have learned to forgive?' [Nonresistance!]

Clearly, or it seems to me, that to resist not evil is to resist nothing...for who resists good? It is our ego that resists...that's its reason for being, to self-protect, i.e., to resist our perception of evil. To seek still more spiritual growth is to seek ego deflation in depth which is a lot easier to talk than it is to actually walk...or even to become willing to.

Paradox alert! We must resist our own want (to slap the offender upside her head) if we are to realize the inner peace of nonresistance (allowing him to walk free in our head). 

Slowly we recognize our reasoning mind must be retrained which makes our decision for us. We must turn our will over to the care of God...a.k.a., exchange our will for God's will. Which, who's kidding whom, is a rest of our life, day-at-a-time, proposition.

So the search for still more spiritual growth is the search for contact with the Divine Spark within, the Source, our Father who knows our needs. The road we must walk leads ever deeper toward that Higher Power...resisting nothing by loving all.

Thank you. 

SWEAT EQUITY...AND OUR GOOD

Teilhard de Chardin viewed love as the attraction of all things toward all things. We could say that love is the universal ordering principle. *** We are connected to a future good, and moving toward something better...the trajectory of human life is toward mutuality and care of self and neighbor. -- Fr Richard Rohr, "Daily Meditation," August 12, 2020.

If we are connected to a future good, and moving toward something better, then all that we are in the midst of today...chaos, calumny, disorder preferred to order...is ours by choice, by our fear-induced invitation. 

It is for each individual one of us whose desire is for still more spiritual growth to move out from that self-protected hidey hole to be "Spartacus,"  to be One.

So often we mouth I am a beloved child of God...fully expecting those words to solve our perceived problem du jour. No...we already are that beloved child of God, our affirmation needs be showing it by our actions based on spiritual principles. There's the solution to our perceived problems.

We need to listen to turn within and listen. We might hear: Sweat equity, it's sweat equity. Ah, we are woke! We need to work with that Higher Power we speak of so often...expecting so much of It. 

By using the spiritual principles we have learned, we can now put forth effort toward the sole purpose of showing forth love. We might begin with love your enemies, bless those who curse you which in our world is just try not to be as nasty as you want to be. 

Keep it simple to start. Failure is ever ready when I See Me...and Lucy has her football in hand.

It is quietly exciting to see our long-sought purpose in life has ever been ours. We are connected to a future good, and the trajectory of human life is toward mutuality and care of self and neighbor. 

Ours is to know it and show it. Sweat equity knows our name.

Thank you.

LOVE'S NEW DEFINITION...GOOD TROUBLE

Human beings seem to need to fight and engage with something before they can take it seriously—and before they can discover what they really need or want. -- Fr Richard Rohr, "Daily Meditation," August 10, 2020

Does Donald Trump represent that which is within each of us that we must overcome...the angel we must wrestle...to find God? 

Or is he our Golden Calf, our supreme act of apostasy? All the ugly that we were taught as youngsters we must not do? If so, and we have elected him President of our Country, is Trump not truly our own mirror image? 

Whether that be so or  not, it is our own self we must change. We turn back to the toughie: Resist not evil. We realize that our change is to love...to love not Trump, per se, but all that Trump represents to us, all that we are resisting that we have invited into our world, into our very consciousness.

We must overcome our own self, and the overcoming is by love...ah, but by our new-found definition of love. We begin to love the fact of Donald Trump...for it is his nature, his acts that have shown us our own self. We judged him by the mote in his eye, and ignored our own, the beam that blinded us.

With that new and ancient reasoning, we are brought to a U-bie in midair for the rest of Rohr's quote is:

The people who never fight religion, guilt, parents, injustice, friends, marriage partners, and laws usually don’t respect their own power, importance, and freedom. They remain content with the external values of the first “lawful” container, instead of working to discover their own. 

We read that and realize that we must get in good trouble.We feel boomeranged for our forever law flashes in our mind like a neon sign: Most important is the discovery that all our problems can be solved by spiritual principles.   

Ah, we are surrendered...we accept...all our self-determined objectives are for naught. We can and must love, and the love we live is to fear not getting in good trouble for that is The Way when we live by spiritual principles. 

God blessed John Lewis...and us.

Thank you.

MAKE CONTACT WITH THE DIVINE SPARK WITHIN

We change from inside—from the power position to the position of vulnerability and solidarity, which gradually changes everything. -- Fr Richard Rohr, "Daily Meditation," date unknown

I am convinced this is the key...the key that opens us to the divine spark within. 

From the eyebrows up, we want this change from the power position to the position of vulnerability, but our self-perceived need, owned by ego, refuses to let go, knows not how to let go. Our want births the perceived need...but our want is in our egoic mind. Our actual or spiritual need is of God which only God can fulfill. 

It is the change from the inside, without reliance on our thought processes that must needs change  us. We cannot seek to do it for there is the block, believing that through thinking we are in control. It is the belief that we're in control that the divine spark burns away. 

Comes the awakening: The battle is not with our control issues, it is with our belief issues. We recall the decision we made long ago to turn our will and our life over to the care of God, and our belief that we are or need be in control is lifted.

It is written that we are released from self through great suffering or through great love. Many let go through surrender, through crash and burn...great suffering. 

Great love: We have to make contact with this divine spark by emptying ourselves or letting go. And then we will know the unity that already exists. -- Meister Eckhart

Thank you.

I AM THE BEING OF ALL SAINTS, ALL SINNERS

Blinding flash of the obvious:  I am the wolf stalking the night...I am the skunk stinking up the place. 

Thoughts flow:  I am the wolf stalking the night...I am the skunk stinking up the place. I am the lion whose roar reverberates across the Serengeti...I am the jackal doing the dirt, carrying the water. 

I am the soul of my most revered saint, I am the conscience of my most resented enemy...I am the Being of all the saints and sinners in between. 

Parents, siblings, friends, enemies, The Church, the employer, lost loves...none get the credit, none get the blame...for each is the wolf stalking the night, the skunk stinking up the place...just as I am.

I Am that I am.

Thank you.

FEAR...GOD IN CAMOUFLAGE

I heard someone on PBS this morning say, Life's greatest motivator is neither love nor God... it is fear. 

Believe it...I knew deep gratitude for the time when I realized that nothing turns me to God faster than fear which led to my blinding flash of the obvious: Fear is God in camouflage. Without that BFO, I'm reasonably certain I would have felt if not afraid then sorely discombobulated this morning. 

Hey, there's another proof of purchase: God knows my needs before I have the need...thus my BFO back then came to save my day this morning...or for that matter whenever fear slips in.

My "good on ya" from God: I then read, The act of love is the surrender of self into life as it is. To me that confirmed the act of love is the surrender of self into the fear-camouflaged God. And I felt hugged.

Thank you.