LIVE, LOVE, LAUGH AND KNOW HAPPY

My June 7 God Calling note to me: '92 - It seems like ever since I started seriously trying to do the Sermon on the Mount, I have never looked uglier...could this be 'praying for patience' principle? What if this is the way God wants me to look, and I am doing it right? And 30 years later: '22 Yes! 

Oh my. To read my consciousness from thirty years hence is to feel boondoggled, gobsmacked and graced all as one. 

I just spent several minutes trying to remember what specific back then I felt so ugly about that I was trying to apply the Sermon to it...which is a giggle and a grin right there. Actually, that's a good-on-ya, girl...there was the time I'd be beating my breast and wailing at my self-centered ignorance, my lack of spiritual with-it-ness...when all that was needed it is getting now, a giggle and a grin...love and laughter.

My yesteryear's consciousness updated brings me to the visit to my hometown that I am considering. It is a tish off-putting how uptight I'm feeling about it...all centered on how I'll appear to my high school friends...or, in particular, my un-friends.   

This I know for truth, and I know it from my own experience: If I take my true me back home I will be accepted, welcomed...free. Ah, but if I take my gussied-up me, looking impressive, or more impressive  than "her"...better than I am, in short...I will be snubbed, laughed at, pilloried-to-the-post if only in my own head.  

I am complete...I am all that I need be to be accepted and welcomed. It is only when I try to make me so that I walk away feeling less than, looked down on, scorned. Lessons from high school revisited. 

My blessing is that I have years of trying, succeeding and failing living experience, that has brought me deeper to a higher consciousness for my foundation today...God as I understand him living me living the God of my understanding. Same as each of my hometown friends and un-friends...whether we know it or not. 

For me to hold dear: How each appears to me is my perception...my interpretation...my choice. Judge not, reject not, live, love, laugh and know happy are not just so many words. They are a non-personal foundation for grace and God to flow freely amongst us.

By love may He be gotten and holden, by thought never. -- The Cloud of Unknowing 

Thank you. 

FROM THE NOSE UP IS GOD SPACE

We are changing within and without whether we know it or not. 

Our difficulty with change is our unconcious inability, a.k.a., unwillingness, to allow our need, God's will, to take precedence over our wants, our self-determined objectives. 

Our only need is to trust God's will unto doing God's will...and there be the hump. To trust God's will is to release our reasoning mind's wants...the perceived imperatives to look good, to get our "rightful" be it money, power or glory. Specifically, to let go of God as our pony to ride to get those wants we have misdiagnosed as needs.

To reiterate, we are changing within...whether we know it or not. That haunting want has already been upgraded by our Father to thank you.  

Now, we walk it...that is our leap of faith, walking it. Very imperfectly. By putting one foot in front of the other. Again. And again. And yet again.

We are toes-to-nose grateful that God grades on the curve...the curve being love and laughter. Nose up? God space.

Thank you.  

GOD...THE GIFT THAT WE ALREADY HAVE

My morning wake-up gift was the quote that simplifies and magnifies for me the God of my understanding's how-to manual: Your best chance, as I see it, is to try not to be as mean as you feel like being, and not to give yourself airs, and to hope for the best. From the genius of Henry Mitchell as printed in his column in 1988 in the Washington Post. 

From that came my p.d.q. spiritual principle: Just try not to be as nasty as you want to be...which has been my "golden rule" since first I read the original quote. 

That brought with it this morning another favorite quote, this one anonymous: All my problems can be solved by spiritual principles. 

We recall the old gold: We go to God for  God and that is all...ever re-re-recalling that we already have any/every thing we can think of to pray for. The turnaround is ever the recognition that it is not the egoic want but the spiritual nature of the egoic want that is God's gift for us. 

Our continuing task is to discipline ourself to turn runaway thoughts back to that spiritual reality. Or, to quote from Fr Richard this morning,  to fan into flame the gift that we already have.

Thank you.

OUR FATHER KNOWS BEFORE WE ASK

I awoke recently with my anxious mind all gripped with the "what if" of dementia...and the peace of our Father enveloped me. 

In that moment of peace with my Father, I was assured that He already knew "what if" and if that was meant to be the case, He had me safe and secure. The Father knows my needs came to me in that moment. 

If...any if...it...any it...happens, the best will result on our behalf and in our favor...whatever cloak it is wearing on arrival. As death was to Lazarus, dementia is to us. Believe it or believe it...not our choice. Whether we know it or not

For your Father knows what you need before you ask Him. -- Matthew 6:8   [For fact's sake, I unabashedly admit I only quote the Bible when it says what I want to hear...or choose to believe.]

Thank you.

GOD CONCEALED, FAITH REVEALED

It’s quite simple: One sees clearly only with the heart. Anything essential is invisible to the eyes. —Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

Not a week ago, on May 28, I was gifted with Daniel in the Lion's den sent to usher in my intuitive God realization of June 1. 

Yet here's me today all in conflict in my head. I even started journaling with the shrug emoji and the admission of that as the prayer of my head this morning.

Now, Now!...here comes God to clear the way.  From the ether dropped my beloved Teilhard quote, Let myself be taught to adore every dark corner conjured up in my mind by seeing my Father concealed within it.

Before I take myself way too seriously, a reminder to me: Thank you will suffice.

Thank you.

CEASE FIGHTING...LOVE AND LAUGH

The purest form of spirituality is to find God in what is right in front of you—the ability to accept the sacrament of the present moment. -- Fr Richard Rohr, "Daily Meditation," April 24, 2022

Ponder that for a minute or two and, amazingly, several words pop that fit the "purest form of spirituality." For instance, nonresistance or surrender or acceptance...and acceptance is the only one that doesn't sound to the egoic mind as either punishing, surrender, or just wrong, nonresistance. 

But, stripped of the fancy sounding "sacrament" of the present moment, it becomes clear that is what we do...the "we" who seek still more spiritual growth, and the "we" who just seek peace of mind (unaware or uncaring that, too, is still more spiritual growth).

We learn early on, back when it seemed we were met with an "oh-no!" hourly, to turn that fear-fact around, look at it in every possible way until we find a sliver of gold. We then hang onto that sliver of gold for it will lead us free...free to find God in what is right in front of us. 

The quoted text goes on: The sacramental principle is this: 'Begin with a concrete moment of encounter, based in this physical world, and the soul universalizes from there, so that what is true here becomes true everywhere else too.'

Now we get to the meat of the matter. We begin with a flat fact in our own life, say our battle unto surrender unto acceptance of an incurable, progressive disease. 

When we surrender, that transmutes unto acceptance, and the soul universalizes from there...so what is true here, peace,  becomes peace everywhere else too.

We have ceased fighting everything and everybody...and we have peace, the pearl beyond price. 

Thank you.

NOW IS...PRAY THANK YOU

My morning blinding flash of the obvious: With gratitude, I welcome my current worst fear for it is that fear that re-turns me to God...thank you.

As I sit in the silence, I ponder. 

I recall when first I "got" it...that our reasoning mind's less-than, i.e., that which we resist, needs to happen for us to experience our own powerlessness. I "got" it more than a few times since, every time a tish higher at a deeper understanding. 

For ever so long, I took that as evidence that I hadn't "got" it the first time. No. We need those first, second, one hundred, etc., wake-up calls. That is the lengthy process of letting go of what we think we know to fully grasp, or realize, that only our Father knows our needs...and Meister Eckhart's If the only prayer you ever pray in your lifetime is thank you, that would suffice proves true in our head and in our heart. 

Short, sweet and true, we pray not for our feared less-than to be removed, we pray thank you for what is. Just thank you. Now Is. 

Thank you.