WHENEVER IS NOT A ONE-TIME THING

Whenever we’re led out of normalcy into sacred, open space, it’s going to feel like suffering, because it’s letting go of what we’re used to. -- Fr Richard Rohr, Daily Meditation, September 28, 2023

God Calling today: Rejoice at your weakness. 

That God Calling sentence has been underlined and highlighted a lot. The hidden hope has ever been that rejoicing at our weakness would remove the weakness. That...paradox alert!...is the exact opposite of our need. Our need is to recognize and rely on God's strength in letting go of what we're used to...our own puny strength. 

Today, having absorbed our lesson anew, we get a deeper understanding. Rohr's first word, whenever, is the tell...whenever is not a learn it and let it do its magic forever after. No...whenever means it keeps coming back like an earworm.

So let us experience the suffering of being led into a sacred space...this [is the] mysterious process in which we incarnate Your healing presence. 

Thank you.

EMBRACE HOPE...LOVE AND LAUGH

When we decide to embrace hope—when we choose to make that our goal and our message—we release a flow of energy that cannot be overcome. Hope is a light that darkness can never contain. -- Episcopalian bishop and Choctaw citizen Steven Charleston

We hope. We believe. 

That promised flow of energy is released...we love and laugh.

Thank you.

NOTHING IS AMISS NOW...STAY HERE NOW

Now. The saving grace of Now. I just experienced that saving grace. 

I've had a "heavy, heavy over my head" recently and for too long. It deals entirely with a what if? Meaning it is not pretty, it is not always present, but it is hanging fire in my head. 

The possibility just slithered in again, and grace met it. I sensed-heard, Nothing is amiss Now...stay here Now. 

I felt warmed, readied and righted. There's my assurance that I'm on the right road, heading in the right direction...with the full knowledge that if I'm doing it right, I'll make a wrong turn at some point. 

And that, too, will be for my benefit...there, God's recent gift for all life to come.

Thank you.

RESIST NOT...GENERIC LOVE GUIDED BY GOD

I read recently that Jesus lived in unrestrained love, inwardly free:  He challenged others not by argument or attack but out of a deep center of love....'Do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also' (Matthew 5:39).

I've been pondering that, trying to get a fix on love...other than romantic love or familial love, what does, say generic, love mean to me personally. 

I'm going with love is nonresistance. Period. 

With that in mind, picture a rattlesnake at our feet. We wouldn't resist the rattlesnake since clearly we would lose. We would silently, stealthily back away...give over. We would not need to hate the rattlesnake, want to kill the rattlesnake. No...we would need no judgment of the rattlesnake. We would need our judgment to decide how far and how fast we can back away from the rattlesnake...or to stand still and let the rattlesnake move on. Resist not.

I'm not about to keep the image of a rattlesnake in my mind to learn to live nonresistance, but, who's kidding whom, there are a kazillion things I can substitute, without thought, that I resist daily.  

Well, now. There is a fine example of contempt prior to investigation...I decide I'm not about to before I've come up with another workable image. This, after my inner-bragging recently about how good I'm getting at letting God's will, God's way be whatever "regrettable" comes from me or to me. 

I suspect it was God's prompting the use of nonresistance in place of love. Face it, love has too good a rep to be used with the image of rattlesnakes or personal poisons. Nonresistance, now...a right good fit.

Blinding flash of the obvious: Retraining the brain...that's what nonresistance amounts to. This cannot be done without using the Higher Power's wiring.

Thank you.

OUR FLUBS, TOO, ARE FOR OUR BENEFIT

I am slowly realizing that the most unexpected fact in true spiritual growth is how much we already knew before we learned from authentic spiritual teachers. It is only after it comes to us afresh that we can recognize it as already within us, waiting to lead us deeper to our higher self.

I can understand, as Fr Richard posits, the material world is the hiding place for the spiritual. Of course it is...our eyes can evidence the material, our Soul must transmute the spiritual.

Making that point clearer is my note in today's God Calling: 2014 - BFO...I must do for the Lord...to do for him, I must let him lead.

I realized that nearly ten years ago, and today I can see the times I got away from Self into self, and spent too much time regretting...yet now I see the flubs, too, were for my benefit. 

I learned lessons I did not know were mine to learn...spent time being humbled by my own missteps, and today know them as the gold in my still more spiritual growth. 

Thank you

LAUGHTER, THE GATEWAY TO LOVE

Except the Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it. -- Psalm 127

In my world, they hand us the Big Book along with the quiet word: All your thinking has been done for you.

This is not to say we should quit thinking...it is to say that we can think all we want, but our thinking is now based on spiritual principles...for the benefit of the other, especially the other who is right this minute ticking us off.

The other who is right this minute ticking us off is an angel straight from Heaven. That one we call "other" is fear...styling! Looking good! Else why would we be giving it all our attention?  

The lesson I am currently smack-dab in the middle of:  We can never be outside of God's love...it is our own regrets with which we beat our self that imbues us with self-recrimination. No matter how off we are feeling, thinking, doing...take it to God and a trusted friend. 

We'll never get to laughter, the gateway to love, till we share every less-than thought.

There. Our first lesson in learning to love. 

Thank you.

LOVE...THE ULTIMATE IN NONRESISTANCE

I’m not going to call the True Self just 'life' or 'being.' More basically, I’m going to call it 'love.' We were made for love and love is who we are, as I believe we are metaphysically created out of the infinite love relationships that are the Trinity. -- Fr Richard Rohr, Daily Meditation, October 1, 2023

That speaks to me...I need to ponder love as nonresistance...and that, too, is for my benefit.

I have posted a couple times recently about being gifted with the phrase and this, too, is for my benefit. Talk about a gift that keeps on giving! It fits most everything I've run by it...most everything, baloney! Every less-than-wonderful thing I've held it up to, it has fit. 

The fit, of course, is in the change of our mind. We wouldn't test it on a "good" happening...of course that'd be beneficial to us...but on the fears, the hasn't-happened-yet-but-what-if-it-does? things.

There's our pearl beyond price...it takes away our fear of the non-event or the not-yet event. 

An unfearful mind is God's territory...our work is over. We long ago learned we cannot change our mind by self-determining to change our mind...we go to God with thank you, and be peaced.

Thank you.