THE GIFT OF UNEXPECTED HUMILITY...UH-OH

Choctaw elder and retired Episcopal bishop Steven Charleston writes: We are all prophets. We are not divine messengers. We do not speak for God. We are not miracle workers or moral judges. Instead, we are … human beings living in extraordinary times. We are what the Hopi are: communities seeking a spiritual purpose to their lives. -- Fr Richard's Daily Meditation, December 28, 2023

I keep returning to prophet, as in, what does that mean? Who is a prophet? How can one tell a prophet from a spiritually inclined talker? Or a plain old blowhard?

Before reading Fr Richard this morning, I jotted down some thoughts: Prophets come in all sizes and kinds...the one whose voice a certain few hear or maybe the one least likely who has the most need to hear the Word. 

No wonder I felt gobsmacked when I read Charleston's words: We are all prophets. 

Being so stuck that one does not know if she qualifies as a prophet or a blowhard is a tish humbling...only a tish because, face it, that is funny. 

I particularly relate to the Hopi...seeking a spiritual purpose to my life. Recently, I discovered the meaning of spiritual to me...i.e., to have a sense of peace and purpose for the benefit of others. Later I included myself in the benefit part.

To me today, spiritual means to have a sense of peace and purpose for the benefit of myself and others. 

I long ago realized when I'm thinking, doing, feeling for others while ignoring my own self, my ego has a hold on me. I've driven myself into a ditch in the name of others more times than I choose to dwell on...rarely helped them but got me a boatload of humility whether I wanted it or not. 

Hmmm...a boatload of humility can never do a harm. I'd best pray thank you, love and laugh before I take myself too seriously...or am I too late? 

Thank you. 

LOOK AND LISTEN...LOVE AND LAUGH

He is telling his followers, 'You’re going to be persecuted the way the prophets were before you.'  -- Brian McLaren in Fr Richard's Daily Meditation, December 27, 2023

I must admit upfront that the word "prophet" causes me pause...it brings images of street corner fanatics and religious zealots, some of whom have been fairly close relatives of mine. So, off-putting to me but true, McLaren's description of the prophet fits my identity of myself:

The prophet is somebody who goes deep into themselves to hear the message that’s being birthed in the midst of their pain and their burdens and their frustrations and their sufferings and their questions and their perplexity and their disillusionments. In the foment and ferment of that inner journey, something begins to emerge, and they bring it out and they say, 'I can’t just say these words. I have to demonstrate them. I’ve got to find two or three other people who see what I see so that we can do something about it.'

I was hooked at the sentence, 'I can’t just say these words. I have to demonstrate them.' 

I realized with my first blinding flash of the obvious that I had to make it mine. My personal admonition with each new BFO has been, I must prove this...I can't share it until I have made it mine.  

It seemed that each BFO, each little understanding, why "little" is the necessary descriptive for me had become one. I recalled the snubs and snarks I have received for just being me...I feel the overwhelming love and acceptance I receive for just being me. I knew wonder and joy intertwined with trepidation and doubts. 

I must consider if this insight coming at the end of the year...coming at the beginning of a new year...is God's reality for me or my wannabe fantasy?

This I know from my own experience: God's reality for me is a wannabe fantasy until I quit talking it and start walking it. I will be cleared for landing in my head after I've landed...loving and laughing at my wannabe fantasy or basking in the inexplicable glory of God's love. 

More will be revealed.  Look and listen...love and laugh. 

Thank you.

WITH THE ASSURANCE OF NONE BUT GOD

Mary and Joseph walked in courage and absolute faith that their experience was true, with no one except God to reassure them they were right. -- Fr Richard's Daily Meditation, December 25, 2023

Regarding my piercingly painful shoulder, amid the prayers I was shooting to God, I had a blinding flash of the obvious...namely, I am my healer. 

I understood that all my prayers had been aimed out there, none within. I recalled how often I have said, written, thought, The Father lives within.  

This is the time, the time of unknowing, that "courage and absolute faith" are called up...and way too often jettisoned for something that makes sense to the reasoning mind...where I find myself sliding in and out this morning. 

With no treatment at all, except thank you, my shoulder is way better...hardly hurts, except slightly on occasion. That causes me pause...that which feels off may not be my shoulder, it may be consciousness-raising. Is that me just putting on airs? Or is my consciousness being raised? 

I take heart from both the words and the timing of Fr Richard's article yesterday about Mary and Joseph's journey which may just be the painful way to higher consciousness: 

Kingdom of God people...break through the small kingdoms of this world to an alternative and much larger world, God’s full creation....[Mary] had to let God lead her outside of her box of expectations, her comfort zone...They both had to rely on their angels!....Mary and Joseph walked in courage and absolute faith that their experience was true, with no one except God to reassure them they were right. -- Ibid.

Ah, with no one except God to reassure them they were right. According to me, passing the test of those words is true belief. 

Thank you.

ON FINDING OUR CORE...AND LOVING IT, II

[The following is a reprint of my post of  December 29, 2021.]

The following, by Joan Didion, is from her essay, On Keeping a Notebook, at p 126. This, more than anything I've ever read or heard, describes me and my being in my world as I live it:

....I tell what some would call lies. 'That's simply not true,' the members of my family frequently tell me when they come up against my memory of a shared event. 'The party was not for you, the spider was not a black widow, it wasn't that way at all.' Very likely they are right, for not only have I always had trouble distinguishing between what happened and what merely might have happened, but I remain unconvinced that the distinction, for my purposes, matters. The cracked crab that I recall having for lunch the day my father came home from Detroit in 1945 must certainly be embroidery, worked into the day's pattern to lend verisimilitude; I was ten years old and would not now remember the cracked crab. The day's events did not turn on cracked crab. And yet it is precisely that fictitious crab that makes me see the afternoon all over again, a home movie run all too often, the father bearing gifts, the child weeping, an exercise in family love and guilt. Or that is what it was to me. Similarly, perhaps it never did snow that August in Vermont; perhaps there never were flurries in the night wind, and maybe no one else felt the ground hardening and summer already dead even as we pretended to bask in it, but that was how it felt to me, and it might as well have snowed, could have snowed, did snow.

"I tell what some would call lies," Didion wrote. "How it felt to me: that is getting closer to the truth...."

As I read that, from my toenails up, I felt accepted, partnered...twinned, dimdammit! And I heard my innards laughing for I could freely admit that is me...I tell how it looked, felt, was...looks, feels, is...to me.

And here's the nut as Didion wrote it: "I always had trouble distinguishing between what happened and what merely might have happened, but I remain unconvinced that the distinction, for my purposes, matters." [My emphasis added.]

It seems likely...to me at any rate...that it is our way of communicating that won Didion Pulitzers and has won me friends, each of them my Pulitzer and the pearl beyond price.

Finding our freedom within through the freedom of a like Soul proves true self-acceptance is the acceptance of Self.

Thank you.

INTENSE PHYSICAL PAIN...WITH FAITH INTACT

My today's dilemma: An excruciatingly painful shoulder...is my aching shoulder a torn rotator cuff or deeper initiation? If initiation, I accept that doesn't mean it is not a torn rotator cuff, so no surgery. It may be a way to my deeper understanding of life...i.e,. getting through surgery and physical therapy with my faith intact...in fact, deepened. 

Thy will, Thy way. Let me be the cause of no self-determined hurt, harm, pain...mental or physical. Lord, hear my prayer...thank you.

Interestingly, this comes on the eve of the holiest day of my experience. I know naught, but I suspect the virgin birth of Mary did not make her birthing pain any less intense. I wonder if her state of consciousness...birthing the Son of God...transmuted the pain? Or does the pain fall under what Fr Richard describes as necessary suffering? 

Today is Sunday, Christmas Eve, so no doctors, acupuncturists, or healers are available. Why, I wonder, did this shoulder problem come to me now? Yesterday there was no pain, yet as I went to bed last night, it came out of nowhere...I ached in the night and awoke this morning feeling serious pain.

Thank you for opening my hidden Self to whatever is mine to experience. Amen.

Thank you.

A CHANGE OF CONSCIOUSNESS...PEACED

As the thought crossed my mind recently that a natural part of aging is forgetfulness, a blinding flash of the obvious followed: Dementia may be just a change of consciousness. 

I welcomed that thought and turned from my reasoning mind to let it perc. Slowly, it has come to me that when we depend on Big Pharma and the medical profession, our consciousness is lowered, and fear blocks our Father within. When we depend on the Father, growth in consciousness and love blocks fear, and we are peaced.

I have become leery of the overwhelmingly many things that today's world credits to dementia. In the early '80s there was a run on cancer being the go-to fear...and, like dementia, cancer is fearsome. But one day I was talking with a friend about our shampoos...I named mine, and she, aghast, said, "That causes cancer...I read it in blahblahblah." That's precisely when I quit taking notice of what all was said to be causing cancer. 

I see that in dementia today. It seems there is always a product being sold that gives relief...doesn't cure, just gives relief. Meditation frees us of our fear that blocks relief.

Relying on the Father within, we live assured that whatever...dementia included...comes to us, the Father is with us. He doesn't cure, he doesn't bankroll, he doesn't deliver love with a wedding cake...he gives us peace, or growth in consciousness and love in the midst of pain, lack and scorn.

We can live with that...peaced.

Thank you. 

JOSEPH WITH WALKING-AROUND FAITH

I awoke this morning to this blinding flash of the obvious: I am a follower, not a leader. I seek not to know higher truth so that I can lead others for or to the Lord...that is not my way. Mine is the way of Joseph, the last named, the cleanup crew, the holder of the Cup...that is mine...thank you.

I often admit I know little and less than that about the Bible....Holy Writ as written is way over my head, and I let it be. I studied the main stories in catechetical class...and long ago made the truths I learned then my own. So, here's my take on the Christmas story:

Of the three, Jesus, Mary and Joseph, I have long held that Joseph had the purest practical faith. Jesus, of course, being Top Dog, Mary being above human touch, Joseph gets to walk it...he gets the fiancé who, I'm guessing, never let him so much as kiss her, who comes to him and tells him she is pregnant...and by The Lord...and he believes her. 

He lives his belief by becoming her on-earth caretaker...her husband, in a word. Since we're going by my take, that has got to be faith, trust and love, pure and shining.

That is what makes my morning BFO so comforting...mine is the way of Joseph, the walker of the Word not just the talker. We walk behind to aid the halt, the lame, the elderly...our own self, getting by giving help to others when needed.

Every master's lesson, every parable or spiritual riddle, every confounding question is intended to bring up the limitations of our own wisdom, our own power, our own tiny self. -- Fr Richard's Daily Meditation, May 24, 2016

Thank you.