TO BE MORE LIKE GOD...LOVE, AND THAT IS ALL

Gena Rowlands in “A Woman Under the Influence” (1974): Shortly after filming, Ms. Rowlands told the publication New Times that the film was an attempt to explore 'the natural drama of a woman’s life,' including what she said were feelings of worthlessness and fears of abandonment. 

In that Washington Post article/obit of Gena Rowlands this morning, I read a line that either blew my mind or has such possibility...it's too soon to tell in toto. 

My blinding flash of the obvious:  .... "'the natural drama of a woman's life' including feelings of worthlessness and fears of abandonment".... 

Whoa!...the natural drama of a woman's life? including feelings of worthlessness and fears of abandonment? 

That is the natural drama of my life? That's not just the warped insecure feelings of the younger poor, pitiful, put-upon me? Who fought so hard, and nearly fruitlessly, to overcome those feelings? 

I mentally fall to my knees and thank God I live a turned-over life today. After the initial "OMG, I See Me" flash, I settle into seeing me and the possibilities. 

Just like my realization that fear is God's helpmate within us, i.e., nothing turns us to God faster than fear, I am opened to the feelings of worthlessness and fears of abandonment as God's helpmate for women. 

Trying to overcome them...to be more like men?...is a self-determined objective, not of God. I suspect that might be akin to cats trying to be more like dogs, or cows like goats.

If that be so, the change women need is trying to be more like God rather than like men. Trying to be more like God is to love, and that is all. There it is, the sliver of gold. 

Men could likewise benefit, but this is a woman's story...or women + God story.

Thank you.

YOU WILL NOT BE OVERCOME

[God] did not say: You will not be assailed, you will not be belabored, you will not be disquieted, but he said: You will not be overcome.  --  Julian of Norwich

For years now, I have studied the words of Julian of Norwich and Meister Eckhart and other mystics and saints, and today when I see the inner me...my origins, my centered spiritual beliefs...I feel awed...graced by doubt and by hope.

Another wonder is that I recognize the core of my first writing for my blog, nothing is original with me. I knew that, but I did not know that...I didn't even wonder at the wonder of it. Yet, here I am...in wonder of it today.

I am reminded of my early days in seeking spiritual growth and not even knowing that was the essence of my search. I knew I wanted what the first 100 members of my fellowship had...and I found that all they had to learn from was the Sermon on the Mount. Knowing less than nothing about the Sermon, I studied the King James version (not the E-Z read translations and versions of others). 

When I came to the part saying if someone slaps you upside your head, turn the other cheek...no doubt "I do not think so" was my first thought. I know I considered it too religiously radical, and I know I tossed the Sermon aside and went back to reading my Big Book...studying, underlining, highlighting, feeling good. 

Then I came to the line in my Big Book that we have ceased fighting everything and everybody. I froze. Not being entirely stupid, I inner knew that was code for turn the other cheek. 

Back I went to the Sermon. Imagine my surprise, my shock!, when I realized that all it teaches is love, pure and simple. Love the snakes in the grass and the rainbows in the sky and every single thing in between...and here's how: Resist not, and pray thank you.

I am still using the Sermon as the Word for unselfed love at which I fail often but I succeed more than I ever dreamed I could want to...close enough for me today as it continues to lead me toward still more spiritual growth.

And the promise holds: You will not be overcome.

Thank you.

JOY IN THE MORNING, AT NOON AND AT NIGHT!

And joy is also a discipline....We have to teach ourselves to look for it until our looking becomes habituated. -- Grace Ji-Sun Kim, Fr Richard's Daily Meditation, August 10, 2024

A comparative thought just came to mind...that our good feelings...joy, peace, kindness, and the like...visit us for our comfort and to share. The less-than feelings, however, visit for us to place blame...they are "caused by" someone, something out there but not us...on purpose at any rate.

That we need to teach ourselves to look for joy and its kind is to be contemplated, reviewed...loved. We need no directions for wallowing in the less-than feelings. We can't seem to stop pondering those..."obsessing over" in order to avoid the blame, plain and simple. 

I wonder how one disciplines oneself to look for joy.

Well, blinding flash! That is one of the first lessons we learn when we begin to seek still more spiritual growth; namely, find the sliver of gold in any less-than situation and focus on that alone. 

All else fades as we let the sliver of gold, a.k.a., God, walk us through the whatevers of life.

There...I have a sense of peace...or joy!...in recalling my early spiritual growth. For sure, there is a sliver of gold in everything...find that sliver and hang on to it made a home in my head, my heart, my soul. I can live in gratitude today with those words as my platform.

God is so good to us.

Thank you.

WE HOLD TO THE LITTLE YES WITHIN

I awoke this morning with a heavy sense of dread. As I wrote in my journal, "I have a sense of dread that my life has 'nothing to show for it.'"

Comes God now to my aid: That sense of dread is material mind, and you are powerless over the feeling coming, but I am here...your need is My power. 

There...that's how God comes calling...our need is his calling card. 

Our material mind/spiritual mind U-bie is exactly there. Our material mind, filled with fear, begs God to take the fear away; spiritual mind accepts fear as God's invitation to settle us. 

We are brought again to the fact that nothing turns us to God faster than fear...kiss it on the lips in gratitude as we are peaced.

I was comforted and somewhat awed when I came to my first daily reading, Fr Richard's Daily Meditation, for it spoke directly to my earlier fear-thoughts:

The soul is that part of us that has never doubted and that has always said yes to God. It’s in everyone. Even in those moments when we are filled with negativity, there’s a little yes that holds on. That’s what mystics like Julian of Norwich have become aware of and the place to which they return. They trust that infinite yes that shines within all of us. 

Thank you.

GOD KNOWS OUR NEEDS...TRUST

God knows our needs...we get to stay focused on, say, a lily of the valley, and let all be well, no matter what our lying eyes tell us…for unless we are using God’s eyes with which to see, ours are lying eyes. -- from a long-ago post of mine

When the black cloud descends, when we are feeling left all alone, when fear is riding herd in our head...we have but one need, and that is to loose all our wants and pray thank you...thank you for my everything just as it is and just as it seems to be right this very minute.

We have but one need...to trust that the God of our understanding only brings the best for us to us...our opinion of the best is what we need to upgrade. That cannot happen as long as we remain married to our idea of what is best for us. 

We go to God for God and that is all...God's will, God's way...no frills, no fancy-dress, no anchors, no barnacles. Our imagination is stripped bare, and we feel a frisson of fear that we've lost our mind. 

We find that we have lost nothing. We have gained the centered mind, also called the Christ mind, which seems too big, too scary, so we stay with centered...until we become centered. God knows...trust.

Thank you.

IN OUR SILENCE GOD DOES HIS PERFECT WORK

 I awoke this morning to a blinding flash of the obvious: Our deepest spiritual growth is unknown to our reasoning mind.

When I went into my Quiet Time this morning, my first reading was from Easwaran:  Now the name of Jesus is a concrete and powerful means of transfiguring men and women into their hidden, innermost, utmost reality. --The Invocation of the Name of Jesus

There...that is it...the secret to our not "feeling" the transference, the transformation that is promised. It is hidden from the material me, the walking around human, our world. 

But it is hidden within the walking around me, you, us.

We seek still more spiritual growth not to add on to our spiritual self but to uncover that which is already within. Again...we already have that which we seek.

I do not know how to find this. It may be that we cannot know the how of spiritual growth...we do our spiritual growth and are filled with gratitude. I sense that I must talk this not...tell no one...or, Tell No Man (from somewhere in the Bible).

In our silence God does his perfect work. 

Thank you.

REGRETS AND WOES, TOO, NEED GOD'S LOVE

'Reposing in oneself' … probably best expresses my own love of life: I repose in myself. And that part of myself, that deepest and richest part in which I repose, is what I call 'God.' -- Dutch Jewish writer Etty Hillesum

Blinding flash of the obvious: I am on the right track heading in the right direction...away from reliance on the reasoning mind toward still more spiritual awakening. 

That BFO calls me to repeat: Turning 80 is a whole new level of life...it is akin to being in kindergarten for the elderly. Doubts, dreads, fears...rues, regrets, remorses...they all live but they are met by our spiritual growth, the punch line of which is love and trust...then laugh.

All of my Quiet Time readings for the past month or so have reassured me that my early realization of spiritual growth as my true path still holds true. 

Today's God Calling and Easwaran both demand reliance on God alone. 

God Calling: ...so much retained by you, so much the less will be gained from Me.

William Law's quote in Easwaran is my quiet word: Though God is everywhere present, yet He is only present in thee in the deepest and most central part of thy soul....This depth is called the centre, the fund or bottom of the soul....Awake, then, thou that sleepest, and Christ, who from all eternity has been espoused to thy soul, shall give thee light.

I have read that quote in particular for years and only this morning have I become readied for its meaning...to me personally. 

The good and the bad news both together...I have become readied, I do believe, I doubt not, and I will experience rues, regrets and remorses again...when, not if, I am doing it right. 

Nothing turns me to God faster than fear...rues, regrets and remorses leading the way. Clearly, they, too, need God's love, and I'm their Source. How sweet it is!

Thank you.