GRACED AND BLESSED, I

[The following is a reprint of my post of December 30, 2014.]

I am convinced that the only thing blocking our doing God's will consistently is our resistance to what he's offering. And, of course, that resistance is based on our own idea of what he's offering.

We hear, "Let go and let God." We say it...repeatedly. Nine times out of ten, even as we pray for God's will, we're picturing our want, our self-perceived need. Then we're gifted with what appears to be the exact opposite of what we perceived we needed! In fact, it often seems to be the one thing we're praying it won't be.

Having no choice, we accept what we got, and, through gritted teeth, thank God for it. Then, YOWZER. it comes to be that what we got was and continues to be much...oh, so much...better than our initial desire. We are forced to realize and accept that only God could have pulled it off.

A thank you prayer: Thank you, God, that I want your will done in my life more than I want my own will done in my life no matter what. Open-ended. Knock yourself out, God. Do your thing. You got the power, use it. You're nothing but good so nothing but good can come from you no matter what it looks like to my eyes. You'll make it clear to me when it needs to be clear to me. I am graced with gratitude and blessed with love. Amen

Thank you.

THE UNFAILING GOODNESS OF GOD

I have discarded a lot of what I consider religious baggage. I now tell people that I am a “follower of Jesus,” trying to live by the “terms and conditions” of the Sermon on the Mount. —Eric F., "Richard Rohr's Daily Meditations," October 18, 2025

I connect with the Sermon more than with anything else I've read, but I still have a mental hesitancy in owning the proposal that I am a follower of Jesus. It is naming Jesus that causes me pause. 

Whoa! Blinding flash of the obvious: I need to accept the truth of the matter which is that is my teen rebellion never allayed.

Factually, I am a follower of what Jesus taught, but not a follower solely of Jesus. But who is kidding whom? It seems that everything that calls to me originated with Jesus's teachings. 

So, why do I quibble? 

What does it matter whether I credit Jesus? Believers know it, and non-believers deny it, so let it be my truth and fret not. It came to me from God by whatever circuitous route God chose. 

God is so good to me...to us. God is so good.

Thank you.

GOD'S GIFT...AND WANTING IT, I

[The following is a reprint of my post of October 27, 2015.]

I believe that life's spiritual test is how well we can comprehend and live the promise that the God we seek is already ours...already within me, within you, within us which includes every living thing, and every living thing includes stone and steel. Cats even. Everything. Everywhere.

The word is that there cannot be a place that the living God is not. This becomes ours to prove, and the battle begins...within. Between the reasoning mind's view and the spiritual view.

"Ours to prove" takes a lifetime for most of us. It is life itself that teaches us that only through surrender do we reach our gold. The paradox is that we learn to resist not, yet the only way to surrender is to resist! For how are we ever going to surrender if there is naught to resist?

We can accept that our road to God is to resist a little less each day. To find within our self daily the love necessary to give over to another, specifically to give over to the one we are resisting...there's always someone to our ego-victory mind.

Maybe God's gift to use is an attack mind and the spiritual tools to overcome it. We get to supply the want to.

Thank you.

LET THE SILENCE BECOME THE BRIDGE

The following is lifted entirely from October 18th  "Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation." I regret I neglected to note the author:

I wake in the morning and sink down into the quiet Center.

Before the news and the heartbreak. 
Before the world becomes all fire and brimstone. 
Tell me, is this salvation? 
I could stay here, alone and away. 
I could place my life in the company of the undisturbed. 
But if I do, I will surely lose You. 
Friend of Sorrows. Acquaintance of Grief. 
Let this silence, then, become a bridge. 
Let me walk it to where Love is. 
At the edges. Amidst the rubble. 
Trudging among the bones 
Where the prophets call to the four winds 
And a Voice cries out saying Live! Live! 
Let this silence become a forgotten thing 
If it does not lead me to the hill 
Outside the camp.

Thank you.

WE MUST GO BEYOND REASON

Thy rod and thy staff they comfort me...thy rod and thy staff are love and laughter...or, tears and travail. 

Interesting to me...the first part being named "love and laughter" came to me many years ago, but the "tears and travail" flashed just this morning. 

I'm guessing whether we are consciously aware of it or not, our inner prayer is for love and laughter with tears and travail never on our wish list.

Yet, as we mature in faith, we realize that without tears and travail, where is our soul's need for the hand of God?  We may have the egoic want, but the God-given need is a faith-driven imperative. 

This is most often the very thing we pray God relieve us of...and gift us with our own self-determined objective dressed up in our mind as God's will, God's way

We must go beyond reason to love, to God's will, God's way.

Thank you.

BEYOND GRATEFUL...BLESSED

 ....pain is physical discomfort, but suffering comes from our resistance, denial, and sense of injustice or wrongness about that pain. -- Fr Richard Rohr, Daily Meditation, July 5, 2023 

This gives proof of truth to resist not evil, a quote from the Bible, which makes no sense to the reasoning mind. I probably wrestled with that quote, resist not evil, longer and harder than with any other teaching presented to me. 

I kept coming back to: It does not make a lick of sense. Truth to tell, there isn't a boatload of truth in the Bible that does make sense to the reasoning mind...virgin birth? Uh-huh. 

To me, that's paradox, and accepting paradox for a learning tool has opened my mind...which has opened my life. I now accept...or do not resist...a questionable statement or theory. I kinda let it explain itself to me rather than breaking a sweat trying to disprove it. 

This has proven to be an invaluable tool for my acceptance. My first thought is no longer, I doubt that...it is now that may be so. That way I can let it perc awhile to see what comes, and what comes is rarely what my first thought was. I don't always accept it, but it's usually for an entirely different reason than my first thought presented.

Truth to tell, that is precisely how I came to accept Jesus...I'm not the Jesus-freak I feared I'd become if I let him in at all, but I've found nothing to reject in his thoughts, words and deeds. For which I am beyond grateful...blessed is the word.

Thank you. 

THE PUNY GLORY OF SPIRITUAL GROWTH

Action without contemplation is the work of hamsters and gerbils. It gets us through the day, it gives us a temporary sense of movement, but the world is not made new by spinning wheels going nowhere. --  Fr Richard Rohr, "Daily Meditations," October 15, 2023

Action without contemplation is the work of hamsters and gerbils.  That is a good definition of a self-determined objective.

My personal trouble with a self-determined objective is that it nearly always feels so right...as in, no need to think this over, or even ask for God's input...it is right.

I have learned, even often remember, that that is my ego on the stroll...admiring its kingdom, i.e., self.

It has taken me over fifty years coming to my personal gut-bucket acceptance that any original right idea of mine is wrong. That is to say, it is wrong for my spiritual growth, especially when it is right for my walking-around world.

There...that is proof of progress for my spiritual growth...puny to my egoic mind, glorious beyond dreaming to my inner Self.

Thank you.