THE CHRIST NEVER SLEEPS

This morning's blinding flash of the obvious: Our daily goal is to awaken the sleeping Christ within.

The second BFO: The Christ never sleeps...the goal is to release the imprisoned Christ within.

In pondering that, I realize that we do that by becoming entirely willing then ready to change our mind...that is all. And that's when we learn that we are unable to change our own mind without help from on high deep within us...this is the imprisoned Christ breaking the mental chains that bind us. In short, doing our thinking for us.

Loose him and let her go.

For there is our spiritual freedom, the real freedom...freedom from want. Freedom from want, a.k.a., lack...lack of anything ever...for that freed Christ within knows our every need and supplies it before we know of it.

Thank you.

TOSS IN WITH WHATEVER GOD HAS IN MIND

Yesterday, I was talking with a friend who was deep into self-pity, of which there is no more sincere feeling...and she was deeply sincere.

My suggestion to her was that she change her mind about the way she was looking at that which was hurting her. That suggestion was met with more sincerity, only this time it was sincere resistance. So we talked. Turned the situation this way and that, and she finally understood the concept.

Her response: "But then there'd be no issue at all!" [Note the "But," the ego's hidey-hole for "No."] She understood the concept, she just didn't agree with it.

For the concept is, as Chief Joseph so eloquently put it, "I will fight no more forever." As is just as eloquently stated elsewhere, "We have ceased fighting anything or anyone," and "Agree with your adversary quickly." Not to mention, "Acceptance is the answer to all our problems."

I can surely understand my friend's resistance...all those words sound good when we're applying them to someone else's self-centered fear. But ours is real, cries our ego.

It is only by giving up the siren song of our ego that we can honestly turn to God and toss in with whatever he has in mind...knock yourself out, God, you got the power. That's my favorite reminder to me that, whether I agree or not, God is in charge of my heart, my soul, my body, my brains, my bones, my blood,,,me. And I am grateful.

Thank you.

LIKE A TSUNAMI...ONLY GOOD

All things will be made clear...just this morning Fr. Richard Rohr's "Daily Meditation" is titled You Become the God You Worship. I was immediately taken back some thirty years to the time when my mentor said, a lot, "I am the image of the God I adore." 

I could not grasp that concept, and we discussed it...repeatedly. 

I finally made my breakthrough when I worked for a man who lived totally in his intellect...totally and proudly. It was clear that his towering intellect was his god, and he had become a towering intellect...which is a very limited and limiting god and draws few people in. He was a not happy man.

I have since seen the same thing play out in people's fears...fear of financial insecurity is primary. We often hear stories of someone who has a comfortable income but lives like a miser for fear of running out of money. Money is his god and can never bring peace of mind...it takes away peace of mind is what it does.

Anything that our mind can conceive of that we make our god will fail us...there's an old affirmation I still hear sometimes: If my mind can conceive it, I can achieve it. Which I don't even doubt...the trouble is, achieving and maintaining are two different things. Maintaining requires that we live in the reasoning mind, a wondrous thing it is true, but living there does not bring lasting peace, nor joy, nor love. 

It is in surrendering...surrendering our self-determined objectives, our wants, our perceived needs...to an unseeable, unknowable, untouchable power of pure good that we first glimpse, experience really, the real power, the Higher Power, God. Whose only job is to flow forth from within us as love for any and all...every person, place, thing it meets. Like a tsunami, only good.

All we need do in order to surrender is hold our nose and take a leap of faith. We will be caught. We will be transformed.

Thank you.

STOP THE ATTACK...APPRECIATE

Am I ever proving myself to be a slow learner! I'm glad I decided a long time ago that slow is the best way or I'd really be chagrined this morning.

There is a lady, a friend of a friend, with whom I'm less than enchanted who, apparently, is enchanted with me. Every time I'm around her, I feel like her prized pig on parade, and it drives me bats.

I'm journaling this morning, and I write, "She hears only as she chooses to hear...as it reflects on her, to her glory." My following line: "Don't we all though...in some manner or means? I need to find her good behind that...find the gold in her."

There. That is my blinding flash of the obvious.

I have been preaching "find the gold" since the '70s, but I never thought of it with people...only with dreaded situations, events, happenings. With the dreaded person, I've always called it "upgrading my opinion" of her, but I like "finding the gold" in him better. For sure, it is at its most inner fulfilling to find the gold in the person I'm obsessively attacking in my mind...the one I feel attacked by (or overly prized by, I'm seeing). Nothing stops an attack mind like appreciation.

As Easwaran writes in his today's daily reader: "Instead of criticizing...we can focus all our attention on what is best in them."

Thank you.

IN THE END, ALL THAT MATTERS...

[The following is a reprint of my blog of December 29, 2009.]

“In the end, all that matters is what you have done for Christ.”

Some years ago, I saw that message, framed picture-like, at the home of a lovely lady who was my mother’s friend.

I’ve thought of that message over the years, and it becomes truer to me as I open my mind to it…true for all, when one realizes “for Christ” as for God, for Allah, for Buddha, for Mohammad, for Mary, for Self, for Spirit, for….

In the end, all that matters is what you have done…selflessly…for others.

Thank you.

MEAN, MAD AND PUT-UPON

In his October Community Assistance Letter, my beloved Mac wrote, "Dorothy Day wrote that Jesus 'made heaven hinge on the way we act toward Him in his disguise of commonplace, frail and ordinary human beings.'"

I told Mac that I believed that I'd met Jesus at the Hospital Center’s new pay-for-parking kiosk. Never having seen one before, and being absolutely machine-phobic, I was approaching it with trepidation, also known as gut-bucket fear...fear that I'd never figure it out, that me and my car would be stuck in the garage at this ugly place forever, and Ruckus would starve to death for lack of love and food.

It happened that an old man was there ahead of me. He was kinda twisted and bent over, dressed a tish shabbily. He looked like I felt...mean, mad and put-upon. He was trying to figure out this new thing, and clearly, he didn’t have a clue. I knew that I didn’t either, but that I, too, would have to learn. 

The man was muttering and cussing...talking to himself. So I answered and we got to figuring the thing out together. We finally did, he got his ticket to ride, we shook hands, and he walked away. 

I turned back to the machine and here comes the main ticket for him...the first ticket is a receipt, apparently (sheez!)  I quick call to him as I tear off the ticket and hand it to him. I go back to figuring it out for me, and I did good. I got my ticket, turned away, and he’s still there and he laughingly says, “You’re doing the same thing I did!” My main ticket was just coming. He pulls it out and hands it to me just as I’d handed his to him. We were giggling like teenagers when we parted. 

Here's why I know that was divine intervention: The fact is when I'm all alone and attempting anything new, I nearly always fail on my first attempts. I get utterly frustrated, quit, cry, and have to take an hour's break...at least. If I have anyone, from a five-year old child to a ten-year old dog, beside me, I stay calmer. Also, the man was not intimidating or threatening to me. He was not a well-dressed professional who might not know what he was doing but would not welcome a little old lady's intervention...nor was he a muscle-bound younger man with tatts in a wife-beater and bandanna. In either of those cases, I would have waited out-of-sight and felt sorry for myself.

In my heart, soul, body and brain, I know that I met Jesus yesterday. He's very human.

Thank you.

IN THE WELCOMING WE BECOME ONE

We seek still more spiritual growth not for the knowledge but for the experience...to experience the Father within/without.

I'm guessing spiritual growth is so difficult to honestly seek because the charge is to seek nothing but still more spiritual growth.

We come to know, from our eyebrows up at least, that if we're expecting our good to come to us, we're going down that wrong road again. We're learning that we must quit asking for our good and open out a way for our good to escape from us.

Think of kindness. Where would we go to get kindness but from within? All the kindness there is is already within us just waiting to be used.

It is our reasoning mind that decides when and where to parcel out that kindness...who deserves it, who doesn't. It is our developing spiritual light that shines on all, on everybody, without our deciding the deserving or undeserving.

Thus begins our deeper lesson: It is not our opinions that need to change, it is our mindset...from resisting to unresisting. Here's where we realize that to welcome the good, the bad, the pretty, the ugly, the different, the indifferent is to know Oneness...in the welcoming they become one.

And then the lesson goes deeper to a higher lever...we realize we cannot do that by our unaided will or want...both of which are subject to our reasoning mind. We must go beyond our reasoning mind to love...and there find peace of mind.

Thank you.