TRUDGING ALONG GOD'S ROAD

When we feel a self-need, the answer is to go deeper into that feeling of need. Most often we try to figure out how to fill it or fix it. We obsess on how-to until we must declare defeat...then we pray for God to fix it.

I try to remember this: A sense of need is itself heading in the wrong direction...that is simply our ego, my Lucy, scratching at the door of self, wanting to be let out. Our needs, being spiritually based, are fulfilled by God...our wants, ego-based, are ours to fill or release.

When someone asks me to pray for them or for somebody, e.g., their relative who is dying of cancer, I always agree, and I do. I include them, enfold them if you will, into my world prayer which I pray every morning, and it is always the same: Precious Lord, Help us, each and all of us in this world, to know your will for us and give us the power to carry it out. Thank you for our everything just as it is right this very minute. Amen.

I know in the praying that God's will, which is always love, has already been carried out, and it is for the best for all. Our spiritual task is to see it through God's eyes and feel grace. If, however, it looks like cow piles, Lucy is still doing the viewing.

This is when we turn it, turn it, turn it, until we find the sliver of gold. It is there, it cannot not be there...find it and thank God, for no matter how slim the sliver of gold, it will grow as we are now turned in the right direction.

We are trudging along God's road now...with love and laughter.

Thank you.

WE ARE TURNED AWAY FROM EGO

Father forgive them for they know not what they do. -- Christ Jesus's cry from the Cross.

Father forgive me for I know exactly what I do...and I do it anyway. -- our cry way too often.

My morning blinding flash of the obvious: Both cries, Jesus's and ours, have the same result for God, the Father, cannot not forgive. God, the Father of all, is forgiveness. God is love...how can love not be forgiveness? So we are forgiven...what we must needs remember is a previous admonition: Go and sin no more. Oops.

Here's the hook...old Lucy, my ego, has never met a mystery of God's that she could not use. We must be ever aware of that else we fall into the ego-trap that is so popular today...do what we want and ask forgiveness later. No. Why would we study the Sermon daily and diligently to continue living in self-will? We work with a sincere heart and goal following what is laid out for us in the Sermon (that which makes no common sense at all, may I say) just to selfishly continue serving our ego? No, just no.

At some point, working with God, we are turned away from Lucy's siren to hear our Soul's whisper. Just as, I'm sure, Chief Joseph did when his Soul spoke through him, declaring, "I will fight no more forever." There was a man of God, righteous and holy.

And we all have that Soul within us. We are each and everyone of us righteous and holy. Loose it and let it go. Love it and laugh.

Thank you. 

THE BATTLE IS NOT OURS

But if you do choose to walk through the depths--even the depths of  your own sin and mistakes--you will come out the other side, knowing you've been taken there by a Source larger than yourself.  [I read that awhile back in a Richard Rohr "Daily Meditation" just after my deep quiet time on my rues, regrets and remorses being my gold.]

Knowing, believing and living that knowledge and belief is the essence of a spiritually based being. It is way too difficult to believe (not to know but to believe) even when in the depths of our own sin and mistakes, that God is there. Our Source, our Force of Being, our very own Beloved, is with us, within us, without us ever and always.

I suspect the reason it is so difficult is because that belief, not the knowledge but the belief, totally eviscerates the ego. My ego Lucy doubles, triples, down with the very idea. We want ego deflation in depth and make the mistake of thinking to do it our self. We know what to do, we do for others all on our own...easy peasy.  Lucy exults with the very idea.

To engage in a battle of will or wits with Lucy is to play with Lucy's deck...stacked and marked against me before birth. So imagine trying to deflate her entirely...she's already won the battle the minute I engage in it.

Remember that great civil rights battle cry, "Keep your eyes on the prize!" There it is. We don't ponder our ego and all its shifty, sneaky, low-life ways and how we're going to whip it...mainly because we're getting set to use every one of those ways in order to win. No. That's just another ego trip.

So, what to do? We go to God. Not for the purpose of defeating Lucy...that's staying in the ego-battle. We keep our focus on God, the things of the spirit, love, peace, joy. In effect, we let God hug Lucy, and in his warm embrace Lucy is powerless.

The battle is not ours...it is God's.

Thank you.

GIVE OVER...WITH LOVE AND LAUGHTER

The grace of God cures disharmony and disorder in human relationships. -- "God Calling," August 27

Since the above is true, why do we continue to natter God about a relationship of ours that is at sixes and sevens? Issuing demands disguised as prayers (What?..we think he can't see through that?) as to how he needs to make the other see it our way.

We think we've become a spiritual giant when we remember to "pray" that he make us see it the other's way. Who's kidding whom? If that is what we really wanted, we'd do it already.

It is all about ego deflation in depth...ego deflation in depth is all about giving over to another. Not clinging to our belief that we are right. Not justifying our position since he is wrong. No. Give over. Not as a doormat, there to be walked over...that's just another ego trip.

We give over as a full and complete member of God's world where we all work together to show forth God. Whether anyone else is knowing/doing it or not. Our reasoning mind will not get us there. Thinking it through will lead us back to Whaaa?

We go to God for God and God's ways. Or we don't get to God.

Thank you.

THE SPIRITUAL LIFE IS NOT A THEORY

You say you're having a panic attack, Bunky? Feeling sore afraid, entire body clinched, volts of panic surging from your toes to your nose leaving your brain...sore afraid, clinched, panicked....

Oh, do I have an answer for you! The answer requires that you park your brain, which is already about half off the rails so it's no big deal.

The answer is: Don't fight it, invite it...invite that panic to come right in, side down, have a cuppa.

The trouble being, our reasoning mind is just a tish too smart to fall for that. Invite panic in? It is already in!..and it is running away with us!..we are not stupid!..give us a a pill, a shrink, a funny cigarette, chocolate.

Only we've already learned...repeatedly...that none of those work. We have a terrible feeling that the reasoning mind may be the driver of the panic...that feeling of spiraling ever downward, upward, sideways, crossways...all at the same time. But the reasoning mind balks at the answer being, "Welcome it."

Here's our dreaded crash and burn come to save us.

Having nothing left to lose, we turn to God. We accept finally that our salvation will only be found through spiritual answers. Our invitation to that panic is our turning to God, opening the door to let his power flow out...into us and through us.

We come to believe that God can and will intervene in our life in our behalf. We come to believe that because, having turned to God, we experience that. It is not a theory...we experience it in our walking around world.

We come to know the grace of God can and will...anything.

Thank you.

GO FOR GRACE...HUSH

To live by the letter of the law is to live a rigid existence. Rigid existence is a contradiction in terms. Rigid = hard, unyielding. Existence = ethereal, nonresistant. According to me.

To live by the letter of the law is to choose fear as your God...if it is set down in black and white, it is right, no exceptions. No. There are always exceptions in God's world...and God makes them, not us. God makes the exception to the law that a murderer needs to be murdered. Not always. Maybe not ever, but that's beyond my ken.

I'm still back in the kiddie pool. Like...being right does not make us right; hurt people hurt people; it is better to lose in learning how to win than to win and believe you're a winner with nothing left to learn.

All of these paradoxes lay the foundation for learning how to cease fighting anything and anybody. When remembered, they cause us pause. That means we have just one task, and that is to discipline our own self.

In plain word, hush.

That's the pause when God uses our heart's voice...and we are sore afraid and elated both at the same time. For we have experienced grace, and we know it.

Grace is not under the letter of the law.

Thank you.

THUS AM I LOVE

I ponder again that God's ability to give is unlimited, it is our ability to receive that is not, and I realized  it is limited because our ability to receive is self-bound.

Carl Jung's "The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are" is key to unlocking that self...by opening us to who we truly are from our toenails up through a degree of self-acceptance only known on a higher plane, through a higher power.

The privilege is not to give love, nor to receive love, but to be love. The privilege is God's gift of realization that the Father and I are one, the Father is love, thus am I.

Thank you.