DON'T BE SORRY, BE GRATEFUL!

Eeeek! Whole new world! Whole new world!

Instead of apologizing, I thanked Gertrude for her part in our brouhaha. In my quiet time, the thought rolled through that she helped me to actually feel my ego Lucy doing my thinking for me...and that is never, not ever, a good thing. For that, I could not be sorry, only grateful.

There's my whole new world...a new tool for my use in deflating Lucy: Don't be sorry, be grateful!

It boils down to the same-old-same-old though, doesn't it? It's all about the hardest thing life is ever going to ask of us which is that we change our mind...for the benefit of the other.

Thank you.

ON UN-POLLUTING MY SHARE OF THE EARTH

Franciscan sister Ilia Delio  writes:  We’re reaching a fork in the road; two paths are diverging on planet Earth, and the one we choose will make all the difference for the life of the planet. 

WHOA...God is sooo good to me. Just this morning, when I really need it, in that quote having to do with the earth, I see me in my little quirks which pollute my share of the earth.

My story: My sleep last night began fretfully. My friend Gertrude is all set to chew my face off, and I'm all set to let her just so I can rip her right back. Around 2:00 AM, with no preplanned thought, I had a blinding flash of the obvious...I heard, "You're right, Gertrude. I apologize."

I felt such all-encompassing peace that I knew it to be my answer. With which, I drifted into sleep.

I'm forever preaching (which I prefer to call "sharing") that we must agree with our adversary quickly, that we have ceased fighting anything and anybody. But I don't recall ever knowing such complete peace after coming to agree to agree. I've known I needed to do it and have done it, not with recalcitrance but for sure never with a sense almost of joy.

I fully realized...I actually felt... how much more peaceful it would be within me to accept my part, leave her part to her, apologize, and let it be. In other words, to agree with my adversary quickly.

Thank you.

NOW TO DO IT

Most likely there will  ever be times in our lives that appear to be less than wonderful...when we seem to be at sixes and sevens as it were. Naturally, we will resist. Ah, but it is the overcoming of our own natural impulses that is the aim and the gift of still more spiritual growth.

The hardest lesson...and I am still learning...is to let that be my gift. To work to earn it is to miss the message.

Here's my problem: I still can't believe that'll do us a harm, that is, to work to earn it. It may well be wasted effort but it keeps my thoughts turned toward God. Where's the harm?

Uh-oh...my thoughts. When I know full well our thoughts will ever be legislating for our will, and our will alone. That's the harm, our block if you will. That's why it is Let go and let God, not Let go a little and think on how to help God.

It's like we're taught at age five or six: When someone offers you a gift, a compliment or a present, accept it and say "Thank you." And that is all.

Thank you.

THIS, TOO, IS GOD

Here's me, feeling uncertain, scared, fretty...again.

This is the exact time of year, that my beloved Ari first got sick...he went back to Heaven the day after Thanksgiving. 1989. And my adored Ruckus is not well. And I'm half crazed. And God's in his Heaven, all's right with the world...only it doesn't feel all that right with my world.

But you know what? All those things we learn and say and try to teach others? They do count. I can say...pray...God can and will intervene in my life in my behalf and feel the better for the reminder. I do remind me to upgrade my attitude, and I'll upgrade my problem, and that does give me a positive  to turn my attention toward.

Here's my truth this morning: If the only prayer you ever say is 'Thank You,' that would suffice. -- Meister Eckhart

Thank you.

ON MEANDERING THOUGHTS AND LOVING THEM

[The following is a reprint of my blog of June 20, 2015.]

My thoughts are meandering this morning, and I remember again that in the midst of any apparent disaster or simply unwanted situation, to realize that God's hand is in it is all that is needed to bring peace.

In pondering that, it occurred to me that that realization ought to bring peace not only to me, realizing it, but to any others in the situation. But ought schmought...I cannot direct it, I can only know it. If the other is not on my spiritual wavelength...being higher or lower...s/he will miss it.

Spiritual power, however, is like water...it goes to its own level. That realization at that time may touch someone I have no knowledge of...and come as a needed blinding flash of the obvious to him or her. Maybe that's one way I get my blinding flashes of the obvious...from someone in meditation 100 miles away!

I love that image but what do I know? Just enough to know that if I'll love and laugh I won't have to analyze these things...and call it pondering.

God loves me so much.

Thank you.

WHATEVER THE OUTCOME

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil....

We face each day not knowing if this is the day we walk through the valley of the shadow of death (a.k.a.,  meet ego deflation in depth). When the time is now, we're not doing it wrong if our heart is pounding, our hands are shaking and our eyes are filled with  tears.

In fact, there's our still more spiritual growth. We can give our self credit for going forward, for walking toward our fear. To the reasoning mind, that is a low bar to clear...driven by our ego, we can only accept looking good, i.e., winning, as the "right" goal.

We can be grateful that we know that our worst fear may well be realized but also that it may not be. Our highest hope can be realized only when the result is not ego-driven, when we have no desire for one over the other. We'd best want God's will to be done in our life more than we want our will to be done...which does not preclude pounding heart, shaky hands and teary eyes.

Whatever the outcome, it is our still more spiritual growth, and there's the pearl beyond price.

Thank you.

LIVING IN AN ACCEPTING WORLD

Love is the highest and holiest action because it always contains that which is not love within itself, it always and ever moves to include the unloving. -- Thaddeus Golas, "The Lazy Man's Guide to Enlightenment"

I've read "The Lazy Man's Guide" too many times to count, yet I nearly always find something I do not recall having read...underlined and highlighted as they may be. 

Golas's quote is especially meaningful to me today because I am stumbling and bumbling my way through the ever-deepening meaning of love. Seems that every time I get a new insight, I feel sure that This Is It...then I'm hit with yet another unlovable, another resistible which is just something that to my reasoning mind must be resisted, set straight, made right by me.

Loving the unlovable, accepting the unacceptable...ah, those are the impossibles to our mind's eye. We think they are obviously not right since they go against our basic instinct...i.e., to win (which we call "survival").

The hard lesson learning is that when we win, we lose. For winning is of the ego, and it is not that losing is of  God, it is that there is no win, there is no lose in an accepting world, a.k.a., The Peaceable Kingdom. And isn't that where our still more spiritual growth is aiming us? 

Thank you.