GIVING GOD A GIGGLE AND A GRIN...AGAIN

I woke up thinking that my material world appears to be less than wonderful, what with people losses and health drains. I took comfort in the thought that for this I seek still more spiritual growth...I am utterly at peace knowing the mirror image of God reflects my life exactly as it need be in this instant. I pray my thank you.

Then I turned on the weather report. It is May 31, we are back-to-face of June 1, and still we're having a preponderance of gray days, chill and rain. I love that that's what ticks me off most...that which clearly is not mine, can never be mine, and I get all up in my head about it. 

That immediately leads to my own personal slippery slope: That which is clearly not mine reminds me of old wo/men laying down the law for young women and what they should do with their bodies. While young men do what they do because "boys will be boys." As Gloria Steinem, a very smart woman, once said, "If men birthed babies, abortion would be a sacrament." Tell me that's not true.

There it is...spelled out before my own eyes. I can write I am utterly at peace knowing the mirror image of God reflects my life exactly as it need be in this instant. I pray my thank you. Then, in a heartbeat, I'm ranting about one more thing that I will never experience so I make free with my heavy-duty opinions.

Well, I just figure we are the only fun-figures God gets to love and laugh about. Dogs and deer...crocodiles and kangaroo, for Heaven's sake...surely are better behaved.

Thank you.

LOVE...A COMPLETE TRANSFORMATION

If we are to be a continuation of God’s way of seeing, we must first of all be mirrors. We must be no-thing so that we can receive some-thing. To love demands a complete transformation of consciousness. -- Fr Richard Rohr, "Daily Meditation," May 5, 2018

The key to living a complete and fulfilled life lies in the realization that there is a mystical, transcendental Presence within us that has already provided our infinite supply unto eternity, that contains within Itself our companionship unto eternity, and that has within Itself the power of fulfillment. -- Joel Goldsmith, "A Parenthesis in Eternity," p 269

Goldsmith's key to living a complete and fulfilled life requires the complete transformation of consciousness of Rohr's "Meditation."  I'm convinced that is the giving up of our hope of Heaven. An utter surrender of self-will moves us in the right direction...turns us away from our own idea of Heaven and leaves us without an answer, not even sure of the question.  Feeling hopeless, helpless and bare-butt naked in the world.

The answer we seek is seldom what we want...and there's the nature of the mirror image of God. We may experience what to our eyes looks like pain beyond enduring only to learn on the other side of that pain that to God's eyes it was what we needed to be led free...Free Of Me. We realize a complete transformation of consciousness. 

God knows our needs, we only know our wants...which wants may even match our needs only we cannot self-will them. We must go to God for God, and all these things shall be added unto us.

Thank you.

REGRET NOTHING, WELCOME EVERYTHING

I tend to believe that regrets are just resentments in fancy dress. The first sentence in today's "God Calling" is just two words: Regret nothing. The second sentence: Not even the sins and failures.

That's sure not putting too fine a point on it, is it?

That's not Fatherly advice, that's a command.

Why, then, do we find it so difficult to follow that command? Who's kidding whom? There is no room for debate there. No way is Yes, but acceptable...or even allowed!

I never wanted to deny it. I just wanted to learn how to let it be true, to be my truth.

I bring good news. We let it be true by our daily commitment to seek still more spiritual growth. Now. Here. Right where we are.

We seek still more spiritual growth daily not (just) for the Big Bang, God Is moment. But for the little constants...the misspeaks, the inadvertents, the oops of life. Those are the regrets my ego Lucy could polish until they were clear enough to read another's name on...and a resentment was birthed. The resentment needed not be at the other, it often was at me, specifically my own stupidity, ignorance, no-good-dirty- whoa, Nellie, I'm gone again.  

Ah, and there's the pearl. Through daily practice, we find a whole new wakin' up morning. We can feel that niggling regret, and we can know peace. We are now aware that it's just looking to blame and shame, but there's no willing body at home to accept it.

It is in the search, the discipline to seek still more spiritual growth daily, that we find the peace that passes understanding. Without that daily discipline, it fades, and it fades a lot faster than ever it comes.

Maybe that's why we're told to pray without ceasing...and maybe that's why, per Meister Eckhart, If the only prayer you say in your life is thank you, that would suffice.

Thank you.

ON BECOMING WHOLLY HOLY

I have read that we must defeat our tendency to try to be holy without being human first, and I know that to be my early-on (up until the next time) stumbling block.

It is hard enough to learn that we must go beyond reason to love (or love your enemy as yourself...whoa!). If, though, we are sincere about our search for still more spiritual growth, we do come to the necessary understanding of their inner meaning. Most often our understanding translates to coming to agree with it as it applies to you. That, too, we can get grateful for since it is that thorn that births our thank you that turns us away from self toward God. 

Our reliance on our reasoning mind is our tripwire. Our reasoning mind is a necessary tool in our day-to-day life but we must remember that it legislates for self...ever and always. Common sense is ego's nest, or launching pad, depending on our reaction to whomever/whatever we are perceiving at the moment.

In trying to be holy, we quote turn it over at the drop of another's problem...in being human, we beat our self up because we're flunking our own rigid, righteous and right rule. We come to agree again and again and yet again that self is our only enemy.

We want to let it go...to cling to nothing, to fly. We can't. In that gut-bucket, toenails-up realization we are free. Free to be wholly human. We love it and laugh.

There. That is the fruit of our labor to sincerely turn our will and our life over to the care of our God...ah, now that is holy.

Thank you.

OUR LIFETIME DISCIPLINE

I lined up the loftiest ideals I could find and set out to achieve them. The results were rarely admirable, often laughable, and sometimes grotesque. But always they were unreal, a distortion of my true self—as must be the case when one lives from the outside in, not the inside out. I had simply found a 'noble' way to live a life that was not my own, a life spent imitating heroes instead of listening to my heart. -- from today's "Daily Meditation" of Fr Richard Rohr's quoting Parker Palmer, a Quaker teacher and activist

There. That to me is the perfect description of a self-determined objective and its almost always consequences...rarely admirable, often laughable and sometimes grotesque.  Palmer was speaking of his life's journey, but all one need do is minimize the goal...one's life's journey into what one wants right now. That want way too often justifies itself as a need, and we're heading down that wrong road again.

Our wants usually do distort our true self for by their very nature they are for our own benefit...even our want to do good for another. Follow that to its end, and isn't the result that we feel good about our self? Who would want to do good for another if we knew we'd feel just terrible about our self in the end?

The discipline, the risk if you will,  comes in learning to listen to and to trust our very own heart, the hidey hole of our Father. Or, as Palmer described it, living not from the outside in but the inside out.

This is the discipline known as seek ye first the kingdom of Heaven. Ah, but no, the discipline comes in forgetting the rest of that sentence, the part about and all these things shall be added unto you. That is where our self-determined objectives live.

No wonder it's a lifetime discipline...and aren't we grateful that it is?

Thank you.

TO MEET AGAIN

I think it not improbable that man,

like the grub that prepares a chamber

for the winged thing it never has seen

but is to be –

that man may have cosmic destinies

that he does not understand.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

(1841-1935)

That gives me comfort...that Oliver Wendell Holmes thought it not improbable that humans may have cosmic destinies. He wasn't at all certain sure, was he? That's my comfort. 

Most of the time I think I'm certain sure...then I hold my little guy (who was human in disguise) as he leaves this plane, and I can only hope there really is a cosmos where he will know peace, love and joy...where he can bound across Heaven, meetin' and greetin' and having one fine time...again. Or still. 

Thank you. 

FORGIVENESS BEGINS WITH OUR THOUGHTS

Those dark nights of the soul...those, too, we come to love.

It is in those dark hours, when we are begging God's forgiveness, that we first awaken to the need within us to be released of our self-protective wrap, to forgive in a word. I contend that it is the need to upgrade (forgive?) our thoughts that forms the path to forgiveness...of self and others.

Ego will always dictate...sometimes just a tish, sometimes entirely...that others are the real reason we did less-than-wonderful in the first place. That's ego's job. Ah, but our job is to turn from ego to God. 

As we seek God's forgiveness, our very desire extends, embracing our remembrances, our memories  of others, those people and events that we have been regretting...and blaming.

That dark night of the soul has become the channel we pass through to become forgiving...of self and of others.

It is in forgiving that we are forgiven.

Thank you.