LEARNING A NEW LEVEL OF LOVE

Fr Richard Rohr's "Daily Meditation" today quotes Coretta Scott King speaking of her husband's commitment to peaceful resistance. In her talk were the words, nonviolent resistance [is] the means of stirring and awakening moral truths in one’s opponents. 

I see! I see! With those few words, my eyes are opened. I understand that responding with peaceful resistance, with nonviolence or love, is to invite love and peace...there is nothing for the other to resist. 

In grasping what peaceful resistance means to me, I know that to do peaceful resistance is to do and to do and to continue doing until I am living it without thought, without selection, without judgment...but with the option, to quote our beloved John Lewis, to cause good trouble. Nobody is born to be another's doormat.  

That makes clear Gandhi's statement, Nonviolence cannot be preached. It has to be practiced.  

I have known all the right words, have practiced them, for years.  Ah, but without a sacred purpose, meaning not for the purpose of stirring and awakening moral truths in one’s opponents.  

This blinding flash of the obvious tells me that I need a mentor who lives nonviolent resistance. No better time than now to begin learning to love not by my want-to but by my need-to, a very different level of love.

There. I give over to God to lead me to my guide, please and thank you.

Thank you.

WE DON'T COME BACK ALONE

[On singing the song of trust in the Lord] We trust in the Lord, stay on the battlefield, and treat everybody right until we die because, frankly, nonviolent love can get you killed.  *** This is not a song to make you famous, but a faith to sustain you when you go to jail, when the money runs out, when you are powerless and cold and alone. You sing this song, and you know you’re not alone. You’ve been invited into something big enough to hold all your sorrows. --  Fr Richard Rohr, "Daily Meditation," November 23, 2019, quoting another whom I neglected to note.    

There. That I believe from my toenails up. It is also my proof positive that what I believe and what I do are two distinctly different things...some of the time. 

I know from my own experience that my "song of trust in the Lord" will sustain me because it has more than once when the money was not there, when I was powerless, when I was friendless, mocked and humiliated, when I, personally, was not the faithful friend. 

Another hard lesson to welcome: Faith is not a one-shot-deal.

Without a need to build our faith, we'd not go for  still more spiritual growth...which, face it, invites hard knocks, faithless friends and frayed rope bridges. 

How else are we going to learn to love, to be ye perfect even as our Father is perfect? Which few of us expect in this lifetime but that's sufficient reason for me to believe in...hope for?...reincarnation. We keep coming back until we get it right.

We come back knowing the song of trust in the Lord...we don't come back alone.

Thank you.

BE THE PEACE YOU SEEK

Thich Nhat Hanh teaches: The situation is so dangerous, injustice is so widespread, the danger is so close. In this kind of situation, if we panic, things will only become worse. We need to remain calm, to see clearly.  *  *  *  A person who wakes up and understands is called a Buddha Christ. It is as simple as that. The capacity to wake up, to understand, and to love is called Buddha Christ nature [my name change]. -- Fr Richard Rohr, "Daily Meditation," July 29,2020

A person who wakes up and understands is called a Christ was told to me nearly fifty years ago. I did not get it, and I did not get it purely because I equated the word "Christ" with "Jesus," and I would have no part of that. It was some fifteen years later before I waked  up and understood...and I had already been trying to comprehend the Sermon on the Mount for nearly the whole of those  fifteen years. 

The good news...none of my trying was lost, none of my eyebrows-up efforts were for naught...they each and every blind-alley effort was necessary for me to be turned away from my self-determined direction and toward the peace that passes understanding...which all religions teach.  

Ah, what a wondrous revelation...that all religions teach peace. That gave me permission to keep it simple and go with the one I had some basic knowledge of, Christianity. I still know not a lot about the religion, and I'm good with that. It is the life that Jesus lived whether every word is true or not that I want for mine since the fellowship I live in is based on these principles...short form of which is ego-deflation-in-depth or get over yourself. 

I just want to be the peace that all religions teach. Which, who's kidding whom, is a stretch. But, if it be true that with God all things are possible, just don't set the clock (or the calendar) and go for it.

Thank you.

TO LIVE SIMPLY...GET OVER YOURSELF

You wonder sometimes why you are permitted to make mistakes in your choices when you sought so truly to do My Will in the matter. To that I say it was no mistake....Not to him who walks on with no obstacles in his way, but to him that overcometh is the promise given. -- "God Calling," July 28-

There, that quote from today's "God Calling" gives the backbone to my chosen code: We have ceased fighting anything and anybody...which to me comes directly from the Sermon's Resist not evil.

A brief salute to the late Honorable John Lewis who I believe will be remembered along with King, Gandhi and other walking-around saints. In reading about Lewis, who I have learned studied and lived by the Sermon, I feel more settled with my inner discomfort that I have been nattering about for too long now. It takes inner discomfort to be willing to change...and then to loose it and let it go.

To cease fighting, to make an honest decision to attempt to cease fighting, has and does require me to "refrain from the inner violence of the heart" as Gandhi is quoted as saying about nonviolence. I tend to give myself points for not responding in kind to a snark or a snarl, but there's no "good behavior" in that when we're mentally responding in kind...we could just tape our lips shut, that won't get us still more spiritual growth.

According to me, spiritual growth has next to nothing to do with religion as such and religious opining in particular. It has everything to do with putting the other person first not just out on the freeway, which counts by the way, but in our own thoughts and prayers...and especially when our ego is demanding retribution for some slight (how aptly named is that?).

I'm convinced that doing it right by rote is not the path toward spiritual growth...by rote is just living by memory so we won't be wrong. Face it, nothing turns us to God faster than a personal foul-up. For that's when, invariably, the God of my understanding turns me to the fact that I have made a decision based on self that later placed me in a position to be hurt, and I've taken that out on another...no matter what it seems the other has done to me.

I'm a believer in keeping it simple...I really like Rohr's forgiveness is the religious word for letting go. Because isn't it? Isn't forgiveness just letting go of our own opinion? Then there's my current favorite, of course, get over yourself...which covers the Sermon in three words. Ah, to live that simply, there's life's key.

Thank you.

ON GIVING OVER

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. taught us that before  we go out to witness for justice, we have to make sure that we can love and respect those with whom we disagree. [How do we get to a win-win solution?]  We change from inside—from the power position to the position of vulnerability and solidarity, which gradually changes everything. -- Fr Richard Rohr, "Daily Meditation," July 27, 2020

My blinding flash of the obvious that changed my life: Be the first to give over. 

This came to me sometime ago when I was in a very minor hassle with a friend...I don't even remember the problem but I'm thinking it was akin to which movie do we want to go see? Minor? That doesn't even qualify for minor, but my ego was fully, completely, utterly engaged...and so was hers.

Be the first to give over blinked in my mind, and I followed the blink...which is the even bigger "who'd-a-thunk-it?" There were no bells and whistles until much later when another opportunity came to me, and I found it not so easy to do. I did it, but that rang the bell that told me I had to do some serious digging...because I had done it with resulting resentment. The Big No, No Way, Go Back, Do Over, etc.

 

That's when I learned that the old prior proper planning is necessary...probably in life itself...but for sure when making inside changes. 

I realized that I needed to make a decision to commit to the two great commandments, loving the God of my understanding with all my heart, soul, body and brains and my neighbor, be they friend or foe, as myself. Being not entirely stupid, I knew this was going to be a tough slog, and I'd best stop my giving over to get. 

I knew I loved the God of my understanding to the best of my ability to love, but the as myself was a puzzler. For I didn't love myself, and I knew that. So I pondered my less-than-wonderfuls...i.e., I'm a tish partial to gossip, I have a tendency toward know-it-all, I may ramble a bit much, etc. So I determined to stop that. 

I don't know if it was God who slapped me upside my head, but something did, because I came to my senses, or close enough, and the decision bloomed within me: I am as good as I'm going to get just as I am...it'll be hard enough holding steady right here, any improvement is God's job, and he's more than capable so let him already. 

Wonder of wonders, great God Almighty! I felt free to love my neighbor, friend or foe, as myself...s/he is good enough just as s/he is...let it be. So any disagreements I have today, I can be the first to give over without resentment...plus, with no sense of superiority. 

Even more freeing, just because I can doesn't mean I always do...but I know what to do when I miss: Give over, give up, give in.

I cling to the heart-knowledge that we all and each of us are as good as we can be right this very minute...hug it and kiss it and let it be. Now love and laugh.

Thank you.

RAINS MUST COME...EGO MUST RESIST

My Sermon study this morning was at Matthew 7:24-27; i.e., doing His words is akin to building our house on rock, rains come, house stands...not doing them is akin to building our house on sand, rains come, house falls.

My take is the little noticed by me but really important words...that the rains are going to come whether we're doing His words or not. It rains on the just and the unjust alike.

It's not an easy fact to remember, that doing the good we are learning does not exempt us from the rains, because, face it, that is what we usually are praying for. No, it is taking the steps we are learning that we are safe, secure and unafraid (or close enough) in the midst of the rain, i.e., the political/pandemic/financial/civil rights/climate change, etc., storms of today's world.  

Doing the work of our spiritually based program frees us, if only a tish, from our ego. It is our daily discipline of freeing ourself from our egoic mind that allows us to pass on to those who follow all that is ever passed on to us.

All that being my truth, Rohr's post this morning is particularly apt:

The ego seems to find its energy precisely by having something to oppose, fix, or change....We must recognize our constant tendency toward negating reality, resisting it, opposing it, and attacking it on the level of our mind. This is the universal addiction. -- Fr Richard Rohr's "Daily Meditation," July 26, 2020.

Thank you.

FORGET, FORGIVE, LOVE, LAUGH

Forget, forgive, love and laugh. -- "God Calling," July 26

There it is...the short form of the Serenity Prayer, the Lord's Prayer and the Hallelujah Chorus all in one. 

Now to do it. To actually forget, forgive, love and laugh. 

Ah, but who's kidding whom? On my own I am incapable of all but one of those...I can laugh. I know from doing it that forcing laughter can lead to genuine laughter...it's like yawns...they just follow when given a starter.

Which poses the question: What if I tried to force feeling love on an ego-determined unlovable? Actually, I have done that, too...but it was to get on the good side of, not to give love just to give love. Big difference. But it worked. I was in high school, the unlovable and I snarked at each other a lot, I found out she lived three doors from a guy I had a mad crush on...change of mind and motives, p.d.q. I quit resisting her which gave her nothing to resist...we wound up best friends. 

Ah, high school...life was simpler then. I didn't analyze so much. Want it? Go for it! There wasn't a lot of searching for a higher purpose for sure.

I suspect life is just as simple now, it's the constant mental digs that confuse the issue. Unfortunate fact,  trying to do God's will as a self-determined objective takes God out of the picture...kinda like trying to do loving without being loving. Say what?

Which leaves forget and forgive standing alone. This isn't the forget that comes with age, of course. This forget is of the things we'd best forget...those things we hold ourself in bondage to by resentment in all its forms. 

I'm convinced the only way free of resentment is by our act of forgiveness. Forgive...get over one's self. Which cannot be done by self-will...if we bring self-will to a resentment, resentment has already won. We go to God for God...not to get God to do for us, but to give over to God. Trusting, knowing that God has already healed us and our disturbance.

Loose it and let it go.    

Thank you.