THE MUSTARD SEED AND OUR INNER KNOWING

Early on we want to talk spiritual before we own our spirituality. We learn to sit in the silence until we are called upon to talk. This "called upon" is a Now thing...we cannot think it, plan for it, study how to...even as we come to recognize that is what our spiritual preparation is about. 

This I know from my own experience...we will know when to be silent, when to break silence. This I  also know from experience: Just because we know doesn't mean we do...that's why "when wrong, not if wrong" is our fail-safe. 

We will be wrong, and often...quite often...we will learn more from being wrong than if we had kept self-willed silent. 

There...a telling difference in spiritually enlightened and highly educated...sometimes it is necessary to do it wrong to get it right. This is counterintuitive...or in plain speak, doesn't make a lick of sense...but it is exactly where still more spiritual growth awaits...not in our mental acuity, but in our Soul.

I'm convinced the hardest part in living by spiritual principles is trusting spiritual principles...having faith in their reliability. We can't see, touch, smell, taste, feel a spiritual principle...all we have is our own faith, our willingness to trust it. 

Comes the dawning, that is all we have in the God of our own understanding. And there it is, the greatest gift...our inexplicable, inner knowing. 

When first we come to believe in a Power greater than ourself, we realize we're going to need to build our trust in that. That first understanding is the same understanding we will take with us when we go to our Great Reward, as my beloved grandma called death. 

We build our trust...but is it enough? It is never enough if we are still relying on our reasoning mind. Then the parable of the mustard seed comes to mind, and gratefully we pray our thank you.

Thank you.

TRUST GOD...AND RELAX

The only purpose of the gospel, and even religion, is to communicate that one and eternal truth —You are beloved children of God! -- Fr Richard Rohr, "Daily Meditation," October 28, 2021 

OK...if that quote of Fr Richard's is truth, what does it mean to you, to me, to us to be beloved children of God? 

What or who is God to each one of us? 

We say we believe in the God of our own understanding...well, what, who is that in our daily walking around world? Or is it just so many words? 

How does the God of my own understanding manifest itself to me right Now? Or does it? And if it doesn't, what good is it? 

Is it really just so many words or is it real? Does it have meat on its bones, hair on its head, breath in its body...in another dimension? 

Is it personally meaningful or is it I-hope-I'm-not-kidding-myself?

I have wrestled with each of these thoughts and questions and found my answers to each...and then had to wrestle and find it again...and yet again. The great and glorious news is: If we will seek, we will find. 

We will find answers not of our own thinking. We will come to know them to be true which leads to the hard part...living, breathing, walking our proven truth. In other words, trusting. 

Our trust in God is our proof of God...ah, which is not ours to do. It is God's to grant. 

Let go and let God.  

Thank you.

WHERE ELSE WOULD WE GET SO INSPIRED?

You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy,' But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.... -- Matthew 5:43-48  

 

Long ago, a blinding flash of the obvious gifted me with those two sentences as my inside personal goal. Admittedly, doing it has been more than difficult, and that's doing it imperfectly at best. 

To me to "pray for those who persecute you" means to pray for those to whom I have assigned the role of persecutor, relatives, friends and some who are just passersby in my life. I don't have to work on not thinking of them as persecutors, that's the wrong end of the learning curve...I need to upgrade my perception of them to being angels in my life for, like fear, they turn me to God p.d.q. 

Truth to tell, the biggest block to doing this has been the name of the person who first said it, namely, "Jesus."  That name in itself is toxic to many in my world today. I avoid using the name and usually use "J" when I'm quoting him even in my journal! 

My peeps do not use the name when talking about spiritual matters...and literally talking about things he taught. I know, and I quote a lot, that loving our enemies is the essence of nonresistance and nonresistance is love and God is love. Ah, but who first gave us the quiet word, resist not evil? J.

A short time ago, for no known-to-me reason, this "new" understanding came to me: Invite Jesus, as just plain folk, into my thinking...Jesus as a walking around good and decent person...kinda like I believe my dad, my friend Judy's dad Ed and Sandy B. were. 

In short, strip him of the fancy-schmancy religious symbolism and let him be, just like I am...and you are. I've been letting that be...I chew him out on occasion, kiss him on the lips when I'm at sixes and sevens, high-five him when life's going my way. I may change his name to "Jay" until I get to where I'm going.

Best part...I know my God approves. Face it, where would I get such an idea except from my God? 

Thank you.

LOVE AND LOVE ALONE...DO IT OR DIE UGLY

Blinding flash of the obvious: To feel disrespected and to force oneself to remain silent and think good thoughts of the other is just a high-toned self-determined objective. There is no win-win in self-determining to let the other one win, too, so we may actually win by calling us both winners. Duh.

A win-win is God entering our heart dissolving the discord, leaving peace for all behind. (It helps when we first invite God to do his thing...and mean it.) 

Interesting to me...immediately after my BFO, I turned to my study of the Sermon on the Mount. I am today at the very verses from the Sermon that set forth in black-and-white the quiet word...We have ceased fighting everything and everybody:

Matthew 5:38-42 You have heard that it was said, 'An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,' But I say to you, Do not resist one who is evil. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also, and if any one would sue you and take your coat, let him have your cloak as well; and if any one forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. Give to him who begs from you, and do not refuse him who would borrow from you.

There. The Word in a nutshell: We have ceased fighting everything and everybody. 

We need to recall those very words are in our How-To Manual, our Do-It-Or-Die-Ugly Primer. Meaning, we either do what we are taught, or we fall by the wayside.

This spiritual way, this how we do it, is the core of happy, joyous and free...which never would enter the reasoning mind as a good idea. We must go beyond the reasoning mind to the impersonal love of all.

We must go beyond reason to love. -- Thaddeus Golas

Thank you.

ON LOVING YOUR NEIGHBOR AND YOURSELF

Words to welcome our morning with: There is a Jewish proverb, 'Before every person there marches an angel proclaiming, ‘Behold, the image of God.’  

Words to keep uppermost in our mind throughout the day: My job is to plant seeds of love, and to keep on planting, even—or especially—when bad weather comes.

Words to live by: You shall love your neighbor as you love yourself. Yourself. Loving the self is a required balance. If we fail in that, we fail our neighbor, too. 

Finally, and according to me, all these words form the ideas that have been and are building our spiritual growth. We nurture them through remembrance and repetition until they live within us/without us.

Thank you.

Sidebar: The above quotes are lifted whole cloth  from Episcopal Bishop Michael Curry as printed in Fr Richard Rohr's "Daily Meditation," of October 29, 2021. Pass them on, they're too good to keep.

WE ARE A PEOPLE SPIRITUAL IN NATURE

In one of my daily readings this morning, I came across these words:  ...then they are part of the grand movement of love in the world, which is the movement of God in the world.

Blinding flash of the obvious: the grand movement of love in the world is what we are living in right this moment. Resist it not for it is our path to freedom from our own self, that which led us here in the first place.   

I ponder that, and my thoughts go to my beginnings, and I recognize where we are right now is where I was back then. My own need led me to crash and burn and so to a Power greater than self, God, and thus to love and laughter.

Today, we, you and me and our country, are at a place embodied by a self-fed leader, his acolytes and like thinkers. We need recognize and accept that this place, these thinkers, this leader, were given us by our own need. To become that which God created...love and love alone...we, you and I, need to crash and burn with our resistance to all of that. 

I firmly believe our country, born of spiritual (not religious) principles, sturdy in its democratic laws, can and will withstand the battering from within. But what if it is you and I that stand at the door with love and love alone as the protectors of our country? We must needs rid our own self of our like thinking and offer love and love alone...oh! and laughter.

This is a country, we are a people, spiritual in nature. We may seem lost right now, but we pray our thank you knowing we are not lost, we are in the process of finding our rightful place. Let it be.

Thank you.

BE AN ADVOCATE FOR THE EARTH

In continuing to ponder the Wendell Berry quote, No matter how sophisticated and complex and powerful our institutions, we are still exactly as dependent on the earth as the earthworms, I have substituted for the words "our institutions," the words "we think ourself to be."

It is wishful thinking the minute we deny that we think of ourself as "sophisticated and complex and powerful." We're way to clever to use those words...we use lowering words like "shoulda, woulda, coulda." Words with not a lick of spiritual meaning...useless, in fact.

Ah, but how we think of ourself is no longer the point...our dependence on the earth and our care and concern for the earth and the earthworm is our primary. We are as dependent on the earth as the earthworm. Period. 

Simply put, our want is to up our opinion of ourself, our need is to protect the earth. 

We remind ourself that our wants are all covered by God who has our back, that we are a beloved child of God, act like it. 

First off, we pray our thank you. Second, we remind ourself that to love others is essential to a healthy earth. Third, we set out to do that...we move no mountains, we throw the trash of somebody else in a trashcan. 

Now, we continue the same.

Thank you.