SEEK LESS...ON THIS NOTHING WE NOW LIVE, II

The following quote of Joel Goldsmith is a reprint of my post of December 31, 2022. It fills my heart yet again. 

You have come to that point in consciousness where you are seeking for what the world calls the intangible. When you came to a spiritual teaching, you knew in advance, or soon learned, that you were going to obtain nothing in the external realm. What you were seeking was the Invisible, that which cannot be seen, heard, or known. And yet you were seeking to be able to see, hear, and know just that. Through that seeking, you are coming to know that which is unknowable, see that which is invisible, hear that which is inaudible. And on this Nothing you now live. -- Joel Goldsmith, "Leave Your Nets"

We go to God for God...and that is All.

Thank you.

GOD IS IN OUR MISTAKES...SEEK INSIDE

Everything is profane if you live on the surface of it, and everything is sacred if you go into the depths of it—even your sin. To go inside your own mistakenness is to find God. To stay on the surface of very good things, like Bible, sacrament, priesthood, or church, is to often do very unkind and evil things, while calling them good. -- Fr Richard Rohr, Daily Meditation, May 26, 2013

Well now...there is the eye-opener, the answer to my morning's blinding flash that I am currying favor...gushing flowery words, giving $$$ tips, giving over to the other rather than to God. That is staying on the surface looking to get my wants met.

I need to surrender my surface self...hug it and kiss it and let it go. Accept my standard, long ago gifted me: Spiritual principles will solve all my problems.

 

As, if and when I keep my mind open for the Word from the Father within, It comes to me from Me in the moment. 

Plan not, worrit not, follow the Father within.

Thank you.

THE NEW COLOSSUS GONE BEGGING

 "The New Colossus" by Emma Lazarus

Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me:

I lift my lamp beside the golden door.

We come again to our need to recall the promise of America to the "wretched refuse" of other teeming shores. 

Again, and yet again, we trample that promise without so much as a backward glance as we roll on...and who cares if we're going in the right direction? We're strutting our stuff, showing 'em how it's done...and who cares if we do not have a clue our own self? Throw another log on the fire.

I miss Kate Smith singing "God Bless America," and America standing with its hand over its heart and tears of gratitude in its eyes.

Father forgive us for we know not what we do.

Thank you.

THE GIFT OF UNEXPECTED HUMILITY...UH-OH

Choctaw elder and retired Episcopal bishop Steven Charleston writes: We are all prophets. We are not divine messengers. We do not speak for God. We are not miracle workers or moral judges. Instead, we are … human beings living in extraordinary times. We are what the Hopi are: communities seeking a spiritual purpose to their lives. -- Fr Richard's Daily Meditation, December 28, 2023

I keep returning to prophet, as in, what does that mean? Who is a prophet? How can one tell a prophet from a spiritually inclined talker? Or a plain old blowhard?

Before reading Fr Richard this morning, I jotted down some thoughts: Prophets come in all sizes and kinds...the one whose voice a certain few hear or maybe the one least likely who has the most need to hear the Word. 

No wonder I felt gobsmacked when I read Charleston's words: We are all prophets. 

Being so stuck that one does not know if she qualifies as a prophet or a blowhard is a tish humbling...only a tish because, face it, that is funny. 

I particularly relate to the Hopi...seeking a spiritual purpose to my life. Recently, I discovered the meaning of spiritual to me...i.e., to have a sense of peace and purpose for the benefit of others. Later I included myself in the benefit part.

To me today, spiritual means to have a sense of peace and purpose for the benefit of myself and others. 

I long ago realized when I'm thinking, doing, feeling for others while ignoring my own self, my ego has a hold on me. I've driven myself into a ditch in the name of others more times than I choose to dwell on...rarely helped them but got me a boatload of humility whether I wanted it or not. 

Hmmm...a boatload of humility can never do a harm. I'd best pray thank you, love and laugh before I take myself too seriously...or am I too late? 

Thank you. 

LOOK AND LISTEN...LOVE AND LAUGH

He is telling his followers, 'You’re going to be persecuted the way the prophets were before you.'  -- Brian McLaren in Fr Richard's Daily Meditation, December 27, 2023

I must admit upfront that the word "prophet" causes me pause...it brings images of street corner fanatics and religious zealots, some of whom have been fairly close relatives of mine. So, off-putting to me but true, McLaren's description of the prophet fits my identity of myself:

The prophet is somebody who goes deep into themselves to hear the message that’s being birthed in the midst of their pain and their burdens and their frustrations and their sufferings and their questions and their perplexity and their disillusionments. In the foment and ferment of that inner journey, something begins to emerge, and they bring it out and they say, 'I can’t just say these words. I have to demonstrate them. I’ve got to find two or three other people who see what I see so that we can do something about it.'

I was hooked at the sentence, 'I can’t just say these words. I have to demonstrate them.' 

I realized with my first blinding flash of the obvious that I had to make it mine. My personal admonition with each new BFO has been, I must prove this...I can't share it until I have made it mine.  

It seemed that each BFO, each little understanding, why "little" is the necessary descriptive for me had become one. I recalled the snubs and snarks I have received for just being me...I feel the overwhelming love and acceptance I receive for just being me. I knew wonder and joy intertwined with trepidation and doubts. 

I must consider if this insight coming at the end of the year...coming at the beginning of a new year...is God's reality for me or my wannabe fantasy?

This I know from my own experience: God's reality for me is a wannabe fantasy until I quit talking it and start walking it. I will be cleared for landing in my head after I've landed...loving and laughing at my wannabe fantasy or basking in the inexplicable glory of God's love. 

More will be revealed.  Look and listen...love and laugh. 

Thank you.

WITH THE ASSURANCE OF NONE BUT GOD

Mary and Joseph walked in courage and absolute faith that their experience was true, with no one except God to reassure them they were right. -- Fr Richard's Daily Meditation, December 25, 2023

Regarding my piercingly painful shoulder, amid the prayers I was shooting to God, I had a blinding flash of the obvious...namely, I am my healer. 

I understood that all my prayers had been aimed out there, none within. I recalled how often I have said, written, thought, The Father lives within.  

This is the time, the time of unknowing, that "courage and absolute faith" are called up...and way too often jettisoned for something that makes sense to the reasoning mind...where I find myself sliding in and out this morning. 

With no treatment at all, except thank you, my shoulder is way better...hardly hurts, except slightly on occasion. That causes me pause...that which feels off may not be my shoulder, it may be consciousness-raising. Is that me just putting on airs? Or is my consciousness being raised? 

I take heart from both the words and the timing of Fr Richard's article yesterday about Mary and Joseph's journey which may just be the painful way to higher consciousness: 

Kingdom of God people...break through the small kingdoms of this world to an alternative and much larger world, God’s full creation....[Mary] had to let God lead her outside of her box of expectations, her comfort zone...They both had to rely on their angels!....Mary and Joseph walked in courage and absolute faith that their experience was true, with no one except God to reassure them they were right. -- Ibid.

Ah, with no one except God to reassure them they were right. According to me, passing the test of those words is true belief. 

Thank you.

ON FINDING OUR CORE...AND LOVING IT, II

[The following is a reprint of my post of  December 29, 2021.]

The following, by Joan Didion, is from her essay, On Keeping a Notebook, at p 126. This, more than anything I've ever read or heard, describes me and my being in my world as I live it:

....I tell what some would call lies. 'That's simply not true,' the members of my family frequently tell me when they come up against my memory of a shared event. 'The party was not for you, the spider was not a black widow, it wasn't that way at all.' Very likely they are right, for not only have I always had trouble distinguishing between what happened and what merely might have happened, but I remain unconvinced that the distinction, for my purposes, matters. The cracked crab that I recall having for lunch the day my father came home from Detroit in 1945 must certainly be embroidery, worked into the day's pattern to lend verisimilitude; I was ten years old and would not now remember the cracked crab. The day's events did not turn on cracked crab. And yet it is precisely that fictitious crab that makes me see the afternoon all over again, a home movie run all too often, the father bearing gifts, the child weeping, an exercise in family love and guilt. Or that is what it was to me. Similarly, perhaps it never did snow that August in Vermont; perhaps there never were flurries in the night wind, and maybe no one else felt the ground hardening and summer already dead even as we pretended to bask in it, but that was how it felt to me, and it might as well have snowed, could have snowed, did snow.

"I tell what some would call lies," Didion wrote. "How it felt to me: that is getting closer to the truth...."

As I read that, from my toenails up, I felt accepted, partnered...twinned, dimdammit! And I heard my innards laughing for I could freely admit that is me...I tell how it looked, felt, was...looks, feels, is...to me.

And here's the nut as Didion wrote it: "I always had trouble distinguishing between what happened and what merely might have happened, but I remain unconvinced that the distinction, for my purposes, matters." [My emphasis added.]

It seems likely...to me at any rate...that it is our way of communicating that won Didion Pulitzers and has won me friends, each of them my Pulitzer and the pearl beyond price.

Finding our freedom within through the freedom of a like Soul proves true self-acceptance is the acceptance of Self.

Thank you.