ON BELIEVING...BUT NOT FANATICALLY

Fr Richard has written of a deep transformation that isn’t achieved by magic or miracles or priestcraft but by a vital spiritual experience that is available to all human beings. 

Comes the slowly blooming light: That transformation is a long time coming...as in the rest of our natural life. That fairly well defines still more spiritual growth...our new, every day new...way of seeing, hearing, knowing is that deep transformation. 

When, not if, we forget that we are spiritual beings living from a higher plane...meaning that we want to smack Joe or Sylvia upside the head for irritating us...we have learned to shoot a quick thank you. That is exchanging our want for our need...love and laughter. 

To complete Fr Richard's quote, that transformation leads to an emotional sobriety, immense freedom, a natural compassion, and a sense of divine union that is the deepest and most universal meaning of that much-used word 'salvation.'

Just an afterword: I had the devil's own time in adding the end of Fr Richard's quote; namely, that is the deepest and most universal meaning of that much-used word 'salvation.'

Why the hesitancy, I am not certain sure, but I suspect it has to do with the word "salvation." That has a ring to me of what I identify as "White religiosity," or the rigid, righteous and right of the White entitled-to-be-religious-fanatics...not to be too rigid, righteous and right about it myself. 

I give myself points for adding it, I take a couple back...just because.

Thank you.

SOME ACTION IS TO SIT AND WAIT ON THE LORD

I have been mentally struggling with a what-to-do problem. "Jerry," a friendly acquaintance of mine, has co-opted a special symbol from the Fellowship of which I am, he is not, a member. Only one other member is aware that he is not a member of that Fellowship. He is now sharing as if he is a full-fledged member but does not specifically identify himself as such. 

My quandary is threefold: The other member who knows of his deception seems to have no problem with it; I do not choose to be either a gossip or a do-gooder; finally, believing this to be detrimental first to my Fellowship and second to Jerry, is it mine to address? 

I believe I got my Quiet Word this morning: Speak to Jerry with love...of him, not of what he is doing. Speak to him alone...bring in no known "heavy hitters" to back me up. He is not to be condemned but reminded that his membership and thus his actions need to be clarified. In short, he needs to come clean since his next step may be to act as a mentor for which he is supremely unqualified.

Ah, and here comes my egoic mind shouting her proverbial What if? In the end, what if what I say goes right by him...he shrugs and changes not? 

All it takes for bad to win is for good to sit silently by. --  Edmund Burke, radically paraphrased 

Immediately after writing, I opened Joel Goldsmith's "The World is New" at p. 69, and read: Ultimately, we shall realize that any and every obligation -- family or otherwise -- is not our personal responsibility, but that of the Christ ***. No demand will be a drain if we catch the central point that the demand is not being made upon us, but upon the Christ, and we shall look upon ourselves as instruments -- transfer agents-- through whom our family, friends, or relatives are supported.

Reasoning mind translation: Love and laugh and do the next right thing. If wrong, promptly admit it...and love and laugh.

Thank you.

ONE...I AM/WE ARE/LIFE IS

Blinding flash of the obvious: No miracles happen when we shut down and take no chances.

No inner-miracles happen when we take no chances...which is what decisions are, chances. Self-protected we close down, locked in our self-determined objective, holding to that material feeling of safety. 

That flash immediately opened another: Thou prepares a place before me in the presence of my enemies. Ah, there be the secret of One-ness. Thou are the great I Am is i...I/i prepare a place before me in the presence of my enemies.  

I/ i prepare the place that brings my enemies to me; i fear them not for I am with me/within me...I am doing the bidding just as i am. 

I Am/we are One. 

All of those one-thought came right before I read today's Fr Richard's Daily Meditations with a quote by author and minister Danté Stewart: I started to see that my Black rage in an anti-Black world was a spiritual virtue…. 

There...One-ness: Black rage in an anti-Black world was a spiritual virtue. 

We are/life is One.

Thank you.

TRUST GOD TO SPEAK OUR TRUTH

I am very leery of people who quote the Bible word for word with commas and semicolons in place. 

Actually, I'm leery of quoters who just repeat what they have heard as if it is original to them. Until they have made the words their own through their own experience (their own usually humbling experience), they just know the words, and that is all.

F.X., my late and beloved mentor, once told of people who would come to him speaking words they forgot they had heard from his lips...the "sound good" words. 

I have noted that nothing is original to me, and I halfway regret that...and not for my "ownership" but for the other's growth. The way we speak our words is as original as a fingerprint...the words aren't original but the way we say the words is.  

When the words we speak do not come to us unbidden from our head, our heart and our gut...from inner truth not for outer effect...they may sound good, but they will do our spiritual growth not a lick of good. Worse, they have the possibility of hindering that growth. 

I have learned to trust this: God holds our own words in safekeeping for us to speak as we are readied...my words are mine, F.X.'s were his, Joe Doaks' are his. Until we speak our own truth given to us by the God of our own understanding, we hold our spiritual growth at bay. 

Speaking of social intercourse alone, we don't get to God on Sylvia Schloppenhaufer's words, thoughts or ideas...we get to God on the words he holds for us to speak as our consciousness is raised.

Thank you.

ON BEING OPEN TO WHAT IS...RIGHT NOW

Our own idea for still more spiritual growth is not of God, it is a self-determined objective.  As Easwaran's "Words to Live By" has it in today's reading:  ...what the mind wants to see ... is the profit or momentary gratification it is interested in.

The blinding flash of the obvious that spiritual growth is nearly always counterintuitive has opened my mind to acceptance of the is-ness of each minute. Analyze not, fret not, see with the mindset of this, too, is of God.

We cannot for a certainty know the outcome of the next second one second before it happens...God's will, God's way. We only realize that in looking back.

Not knowing but joyously living Now opens the gate to the Secret Garden of God. 

Joy is the sovereign balm for all the ills of the world, the spirit-cure for every ailment. -- "God Calling" today.

NOTE: The above is my today's journal entry written at 5:00 AM. Now to live that. I love and laugh and joy in the fact that I know the words...I may not live them to the max till the next lifetime or two, but I know I'm heading in the right direction. God is so good to me.

Thank you.

THE UNWANTED PEARL...SELF-DISCIPLINE, I

[This is a reprint of my post of March 26, 2016,]

With self-acceptance must come self-discipline else the reasoning mind will take self-acceptance as its license to remain self-will-run-riot. There is no peace there.

Our self-acceptance together with self-discipline leads to a turned-over-to-God life...without self-discipline, we're akin to monkeys run amok.

We learn to remind our self, often and as needed: Most important is the discovery that spiritual principles could solve all my problems.

Thank you.

GOD'S WILL, GOD'S WAY...EVER FOR OUR BENEFIT

A person must pass the lessons learned on to others—or there has been no real gift at all. -- Fr Richard's Daily Meditation, February 23, 2024

A meeting I recently chaired has been running regrets in my mind...as in, I shoulda, coulda, woulda done it better if only....

This morning, I recalled my quiet time before the meeting when it flashed that the group already knew and lived their own understanding of the spiritual subject matter I was to speak to. I did not need to explain my take. That seemed to be an idle thought at the time, but just now it showed its wings.

I can shuck my egoic regrets and get grateful that I shared what I shared. Of this I am sure, it was purely from my experience, came blessed by God and had no ego attached. 

In trust, I believe that share planted in at least one of the group the seed of acceptance of a Power greater than ourselves. 

That Higher Power can and will if sought and always for our benefit.

Thank you.