NOT BY WILL BUT BY GRACE

We are created with an inner drive and necessity that sends all of us looking for our True Self, our true home, whether we know it or not....God creates the very dissatisfaction that only grace and finally divine love can satisfy. -- Fr Richard Rohr, Daily Meditations, May 9, 2024

We find living primarily by spiritual principles can lead us to deeper spiritual growth than we ever dreamed of...or wanted for that matter. Who's kidding whom...we learn, if we're doing it right, to give over, give up and give in not by will but by grace. 

There's the beginning of our test run...the test being, how ready are we really to live our life by our major spiritual principle, namely, agree with your adversary quickly. 

That is one steep climb which we will fail often. Ah, but the test is not to ace it and forget it, the test is to live it until three days after we are dead...if that be God's will. 

Expect to fail...welcome failure...for that is how to shuck our shields, the way to let go and let God.

Again from Fr Richard: We don't get to God by doing it right, we get to God by doing it wrong...which, according to me, is the open secret of living by spiritual principles...the willingness to show our bum in public. And that can never be done intentionally (looking for a shortcut to spiritual growth)...that's just another self-determined objective. 

Inadvertently we show our bum in public and, from our toenails up, feel the burn of personal humiliation, accepting without resistance the sneers and snarks...real or imagined...of others. 

That is still more spiritual growth. That is the by-product of looking for our True Self, our true home, whether we know it or not....God creates the very dissatisfaction that only grace and finally divine love can satisfy.

Thank you. 

RESIST NOT, WELCOME GLADLY

It is permissible to take life's blessings with both hands provided thou dost know thyself prepared in the opposite event to take them just as gladly. This applies to food and friends and kindred, to anything God gives and takes away...As long as God is satisfied do thou rest content. If he is pleased to want something else of thee, still rest content. -- Meister Eckhart   

Our best hope prayed for, or our worst fear received, we recall and rest in Meister Eckhart's advice as the answer.

God's will, God's way is the quiet word for living and being happy, joyous and free.   

Thank you.

THE TRACKS OF OUR TEARS LEAD TO GOD

Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. —Matthew 5:4 

Here it is, June 28, 2024, the morning after the Biden-Trump debate. The debate that right now seems like a debacle to some, like manna from Heaven to others. 

One of my daily readings is all about those who are blessed by their mourning. By my own life experience, I know that to be true. 

I have the incurable disease of alcoholism...I am 52+ years sober. The day before I took the first step toward recovery, I knew God did not know my name. I knew there was no hope for me and my life. I  received the Gift Of Despair as I virtually crashed and burned.

The day I took the first step toward recovery I lost my thirst for alcohol...I have never had a desire for it since. Since that day, the God of my own understanding has lived within me, guided me, and when I messed up, corrected me. I have come to realize love for pets and humans...in that order.

It has taken every one of my sober years to realize that I've only just begun...and that is the good news.

Whenever less-than-wonderful comes visiting, my go-to reminder is, if alcoholism can be a good thing, and it is to me today, then so can this be. And so it becomes.

Last night's debate happened exactly as it needed to happen for the benefit of all...for the best to come out of hiding and march us forward. 

Joe Biden may grow hair and roller-skate down Pennsylvania Avenue on January 20, 2025. 

With God, all things are possible, some are just less probable than others. More likely and probable: Another person, just not a bald-faced lying convicted felon, will walk down The Avenue on January 20.

I look forward to praising God in gratitude for the good, decent and honest people America has to turn to in these times of trial. 

Thank you. 

WE CAN TRUST GOD SO WE TRUST GOD

According to the Talmud, every blade of grass has its own angel bending over it, whispering, 'Grow, grow.'

It seems that quote comes to me as needed, and I'm usually surprised...but always welcoming. I can sense my angel bending over me now whispering words of encouragement. 

This I choose to believe, because it is what I have been led to believe for the last 50+ years, I can trust God who has me and my foibles well in hand...every single glitch and pitch is of God and for my benefit...especially the scary ones, the ones that feel like my mind is going on a walk-about, leaving me all alone and so lonely, unloved, unneeded, unwanted and unappreciated...my well-known and acknowledged primary self-centered fears. -- possibly from an older post, possibly a blinding flash from my journal

There...proof that my angel is always with me. I wrote that paragraph previously, and apparently, it is what Nervous Nelly who shares space with the Father within needs now for, unbidden, there it is. I am sure those words were important to me when I first wrote them, but they feel vitally important to me right now. 

The vitally important words right now: I can trust God.

Our Father knows our needs. I say that a lot...then when the fact is proven, I try to explain it. To make material mind sense of a spiritual mind gift is to deny the spiritual gift. So, I'll not try, I'll gratefully accept that I know, and I know that I know...I trust God.

Thank you. 

A PERSONAL PERSPECTIVE, I

[The following is a reprint of my post of June 10, 2019...I am tempted to change the title to "When Will We Ever Learn?"]\

Hearing of the draconian laws being put forth in re abortion, I wonder...is there any law opposing abortion that penalizes the male for impregnating the woman? As the female is penalized for being impregnated?

Is there a law even being suggested that requires the male to take lifetime responsibility for his part in the pregnancy? That shames the male for his part in it? Or that requires a lifetime of care...medical, mental, physical...of the child? Or, for that matter, to years of monetary care for the child?

What comparative law could there be to the one being suggested (in Georgia, I believe) where any woman requesting an abortion must submit to a medically unnecessary vaginal exam?

I do not advocate for or against abortion. I do advocate for the woman's right to choose especially since the woman is the sole party held responsible for the outcome. It seems that legislators, at one time all male still majority male, have never held the man to account with regard to a child...born or unborn. Woman's work, don'cha know.

As is often said, if you find a turtle on a fence post, you know it did not get there alone.

Thank you.

WE MAY BE...WE CAN BE...THAT WILLING SOUL

When there is something that is wrong and we know it and we can see exactly what it is that is wrong and we try to fix it and it does not fix and we try again, harder, and it stays unfixed...we are looking in the wrong direction. We are looking out there... at the problem. Look within. To the solution, spiritual principles. All spiritual principles are within us, have always been there, will be there three days after we are dead...and 1,000 years after the world as we know it is no more, spiritual principles will be in the ether...waiting to be realized and released by a willing Soul once again. -- Slightly reworked blinding flash of the obvious originally posted February 9, 2017

GOD'S ALL IN ALL: THE WEE SMALL & GREAT GIFT

The way we can tell our tears have cleansed us is that afterwards we don’t need to blame anybody, even ourselves. It’s an utter transformation and cleansing of the soul, and we know it came from God. --  Fr Richard Rohr on grief in today's Daily Meditation

When we ponder that, specifically an utter transformation and cleansing of the soul, we realize that describes the liminal space between owning our deepest shame and sharing that secret shame with a like other. And we are gifted with further proof that spiritual growth is basically counterintuitive. 

At one time our search was for permanent peace of mind. We were well into spiritual work before we flashed that permanent peace of mind is a denial of God. Why would we need God when we have permanent peace? 

The blessing then is an ephemeral knowledge of God is God's all in all...an utter transformation and cleansing of the soul. Blink and we've missed it...which only sends us deeper. 

Everything is God's gift when we are willing for it to be. 

Thank you.