Three Things, Simply

May 22, 2013 at 7:50 am (Calling, community, knowing God)

Love.
God is love.  And not the kind of love that is necessarily Hallmark like, but the kind that is Present when no one else is, when all else has failed, when there are more doubts than assurances.  And in all things and through all things I am keen to remember (re-member) two solid truths: one, that God is Perfect Love and two, I gave my life to God.   All else in my world must flow from these truths or I am lost.  And if God is perfect love, and I surrendered my life to this God of Perfect Love, then I am wise to allow that divine love to flow into me and through me.  I must get out of my own way, so to speak, and allow God’s all embracing, all encompassing love to BE just that in me and through me: embracing all and encompassing all.

Learn.
I am here to have my mind conformed to the will of God.  And God’s will is that of love, so therefore I am also here to learn of God’s love and to let God’s love teach me the divine ways of being.  For me, God’s love cannot be learned in a book of paper but rather in the and through the book called Life.  I have joked around that the definition of LIFE is Love In Full Expression.  And so must my learning be: learning to let God’s love have full expression within me, burning off the dross of my banal ego and my leanings towards the pettiness of things.  If I am to learn of God’s love, I must place myself consciously “in the way” of this love, and I am here to learn of this will of God that is love in being and action.

Lean.
And finally, since I am oh so human and I need to learn to lean on God and others for my support, my growth and also how to be someone others can lean on.  Love received can only be nurtured if it is love given.  So I need to Love, Learn and Lean…

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“The Gift of Ears” (W.H. Auden)

May 21, 2013 at 9:47 pm (community, Creation, creativity)
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The Christian Church came into being at Pentecost. The gift of the Spirit on that occasion is generally called the gift of tongues, but it might equally well be called the gift of ears…

As writers, readers, human beings, we cannot speak to or understand each other unless we are first prepared to listen.  Of all the gifts which the Spirit is able to bestow, the one for which we should first and most earnestly pray is humility of ear.

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“Easy to Believe” (Dorothy Day)

May 21, 2013 at 11:01 am (knowing God, servant leadership, social justice)

It is surely an exercise of faith for us to see Christ in each other. But it is through such exercise that we grow and the joy of our vocation assures us we are on the right path. Certainly, it is easier to believe that the sun warms us, and we know that buds will appear on the trees in the wasteland across the street, that life will spring out of the dull clods of that littered park across the way. There are wars and rumors of wars, poverty and plague, hunger and pain.

Still, the sap is rising, again there is the resurrection of spring, and God’s continuing promise to be with us always, with comfort and joy, if we will only ask.

Source:

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” The Single Garment of Destiny” (MLK)

May 20, 2013 at 7:39 am (servant leadership, social justice, spirituality)

We must all learn to live together as brothers [and sisters] or we will all perish together as fools.  We are tied together in the single garment of destiny, caught in an inescapable network of mutuality.  And whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly.  For some strange reason I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be.  This is the way God’s universe is made; this is the way it is structured.

Source:

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“Thirst” (Mary Oliver)

May 9, 2013 at 4:39 pm (contemplative life, Creation, encountering God)

Another morning and I wake with thirst for the goodness I do not have. I walk out to the pond and all the ways God has given us such beautiful lessons. Oh Lord, I was never a quick scholar but sulked and hunched over my books past the hour and the bell; grant me, in Your mercy, a little more time.   Love for the earth and love for You are having such a long conversation in my heart.  Who knows what will finally happen or where I will be sent, yet already I have given a great many things away, expecting to be told to pack nothing, except the prayers which, with this thirst, I am slowly learning.

Source: Thirst

 

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More Musings on Healing

May 7, 2013 at 8:53 pm (Addiction & Recovery, God's love, Hope, knowing God, spirituality)

The journey towards healing can feel at times like a disjointed rummaging through the crevices of our souls seeking out the darker corners in order to let in the warm sunlight of God’s love.  Healing is sometimes akin to things like beauty, truth and spirituality: they are things that are ineffable yet real and rather than define them, they define us.

This rag-tag, one foot in the front of the other, one day at a time journey is the journey of a lifetime that occurs in every diminutive detail and every instance.  And I cannot necessarily define my healing journey or necessarily point to specific scars as evidence.  The very things I am being healed of have been accrued over a life filled with the paradoxes of poor choices and God’s ever intervening grace, with both being somewhat messy yet always real.

I am velveteen rabbit-like in my journey for you see my eyes are popping off, my fur is being rubbed off, my stuffing pulled from my fragile innards, yet I know I am loved…loved by a generous and gracious God.  Oddly enough, I even know this at this precise moment when I do not ‘feel’ or sense it.

At this juncture I am peeling away the dried mud of anger and resentment that has splattered me after hitting the proverbial fan. I am not in a tender place, or feeling very forgiving, and I most certainly am not sensing God’s presence.

But none of that matters.

God is faithful even when my feelings are not.  God is before me.  God is beside me.  God is within me.  God is to my East, my West, my South and my North.  God is in my ups and my downs.  God is the Constant Companion on this journey towards healing and God is the Final Destination of this journey.

And like it or not, believe it or not, feel it or not I surrendered my life to God and God IS Love; not fleshly love, not feeble love, not finite love.  No!  God IS Love: all consuming, all powerful, all present, all knowing and ever-faithful LOVE.  And regardless of what friend or foe says to me or about me, THAT truth is the motive, the power, the hunger, and the reason for this journey I am taking back Home.

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Musings on Paradox…

May 1, 2013 at 5:02 pm (A. A., Addiction & Recovery, messy grace, spirituality)

The thought of discovering spirituality and a deepening relationship with God in a room full of drunks and drug addicts telling stories might seem like a paradox.  But as ancient truth reveals to us, stories are one of the very foundations God uses to reveal himself to us and to the journey of transformation; and stories are exactly what are found in the rooms of us 12 steppers.

Jesus told stories – some offensive, some hilarious, all of them insightful – as he taught and lived these very stories as a means of communicating God’s infinite and tender love for us.

Stories in general, and our stories in particular, are what keep people like me clean and sober.  We share what we have done and who we have been in the hopes of opening up our hearts to let the grace of God fill and transform us, so we do not remain those fractured characters of our stories past.   In sharing our stories, in sharing my story, I find I am freed from the bondage of the past and the restraints of the disease named addiction.  When my story is unleashed, I am unchained.

Stories are the vehicle for God’s grace as it comes in tenderness, in messiness, in darkness and shifting shadows…but come it does when I open my heart and share the truth of who I am and what I have been like.  And in stories, in the sharing of my past wreckage and destruction, healing is found and divine light is released into the world, shining so as to light the path for those who walk with me and those who will come after.

Addiction is indeed cunning and baffling, but only for us, it is not so for God; for God is not baffled by my dis-ease.  For God is the great Mystery that swallows up all the mysteries of the how’s and why’s of addiction; God is the truth in the lies; God is the light in the darkness; indeed, God is the tenderness to my sharp edges.

That is the grace and power of paradox.

Only in a room full of addicts and alcoholics (the walking wounded and wonderful) do I learn that I cannot keep what I do not give away.  And like the ancient echoes of the prayer of St. Francis, I learn daily that in giving, I receive; in pardoning, I am pardoned; and in dying daily to my selfish ego, I am born anew in the living grace of a loving God.

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“The Spiritual Life” (Evelyn Underhill)

April 29, 2013 at 4:33 pm (contemplative life, mission, mysticism)

This is a quote from the amazing little, but rich and deep, book, The Spiritual Life by Evelyn Underhill.  It was written in 1935 and now almost 80 years later it is on point!

“We mostly spend our lives conjugating three verbs: to Want, to Have, and to Do.  Craving, clutching, and fussing, on the material, political, social, emotional, intellectual – even on the religious – plane, we are kept in perpetual unrest: forgetting that none of these verbs have any ultimate significance, except so far as they are transcended by and included in, the fundamental verb, to Be: and that Being, not wanting, having, and doing, is the essence of the spiritual life. 

Any spiritual view which focuses attention on ourselves, and puts the human creature (with its small ideas and adventures) in the center foreground, is dangerous till we recognize its absurdity.”

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The Gift of Failure

April 28, 2013 at 7:13 pm (A. A., Addiction & Recovery, forgiveness, God's love, messy grace)

Failure is a gift from God…and I need spirituality to teach me that for religion only speaks to the shame of failure and not to its giftedness.

Spirituality teaches us how to deal with, and accept, failure as a gift and a needed tool for our journey with and towards God; for failure is the twin of success, much the way doubt and faith are inseparably linked.

One of the foundational ‘tenets’ of Alcoholics Anonymous states that the journey of sobriety is about “progress not perfection…[for] we are not saints.”  Imperfection and failure are two of the tools God uses to draw me closer to him; for by embracing imperfection and failure, I am reminded of the glorious truth that I am indeed human.  And in my being human, nothing is drawn away from God and his relentless love, and I find that if I embrace that truth, I am also fully alive.

My failures prove only that I am not a saint, but they do not take away from any goodness that God has placed within me.  I am fond of saying if there is anything in me you find good, then you can give thanks to God and my mother, but if you find anything in me that is not good, well for that I apologize.

As I look over my life I see a wreckage of pain, failure and broken hearts and trust strewn across the path.  I feel regret, and rue some of the poorer choices I have made.  But God is eternally good, forgiving and loving so that in his hands my past wreckage becomes malleable clay to be remolded into a shining example of divine love mixed with utter humanity.

And like or not, that is indeed good news.

I am a jar of clay, cracked but valuable when surrendered fully into the hands of a loving God.  My failures become familiar scars, gentle reminders of the power of forgiveness and choice all held by the urgent compassion of God.

God does not judge my failures, only I and other people do that.  God’s love is a merciful cauldron burning the dross of my failures away turning them instead into divine gifts meant to be of service to God and others.  God’s love is greater than any human perspective, judgment, religion, or persuasion.  God’s love embraces my failures as a vital part of me and my journey back Home to him.  And if God embraces my failures, then I can do no less.

So today, I embrace all my failures…all of me, surrendering them over to the hands of God, asking not for them to be removed but to be transformed into the living gifts of a merciful God.

 

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“Notice the Glory” (Abraham Joshua Heschel)

April 25, 2013 at 5:43 pm (contemplative life, prayer)

To pray is to take notice of the wonder, to regain a sense of the mystery that animates all beings, the divine margin in all attainments. Prayer is our humble answer to the inconceivable surprise of living. It is all we can offer in return for the mystery by which we live….

Amidst the meditation of mountains, the humility of flowers wiser than all alphabets–clouds that die constantly for the sake of God’s glory–we are hating, hunting, hurting. Suddenly we feel ashamed of our clashes and complaints in the face of the tacit glory in nature.

Source: Quest for God

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