Un-Othered

Sometimes I have the experience of being "un-othered" as someone called it.  What is that?  It is when I suddenly have the sense or realization, interior something, that this other person or bit of nature is not "other" than me, but one with, connected with me such that I don't compete or judge or avoid or ignore the person.  Or I don't see this bit of nature, creation as something that gets in my way, or is ugly.  Even the tree is not just a tree that I am looking at while my ego makes commentary.  In other words, my ego stops being in charge.  Ego is always making separation and judgments.  When I am in this "un-othered" space I am free of fear, resentment and envy.  I am all I need to be and so is the world around me.  It all passes but it tells me that there is something other than my ego driven life.

Birthdays

I met a wonderful eye doctor today in Basalt, Colorado.  She did a very thorough examination of my eyes to see what problems I might have.  Her conclusion?  My eyes at this time were the result of “birthdays.”  This is what she said.  What she meant is that I am old and so have old eyes.  But she did not say that I was old or aging, or washed up or a mess.  I thought that her explanation of “birthdays” was very kind.  I have had a lot of birthday as do old people like me.  So the next time I think that someone has the results of being old, I won’t say, “You are washed up,” or “You are old and falling apart.”  NO, I will say what this kind doctor said to me.  Your situation is the result of “birthdays.”  Maybe we can all be kind to “many birthday” persons, especially at this time when Covid is so very unkind.  Stay safe and have more birthdays.

My Talk On Zoom

For the many who did not listen to my talk on zoom yesterday, Saturday, I did have it recorded and it is on youtube.  The name of the talk is "Letting Go Of Obstacles To Union With God." The exact sight location is youtube/ITCow4+A-s8.  The first part of the talk is about 40 minutes and then after the break I think I go another 20 + minutes.  No one asked any questions so I was either crystal clear or obtuse.  

Growing Up

On this day, June 28, in 1967 I arrived in Chicago, with all my belongings in my VW Bug.  I was on the MBA graduate track, fresh from the Ivy League Columbia University program.  What I learned years later, was that indeed I was on a career track, but not this one.  I had the spiritual hunger of a loneliness that was not even apparent to me.  But to touch and begin to satiate this loneliness I had to eliminate cultural signposts of happiness and fulfillment.  This Chicago job was supposed to be both and I was being led to make the move and take the job by a power that would become more apparent through a process of elimination.  I had to realize that this Corporate job/career was a beautiful and blessed round hole.  But I was a square peg.  This was the first of several wonderful round hole opportunities that I would encounter, but a square peg I remained.  No round hole could change that.  Along the way I would make some good, life-long friends and have many memories, and some forgetful events as I moved along to wherever I was meant to be.  I stayed in Chicago for two years, two Chicago winters.  They were brutal.  What to do? Move on to a warmer round hole. San Francisco beckoned.  Now that was a place for a square peg!

Real Presence

I used to think that Jesus is in the host, and not so much outside the host.  That is, he is really present in one place and not so present in other places.  Also, if I am really bad he leaves me.  So much for how I filtered Catholic school catechism.  That thinking does not work for me anymore.  God is not a “thing” “separate person” that can be in one place but not another place.  God is everywhere and in all and never leaves.  It comes with the job of being Creator.  So God cannot be really present one place, but not so present in another.  God is really present in a tree or a plant or an animal to give some examples.  So is there a difference between the host, holy communion, and the tree?  I believe so.  If I take a piece of bark off of a tree and eat it, I would feel a bit strange at the bark taste.  Maybe I would get sick or indigestion or maybe some healthy thing might be in the bark.  That is not real presence like in the host.  When I bite down on that host, wow, stuff happens to me in some inside place I call the spiritual.   That host is full of unconditional love begun with Creation, going all the way to a supper meal where Jesus said to his cowardly, lying, denying friends, that this food was eating of his love for them in spite of themselves. When you really love someone you give them your all, body and blood, so to speak. Nothing is held back.  That host is full of love like nothing else I eat.  To me that is Real Presence.  Of course, my Mom’s cooking comes pretty close.

Priorities

Peter, the first Pope, had his priorities wrong, like many who say they believe.  At the very end of John’s Gospel, in a scene that many say was not written by the same person who wrote the rest of that Gospel, Peter has just told Jesus that he loves him, three times no less.  Jesus says to “follow me.”  Jesus does not say, “Believe that I am God.”  What is the first thing that Peter says after this?  He gets competitive, as in who is better than whom.  He asks, “What about him?”  Jesus says to stop with the compare and contrast and just follow.  Many of us are like Peter.  We forget about the follow, as we compare and contrast with others about who has the correct belief and who is the more pious.  As for following Jesus?  That is way too hard.

True Self

As Martin Laird reminds me, what is this true self that so many people are frantically looking for?  I don’t doubt that there is something that is called the true self, the me I am made to be, fully aware and all that.  But I don’t think it does much good to search for it as in finding it somewhere and saying, “Ah!  There is is.”  We each are our true self, so it is not out there someplace waiting to be discovered.  I simply mediate on a regular basis and allow myself to awaken, if you will.  To look actively for the true self is a bit like driving around town in the very car that you think you lost and are trying to find.  “An Ocean Of Light” by Martin Laird is a very good book and not many pages.

An Old Sight

I seem to be on the old blogger site.  Don’t know what happened to the new one

Self-Absorption

There is a difference between unity and uniformity.  The degree of self-absorption makes a lot of difference.  In a monastery the monks or nuns can be doing certain things together such as eating and prayer time.  That would be uniformity.  But if they then go about the rest of their day and life  self-absorbed in their own projects and programs for happiness, then they will not live in unity with one another.  Unity is when you have a sense of oneness.  Often, what you have in a community is a sense of how to make sure someone else’s agenda does not interfere with yours.  There can be a lot of avoidance which has little to do with solitude and silence when it is about me and mine.  A family can ask the same question.  Are we living in uniformity or in unity?  If you do almost nothing together than it will hardly even be uniformity, except to say that you all sleep under the same roof and coordinate calendars in your busy life of happiness programs.

Bike Training

If someone said to me that they wanted to get really good and fit bicycle training, but would only ride with the wind at their back, I would be skeptical at their endeavor.  If you want to get really good at that you have to train going into the wind as well, and do some hills, up, that is.  They are only half training.  So it is with people who say they have no doubts in their faith.  That is the downhill, with the wind faith and not really much faith at all.  Most of those people are afraid to doubt because then they might not get what they want from the “gimme this, gimme that” prayers to their God, or they just like to feel safe with answers, and not dig too deep or dig at all.  I think that doubt is normal for the seeker who wants more than to feel good.  That is too self-centered.  Sometimes my doubts are not so much about the existence of God, but about the theology of my church.  I bring it all to prayer, not for answers, but for honesty.  Fear is useless.  Even the disciples of Jesus saw him alive after he beat death, and they still doubted.  That is a grown up faith.

Practicing On A New Blog Format

My blog has a new format and of course I am a bit clueless so I am typing out this nonsense to see if I can upload a new blog.  If you actually get this then I stumbled onto correctly entering new blogs.  In this format I can add stuff such as 😇😛 and emphasize something with an underline or Italics.  Of course, some people wish I did not lean the new format because they think I am a pagan, heretic, or just a bad person who got ordained a priest by mistake.  

Nostrils

OK.  Here is one some mystic gave to me.  Looking for God and cannot locate God?  You cannot see God anywhere doing anything good?  Your world is a mess?  Well, are you still breathing?  Yes?  Then think of your nostrils.  You cannot see them, but they are always right there as part of you, and they help in your breathing, filtering some bad stuff from getting into your lungs, going along just doing their job even if you don’t see or thank them.  So I cannot see God and sometimes think that God is doing nothing to fix my messy world or the messy world.  But I am still breathing.  So when I think of my nostrils, I say, “Thank you God, even if I cannot see you.”

The Desert

Spiritual aridity is the natural terrain of stillness.  So if you want to be happy, joyous and free, you might not want to take on any spiritual path that will lead to stillness.  Like a desert, stillness is naturally dry so don’t go to either for refreshments.  So why do many people still seek the stillness?  Because that is where you will find your maker, not the god of thoughts, dogma, story, but a NON-THING beyond mind and concept.  It is where you will find Union, a sense of oneness with all around you.  Characters defects, personal shortcomings, bad habits are a lot about “the other,” as in person place or thing.  With stillness there is no other.  But you have to get through the dryness, the boredom, the “what’s the use!”  It is a tough prayer and many of us only get into it because life is not going our way.  I now find stillness the only way, but my life got pretty messed up first and I tried a lot of control praying.  Anyway, today is not a dry day.

Emil Kapaum

I have heard about this fellow, Emil Kapaum, from Wichita.  He was an Army Chaplain in Korea.  When the Chinese Communists attacked and overran the troops, Emil stayed on the battle field ministering to the dying and the wounded.  He baptized and heard confessions.  He was a great solace to soldiers in their moment of crisis fear.  Being on the overrun battlefield he got captured and continued to minister to the sick and dying in the prison camp and prevented the execution of men too injured to walk.  Camp rules said no religious service but he defied them and so they starved him and he died of pneumonia.  So when anyone says that religion makes no difference or is not needed, I point to people like Fr, Emil, who thought it very important and brought love and solace to a lot of people at the cost of his own life.  Anyone who puts down religion as useless, willing to do that?

The Seed And The Fruit

Madeleine Sophie Barat founded the Society of the Sacred Heart.  That is the group that operates those girl schools called Academies of the Sacred Heart.  These are pretty high end schools for girls and maybe now some boys.  Her idea was to educate the whole person which is the goal of liberal arts.  These are not STEM schools.  Anyhow, Madeleine sends a fellow French sister to the USA, the Louisiana Territory.  Her name is Rose Philippine Duchesne.  She starts the first of these schools, a “free school” in a log cabin in Missouri.  She added six more schools.  But her English was terrible and her teaching style was the type not familiar to the students.  She thought she died a failure.  Not so, as can be seen by all these successful schools and graduates in the USA.  She was even canonized.  Rose was the seed, not the fruit.  Things take time.  Maybe more time than our short lifetime.  So you parents of teenagers, especially teenage girls, you might think you too are a failure at times.  You cannot seem to speak their language, and your style is not theirs.  But wait a while.  You are the seed. The fruit will come in time.  I know.  You are still waiting.

Fox Hole Church People

I hear that more people are praying and wanting to go to places fo worship as a response to the feeling of helplessness and fear about the Coronavirus.  Well, pastors and Rabbis, I would not make plans to expand your parking lot just yet.  These new or returning attendees may mostly be what I call Fox hole prayers.  In the fox hole, even atheists pray out of fear and powerlessness.  But what happens when that all passes?  Back to usual.  Two things will happen with these Covid-19 prayers.  One is the vaccine. After it goes into their body, and works, they will go back to chasing after all the things that made life so shallow in the first place.  The second thing that will happen is death before the vaccine.  Not their death, but the death of someone they loved and prayed for, who did not make it to the vaccine.  God did not come through for them.  Good bye to God if their even is one.  So for now, houses of worship, as they open up a bit more and through zoom, will enjoy a bump.  

Malnutrition

I tend to suffer from Malnutrition of the Soul. This is when I feed my soul with nothing but the food of my thoughts.  And my thoughts are always about me.  Even if I think someone else is at the center of the thought it is always in relation to me and my wants or lack thereof.  So how do I feed my soul? Evagrius Ponticus says that prayer is the absence of thoughts, or at least the absence of focused thoughts filling my head.  A prayer without focused thoughts is called “contemplation.”  I cannot make contemplation happen in prayer, but I can practice letting thoughts become peripheral to my prayer.  Let them be background and maybe they will even disappear from my notice.  So I practice entering into silence which as I said in an earlier blog, is always with me.  This prayer is a lot more work than the easier “gimme” prayers in this time of Covid-19.  You can die from malnutrition of the soul.  The vaccine is deep meditation.

Silence

I am finding that there is a difference between silence and quiet.  Quiet is about having no outside noise, or hardly any.  No talking, media noise, music, traffic and such.  Lots of times I cannot control quiet.  It comes and goes.  So I do my best but don’t fret when I want to mediate.  But silence is always with me and I think with each of us if we can access it.  When my thoughts, feeling, emotions are not longer the focus, I can peer into the silence.  After a meditation or quiet walk outside, I can be surrounded by this silence unless I let my mind take over.  It is not that I have to think of nothing, but that I have to think, plan, do the next thing without drama, or commentary.  Sometimes I wake up and start thinking about all I have to do, or what will go wrong in my agenda today, and so on.  It is quiet, but I have lost touch with the silence.  I am often insane when it is quiet but always sane when in the silence.

Jane Adams

Jane Adams founded Hull House in Chicago to promote community and self-respect among the poor. She felt that industrial progress of the early 20th century had cast these people aside.  Pope Francis refers to such people as the ‘Throw Away Person.”  One of the reasons that Jane was aloof to organized religion is that she felt it tended to promote “personal virtue.”  She felt that the time had come to promote social virtue.  This challenges me.  How often do I talk about being judgmental, gossiping, having resentments, failing to forgive, all of which are personal faults requiring personal virtues?  Do I challenge people to be of service to the “throw away people?”  Do I name social injustices and challenge people to do something about them?  Should I challenge people to boycott company products where management fails to spend money to make the factories safe?  And who is making $$$ off the war in Iraq?  I just finished reading a novel, “Billy Lynn’s Long Halt-Time Walk.”  It is about the Iraq War.  Lots of stuff for me to ponder.  I don’t think I am at this moment the kind of guy to inspire Jane Adams to come back to church.

Tribalism

I noticed that in Matthew’s gospel in the last chapter just before Jesus took off for heaven he is supposed to have said, “Make disciples of all nations.”  I doubt he said that exactly.  Why?  Because there was no such thing as a nation.  That came with the second millennium.  There was no France, England, Germany, Iraq or Iran.  But there were tribes of blood relationships.  The Jews were a tribe and they were amongst Arab tribes, and Persian tribes.  So what I think is that the disciples, all Jews, were supposed to get out of their tribalism, and enter into relationship with other tribes, telling them about what Jesus taught.  As Jesus said, “Teach them to observe all that I have commanded you.”  Like in love your enemy and do good to those who hate you, and forgive.  He did not spend time talking about being Divine.  But when religions get institutionalized, they tend to spend a lot of time and energy “converting” people to their particular dogmatic creed.  And then when nations did form they spent a lot of ammunition trying to get other nations or peoples to buy into their particular culture, and economic beliefs.  And so it goes.

The Innocent

Institutional depravity is at its worst when it crushes the innocent to protect the status quo.  You can look at the Covid debacle and just get into politics.  I will go to something of which I am more certain and let you draw your own conclusions.  About 2000 years ago, give or take, a fellow was condemned to death by institutional forces.  It has been agreed by everyone now that he was innocent.  He got in the way of the status quo.  At one point he is on the way to his execution, all whipped and beaten.  He falls to the ground because he cannot carry the instrument for his slow execution.  An African fellow, standing nearby, is picked out to carry the poor fellow’s cross beam.  He had a common name, Simon.  Apparently, the fellow on the ground had a friend also named Simon who had abandoned him.  So what is your response to the crushed innocent today?  Crushed by what?  Debt, hunger, bills to pay, fear of work in which the status quo does not do enough to protect them from Covid, people suffering from underfunded, budget-cut medical facilities and so on.  I ask myself, which. Simon am I going to be?  The fellow on the ground died anyway, but at least someone was there to do what little he could do.  The results are not up to me, but the effort is.

Color

We usually think of color as paint.  I take paint that I call red and apply it to something.  At that moment, in the light, I see what I call “red.”  But I don’t control the light.  Light changes, especially in an outdoor scene where light is not dimmed by walls.  As the light changes with the movement of sun and clouds, the red changes.  So I don’t really control the color except for that moment when I apply it.  Manet, the Impressionist French painter figured this out when painting his outdoor scenes.  Light changes the color of everything.  Think of that when you pick a color for the outside of your house or shudders.  This is a metaphor for control.  We control so little, but the ego keeps trying for permanence.  It is our program for happiness, to be in control.  But there are other forces at work in the world around and within us.  If I meditate in the moment in order to control the rest of the day, I am doomed to disappointment.  There will be some effects of my meditation the rest of the day, just as there will be something of the color red because I painted red in the first place.  Be open to the light.  Surprise!

On Silence

Think of silence as the water upon which you float in your canoe, pushing your oar through the water of silence.  We glide without taking notice.  Our attention is on things around us, the scenery or the desire to get from here to there.  There is no being here.  Rather Here is a passing moment on the way to somewhere else, some other feeling, relationship, task.  The silence holds us as we ignore it, tasked with other things on the mind.  What if we fall into the water?  We would panic and struggle in fear to get back into the canoe, to “safety.”  Silence is never safety.  It is always problematic, to be escaped.  But what if you just swam for a bit in the water until you got used to the wetness, the temperature, the bottomless ness of its encompassing presence.  Or maybe even dive into it and let go of the canoe.  Let go of having to go anywhere, or seE anything or accomplish anything else?  Silence is difficult when we spend a lifetime avoiding or ignoring it.  But it is always with us as we trundle along.

HIV

Did you know or care that 37 million people live with HIV?  Now if you heard that 37 million people lived with Covid-19, you might likely feel some horror, empathy, sadness, and say we must do something about this.  But with HIV many of us say, :”OH, they got that from sex, and it is their own fault.  Their problem, not mine.”  W tend to blame people who are sick from sex.  But many people are now hanging out in close quarters with one another during the Covid pandemic, and many of us would say, “It is their right,” or “No one can tell me where to go,” and so on.  Many of these people are irresponsible, as in hanging out together in public placers, that are optional. When many of them do get sick, then we say that we must work hard to defeat this Covid, keep the warnings up front, spend money to get a vaccine though many such sick people practiced irresponsible behavior.  With HIV not so much.  We have such prejudices about sex, when we know little about circumstances.  We have much less prejudice or judgment about Covid Behavior when it interferes with our “rights” and individualism.

The Spinning Egg

Eggs look the same on the outside.  But spin a raw egg on a table.  It will spin slowly and stop quickly.  Spin a hard-boiled egg on the table.  It will spin faster and keep spinning longer.  The insides are different.  So do you spend most of your time trying to make your outsides match some other people?  Is it about looking good as at the office, place of worship, gym, dropping kids off at school and parent meetings and so on?  How much time do you spend working on the insides as in your intake of spiritual practice, food, and drink?  We are not called to be someone else, least of all on the outsides.  We are called to be ourself and that is an inside job.  I have found it so.

Checkmate

Someone pointed out a connection between behavior in addicts and chess players.  The connection? You admit you are beaten, but you don’t give up.  In chess, your opponent calls out “Checkmate” when they have you beaten, about to claim your king, though you can make a futile move or two.  You know you are beaten, but you don’t give up and make the futile move.  It is the same with addicts.  Example: the alcohol knows that alcohol has them beaten, and they can never win, but they make some futile moves rather than just surrender and give in.  They try one more way of not drinking or not drinking so much, but nothing works.  Surrender or death, it can be a hard choice.  The insane keep trying to beat alcohol.  Maybe I should learn to play chess.  Oh, just remembered.  I have not had that demon alcohol in 35 years today.  Checkmate.

Holy Trinity Homily June 7, 2020

HOMILY NOTES

FR. TERRY RYAN, CSP

MOST HOLY TRINITY SUNDAY

JUNE 7, 2020

JOHN 20: 19-23, EXODUS 34: 4B-6, 8-9, COR.2,13: 11-13

Welcome to all you out there in Zoom land who are connecting to this mass on cyberspace.  The idea of you out there and us here in the monastery reminds me of the image of God I received growing up in the Bronx at my Catholic Church.  I understood God to be somewhere else, in heaven or the sky, and prayer/worship was to connect God to me, much like cyberspace connects you to me now.  But God was not always with me in any intimate ongoing way.  And if I was a really bad person, mortal sin, then God would leave me until I went to confession.  So the relationship was touch and go.  

In the Book of Exodus, God in fact does come down to Moses from the sky, which corresponds to my childhood idea of God.  But then something new happens.  Now Moses is a good guy so it fits that God would stand next to Moses.  What happens next surprised my young faith.  Moses says the people are stiff-necked and wicked.  He asks God to pardon them, which does not make them any less stiff-necked.  Then would God be in our company and make us his own? Yes. Though the people are still imperfect, God forgives and abides with them intimately.  

Why?  Because God is Triune, that is, God is always relational.  That is what the Trinity signifies for me.  God is always in relationship of love and intimacy even before the Big Bang or Genesis.  God is Three in One.  God wants to be with the people, with each of not, not because we are perfect, worthy, or earned anything.  God is Love, the verb, that does not wait for us to be worthy.  Love loves.  One way this shows is in the

Gospel when it says that God “gives” the Son.  God gives God’s very self in self-emptying without waiting for our permission.  Love is self-giving.

The Gospel says that if we believe we will not be condemned.  But belief is not in a creed, but in following Jesus who spent little time asking for his disciples to believe that he was Divine, the Second Person in the Trinity.  No.  Jesus said, “Come, follow me.”  That is do what I do and say.  One can believe in a creed, but still be racist, judging others on skin color, ethnicity, language, or economic status.  One can believe in a creed but be a neoliberal, saying leave me alone to make all the money I can and the heck with how it affects others.  None of this makes one a Christian.  Paul, in the second reading from Corinthians says we should live in peace, and be agreeable to one another.  Greet one another with a holy kiss, socially distant now.  This is the faith Paul is talking about.  

Jesus on the cross did not long to return to how things used to be before he was crucified, as many of us long to return to the way things used to be before Covid-19.  Jesus did not whine and complain on the cross, though he certainly was socially distant from others.  He is part of this loving Trinity.  He forgave people.  What is our attitude in our socially distant mode?  Complaining?  Why not reach out to others through letters in the mail or phone calls.  Be self-emptying.  We have the gift of the Spirit from our Baptism.  We have the spiritual DNA to live like the Triune God, not trying to get back to a past but becoming open to the eternal life offered to us by the Triune God of Love and Intimacy.  Use the time we have now in this pandemic to work on changing our lives for the better, so that we can be more open and accepting of one another in all our multiple differences and uniqueness.  We are all God’s Children.  

Alban Butler

Alban Butler, who wrote “Butler’s Lives Of The Saints,” was not much interested in saints’ miracles but rather how their lives were examples of “Come follow me,” which is what Jesus said to those around him.  But so much for Butler because most people seem to be more interested in the miracles. That is why they pray to the saints to get stuff, like healing, or a parking space, or a job, or a better teenage child and so on.  Fewer are the ones who actually focus on what Jesus said, like in his teaching.  Not too much turning the other check, love your enemies, give one cloak if you have two, and well just read what Jesus said.  For that matter, I suspect it is the same with Buddha.  Many pray to him for stuff, or try and get a feel good from mediation, but not many want to follow his wisdom sayings.  A miracle that challenges me is where you give yourself fully to help another, as did Helen Keller’s teacher. So, quiz: name of teacher and Movie made in 1962?  Extra credit if you know the names of the two actresses.

Being Somebody

Don’t worry if no one seems to notice you or praise you as you faithfully do your work and live your spiritual journey.  In 1622, on the same day, four famous, if you are Catholic, people were declared saints, They were Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Jesuits, his famous friend and fellow Jesuit, Francis Xavier, the mystic, Teresa of Avila, who founded the Discalced Carmelites, and Philip Neri, another founder and writer.  But there was one more person declared a saint that day, not so famous, unless you were a farmer, and even then, not known well.  His name is Isidore.  He founded nothing and wrote nothing.  He was a farm day laborer in Spain.  He was humble, did his job, and had a spiritual life.  So you are never nobody, unless you let people get into your head, rent free, who treat you that way.  Or if being recognized and praised is your goal, then you might be often if not always, miserable.  I am not a nobody.  You are reading this and you are a somebody.

The Mind And Tongue

One of the things I have learned is that I can think the wrong thing, and yet say the right thing.  The reason that a spiritual path is called a path is because it makes some space between thought and tongue, so you don’t speak what immediately comes to mind.  My mind seems to have a mind of its own and refuses any spiritual path.  So what.  I never hurt anyone with a thought.  What hurts are words and actions.  More so now, I may still think a judgment, resentment, lie or fear, but somehow I seem to be able to wait a moment, and then speak something else that is more helpful and even loving.  On my good days, I don’t dwell on messy thoughts.  On bad days, that is where I live, but still might be able not to speak or act them out.  That way, I only have to work on myself and not on a broken relationship, or job.  When I pray for “idiots” in my life, they become a bit less dysfunctional for me.

All

A women mystic once said, “If you would have all, you must give all.”  Another way of saying this is, “The measure by which you measure will be measured back to you.”  I have found that if I react, treat people in a certain way, then I will have a corresponding response from them, unless they are truly debilitated.  Taking inventory of my life, in all honesty, I have found that most of my troubles have been largely of my own making.  And many of the things that I thought most unfortunate to my plans, turned out to be quite beneficial because of the attitude I exhibited in the circumstances.  In a nutshell, if I want love, then I have to give love.  Yes, there are exceptions, but I don’t make exceptions become the rule.  Then I simply blame and play victim day after day.  I used to simply wash my hands of things that did not go my way, and often missed out on some really good things.  When insane, I make bad choices, but when sane I am able to discern where I have to give more to get more.  It is called a spiritual path.  How sober do you want to get?

One Day At A Time +

I have heard the saying, “Live one day at a time,” but I think it means more than that.  I can live one day at a time, being nasty, whining, selfish and so on.  So I add to this saying, “On life’s terms.”  This helps to deal with my potential bad behavior.  For instance, each day presents itself with certain things over which I have no control.  Accept that and then make a decision about what to do.  Don’t ignore reality or turn it into fantasy.  Example: I plan to go on a picnic to the beach.  That is my plan.  But I wake up and it is raining with rain predicted for the day.  Now, if I live today “on life’s terms” I won’t go on my picnic to the beach.  Acceptance of my plans not working out keeps me out of anger, resentment and whining.  Or I could be insane and go the beach, sit on the wet sand and complain about life doing me wrong.  With a cooler of beer I might just do that.  Haven’t been on a wet beach in a long time.

Creative

I hear people say that their work is not creative enough.  “Wasn’t God the Creator?  Are we not in the image of God?”  And so it goes.  But even God was not always creative.  Did not God send the rain?  Rain cleans things up.  It is of service to growing things.  And we need it rather regularly if we want to avoid a desert.  So a lot of work is repetitive, like rain, and this can keep us from grandiosity, while making us aware of our right size ego.  My mother cooked day after day.  She was creative to some extent, but she was of service.  She cleaned the house on a regular basis as a service.  Poor me, for whom cleaning a bathroom was beneath me, did not get humble, right-sized, or mature.  When you take care of elderly and dying relatives, it is repetitive but of great service, and so uplifting if we can get away from self-absorbed grandiosity.  ME is not the center of the universe.  I will keep all this in mind when pushing a mop or vacuum cleaner at the monastery.  Caring for others is creative.

Rusted Servant

I have heard of “trusted servant” as in someone who can be trusted to be of service, to do a job to help others.  I just heard of “rusted servant” someone who did a job and is now finished or no longer able to do that job.  I have found myself to be a ‘Rusted Servant” and it used to bother me.  Why? Well, I was finished before I was ready to be finished.  Since I am not employed full time in any parish, I am free to go and help out other places.  A parish may be short a priest, and they are very enthusiastic, even pleading, for my help.  Then I get attached, and even delusional, that I am a real part of that community work.  Then suddenly they don’t need me because they got  a permanent replacement, for instance, or figured another way to do things.  The calls, requests, suddenly stop.  I became a rusted servant.  While my ego was deflated, I have found this to be tremendously freeing, because then I can choose to do something else.  I am not obligated to that parish or work.  Time for the monastery, time to travel (before Covid) and teach other places, visit with people, all open up to me.  So, the next time you become a “rusted servant” think of what might open up to you, rather than focus on what is closed.