Control

 When I say, “I can control this,” I probably have already lost control.  Do I say I can control eating broccoli?  I never think about broccoli and control.  If it is served I eat some.  That is it.  I do not crave broccoli or think a lot about it or if there will be enough for me.  I only think about controlling things in which I have problems of control.  I don’t have problems eating sweets such as chocolate which I love.  I know a little is OK and more is not.  So I can have chocolate around.  I have given up those things that I used to say, “I can control this.”  I lost too many battles.  My body has always won out over my mind and will power.  

Be Willing

Sometimes I am not willing to do something.  I resist.  My mind is closed.  I am not willing to even try.  Judgment has sealed my mind shut.  What to do?  Someone said that I should then practice the willingness to be willing.  I cannot make myself be willing, but I can want to be willing.  My closed mind opens a little.   I don’t have to do anything or commit.  But I won’t close off the possibility that I might change my attitude.  Then maybe I will ask questions of others, become a bit of an inquirer.  I have found some surprising changes to begin with a willingness to be willing.  

Deep Energy

 Some spiritual paths call it Kundalini.  I call it the Holy Spirit.  When I look into the silence and darkness of meditation, my committee meeting of thoughts and feelings drop away.  At some point I can then feel myself relaxing my shoulders and arms, breathing slowly.  Then a healing sense of energy comes into my limbs all the way down to my feet.  What might have ached, seems to not ache.  I believe this Holy Spirit energy is in me always.  I did not get it at Baptism.  If so, then there is something of God as part of my very self.  When I get up from the prayer, I move slowly.  I feel a sense of love and acceptance for all around me, people and situations, that had bothered me in the past.  This can all pass after awhile, so I keep coming back to a daily practice.  

Bad To Worse And Then

 We think that nothing good can come out of this pandemic.  Well, look at Elizabeth Ann Seaton, for whom my middle sister was named.  Seaton was born Episcopal and rich in New York City.  She married money and had five children.  All good, like our world before the pandemic.  Then things went downhill.  Her husband's business went bust, without a pandemic, and he got TB.  So the couple went off to Europe for a cure.  He died on the way.  Elizabeth ended up living with a Catholic family in Italy.  She was so impressed by them, that she converted.  Went home and was disinherited by Episcopal family.  They kept the kids.  She was penniless.  A priest in Baltimore invited her to start a school in his parish.  This led to her founding the Sisters of Charity.  She opened schools in several cities.  And then she died in 1821.  End of story? No.  The unexpected, unplanned for, European immigration came in mid-century, with Irish Hunger, Italian wars, and her order was ready with the means to help these poor people.  So maybe some unseen good is in the works from all this misery of the coronavirus.  Stay safe.  

Loud

Sometimes it is helpful to be loud, or louder than.  Than what?  Than the voices or "committee meetings" in your head.  Many of us have these meetings in which we mutter to ourselves, or even talk out loud to ourselves when insanity reigns,  about people, places, and things, that are just all wrong.  The committee tells us the solution.  The outside world needs to shape up.  But if we can find a friend, associate, someone on a spiritual path that makes sense, or even a Power in prayer, those voices need to be louder than the committee.  By louder, I mean the committee voices begin to recede in their ability to control our emotional sobriety.  That is why some people pray, or go find a person on the other side of sanity, the side we are not on at the moment.  A good blog is louder than your committees.  

In The Darkness

 If you hate your neighbor then you live in darkness, so says the Bible. Now I say that I do not live in darkness because I do not hate.  But so many of us lack love for the neighbor because we gossip about them in some shortcoming we perceive or imagine.  We talk behind people’s back in a judgmental fashion.  We exhibit a sense of superiority.  It is a long way from hate to love.  Along that way there is acceptance, compassion, being helpful, forgiving of perceived shortcomings, and tolerance.  I have often discovered that the neighbor who I put down is quite loved and admired by someone(s) else.  Makes me think.  

Fabiola

 Before I ever knew that there was a Saint Fabiola, I knew a college student named Fabiola.  She was beautiful, tall, and personable, and fit as she was on the Tennessee swim team.  She had a friend named Susan who was not tall, nor on any University sports team.  Susan used to say that when she was with Fabiola, no one looked at Susan or even noticed she was there.  The focus was Fabiola.  Though Susan was quite attractive, she made a point for me in the spiritual life.  When I teach or preach is the focus going to be all about me?  Or will my ministry point to the path, and for me, to Jesus Christ?  If people say I am wonderful, but remember nothing that I said, nor if they are Baptized, not at all pointed more toward Christ, then I have failed.  Better that Christ is noticed and I am not.  Thank you Susan.  

A Row

 I like the phrase, “One Day At A Time.”  But I will miss something if I don’t add, “In A Row.”  I am on a a spiritual path, but not just this one day.  Yes, I only have this one day, but do I have a plan to string together days in a row?  So part of today’s practice is planning on how and when I am gong to do it tomorrow.  Tomorrow does not take care of itself.  It begins with the evening before.  I often go home from social events, when I used to have social events to go home from, earlier than other people.  Why?  I plan to get up early and into my spiritual practice.  I have found that putting the practice off to “later” in the day does not work for me.  Change does not happen in a day, but can start with today.  

Passing Importance

 The Magi were three fellows come from way East of where Jesus was born.  They each brought him a gift.  They were following a star.  They seemed like such interesting people.  After they left Jesus, we never heard about or from them again.  Why not?  That may be the point as someone said.  Importance is temporary.  You are center stage.  Then you are not.  Someone else comes along who takes on importance.  I was just reading the novel, “The Paris Wife,” about Ernest Hemingway and his first marriage.  When I was a schoolboy, Hemingway was an important author.  He wrote the novel, “The Sun Also Rises.”  I never hear about him now.  Who reads him?  So if you are striving for importance know that it will be temporary if you get it. I try to be loving, to be of service and let it go at that.  

Nothing But Trouble

 Sometimes God can seem like nothing but trouble.  When?  When we try to pray and get the feeling that God is not here, not present.  We feel “blah.”  We are trying to pray and why is God not here?  This is what I call “controlling prayer.”  We think we can control God like we are the puppeteer and prayer is to have God on a string.  In fact God is Present, just not how you want God to be Present.  So don’t make too much judgment about your prayer life.  It is not a rating system.  Besides, feeling better in prayer is simply your agenda.  God may have other plans for you, better plans. 

Silence

 Someone said that silence is not a lack of noise but a Presence.  At times some people don’t like silence because it gives their mind space to engender craziness of thoughts.  Thus, silence makes them uncomfortable.  Sound, noise, commotion, buries thoughts or feelings they want to avoid.  But lack of noise does not mean silence either.  One can be on internet and it is anything but silence.  It is only when silence reveals a Presence, that we begin to feel its comforting dimension, its awe and mystery.  Would that institutional religion was not so noisy, or full of sound.  What is it avoiding?  What are you avoiding?

What Works

 If you find a spiritual path, or religion that seems to feed you why not go with what works for you and leave the rest aside for now.  Spiritual growth is just that, growth.  A lot of the leaders of institutional religion preach the “all or nothing.”  Accept everything or be an outsider, the unwashed.  They are trained that way, and it appeals to their temperament.  It does not appeal to me.  I am all in for a relationship with Ultimate Reality as it reveals itself to me.  But I am not all in to what other people tell me at any particular time.  Religions can feed the soul as long as they don’t equate that with indoctrinating the mind. 

What Changes?

 When I find a situation to be unpleasant for me, I used to try to change the situation.  I never thought to try and change my attitude.  Think of a social gathering.  I don’t feel like a good fit.  Either I don’t know anyone, or I know everyone and don’t want to spend time with them at the moment.  Extra drink? Leave?  Sulk in quietude?  Done that.  Now I think that maybe I can change me, my attitude.  Feel lonely?  But I am not alone.  I have my spiritual power within me.  Or as I say, “God loves me.”  Ah, some emotional sobriety.  Now I discover acceptance. What can I add to the situation?  This event, these people are not all about me.  “Oh, there is a perfect stranger who looks like I felt a minute ago.”  I go and say hello.  And I drink water.  And so it goes.  

Destination

 Emotional sobriety is not a permanent place I want to get to, but rather a process, as someone said.  I can feel “right” and then, oops, I am falling off the track.  So I have to work at it on a daily basis.  I have tools learned over a period of time.  As long as I keep in mind that emotional sobriety is a continuing process, I don’t get so upset when it seems to vanish or diminish.  I don’t beat myself up.  If I can be present to the moment, I often see quite quickly what is going on with me and make a correction.  Blaming the world or outside stuff is a dead end.  

The Purpose

 What is my purpose to feel better?  Do I do something so that it makes me feel better and that is it?  Well, yeah, but then I have begrudgingly come to realize that feeling better  has a purpose!  It is not all about me.  I try to feel better so that I might be available to help someone else.  I don’t mean that I have to run out and look for some forlorn soul, but rather my sense of well being is to attune me to watch where this might benefit another should an opportunity arise.  I meditate in the early morning and it often makes me feel ready to take on the day with its difficulties, be they people, places or situations.  My plans are only my plans.  When I ignore that interior early morning stop the day often goes sideways pretty fast.  

The Window

  A window is useful while it is light out.  But once the darkness comes the window is no longer useful, or not in the same way.  If not electrical lights outside, you see only darkness through a window.  Such can it be at a monastery.  Verbal prayer is like a window.  It is useful so long as you have the light of thoughts, imagination with its images floating through your mind.  But once you enter into the darkness of meditation, verbal prayer is no longer useful.  Words, like windows are pretty useless in the dark.  When I close my eyes in prayer it is dark.  I don’t try to use words, thoughts or images as a kind of electricity to lighten things up.  There is plenty enough to “see” in the dark, but not with the eyes of words and images.  

Wrong

 I think that people have a right to be wrong.  I am not in the correction business.  All I can do, if one will listen, is offer my experience, my view, opinion.  My hope is that I am pointing to a larger truth.  I don’t try to convince someone.  Why not?  If they are wrong, then maybe they need more time to live in their wrong, before life gets so miserable they become “open” to another way.  People often do the same old bad behavior because it is their solution, until it is not.  Then you have the student.  Be the teacher, ever ready.  

Rerailed

 Sometimes we get derailed from becoming our best and truest self.  We do this to fit in, please others, make a living and so on.  We are on the wrong track.  When we finally figure this out and begin to work at becoming our truer self, we are getting "re-railed" as someone said.  But others, for who we performed this "not Me" think we have gone off the rails.  Why? Because we are no longer doing what they want.  Seems some people would rather have us be miserable, unfulfilled, half-full, than their being inconvenienced by our interior changes that lead to exterior changes.  

Self-Obsessed

When I get too self-obsessed, as opposed to not so self-obsessed, I begin to worry what people think of me.  This leads to me trying to do things to a perfection that would make people like me, since they won't like me if I am not more perfect.  Yes, insane, but worse it can affect my cooking.  If I am in this "gotta do better" I begin to stress about how things are going.  Begin to forget stuff, trying to clutter my mind with doing"more."  Then resentment sets in.  OK.  I now stop before  I am about to do something and ask myself how I am doing on my insides.  Insane?  Worried? Resentful?  If so, I know there is something the matter with me, not others or the food.  So my spiritual Power, God, and I have a conference and only after I settle into right-size, sane self, relaxed, leave results up to God, I then do the work of cooking.  Why be miserable doing good deeds?   

Yes, But

 There is a story whereby the father asked the son to do something and the son said, "Yes," but then went off and did not do it.  This is what I call living "in the later."  I will do it but not now.  Lots of us can fall into this time called, "later."  Too frequently, it is a fantasy time to make us feel better about getting things done that never really get done.  I try not to say that I will do my blog later or prepare a talk later.  I cannot guarantee that this later time will become available.  What I do have is "now."  There are long term projects like cleaning the attic or the garage, and we know where a lot of that ends up or doesn't.  But there are a lot of things that do need some more immediate attention in terms of their value, but when we say "yes, but" we have devalued them.  So I write this blog now.  I don't devalue you.  

Choices

 I try not to spend a lot of time trying to help people who want to stay sick.  I use my energy for people who want to get well.  If someone comes to me and asks for help, I give it.  If they then keep to old behavior, I let them be.  I move on.  It is their choice.  I am not like the medical person who keeps giving advice to a patient who ignores it.  Why clutter up your calendar and schedule with people who don’t really want to get well?  Cruel?  I don’t think so.  By letting the sick person continue in their behavior, my hope is that they will someday get so sick that they become sick of being sick.  Then they might be ready to let go of their self-will run riot.  Some people will practice good behavior because of fear of consequences, such as child to parent.  But as soon as they no longer have the fear of consequences, they just revert to bad behavior.  Growing up is too painful for many a person.  But the pain of self-will may be the first step in the cure.  

Rush Hour

 I remember “rush hour” when I was working in big city business.  It was tense at times with a lot of “future-think.”  If I get there sooner, I get a better seat on the train, or get an earlier train.  And then when I get home I can have time to do this and that.  And so on.  I was not living in the present, nor savoring the moment.  Even when I drank, I did not often savor the drink in hand, but thought of the next one.  I was and still am to some extent, a too great extent, a “future-think”person, if not also going off into an imaginary world, a “re-do” of earlier life experiences.  Meditation then is the challenge and often the anchor that brings me into and keeps me in the present moment.  Rush hour is a slippery slope.  Try to savor the moment.  It beats insanity.  

One Small Step

 People say that they want to change.  They get all energized to do big things, big changes, such as change diet, exercise program, gym, working in a soup kitchen, making a vow.  Often, such big steps, all at once, are short term.  Change is neither overnight, nor is is dramatic.  Why not start with what is right in front of you, in your ordinary everyday encounters?  I suspect that in the routine of your day, you encounter situations in which you can change your behavior.  Start with basic acts of compassion and patience.  Nothing heroic.  Few of us change with heroic deeds.  Try a smile instead of a frown.  Instead of seeing the person with whom you come into contact as just a nuisance or necessary to your agenda, like a clerk in a store, see that person as just like you with your feelings and needs and emotions.  Small steps.  Don’t worry about results.  

Where?

People say that they cannot find God.  Are they looking around outside themselves?  In a church?  Work or art? Nature?  I think that God is so close, so one with us that we miss the God presence within.  Why is God so close? Possibly, God wants to speak with our tongue, touch with our hands, love with our heart.  So I find God by the way I act with others.  If God is Love, as many say, then when I am most loving, compassionate, forgiving, accepting, patient, kind and helpful, I have a good chance of discovering that Presence, Power that is within me.   

The Cave

Prayer is a bit like going into a cave.  The cave opening seems wide and easy with plenty of light.  But you don't know how deep the cave is.  Something urges you to go deeper, into the darkness, the unknown.  At some point you make a bit of a sound and hear an echo.  This tells you that in the dark, there is still more depth, and more darkness in the cave.  Though there seems to be no path,  or none you can define, you do not feel alone.  So prayer is the way through the cave of the heart.  The journey starts out easy with memorized words or words from a book.  Words, words.  But as you enter the cave of the heart, darkness will take over and you will not be able to use words from a book.  Each breath is like an echo in the darkness of the heart that tells you there is more, greater depth, deeper union.  And you do not feel alone. I have yet to reach the end of the cave of the heart.  

Deeper

 I am not looking for separateness or renunciation of the world up here in this monastery.  Rather, I am trying to bring  myself to a depth of experience, a deeper self-honesty, a greater removal of obstacles that hinder my connectivity with people.  We can live amidst a mass of people, or in a neighborhood, and yet connect only lightly with ourselves and others.  There is a difference between passing through life and passing by life.  I am very good at finding projects to detour me from the interior work.  Here, at the monastery, I seem to get caught more easily at this subterfuge.  God gets my inattention projects and shows them to me from time to time.  So the process of deepening is first of all to get beyond the bad habits, the detours.  We may grow faster than we think when all seems to be detours.  Grace is at work.  Be I way off track or on the path, grace is at work.  

Thank-Less

 I heard a catchy phrase that is the opposite of gratitude.  It is “taking-for-granted-tude.”  I like it because it is memorable, more so than “thankless.”  If something went well yesterday but I wake up today and fail to be grateful, then I am moving toward taking something for granted.  Often enough I have stumbled back into bad behavior after a string of good behavior, and I have found out that I forgot about prayers of gratitude.  I need a greater Power than myself on a daily basis to say on the path of being free and happy.  Since this power is not really me, I need to say “thank you,” so that I don’t fall back into the misery that results from “taking-for-granted-tude.”

Medicine

 Some people mix up the idea of medicine and vaccine in their spiritual practice.  A vaccine is something you take once, or once a year.  Medicine is something you take daily while you have an illness that requires it.  I want spiritual health.  Doing something like prayer once a year is not going to do it.  I need a daily medicine, a daily practice of prayer and service.  Prayer gets my attitude right, so I can do service right.  It is not much good trying to be helpful while holding a resentment.  People go on retreats or rehab programs or pilgrimages.  Good, but it is more a vaccine than a medicine.  What do you do on a daily basis?  We all like those spiritual highs.  But the growth comes in the daily practice.  Trudge if you must, but persist.  

The Baby

 Most Christmas Stable scenes under the tree or over the fireplace, or wherever, show no one holding the baby.  Why not.  I hear it is because everyone is worshipping the baby Jesus.  The baby Jesus does not want to be worshipped.  Babies want to to held.  And for that matter, Jesus never asked to be worshipped.  He asked to be followed.  Lots of Christians worship but do not follow.  If God was really human in the baby Jesus then God wants to be held.  And when Jesus is held it would be nice to see him held by Joseph.  

Visibility

 In my religion, The Incarnation means that God became visible, human, so that we could approach God and see how Love works through that human body.  “So what,” you non-believers say?  Well, are you visible enough so that others see you as approachable?  Are you showing Love in your physical actions and attitudes?  I see people come to gatherings, last minute, sit in a corner or the back or “away” from others, and leave as soon as things seem to be over.  Then they say they are on a spiritual path.  Maybe.  But for me, I want to be a bit more incarnation type.  I want to act in my body so that others feel they can approach me.  I want to express positive attitudes and actions toward and around others.  My spiritual path is more “with others.”  To do it on my own is to be led by an idiot.  

Chinooks

This New Year's Day is anything but happy in Boulder, County, Colorado.  Many homes and businesses have been lost to fire, animals and lives lost.  What happened?  We forgot.  Native people living in Boulder Valley, before the European settlers came, called the winds Chinooks.  They blow about a 100 miles an hour and bring chaos.  It is often said that God's creation came out of chaos.  Chaos did not go away, but remained in creation.  I remember a Chinook back in about 1982 in Boulder.  No one told me about Chinooks.  It was scary.  I thought our house was going to come apart.  Telephone poles blew down in Boulder.  There was destruction, but in 1982 there was no Superior, Broomfield, Louisville or Lafayette.  Yes, there were places with those names but nothing much was there besides ranches and farms.  Boulder is at 5000 feet altitude and right behind us are mountains that suddenly rise to 8000 feet.  Thus the creation of Chinooks.  But Boulder Valley, being beautiful, people want to live and work here, a bit like San Francisco built on an earthquake vault.  Ranchers and Farmers sold their land, wiring for power went up on exposed poles, rather than underground.  We forgot about Chinooks.  30,000 people moved in and created suburbia.  Drought came uninvited.  A friend of chaos.  And then came the Chinooks, 40 years after the one I remember.  The telephone wires blew down as they do in Chinooks. When we forget, Boulder County near the "Flatiron" mountains becomes a dangerous place to live.  I am thankful for all the people who reached out to the homeless in our suburbia, where chaos lives.  Let us no forget again.