Doing Its Job

 If the past has been a mess, due to your own actions, then it has done its job.  It does a great job if it brings you to your rock bottom, where you know it is either death or a new life.  You might not know what the new life is, but the past has taught you that the old life is disaster and ruin.  So you take a leap into the unknown, in part out of faith but mostly out of hope.  If your past is full of addiction, then you find a recovery group on a path that gives you hope.  They once were as you are now.  Follow them.  In Christianity, Jesus said. “Follow me.”  If the past has been a good enough teacher, you don’t have to keep living it.  Just follow those who have found a way out of their mess.  Happy Halloween!

The Dust

 Good intentions are like dust if we have no depth to a spiritual life.  Meditation is the firm foundation, like being upon rock.  In my Church that would include the sacraments and worship along with my meditation.  In a Program of Recovery it would be the Steps, Traditions and Concepts that build a firm foundation.  People have good intentions after a hangover or some bad action, that they know is wrong.  But then there is no working on the heart, no connection with others on the solid path to recovery.  People often know what to do but lack the power to do it.  Dust in the wind.  

The Bronx

 I go about San Francisco doing “supply” work.  That is, I help out here and there at various parishes without living there.  I am sort of a now and again presence, forgettable.  I accept this as I am still trying to be of service.  But when I get really excited in a homily, I tend to go into my Bronx accent.  San Francisco people know this accept from movies and tv stuff.  Gangsters, street people, young uneducated types and so on with the stereotypes.  So when they hear the Bronx accept suddenly pop up in a homily, they probably think me dreadful and tell the pastor to not invite me again.  And maybe they don’t listen.  So I might be a complete failure but I am still glad I grew up in the Bronx and went to Fordham College in the Bronx.  God’s primary language may be silence as I have often said.  But God’s second language may be “Bronx.”  

Hate Or Love

 You can never hate your true self but you can hate your false self.  The false self is what you built up to impress, or to follow some image/lifestyle you read about.  Eventually, you will not much like this self.  Addiction is one way to forget that you dislike this person you have manufactured.  You probably have few friends by then because people want to be love and accepted.  And if you don’t love or respect yourself then you won’t have it for others.  Recovery is about changing yourself to find your true self.  Recovery has steps since you don’t know the way to finding your true self.  If I want to know how I am practicing my religion I can simply ask myself how many people I hate, dislike, judge or ignore?  

The Message

 In any spiritual reading we must embrace the message before it will change us.  Many believe that God loves them and loves everyone.  But saying it is one thing.  Believing it is another, but neither change you until you embrace the message.  Meditation is what builds relationship into our depth.  What is the significance of these words or facts in our own life?  It is the same with tenants of recovery.  Lots of wisdom but without meditation and then practice, it is just information and intellectual belief.  That is why people in recovery are supposed to help others after they have sobered up.  Religious belief and recovery are not all about ourself.  

Informed Not Reformed

I meet people who know about religion or recovery.  They read and may even memorize.  They are informed.  But that in itself does not lead automatically to being reformed.  Reform, change, is what religion and recovery is all about.  I read a lot of things that I quickly forget, unless I put them into practice.  A good idea is just that until I try it on myself.  Meditation is crucial as a follow up on reading.  It allows what informs me to go deeper into my heart where change is needed.  

The Past

 After you have cleaned up your past, be that necessary, then try to leave the past in the past.  You don’t have to keep reliving it.  This is the messy part of your past, not the good memories or friends.  I still find people who I knew in my messy past, who keep bringing up the old stories.  I don’t respond to this.  I don’t live in that past.  And I don’t spend a lot of time with such people.  I want to live in the now.  A spiritual path helps me to stay in the present.  God does not live in my past so why should I?

Continuity

 Stick to your path.  If you are going to meditate, then do it every day.  Ultimately, all we can control is our continuity, our daily practice.  My running coach preaches consistency.  Run on a regular basis.  Don’t worry about any one run, slow/fast, easy/difficult.  Just show up and run.  Wanting to run does not matter.  If I only ran when I wanted to run or meditated only when I felt like it, or “needed” it, I would get nowhere.  Sloth is one of the seven deadly sins.  This I know from personal experience.  

The Giving

 You might say, looking at your money, or lack thereof, “I have nothing to give” to those in need.  Well, that is from your pocketbook.  But there is another source from which we can give, and that is the heart.  If you can develop a generous interior spirit then you can give from your storeroom of kindness, hospitality and compassion.  Even giving someone a hello or a smile or asking how they are doing is a “giving.”  People are starving for connection in the midst of their loneliness.  So work the spiritual path that fills your heart.  

Willingness

 Willingness and willpower are not the same.  Willpower accedes to the demands of the ego.  OK, but that does little good for the heart’s desires.  Such requires a surrender and this is where willingness comes into play.  Willpower says I will surrender, but that will get you nowhere.  Well frustrated, but that is about it.  You become willing to surrender, maybe out of a deep mess, whatever, and then you wait for some Power that is not you, to take you on the journey of surrender.  Silence and solitude will show up somewhere along the way because the heart feeds on both.  So pray for willingness.  

Becoming Ourself

 Who we are is not the same as what we do.  Doing does not verify our identity.  Who we are is a given.  It is given to us.  Grow silent in meditation, or however you quiet your inner self, your anxious heart, and receive the gift of yourself.  Distractions, striving, consumption create labels that cover up who you really are.  They leave us feeling restless.  Sometimes irritable, and ultimately discontented.  We receive in silent prayer who we are, as a gift, a discovery each day.  Busyness disguises it, but cannot crush it.  We are eternal.  

Distractions

 Distractions numb us to our inner longing.  We consume, experience, entertain, exercise and these can all be good, until they numb us to our inner longing.  Setting priorities helps us to keep the balance.  I believe that our deepest connection/experience of God, the Divine, is silence rather than nature.  Before the universe there was silence.  But not emptiness.  Whenever you meditate and feel alone, that is just an opinion.  Go deeper, or allow yourself to be taken deeper into the silence and you will get a second opinion or rather you will get Truth.  

Courage

 When someone prays for the “courage to change the things they can,” one of those things is our inner longing.  Once we discover we have such a longing, it takes courage to act on it.  Silence, solitude, meditation, however we do it, acts on behalf of that longing.  Little support will come from anywhere else to do this, so it helps to have some community, some fellowship that supports your efforts at “prayer.”  Sometimes you may feel that you are going upstream against the culture and this takes courage to keep going.  And if you lack courage at times, discontent will be your wake-up call.  

Change

 I remember when I thought life was about change of things in the outside world.  I was upset with people, places, things, from time to time and my solution was to change them or avoid something.  But I had very little success and so I stayed disturbed.  Then through some fortunate circumstances, that is the wisdom of others, I learned that what had to change was me.  I was powerless over the outside stuff, but could work on the inside stuff.  But I could not do it alone.  I needed mentors and meditation which meant I needed God.  The prayer had to change from, “God fix things (out there),” to fix me.  So now whenever I am disturbed, I know something is the matter with me.  When I am spiritually fit, the same outside stuff that would bother me at other times, does not bother me now.  I started to grow up!

Peace

 Peace does not mean no strife.  One can drink or drug themself into “no strife.”  But that is not peace.  People who meditate to be peaceful might simply be all about themself.  Rather, think of peace as acceptance, as a surrender to that which is.  One can be peaceful with a busy, thought-filled meditation because they accept that this is what is at the moment.  You might feel better at the time of your meditation, but that will soon leave you as you enter into your more active day with no acceptance.  Meditation is not about control.  It is about growing up.  

Past

Just because you had a bad past, does not mean you are a bad person now.  I am a good priest with a bad past.  There was life before priesthood, and it was chaotic.  The past can stay past.  A spiritual program, something that feeds your insides, your heart, will keep the past, if chaotic, in the past.  We cannot change what happened, but we don’t have to wallow in shame and guilt about it.  We each have today.  So God must have a plan.  Spiritual practice tries to make my plan aline with God’s plan.  Some days are better than others.  We are not saints.  Well, at least I am not.  

The Plan

When I graduated from Fordham College in 1965, I had no plan.  There was nothing I really wanted to do.  Not even go to graduate school.  For what?  But I had to do something because, well, that is what you did after college…something that looks like a career.  My heart was not really into it.  Well, if the heart is not into a work, it will go into something else.  I liked to party.  That is not a good career move.  It is costly, not only in what you lose, but in what it costs.  Now, I go to bed at 8:00 PM and get up in the wee hours of the morning, exercise/pray/work.  What happened to the party guy?  He decided to live.  Now that is a plan.  

Beginnings

 If I say, “Today is a new beginning!” It will not be a real new beginning unless a past “new beginning” comes to an end.  I can make resolutions, but they bear no fruits or little fruit, if I do not let go of the past, which at one time was a new beginning.  I cannot start one thing while still doing another.  It would be like an alcoholic who said they would get into recovery, a new beginning, while still drinking.  Or starting a fitness program while still smoking.  Or getting into a relationship with a new person while still in relationship with someone from your past.  The past is never past until we surrender it.  

The Last Time

 I hear some alcoholics whine about life not being any fun after they stopped drinking.  I try to remind them that they are still alive after their last drunk.  Every alcoholic has a last drunk, but not every one of them lives to whine about it.  When I am going through a patch of a bad day, I try to remind myself that today is a gift and whining was not the purpose of the gift.  

The Poor

 You don’t want to work with or for the poor?  They just stay poor anyway, you think and that is frustrating for your desire for change in the economic system.  Well, you are not God.  But if you can work with the poor out of love, then they may stay poor, but they are poor being loved instead of ignored.  Loneliness is a poverty too, a poverty of soul.  Talking to someone living “rough” on the streets, may not change their living on the streets, but it might change, for the moment, their sense of isolation.  Talking to a newcomer alcoholic might not make them sober, but it might give them a sense of connection.  

Abundance

 Ever feel like your day is empty?  “I got plenty of nothin” is the refrain.  Well, I have found that giving myself in service to others can fill me with abundance.  Abundance of what?  Abundance of companions and connection.  A fellowship is never scarce.  Being all about me is quite lonely.  

Slavery

 Mother Theresa of Calcutta said that work without love is slavery.  I try to keep this in mind when I have some obligation to do, such as go help someone out in my church work.  Am I whining?  Then it is slavery and that is demoralizing.  So I try to put some love into the effort and if I cannot conjure it up myself I ask God to put love into my heart.  Of course, my heart may be full of selfishness and “all about me” stuff, so it can get crowded in there.  I do a daily inventory to see what needs to be tossed out and if I lack the power to do it, God provides the energy.  

Belief

 Some people say, “I do not believe in God.”  But often this is not so much a thought out process, as it is a way to avoid something that requires work.  It is the same with people who do say, “I believe in God.”  Both can be cheap statements, that is, neither one can require much work.  God cannot be had cheaply.  Some don’t believe because it would be costly in time and talent.  Belief to be real requires that you give your all.  “I believe” and do nothing, is no real belief.  To not believe can also be a cheap way out.  Time and effort is costly.  What effort?  Well, the corporal works of mercy, or working on avoiding the seven deadly sins would be work.  I hear some people say how hard it is to just do a few minutes of meditation each day.  God belief is more full-time than that.  

Options

 It can be a good thing to run out of options.  Too many options and you can end up choosing nothing, or choosing something but not “with your whole heart.”  When a drunk runs out of options, cannot stop drinking on their own, this is a bottom for them.  They have run out of options.  If hey enter a recovery process of some sort, such as AA, they just might embrace it with their whole heart and find ongoing sobriety.  People who “try things out,” generally don’t stick to it.  The whole heart is what makes an option a true choice.  

Self-Punishment

 One of the reasons that someone tries to reform their life for their own betterment is because they want to become a friend to themself.  Their addiction to bad behavior has harmed them as well as others.  I like to think that becoming a friend to oneself can be energizing for someone who knows they need to change.  I can apologize to me for causing myself a bad day, but then how am I going to amend my life to make tomorrow better for me.  The spiritual way of becoming friends with oneself avoids self-centeredness.  This is the only true way to change.  It is an inside job that will bear fruit on the outside eventually.  

Old Tapes

 Do you ever judge people by what they used to be like?  They might have changed, but you will have none of it because you live in your past, not their past? At times people repent after their life has gone really bad.  Selfishly, they want to feel better, so they find some spiritual and practical action path to change.  But eventually,  they decide to go tell someone, “I am sorry,” or “I apologize,” or something that admits to the mess they made of the relationship.  They do this as part of their action so as not to fall back into their old way of life and subsequent behavior.  The victim hears the apology but keeps the same judgment about the “reformer.” The victim lives in the past.  They cannot see a changed person, but only the person as they knew them in the past.  Living in the past makes one a double victim.  Forgiveness is a lot more uplifting than resentment.  

St. Francis

 In my blog yesterday, October 4, I spoke about talking to the flowers and trees.  October 4 is also the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi.  He spoke to the plants and the celestial orbs.  Some people thought him crazy.  He was overflowing with love for all.  And not just all people.  The St. Francis Prayer is the one used in AA as their 11th Step prayer.  It is a beautiful prayer that challenges us to be a positive upbeat force and not negative, dragging others down with us into a dark, lonely and isolated abyss.  

All Creation

In Christian Circles, at the end of Mark’s Gospel, Jesus, Risen, asks his disciples to proclaim the Good News to “All Creation.” So this would include flowers, plants and trees, if not your pets.  Include pets.  So when you pass by a flower or a garden or a field of growing food, say hi, and tell them the Good News you have discovered today.  Recovery people have their big book, which they are supposed to be reading and Christian’s have their bible.  Every path has some spiritual literature of good news.  So I talk to the flowers that are blooming in San Francisco.  If I have nothing good to say, it is not the flowers fault, but my need to work on my spiritual life.   

The Purpose

 The monastic life is never chosen for itself.  It is chosen as a conversion process.  The techniques and discipline is for the conversion, to live more deeply in the Spirit of Christ.  It requires a contemplative path.  The monastic life is a vehicle to help take the monk somewhere.  The vehicle is not the goal or the life.  Recovery is not chosen for itself.  It too is a conversion process.  That is why people in recovery practice the steps, go to meetings, help out.  Recovery is not a life.  It is a vehicle to take one to a new way of living, free of addiction.  To just stop drinking is not a conversion process.  It is a dry drunk.  And that is hell.  

A New Value System

 What might be the results of this “inner transformation” that comes with a contemplative way of life?  Values change.  The secular value of success, prestige, acquisition and esteem for instance, begin to be de-valued by the contemplative.  Outside stuff loses its interest.  People don’t choose a simplicity of life, or “poverty” for that matter because they want to have little or nothing.  They simply lose interest in acquisition and “things” for things sake.  A monk who chooses poverty but has no contemplative life, will be a rather unhappy monk.  So practice the prayer first and let the de-valuation process follow more naturally.  

Hospitality

Contemplative prayer is about hospitality.  You become an expectant watcher, focused to become hospitable for the Presence, the experience of God’s dwelling in the true self center of our heart.  God is hidden within.  We cannot “Make” God happen in our experience.  God decides.  We wait.  Become like a good waiter, ready for the call, the invite to come closer, to be of service but not in control.