Maureen

 Today is my Big Sister’s birthday.  A good day to remember a wonderful person.  She stopped celebrating at 64.  She died.  She missed a lot of stuff, good stuff.  Grandkids growing up and now getting married.  One grand child is engaged.  Maureen never met her as the grandchild was not born yet.  I hope they remember grandma at the wedding celebrations.  I called Maureen “Sis” probably because I could not talk very well.  She was my only sis as later siblings had not come along yet.  I used to preach stories about her but that only made her more popular than me.  So I gave that up to spare my fragile ego.  I hope that she is praying for me to go to heaven.  But since I was a little brat and spoiled, so she says, she might not want eternity with me.  This lifetime was enough.  But saints forgive, so I am betting on her good behavior in the prayer department.  Hi Sis!

Stars

 In our Western culture we often act as if we are separate stars unto ourself.  Each star is different and separate.  Each star sustains itself.  One star does not try and sustain another.  But in fact we are also a part of a constellation.  We are more than a separate star unto ourself.  Stars share matter that at one time was all one.  The Bang made a separation but in fact there is still a connection.  A constellation is part of a galaxy and so on.  We are all connected.  A spiritual life challengers a sense of separation.  There is always a WE made up of I, you, them.  

The Rain

 It rains on everyone.  The rain does not decide to rain only on selfish, inconsiderate, or clueless persons.  It rains on the good and the bad.  I need my love to be like the rain.  Don’t judge but love,  OK, judge but still love.  God loves everyone.  Well, sometimes I think God has bad taste.  But that is the challenge of “love your enemies.  Love those who hate you.”  Maybe they need love too?  Maybe they are having a bad day, or bad life?.  I get on the bus and some young person is sitting in a senior seat glued to their cell phone.  I wish them dead.  But maybe they need love too?  So I ask my God to give them what they need.  I usually have a better day as well.  

Outside Eyes

I found myself recently trying to do too much with too little time.  Why did I not say, “I can only do this now, but not that.”  Because I was trying to do things for ‘outside eyes.’  I was doing it to please others.  They already like me and appreciate what I am doing.  They have no expectations of my doing EXTRA.  I run a weekly meeting.  I bake treats.  I stress myself out to bake when I really have not the time today.  The meeting does not require treats.  Is this blog for outside eyes? No.  It is to remind me that I need a meeting! 

Apology

 A good apology is ruined by excuses.  Apology allows for honesty, courage and humility.  All good things.  Excuses cover up the truth.  To contact someone, a boss, colleague, partner,  with a legitimate reason, out of your control, for being late is one thing.  To walk in and give an excuse because you don’t want to face square the real reason for tardiness.  The truth of irresponsibility, selfishness and laziness is usually covered up with an excuse.  Apology allows us to more honestly face the truth.  If we don’t pay the consequences now, we will pay down the road.  I have found it so.  

The Not So Real

 We know we are living a lie when we tend to turn reality into sugar.  You did really bad behavior in some past event or time.  But memory of it says, “Oh, that was not so bad,” or “That really was fun,” or “That was not my fault.”  Why sugar some bitter time in the past with memory?  Because we want to repeat it.  As bad as it was, it gave us something we wanted or avoided something we do not want, such as a feeling.  Some of us do bad behavior to avoid loneliness.  Early in a bad drinking career, we think it was not all that bad, so we repeat it.  Or we admit it was bad but there were circumstances that we will avoid the next time.  We won’t drive drunk.  We will only drink this or that. And so it goes.  Too much sugar can kill you.

Barely Living

We can live without living.  It is often our way to avoid pain.  To avoid the pain of poverty one had known when younger, they might work so hard as to lose a love that was once theirs.  Work draws all the attention.  Life goes too fast for love.  It is love that will slow you down.  An alcoholic is alive, but not really living.  They drink to avoid pain and they lose what love they had.  Love slows us down.  If you practice the spiritual life it must be for love and not to avoid pain.  The spiritual life will be for love if there is a growing relationship.  You know it is growing because you become less about yourself and more about others.  Foxhole prayers are just another way to avoid pain.  They are not relationship with a Power that is Love.   

The Garden

 Love is a garden, I was told.  We have to keep working at it.  When I see a beautiful garden like our San Francisco Arboretum, I am well aware of how much work it takes to make it what it is.  A beautiful love takes work.  Even messy love takes work to deal with the mess.  Someone told me that they love AA.  It is a Recovery Program for Alcoholics.  They love it because they work at it.  If I say I love the spiritual life, it is because I work at it.  There are times when it seems so much work, bother, time-consuming, and it is those times that I must especially pay attention.  Absence of feeling does not mean absence of love.  It means get out of myself.  Gardeners are not selfish people.  

In Between

Where is God?  Well, one place I have found God in action is that space between outside stimulus and  response.  Stuff happens.  People say and act as they do.  That is outside stimulus.  How do I react? Anger, resentment, revenge, whining, self-pity, are all responses in which there is no space for God.  The stimulus and my reaction are bing-bing.  But when I pause, that is God at work.  I may feel a response for a moment.  Feelings happen.  But action need not follow if God gets some space.  This is why I need a spiritual practice in the morning, early.  

The Script

 Why do I get angry, resentful or upset at what someone says or does?  I have come to realize that on some days and occasions, I have gotten up and written a script for how the day should go.  People have their lines to speak and their actions to perform according to the script.  Unfortunately, they don’t read the script.  They say and do things free of my program for my happiness.  So, I am really the director of a fantasy play.  I am the only one in it.  Even God has opted out.  

Trees

 There is a non-profit in San Francisco, “Friends of the urban Forest.”  They plant trees in neighborhoods in tandem with City and neighborhood approval.  One objection to having a tree planted in front of one’s home or business is that they will never live to see the tree grow to full bloom.   But that is not the point.  We don’t plant slow growing trees for ourselves alone.  We plant them for those who will follow us.  Recovery people and people in religious building refurbishing and expansion don’t so much think everything they do is for the present.  Recovery meetings are kept going, functioning, not just for the present membership but for those who have not yet entered the door.  The same with places of worship, and monuments.  

The Whisper

 Grace, that spiritual Power, energy, gift to the heart, does not shout out for our attention.  Grace respects our will to accept or reject.  So grace comes as a whisper.  This is why we need to have meditation in our life.  It is a prayer of quiet, so that we can be open to that whisper who will energize us in a direction for our good and those around us.  Grace gets us out of ourself by getting into ourself first.  

Urgent

 We can get so busy that sometimes important things don’t get done.  The important things too often get buried in the “urgent.”  Ego, fear based life, the self-important focus make some things urgent, that in fact are just getting in the way of the important.  Important things don’t always appeal to our self-interest, or quiet our fears.  People in recovery skip meetings because of a sense of urgency.  Then they drink and so it goes.  People skip worship services, prayer, spiritual practices because they don’t seem to wear the “important” label.  They become optional, or “later,” which rarely comes.  Doesn’t God know how busy I am?

Control

Why worry about things over which you have no control?  You worry about tomorrow?  We don’t even know if we will be alive tomorrow, much less control it.  What if San Francisco has its inevitable earthquake before that?  Or your neighborhood gets washed out by a flood?  Death?  Not tomorrow!  I got plans.  Silly.  Just work on today and check in with some spiritual power to keep you out of your own way.  Surrender will not happen as long as delusion rules.   

The Outsider

 What is self-will run riot?  How do you know when it is active?  Well, one way to know it is running your life is when you treat God as an intruder, an outsider.  You are at best inviting God into your plans, such as to help you get what you want, deserve.  I try to counter this by praying to God to show me a will that might not be mine, but is best for me.  I have preferences rather than musts.  It keeps my resentment list short.  

Happy People

 One of the things that attracts me to some work or effort is happy people doing it.  I might have become a plumber if I actually saw someone happy when they were plumbing.  There might be happy people who are plumbers, but just not when they were plumbing.  But my narrow experience of plumbers does make me look at what I do.  I am a priest.  Am I a happy priest?  That is, am I happy being a priest that people can see.  Or do they see whining, resentment, anger and self-pity?  No one will want to become a priest if that is what they see.  One of the best ways to evangelize is to show that you are happy with what you believe and practice.  This goes for people in Recovery too.  It is attraction not advertising that catches people.  My god-father was a priest.  He was happy.  Fr. Bernard Corrigan was a key to who I am today.  

Violin

 Watch someone just learning to play the violin.  Then watch someone who is a master of it.  The newbie is struggling mightily and you can see it and feel for the person.  The master seems not to struggle at all.  The difference is practice.  Both persons want to be violinists.  The desire is there but the practice time is vastly different.  So why should it not be so with a spiritual path.  We get attracted to a path because we see an adept at practice.  No one is attracted to someone painfully struggling.  But prayer life takes practice if we want our lives to seem “effortless.”  The effort will always be there but it will eventually flow and attract others.  No one is attracted to a Recovery Program if everyone in the room acts insanely.  They might have all been insane at one time, but Practice of a spiritual way made a difference.  

Dawn

I think of myself as a “dawn” person.  I am not living in darkness.  I do have a spiritual practice.  But I am not fully in the light.  I can see it coming and my practice is to strive toward it.  But I am not yet fully in the light.  So I have to be on my watch that I don’t trip over my character defects or personal shortcomings, or try to return to the past which is just a form of darkness.  The past, the darkness is over.  Prayer is moving toward the light, or being moved by some Power toward the Light.  

Effects

 Events End.  Effects do not.  When we continue to live in shame and guilt, and resentment, we are still living the past in the present.  We cannot change the past, so why live it in our bodies?  Serenity is in part accepting things I cannot change.  It can take courage to change the things you can.  Why?  Because it might involve telling someone else about the event, relationship, experience.  Isolation is often living in the past because there is no one to whom we can talk about our shame and guilt and resentments.  Even monks have confessors, spiritual guides who know their secrets.  Then there are no secrets and we can begin to let go of the effects of the past.  We can live in the present, having learned self-acceptance and wisdom of letting the past stay past.  

Grace

 San Francisco is a town with the kind of weather in which one can survive sleeping “rough,” that is, outdoors.  It rarely gets real cold or real hot.  We have a lot of homeless, and many of them are on drugs and alcohol.  When I see one of these people on the street as I walk by, I have gratitude, rather than judgment or distain for their actions.  Why gratitude?  There but for the GRACE of God, as the saying goes.  No one takes their first hit of these highly addictive drugs, saying, “Oh, I want to become homeless, jobless and addicted.”  The first intake is for other reasons such as loneliness, alienation, self-pity, anger, resentment, and all the other common feelings that many of us can have as human beings.  I never took that first fentanyl, crack or cocaine.  I am often weak and stupid and delusional.  So it was GRACE.  

After Time

If you are like me and believe in an afterlife, something beyond our physical death, do you ever wonder what language it might speak so as to connect?.  I expect the After Life is more than like riding a New York Subway where no one looks or talks to anyone they don’t know.  So if it is going to be very communal, what language will it speak.  My belief is that the language will be “Prayer.”  So, every time that I pray it is like being in language school, practicing for this new place I hope to live in after I die.  This helps encourage me to practice Prayer and meditation.   

Time Is Money

 When I get something that I believe came from God, I cannot really pay God, like I would pay someone for something I got through or from them.  God does not need any payment.  But time is money.  So I can pay God my attention.  This is what I am doing in prayer and meditation.  I am paying attention to God.  Five minutes a day is better than nothing, but it is quite close to nothing.  My “precious” time can be my downfall.  

The Owner

 Do you fixate on things you used to own?  Or on things that you do own, but might need to let go?  If so, things might own you instead of you owning them.  I live in a small space which saves me from having too much stuff.  I don’t have a garage full of things such that the car is parked outside.  Or maybe a couple cars.  So my circumstances save me from myself.  I cannot buy something until I ask. “Where do I put it?”  Since there is little space, I tend not to buy things that I don’t absolutely need, like toothpaste.  Maybe something that I never use, but is useful, might be good for someone else!  What a concept.