The Interruptor

 You never know when you might be interrupting someone’s death.  They may be on a downward spiral of behavior with no hope in sight.  It is one thing to tell them to stop doing this bad lifestyle.  What hope is there in that?  If you can offer them some hope, maybe with your own story of hope, it might give them a glimmer.  That is one way you interrupt their death.  So be on your own spiritual path that includes hope, change for the better and a more selfless life.  

Sees Fit

 I tell my God that I give all of me, the good and the bad.  This way I don’t have to be just good in order to attempt surrender.  But then I say, “Do with me as you see fit.”  I figure God is going to do good stuff and remove all my bad, or not so good.  But that is not what I prayed for.  I said, “as you see fit.”  What if God decides to leave some of my character defects, my bad habits with me?  Humm.  For what purpose?  Maybe to keep me humble.  

Approval

The problem with not feeling like we are enough is that we often need someone else’s approval to confirm that we are enough.  We build our life on the opinions of others.  We don’t accept our being little, imperfect, weak.  This might be why we become more unsettled as we age.  We diminish in ways that are new to us.  “We used to” but now we cannot or cannot do as we did.  I try not to base my day and my aging on someone’s approval of me.  It is a gift to be alive today.  So I must have some purpose with my diminished skills.  Meditation reminds me that God loves me.

Someday

 Why let “someday” rule your life.  It may never come anyway.  You think you will change or do this or not do that “someday.”  Why not start with now.  You won’t to become your best self and that is always something that can be begun in the present.  Someday is an illusion.  It allows us to postpone.  Someday I hope to become a better version of my imperfect self.  Well, why wait?  Start with now.  It is all we have.  Someday projects often never get done.  

Busy, Busy

 Why do we stay so busy sometimes, or all the time?  One reason is that we always have something to prove.  We are just not good enough unless and until we get this and that done.  We want to show that we are on top of stuff.  To not do something on our list is to be less than or even a failure.  And we have to do it well.  But there is just so much time in a day.  We end up going to bed a failure for not getting this and that done.  This need to prove keeps us so busy that we fail to have any time to meditate.  Such do nothing prayer gets in the way of the do something life.  So what do you need to prove today?  Who is scoring your life?  

The Bad Too

 If you think that you have to be perfect for anyone to want you, or you think you are simply never enough, I refer you to the Seventh Step of the AA Recovery program.  In part it prays, “ I am now willing that you have all of me, good and bad.”  Apparently, this step in a recovery from Alcoholism says that imperfection if fine with the Higher Power.  I think that God loves us not because we are good but because God has decided to love us.  So we can surrender ourself just as we are to God. We don’t have to be perfect to be loved.  No one is perfect.  It is a fantasy.  So give God you as you are each day and especially when you mess up, but are entirely ready to become a better person.   

The Ripple Effect

 I believe in the ripple effect.  There are two of them.  One is a cheap wine I used to drink, named “Ripple.”  The other is when I do something that is positive and see how it seems to spread.  I can be kind and helpful.  Others experience this and they in turn begin to do the same.  I have found that criticizing never did much good to change people.  In fact it has a bad ripple effect.  I don’t recommend the wine but I do recommend the positive activity and attitude.  

The Letter

 One way to be of service is to write someone a letter without expecting a response.  Not everyone knows how to write anymore with  pen and paper.  I  sometimes write on museum card stationery with a fountain pen.  Classy.  I sometimes write someone who does not even expect to get a letter from me.  I write in cursive.  Older people can read cursive.  I never met anyone who said they hated to get a snail mail letter from me.  So much junk mail, and then the letter.  It helps make my day.  Gets me out of myself.  

The Plant

 The soul is like the flower plant.  Or vegetable plants.  It needs attention.  It needs to be watered, pruned, sunlight or shade.  Otherwise the plant will wither and die.  So the soul needs attention and that attention is prayer.  The seed of God’s love is planted there, but a times such seed can fall upon hardness of heart, the thorns and rocks of modern life with all its distractions and attractions.  Then the soul gets too little attention in prayer.  Like the plant, it withers.  So attend to it each day.  Give it your time and attention.  Water it with words, silence, meditation, solitude.  Give it Light. 

Needs

 When is there drama in my life?  One scenario is when I create needs that are not real necessities.  I put everything aside because I want to finish a novel I borrowed from the library and the due date is fast approaching.  Then I whine about how difficult my life is with so much to do and no time.  Whenever I have no time for spiritual practice, I usually am creating drama.  Why do people avoid me when I don’t take care of my interior life?  Hmmm.   

Watering

The soul is like a plant.  It needs to be watered.  A spiritual guide, God, Higher Power, Ultimate Reality is the water.  If I don’t stay connected with my spiritual source then I wither up and die within.  A plant may wither and die, but still have an outside look of a plant, though pretty dried up.  It no longer buds or shows its full potential.  It just takes up space.  I don’t want to just take up space.  

Neighbors

 Do you know the names of your neighbors?  There is a good chance that you know the names of players on your favorite team, but not your neighbors’ names.  We connect less now with those around us.  As a child in an apartment building, I knew some of my neighbors.  In our suburban home I knew the names of people in houses around us.  If I did not spend time with them that was my shyness, or lack of social skills.  But I knew their names and would talk with them when I saw them.  I knew all the kids on my block.  And so on.  Showing up where the same people meet is a good way to be known and to know names.  

Decisions

 Who makes my decisions about my life practice?  When it is only me, I often end up where I do not want to be.  How did I get into this mess?  Well, I was running my life on my own counsel.  I did not include God.  It seems when I get into “poor me” syndrome, the best solution is to ask God for help.  When God is involved in how I live my life, I am often brought to where I am supposed to be and live how I am supposed to live, a version of my best self.  I turn the mess over to God.  What have I got to lose?  Some people might say God is just a crutch.  Well, if you cannot walk what do you do?

Talent

 Jesus did not pick followers, the Apostles, who were very learned or eloquent.  They would never convince anyone by promotion, words or learning.  They were simple people, but they believed.  So they attracted others by their thorough and deep belief.  I think the best way to attract people to a belief is in how you live it, not in your speeches or exhortations.  That might end up being “saying one thing but doing another.” Attraction is in the action of your life, not in words of promotion.  

The Whirlwind

 As the saying goes, “Sow the wind, you will reap the whirlwind.”  Busyness for its own sake does not feed the heart.  A heart that is not fed will always act inappropriately.  It will act in ways that are like the wind.  Nothing is planted.  So nothing is harvested.  Action without prayer is all busyness that does not feed.  

The Marriage

Good spiritual practice is like the marriage vow.  I do it for better or for worse.  Stuff happens.  Sometimes the prayer/meditation is not what I wanted or expected.  But I don’t give up.  I am in for the long haul, for better or for worse.  Actually the prayer is not “worse.”  Only how I feel about it is worse.  My feelings and  judgments about  results are just my side of things.  I am in relationship with my God, Power who has a God way of doing things.  My job is to be faithful daily in the practice.  

The Fall

 I go out to run in the early morning darkness to avoid pollution and traffic.  My mind tells me to wear a light strapped to the cap I am wearing.  It would shine on the ground in front of me so I would see obstructions, ruts, stones, branches in the running path.  But I say “No.”  I got this.  I don’t need a light.  I know the roads.  So I go out and run.  Just as I pick up the pace, my full speed, I trip over something I did not see in the dark.  I fall.  I am cut up and bleeding.  It is pride goeth before the fall.  I have enough spiritual practice to know the right thing to do, but not enough to do it.  

Mute

 Meditation and Evil keeps us mute.  Evil keeps us mute so that we do not say/do anything that might be helpful to another.  I ignore or practice indifference.  Meditation keeps me mute during the mediation so that I can eventually say something that is helpful to another.  Too soon is often too much of what might have been a good thing.  

Light

 How might I have a sense that I am helping others.  For sure, it comes when we are a light in dark places.  Someone might talk about things that they have lost or how they feel lost.  This is a dark place, though often accompanied by self-pity.  No matter.  It is a darkness and if you are on a spiritual practice then you can become a light in their life.  Your heart connection will guide you on what to do and not to do, to say and not to say.  The prayer life you have will free you from mixing up your ego-self with good advice or action.  The ego wants praise.  It wants to feel better than the person in darkness.  The ego only acts to be helpful if it boosts the ego .  Pray and then act.  

Belonging

Someone might drink in order to feel a sense of belonging.  They find that the drink has become addictive and they still feel a lack of belonging.  Then they stop drinking with the help of a Spiritual Power, God, and the foxhole prayers that got them started.  They say they are on a spiritual path of prayer and acting better in public.  But they still don’t feel a sense of belonging.  That is why there are “programs” of sobriety that include group.  You join a group and get to know and be known.  Maybe there are weekends of spiritual growth together.  You can belong to God, but it is nice to feel a sense of belonging to something you can see in human form.   

Again No More

 How do I know that something I do is addictive?  One way is if something always goes wrong when you do it.  You try to do something for someone that you think is a good thing.  Well, that is your opinion.  They always get angry, upset and then try and avoid you.  You may say, “I am doing it for their own good.”  Maybe.  But if it is always going to be wrong or sideways, maybe you are doing it for your own good.  It is the heresy of helpfulness.  It lacks the spiritual practice that might signal to us a different path or action.  All service and no prayer usually goes sideways at best.  

Value

 I think it is normal to want to feel that we are of some value, that is validated as to who we are and/or what we do.  But there is a difference in being validated by others,  rather than trying to be validated by ourself.  This is where addiction can rise up and bite us.  Someone comes into a group and feels like an outsider, unimportant, unnoticed.  So they start to drink, and as they drink alcohol, their personality, manner and self-perception change.  They feel like the center of attention.  It is validation by overindulgence.  It can happen with work, or even doing good for others.  When it becomes overindulgence, we know that the action is devaluing us.  Moderation.  And if that is impossible, abstinence.