Becoming

 Being Catholic I am familiar with why a lot of people like to go to receive holy Communion or Eucharist, the little white wafer.  The belief is that the host is Christ, as in Jesus Christ.  To receive it makes people feel better and/or closer to God.  While this is so, it is not the point.  The wafer becomes Jesus, so that those who receive it will become Jesus.  But from what I read in the Bible about Jesus, there are times he did not feel better or feel closer to God.  On the cross he felt abandoned and certainly did not feel ok being whipped and crucified.  So I have to remind myself that when my life seems painful and God seems to have abandoned me, quit whining.  I am becoming Christ.  So I have ceased trying to “get” something I want, when receiving communion.  After all I am weak and selfish and sometimes all about me.  I am glad that I was baptized as a baby and told that I was a Catholic, because if I had to choose it as an adult, I am not so sure I would have signed on.  

Purpose

 What is the purpose of my blog?  In part, it is to help people to find God, the experience, the verb, and not the God as in idea or object, thing.  I write a lot about addicts because if they are going to get well, they need to be on a spiritual path of some sort.  If  people are into a religious tradition, I think they need to find the God that is more than someone out there who they fear, or pray to for things.  God as out there, somewhere, a noun, is not a bad start.  We do it with children.  So my purpose is to move to a more adult, mature relationship with God.  This means that when you feel God is absent, it is really God in hiddenness or darkness.  Feelings about God do not go to a sufficient spiritual depth to be of use in dark times.  I keep running into people who do read me, so I think I am onto something for somebody.  

The God Fight

 A lot of people fight the battle against any spiritual path that includes a “God idea.”  What they are fighting, so often, is the “idea” and not the experience of God as an energy in their lives.  You can deny an idea but it is seemingly impossible to deny an energy.  You suddenly see a flower in all its blossoming beauty and it takes your breath away.  The experience is a God Creator experience.  And the flower becomes more than a flower.  Isn’t your day a lot better for experiencing that flower that heretofore you ignored or did not see?  Ideas of God do not really satisfy many people.  Some like the “idea” God because it makes them feel secure or “correct.”  Many of us need something deeper.  Wave the white flag of victory and give up seeking to be nourished on ideas only.  

White Flag

I heard someone say, “The White Flag of Victory.”  That woke me up.  I always thought of the white flag as a surrender and those who surrender are the ones who lose.  They are not the victors…that is, unless you are in an addiction or a battle to ignore any spiritual path.  To finally surrender to the fact, the reality, the truth, that you are an addict, is really to have become a victor.  Because then you are through fighting your addiction unaided, unless you count your blotted ego as a strength.  There are days when I have to wave the white flag of unmanageability.  I am having an unmanageable day left to my own efforts.  So I reach out for some help…spiritual and practical.  Don’t try to do unmanageable alone.  That is why it became unmanageable.  Tell someone, God or another person or both.  Fortunately, I am not trying to do today all by myself.  I keep a white flag nearby on a daily basis.  Even travel with it, metaphorically.  

One Shoe

 I am reminded that skipping prayer on any day, is like trying to go through the day with only one shoe on.  You can do it but it will be uncomfortable and a lot of work.  The time you wasted walking around on one shoe could well have been used in prayer time earlier in the day.  When I skip prayer, I think that I am going to get a lot of other things done, but it never seems to work out that way.  The spiritual life is the other shoe that I left behind.  It is a form of insanity.  

Unloving Me

Sometimes I seem to be so unloving.  I just don’t have it that day.  I am full of self.  What to do?  I ask God to make me more loving, but seem to fall back into the same old, same old.  Good Grief says Charlie Brown.  But I have learned that there is another way.  I ask God to love through me.  My Higher Power is Love, or so I see it.  At his moment I lack the Power to love, but God is Love.  So I ask my God to love through me.  Use me to be loving.  I seem to have the character defect some days, of not being able to love on my own.  Anxious, fearful, self-pitying can do that.  But God is a power beyond my own self, and for that matter, within my fearful self.  So I call upon this power in prayer and meditation.  Then I go about being useful.  Some days this is a real miracle.   

A Concealed Presence

 What are those Catholics looking at when they see the round white and thin wafer that they eat and adore?  They “see” a concealed Presence.  Physically, what they see is a round white wafer of bread.  The Presence of their God, their Higher Power, is hidden from the view of eyes, but seen at some deeper place within them.  Nonsense?  Superstition?  But then again, this Presence that Catholics see, moves them to become more loving, more at peace, a better person.  Or so one hopes.  Hidden Presence is not just in this example.  Say you are in a Recovery meeting.  Do you see the Higher Power with your eyes?  No, but you do see people helping one another, becoming sober, better persons.  This is the Hidden Presence of a Higher Power.  To go from being a drunk to being a sober and loving person is quite visible.  God is at work in such miracles.  This Presence is about change.  When you look at an item in a store window, clothing, jewelry, a computer, you do not see hidden presence.  Even if you purchase such an item, you are not going to become a more loving, kind, forgiving and  compassionate.  And maybe such a consumer purchase is the real nonsense.  I would prefer the recovery meeting or the worship space of a church.  And it is a lot less expensive.  Spiritual power is free.  At least to those who are not bound up by self.