Pop Quiz

 Why Meditate?  Well, life can be like a pop quiz in school.  If you have not been studying much at all, or sporadically, then you will not be ready for the quiz.  Stuff happens on a daily basis.  We are not in charge of what comes up.  It just happens, like a pop quiz.  If we are meditating on a regular basis then we are more ready to handle the unexpected.  Fear, anxiety, resentment won’t control our response.  What will happen today?  I only think I know.  So I meditate and am more ready to respond better to the unexpected.  

Away

 The one area in which I am never “away” is in my relationship with God.  God is everywhere, or at least my God is.  So I am never away from God.  Now I can skip any spiritual practice and feel far way from God, but that is just a feeling.  God is still near, regardless if my will or mind drifts off or my feelings are about abandonment.  So if you ask how to find God, it might be you who are lost.  The idea of finding yourself, your truest self, is finding God.  Right here and now.  

Guardians

October 2 is the Feast of the Guardian Angels.  It is one of my favorites.  Guardian Angels have gone out of fashion but I am still a core believer and ask each day for help guarding me.  Against what?  Mostly myself getting too much into myself.  I identify with these angels.  They are the lowest rank in the celestial hierarchy of angels.  They are the foot soldiers having to be at the job 24-7.  They do the grunt work but are very faithful.  And they are big reminders that God is never far away.  I think of my blog writing as an every day thing, not a big deal in the internet world of stuff, but faithful and trustworthy.  

Not Sure

 People who tell me they are not sure if they have a drinking problem, probably have a drinking problem and are thinking about it.  It would be like someone saying they are not sure they have a soul, or there is a god.  They are thinking about it.  The openness of AA if fascinating.  You only need to want to stop drinking when you come in the door.  You don’t have to believe you are an alcoholic, whatever that might be.  You don’t have to believe in any god.  You just want to stop drinking. It helps me in that when someone comes to my church looking for something, I simply ask what they might want.  Usually, it has something to do with inside emptiness or lack of fulfillment.  I listen and don’t try to convert.  I invite them back.  Stay in touch.  Be where they are in their search.  The seeking never stops.  

Public Prayer

 Why do some people appear pious on the outside but seem rather self-indulgent.  It may be because they pray publicly but not privately in silence and stillness.  If we are always talking in prayer then we don’t spend any time listening.  If you meditate, sit still, in silence, you just might get a Power within you to reveal a shortcoming to work on.  You might realize that you are self-indulgent.  Priests are told over and over that they have to do “mental” prayer as it is sometimes called, so that they work on the insides and not just the outsides.  Recovery people have to do more than look sober.  

Meaning

It seems that for many of us, the question that precedes any conversion to a more spiritual way of life is, “What is the meaning of life?”  I remember asking myself that during my first two years at my first post MBA career employment.  I asked others if they were fulfilled in their work and they all seemed to say yes.  It was not a yes for me.  Something about meaning kept coming into my mind.  There was some other or deeper meaning.  Eventually, through GRACE I began to discover or recover a meaning deep enough for me.  I am sure that many of my coworkers enjoyed long and fulfilled careers at that corporation and jobs they did there.  I simply had to find where my peg fit.  

Why Me?

 When something happens to me, such as accident, illness, a change in living situation, and I complain, “why Me!?  It is a bit egocentric, as if I am so special that nothing untoward should ever happen to me.  Why am I so special and someone else who has a bad turn is just, well, ordinary?  Or it was their own fault, whatever happened.  Why not me?  I am part of the human herd that can stumble, fall, break some part of my body, be wounded, get sick and have surgery.  Self-pity, whining, complaining and resentment seem to follow the sense of my specialness.  Things do fall apart if for no other reason than we are aging.  I try to be grateful that I have today.