Cleaver

 I need to be careful that my sermons are not cleaver, but rather profound.  I can come up with cleaver quite easily, but profound takes more time.  It takes prayer to allow the sermons to develop.  Cleaver ideas come more quickly but this is because they are not deep.  Often I am quiet in a room of talkers because I have nothing much to say.  It takes me time.  I prefer to be helpful rather than noticed.  

Two Appetites

 I think that a good balance in daily life is to nourish the body with good balanced foods and then to nourish the soul with good balanced prayer of words, silence, with others, in solitude.  At the end of each day I ask myself how I nourished the insides and the outsides.  I pray early and try to eat a good breakfast on my “normal” days.  Sometimes other stuff happens, but I did not plan the other stuff.  If the day is going to be of schedule then I figure out how and when I am going to do the two nourishings.  I find that many people want me to do things but few are concerned about my nourishing.  So it is up to me.  

Results

 I try to plan plans.  So?  I try not to plan results.  Someone told me that planning results can result in resentments and disappointment to say the least.  I only know what the plan is, and that can be subject to change.  But the results are not up to me.  I am not God.  My ego forgets that from time to time, and plans the results.  In golf, basketball, and soccer you plan the shot.  The result is whatever it is.  I have a lot of bad results in golf.  Only saints can play that game and be content.  

Grateful

 Why emphasize “gratefulness” in any spiritual practice?  Well, I am a bit of a tricky guy.  When things are going well, that is, they are going my way, I tend to take credit.  Things are better, I say, because of what I do.  Magic: prayer, meditation, silence and solitude are what I did to make this a better life.  Humility?  Thanking God for all the Power?  Absent.  Then when things don’t go my way, God messed up.  God is not grateful for all my spiritual practices.  I need a new God.  And so it goes.  The miracle is that once again GRACE wins out and I am drawn back into gratitude.  Life can be what it is.  God has a plan.  So when I wake up I thank God for lots of stuff I did not make happen.  Thank you God for all my blog readers, though I might have lost some now because I fessed up.  

Half-Measures

 A way to look at half measure spirituality is to want some change to be built around your life that is otherwise unchanged.  In recovery, that would be “stop drinking” or whatever the addiction, but otherwise change nothing else.  It is building sobriety around an otherwise unchanged life as someone pointed out.  Going back to church would be a change built around an otherwise unchanged life.  Half-measures eventually become no measures.  Surrender is that yucky word.  Surrender is not “a little bit.”  It is everything that needs change in order to change.  Addiction was a symptom.  Surrender is everyday and all day.  Trudge that road!

Expectations

Someone gets into religion with the thought that things are going to get a lot better.  In the beginning, maybe so, and the ego gets pumped up with more expectation.  But then life does not live up to expectations.  Christians love Christmas but not the Cross or Good Friday.  A deep spiritual practice of prayer allows for us to accept that life and my expectations will not always match up.  I practice prayer to change me, not the world over which I have little control.  My ego needs humility.   

The Map

 A map tells you how to get somewhere you say you want to go.  It can be on paper or on computer with AI.  You would think it silly if someone got the instructions in detail and then set out without following the instructions exactly.  “I got this figured out,” says the ego.  I know about where to go!  So what good is a recovery program if you are not willing to follow the directions exactly.  Religion says, “Do this and you will live.”  AA says it for its own twelve steps.  Not six or seven you like, but all twelve.  The Ten Commandments are Ten and Six.  And so on.  I have found that following directions gets me there sooner and with less hassle.