Enough

 Today is my birthday.  I will go to a funeral today for a priest who died last week across the hall from me in our rectory.  He was one month younger than me.  He is gone and I am here.  I have come to realize that life is a gift as I age.  It is a gift not so much for me as it is a gift for others.  I have a chance to be of some service to others, that they might have a better day because I am alive in it. Being also Palm Sunday weekend I will have the Evening service today.  We celebrate someone who is a Gift to many people.  The gift of life is not all about me, but all about all of us caring for one another.  So once again you get a blog to read.  And I get to open some birthday cards.  

One Way

 The problem with addictions is that the love only goes one way.  A drunk loves booze but the drink does not love the drinker.  And so it goes with drugs.  You are addicted to social media, but the media does not have feelings for you.  If it were another person, who did not care about you, then you would most likely give them up, unless of course, you are addicted to the relationship.  One way relationships tend to be addictive.  There is a reason we cannot give them up, and it is most often not about love,  It might be fear of loss.  I try not to pour something into me or pour myself into something if there is no back and forth, no mutuality of the heart.  Booze never cared.  

Plans

 When I get up in the morning and make my plans for the day, they don’t always happen as I planned.  Then I get upset, and consequences follow.  Why have a lousy day simply because I did not get as planned?  After all, it was only my plan and I did not check in with the world to see if we all agreed.  So when I wake up I first ask God what plans God has for me.  Since I am clueless, I ask that I be open.  I may still have plans, but it with an attitude of openness, that is, a willingness to surrender my will and life to God as I have come to know or not know through prayer.  

Domesticate

 I am a Christian who too often wants to domesticate the Gospel I read.  I want it to be comfortable and comforting.  I tend to have short term memory for what bothers me.  I tend to focus belief in that I am converted to believing the correct doctrine and tradition.  My shortcoming at these times is that I ignore the conversion of the heart.  I am shortchanging myself from a conversion of the heart that will more deeply affect my actions and attitudes.  Meditation opens me to listening to a Power, my God, who can ever so gently or more directly, point me in the direction of conversion of heart, such that my actions will not be from ego, fear, self, but from love.  I am a work in progress.  

A Restful Night

 When I wake up from a good night’s sleep, I am rested.  This good feeling can fool me into thinking that I am spiritually fine too, as if sleep healed all my shortcomings or took them away.  Sometimes, when I wake up rested, I think that I have all this energy and want to get on with the “doing” of an active life, saving the world and such.  I will pray “later.”  Then the day goes downhill with my ego in charge and my spiritual life starving and weakened.  So I try to wake up and remind myself that I am a spiritually sick person in need or recovery and that I now have the energy to pray first and then see about saving the world, or at least correcting all the shortcomings of others.  Prayer usually gives me a second opinion about what to do in the world of “action.”

Spiritually Sick

 If a drunk comes into church to pray, to feel quiet safety, a respite from the chaos of their life, and they do not act well, but even a bit badly, I don’t judge them or tell them to get out.  They are spiritually sick, and at that moment are trying to get well in as best a way that they can.  Why judge a spiritually sick person for bad behavior?  It would be like trying to throw a drunk out of an AA meeting who is there to get well.  This is the best they can do at the moment.  When my behavior is somewhat immature I reveal that I am spiritually sick at the moment.  I need help, not judgment.  

Time

 If the alcoholic thought about their higher power that got them sober as much as they thought about alcohol when they were drinking, then the Recovering Addict would become quite spiritual.  The idea that we cannot possibly be focused on a spiritual power all the day long is challenged by what debilitating stuff we do focus on all day long.  Spiritual recovery is getting away from “it is all about me.”  If you find yourself planning your daily destruction, then you are surely pretty focused.  Being focused is not the problem.  It is the object of our focus that makes or breaks us.