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.  

First Cup

My first cup of coffee in the morning, after I make my bed, is the best cup of the day.  In part it is because I am filling my spiritual cup of reading, and meditating, while I slowly sip my first cup of coffee.  Eventually, I have a second cup, but that is with breakfast while I read the news.  I am not filling my spiritual cup with the news or cereal.  So I often don’t even finish the second cup.  I always know if I am being spiritually filled, if I am enjoying my coffee.  I wonder if there will be coffee in heaven?  

My Youngest Day

 As Anthony Hopkins said in his well expressed autobiography, “Today is the youngest day of your life.”  When you feel morbid about aging, replace it with something uplifting.  Today you are the youngest you will ever be from now on.  So make the best of the day, which can begin with some gratitude.  Even if you are hungover, or recent surgery, you woke up.  You have this day.  Make it a day of wisdom that can come with age.  One piece of wisdom: it is harder to fool yourself anymore.  Another hangover?  Been there before.  Yes, and you know what to do, before you don’t wake up to another morning.  Surgery?  An infection?  Cold?  By now you know how to heal.  And being your youngest day, there are still things, places, events, people that you have not experienced.  Be like a child.  Someone said that was a good piece of wisdom.  “ Unless you become like a child…”

A New Normal

My Mon passed away this date 23 years ago.  We were close.  Along with my Dad, we did things together, shared events, in specific places, or just a pace of life together whenever I visited which was often.  They were a meeting place for my siblings and me.  The mourning was not just for the absence of my Mom in my life, but the sudden absence of things and events and a way of being, all of which was well time spent together.  One should not try and replace one life too quickly with another as if to avoid the emptiness.  Mourning is for just that, the emptiness.  It takes energy.  Mourning loss, the sadness, the tears are all part of the space needed to let go of something gone, and be with it.  In time, healing time, I would later come to a sense of who I am, Mom-Less, and begin to build something of true self into those spaces.  The missing never stops as my friend Marcia once told me, so wisely.  But one does live on with memories that are not meant to fill the space, but simply to be part of one’s knitted life.   

Fitting In

 If you are trying to find yourself in your own world, it does not help if you focus all your attention on fitting into someone else’s world.  If someone tries to fit into the world of the rich in order to get something from them, that person will lose themself because they are not fitting into their own world.  A healthy group, be it church, recovery, club, is such because it is helping you to find yourself in your world.  Drunks in recovery come from all different worlds of experience and income.  They have a singleness of purpose which is to know the truth of themself and help others to do so to in recovery from their alcoholic behavior.  They are different but bound together by a common purpose.  

Negative Presence

 When we pray but feel bored or empty, it is called “Negative Presence.”  God, Higher Power is present but we don’t feel anything that we would call a presence.  Feelings don’t go deep enough to experience the depth of Real Presence.  I try not to go into meditation with any expectations.  I trust that God is at work whether I feel anything I would call God or not.  Boredom comes and goes, but God is always present.  So come and stay still.  Your Higher Power is at work.