More Days

 One thing that sobriety and good health habits tend to do is give you a longer life.  The longer the life, the guarantee is that things will change.  We all would like to live longer, but many of us don’t want any change.  We have found a sweet spot.  We want life on our terms, the sweet spot.  Or we seek a way of life that comforts us sober and with good health, few aches and pains.  But life changes.  So I need to deepen my prayer life, solitude, meditation, reading, to be able to accept the changes that come without my permission.  

Tempered

 Those who are fired up by the spirit can do with some added solitude.  Why?  Because with solitude, the message you deliver will be sparse with words.  It will be clear and brief.  If I practice solitude, quiet prayer alone, and meditate on scripture, I hope to be “fired up” to preach, but with few words.  That is why my homilies are often praised for being short.  Maybe they lack depth, but they are short.  In meetings, if I am going to share, I ask myself how I will use few words to focus on the message.  When people talk on and on in sharing a message, should they actually have one, others tend to tune them out.  Match your message with a person’s capacity to listen.  Solitude can help you.  Happy Friday the 13th!

Fire

 What does fire do?  It tends to spread.  When someone gets all fired up, as we say, they tend to spread their enthusiasm around.  Or they tend to pour themself into whatever has caught them.  Runners do this in training.  In Religion and Recovery, both spiritual paths, people tend to deepen their experience by practicing, such as service to others, talking about their experience, sharing their hope and love.  Such people are important to all those for whom the fire has gone down to smoldering coolness.  The spark is there, but it needs others to blow it back up to fire.  That is why the Spiritual is often referred to as Wind.  

Weeds

 I went to the San Francisco Arboretum last month for the Magnolia Season.  Blue sky, no fog or cold wind.  Chamber of Commerce weather.  I watched the gardeners pruning the ground around the plants and trees.  Get rid of the mess, weeds, and such that get in the way of growth and nature’s health.  I thought of character defects and human shortcomings.  These are our weeds.  We are the plant or tree.  We are meant to be beautiful, but choke ourselves off with character defects, bad habits, and bad choices.  People in Addiction Recovery know of God the Pruner when they practice any one or more of the Twelve Steps.  No one prunes themself.  Though the delusional think, “I can do this myself.”  

Garbage Man

 When I go out early in the morning for a walk or run, I see the garbage man and the truck getting rid of all the mess we make each day.  God, your Higher Power, is the garbage man of the mess we make each day in all our imperfections, mistakes, and self-will run in over-drive.  The Catholic Church has a sacrament for this.  It is called Confession.  During Lent season a lot of Catholics go see the Garbage Person, God.  Addiction recovery Programs have a specific step for this.  It is Step Seven.  When you put out the garbage in plain sight, Garbage Power takes it away.  

Close Your Eyes

 God Power is obscure but not invisible.  What?  Well, why do so many people close their eyes when they meditate?  Why are eyes closed when you sleep?  To see better the visible, to be led to the unconscious, the depth of oneself and reality.  The open eye cannot see all of this Power.  God Power lives in your darkness, intimately.  This spiritual Energy lives in seen and unseen creation, trees, plants and so on, but that is not an intimate, most near presence.  In the darkness, eyes closed, you enter the obscurity of faith.  Now you see with the eyes of God.  Darkness is not so dark.  

Grace

 Grace is often spiritual power showing up in unplanned moments.  This power is always at work.  God does not sleep.  But it is most experienced in the unplanned moments.  You wake up and plan your day.  Grace is not so visible though you ask for, and expect, spiritual help.  But Grace is most experienced, felt, in the unplanned moments.  “I am going to do something tomorrow,” but then you don’t.  The drunk knows this one.  But one day you just walk into a meeting, your first.  This is Grace felt at work.  You don’t even feel like you did it on your own, like in planned moments.  You suddenly pick up the heavy phone, now grown lighter, and call someone.  You walk into a church or synagogue, “out of the blue” as we say.  Grace just wrote this blog!