Normal

Normal changes.  To live life on life’s terms is to be able to accept new normals.  If we can accept these type of changes then we have a better chance to flourish on a different platform.  If you lose a body part, you live a new normal.  You are not diminished, but changed in your everyday way of life.  If you are getting sober in recovery you are living a new normal.  If you have a conversion experience of any sort, it will affect your daily life.  Some things are dropped and some new things are embraced.  We cannot grab onto the past and still live to our fullest in the present.   

Inside And Outside

 I often speak of prayer as getting inside yourself, to your deeper self in meditation.  But prayer of this sort or any prayer is to help us get “outside” ourself.  Yes, we do pray to get things, but if we are on a spiritual path, what we want to get is in part to be of service to others.  Just wanting what I want when I want it for no other purpose than  to feel better is not getting outside oneself but rather feeding the self and becoming more insular.  This can feed isolation.  So if I ask God to feel better, I hope I have some purpose outside myself.  

Enough

There is a wrong path or a lack of path that is called “enough.”  It is the detour from a deeper, growth oriented spiritual life practice.  A drunk gets into recovery and does all the right things.  Then one day says, “I am sober enough.”  There is no enough.  It is delusional.  Go forward or you will go backward.  No standing still.  Try standing still in a spiritual practice and  you go from sober to dry, from daily practice to occasional to rare, to nothing.  People who used to believe or go to church or meditate all know this.  And they probably used to read my blogs.  If you don’t grow you go.  

Death

 Death is inevitable.  But we can postpone it by good behavior.  A drunk who sobers up and enters recovery, interrupts their death.  Someone who listens to their doctor or trainer and begins to live a healthier lifestyle of exercise and diet, interrupts their death.  I think that meditation does too.  In touching our depth it also heals the body.  I have found it so.  

Inconvenience

 One thing that moves us beyond our own inconvenience is being of service to others in need.  We don’t need much depth in a spiritual practice to be helpful when it is convenient or serves our own sense of worth, or makes us feel better.  These actions have their obvious rewards.  But without some depth of spiritual practice, some deeper meditation for instance, we won’t move beyond our own inconvenience barrier.  But this depth of practice will also protect us from overdoing, and burn out.  The Power always moves us and levels us.  

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!