Secret Center

 I have a secret center, and I think everyone does.  At least it is a secret from me.  But it attracts and if I ignore it, the secret will bother me, touch my sense of discontent.  It is not a secret as in a mystery to be solved. Rather it is a secret to be encountered, embraced, beyond thought, imagination, and scientific discovery.  At times, when I seem to be occupied in one thing or another, the secret can suddenly or gently distract me with its energy, it’s presence in my surface consciousness.  It could come during a walk, cooking, exercise, attending to some task, encountering another person, or some art.  It invites me to stillness even as I am doing whatever I am doing.  It can be a peacefulness and yet it calls me to be quiet and still when next I can be.  Love, the energy of it is everywhere, suddenly surprising me, at times. Love as gift invites me, but is not rude with a demand.  I am left to decide.  Each day is decision day with the gift of time, not just to get more things done, but to take time to get nothing done.  Sit. Wait.  Let Love do the work.  Enjoy the secret.  

The Moth

The moth is drawn to fire where it is annihilated.  This is a great metaphor for the spiritual life.  As the desert monk would say, “Become fire!”  I grew up formed by the culture, society, group-think that was all around me. I tried to fit in however I could figure it out.  I even tried to drop my Bronx accent when I move out of the East Coast into the mid-West and the California. Well, some things never change.  But something just never did fit, or I never felt truly comfortable in all this attempt to fit in.  There was a “more,” or a “deeper” that was somewhat vague, yet felt.  Falling in love, music, art, literature, theatre, ballet would point to or touch this something, yet I would fall right back into my daily routines of fitting in.  There was a discomfort, but not one great enough to overcome the discomfort of deep change.  Becoming my deeper self, a truer belonging, would alienate me from the world I knew.  But as I discovered and gave myself a little to silence and solitude, a more meditative way, on a daily basis, I began to discover, to touch, graze against, this inner flame.  I could not adequately explain myself to others who knew the “outer” me.  “Surrender” began to attract me.  I am the moth called to the flame of Love.  

Consistency

There are many things that I seem to forget as time goes on, but I never seem to forget my shortcomings or bad habits.  This is because they are still bad habits.  As an alcoholic sagely suggested, "It is easy to remember your last drink if you are still thing it."  Ouch!  I remember my bad behavior, sour attitudes, and shortcomings because they all seem to be so current, as in, over and over again.  Why don't I get better?  For one, I am weak-willed, but that is from my side.  What about this God I understand who has all this Power to make me drop off these habits into a distant past?  Perhaps this Power who could remove a shortcoming, decides to leave me with it so that I remain humble plus stay in touch with this Power out of some desperation to escape the misery of my acted out messiness.  Is it not better to have humility rather than despair?  I have no developed skills to be perfect.  Only a big ego lives in the delusion of perfection.  

By Another Name

 If you don't like the word "God" why not do what someone else suggested, "The Great Living One," who can be seen in all creation.  Now you might say, "I see no such thing in creation."  Well, this Living One is not a thing.  It is an energy which cannot be pinpointed as Here or There.  Rather it is a Presence to be caught by the imagination and then the heart.  So the issue is that you might not know how to see, rather than nothing exists.  I have referred to the outdoors as "Nature's Cathedral" put together by the Living One.  If my prayer life is deep enough in meditation I can then go for a walk and see with the imagination, the heart, a world teeming with wonder, new life, something coming from ashes.  The Living One cannot be boxed into a book or a building or a little god-house.  This energy cannot be contained so easily.  These other things are pointers, or places where the Living One can be found but not confined or roped into dogma.  That is never enough for the human heart.  

The Split

 Contemplation is not a prayer of escape from life but rather a way to overcome the barriers to care-filled living.  With the loss of a spiritual sense in our modern age, along with the outward focus on ritual routine and rules in religion, we have lost a sense of a heart connection with earth and one another.  For some people there is a sense of not caring, a malaise, responded to with interminable time on the Internet.  Others are bothered by not being bothered by the malaise.  It is all a disconnection of body/spirit from ourselves and the world around us.  The contemplative life puts aside for a moment these feeling of guilt and malaise, while the body rests from negative thoughts of how messy and dark the world is.  Our inner self, spirit-self, truer self, gets a chance to breathe and stretch out from the confines of our sadness.  The chains of a life low in meaning are let loose, and we can come around to an energy that will connect us in a more positive way to Mother Earth and its inhabitants.  In our modern world contemplation is anything but a waste of time.  

With Interest

When I am new at something, say a spiritual path or program, I borrow from others, either in books, dialogue with people, and practice with a tutor.  I don't know much at fist, so I learn from others.  But it is not free.  I am borrowing their knowledge or skill, which means that I have interest to pay.  What is the interest?  It is to eventually help others with what I have learned.  My blogs are free.  My zoom and in-person teachings are free.  But I have first to learn from others before I can give anything back.  Now I may end up in Debtor's Prison, but perhaps not.  As the Irish say, "Not to worry."  I like to pass on what I have learned.  I think any cook would feel this way.  We don't keep our learned skills to ourselves.  We show gratitude by passing it on to those willing to learn.  There is interest to pay on what has been given to you.  

Potholes

 Like most of you, I would like a smooth road each day in my drive to being happy, joyous, free, fulfilled and at peace.  Unfortunately, for me, the road is often filled with potholes, as someone sagely reminded me.  A bumpy and irritating ride is made by my shortcomings.  Today, I will talk about the "fear" that something is not going my way and I cannot seem to fix it.  Alone, I cannot fill in the pothole.  I can only make the pothole deeper.  What to do?  Well, like many things that seem beyond my control, I can ask for help.  I don't have to try and do life alone.  Two, I can let it go by turning my life's pothole over to the One I call God.  I am amazed by how things smooth out when I let them go.  This does not mean I get the results that I originally wanted, but it does mean that I stop being afraid, preoccupied with the "problem."  As fear is diminished, the problem seems to be diminished.  I no longer worry about a lack of control over something, because now I have let go of control.  Instead of wrestling with it, I let it go.  Maybe fear was my real problem, while the so-called issue was just my "presenting problem."

Private Journey

 I find that the impetus for going to meetings in recovery programs such as AA is to be of service to others, to pass on the message of recovery that one has received and practiced.  Only beginners, who don't know the wisdom of recovery go to meetings mainly to feel better.  Of course, they are new and so are self-centered.  Their life was all about themselves.  But once they get into the steps their reason for going shifts to service toward others.  Not so in many a church, such as Catholic.  Catholics still go to be alone with God, to have some space in the pew not too close to anyone they don't know.  The person is there for themself and God, private and personal.  They may be with family, who are people they know. When the service is over they leave and maybe talk to no one.  If they do talk to someone or go for coffee in the hall they talk to someone they know, and it won't be about religion generally.  The stranger is welcomed by everyone in AA.  The stranger is avoided in many a Catholic church.  The Protestants are better at welcoming new people, and the mega-Churches are over the top about welcoming new people.  It is still an upward climb for us Catholics.  

Reliance

 There are any number of times that people around me did not remember my birthday.  They just ignored my "special" day, and it used to bum me out.  I would get resentful and self-pitying.  "No one loves me," I would think.  But eventually the light went on for me.  Why was my happiness dependent on another person's response?  Why live in disappointment?  Change my attitude.  Stop relying on others to fulfill my happiness quotient.  I became glad that I had lived another day to be happy, joyous and free.  Then I had an epiphany!  Why not do something to be helpful to another person?  Be of service on my birthday.  What a concept.  Who thought this up?  

Meeting Tent

 When the Hebrew tribes of the bible were wandering around in the dessert with no permanent home, they built a "meeting tent."  This was the place where they could meet their God who had freed them from slavery.  Could they not have found their God everywhere?  Maybe.  But I think the meeting tent is a good idea.  I need a meeting tent.  Yes, I know that my God is everywhere, but I need some special place I go to in order to focus.  I need a space, a physical space, where I can quiet my heart and get still in silence.  If you are having  a tough time in meditating you too might need some space, your space, your meeting tent.  i have found it so.  

Bad Example

 I don't want to be a bad example to others.  I want my actions to encourage them or make them think about being their best.  One of the ways I encourage is by how I love.  I get that.  But there is another way, much more subtle in which I show bad example.  And it is subtle or almost hidden by inaction.  It is called the example of "indifference."  Indifference is not the same as consciously deciding to be inactive.  There might be a good reason for consciously not doing something.  Indifference is sneaky.  We simply don't care.  We don't think about it.  We just don't care enough to even pay attention.  It is one thing to pass someone or some situation and decide to do nothing.  It is quite another thing to not even notice the person or situation.  We don't choose indifference.  It is something that grows on us little by little.  

Dust

I hear that we come from dust and will return to dust when we die.  Ash Wednesday reminds me of this when the ashes are put onto my forehead.  It is supposed to keep me a bit humble.  Think of all the gym work to have a strong and fit body.  The couch potato and me both go to dust anyway.  But so much for humility.  I like to remember that though I am but dust, I am beloved dust.  The Creator Power loves me.  My world is not coming from nothing and going nowhere.  Creation is all about love.  So I try to love back by not messing up creation in my neighborhood.   

Debts

 What do people do when they pay off their debts or downsize their debt financially?  They often go and buy more stuff.  It is not that people like debt.  It is that they like "stuff."  I remember after I got out of grad school I had school debt and a car loan debt.  Month by month, I made a payment, and saved little.  One day the debt was all paid.  What did I do?  Start saving that money that went into paying the debt?  No.  I went and bought more stuff, spent the money on things, places, entertainment and saved nothing.  The bible has what is called a "Jubilee Year," when all debts are forgiven.  Why?  So that you can begin to be more generous to the poor.  Humm.  That never occurred to me.  

Wrong Change

 Being on some spiritual practice does not mean that I change my life.  It means that I change the way I live my life.  Anyone in a Recovery program will get to know this.  Too often people change their living location, move from one place to another.  Or they change spouses/partners.  Or they change jobs.  The constant that goes with them is themselves.  Spirituality is not changing what is around you, but what is in you.  What good is it to move, be rid of a partner or a job, and still be a resentful, fear-based. judgmental and self-centered person?  I remind myself that I am not in a monastery to change where I live, but to help in changing how I live on the insides.  In the silence and stillness each day, I have to face...ME!  Yikes.  

The Dodgers

 Growing up in the Bronx as I did, the baseball team in Brooklyn was despised.  I was loyal to the Yankees, the team of my Dad.  All the baseball teams back then had names that had to do with history, but the name "Dodgers" was the most interesting.  Back in the very early 1900s, in New York City, public transportation was switching  from horse drawn to electric streetcars that ran along tracks on the city streets.  Without much in the way of stoplights, one had to be careful when crossing the streets, as you did not want to be hit by an oncoming electric streetcar.  Sometimes, you had to "dodge" the streetcar as you crossed the street.  Thus the name of the Brooklyn Dodgers.  I no longer despise them for being the Brooklyn Dodgers.  I just don't like them for moving to Los Angeles, where so called fans come late and leave early for traffic purposes.  LA has minimal public transportation.  Brooklyn is now a thriving metropolis and should have its own baseball team.  Come back Dodgers.   

My Eyes and Ears

 What if God wanted to come to my neighborhood and look at it and listen to it.  That would be a good thing right?  Well, maybe.  But what if God wanted to look at the world through my eyes and listen through my ears?  Oh boy!  Or oh girl!  I don’t want to get in the way of God with my eyes that are all about making judgments at what I see, or failing to see something because I am preoccupied with fantasy, anger, or future planing.  And what about my ears that I so easily fill with sound, noise, to avoid the silence around me.  My ears and eyes would not be much good fo God.  So when I complain to God about God not seeing or hearing things in my world, it might not be God who is the problem.  Maybe God wants to see and hear through you?

My Back

Now and again, God reminds me that the Divine Power has my back.  I was at someone's home nearby to have breakfast and catch up on our lives.  Just before I left, I checked my voicemail, since they have a connection and the monastery does not.  It was a medical place that had my doctor's request for blood work after my medicare wellness exam.  The blood test place wanted about $500 for the blood work and said Medicare would not pay.  I said, "And neither will I."  I mentioned this to my friends and they said this happened to someone they knew and that this person found another much cheaper place nearby.  I went and checked it out and sure enough it is legit and much cheaper.  Now what if I had not had my friends there to tell me about this option?  It was just a coincidence?  I don't believe in coincidence.   

Vocation

When someone asks you, "What to you want to be," as referring to some career or vocation, it is really a luxury question.  Many people don't have much choice in what they do.  Think of people trying to escape poverty, insecurity, drug and gang violence.  Think of refugees. They are into survival, not vocation discernment.  Men who come to the monastery to discern if they want to become monks, have other options.  Monasteries are not much interested in men who are desperate to survive.  That is not considered a good enough reason to become a monk.  Any vocation I chose out of desperation, fear, or the "solution" to my sideways life, was never my vocation.  Bu I know it has been a luxury for me to be able to choose and then choose again something different during my growing up years.  Yikes!  I am still growing up.  

Time II

 Staying with yesterday's blog theme on time, Jesus died in chronos time.  It was an historical event in sequential time.  The resurrection is about chiros time, God time, and not on a clock.  To say that he rose on the third day is to put a clock on something that is deeper than this.  What we know, for me, is that someone saw him alive on the third day.  He beat death and the devil in chiros time, God time.  One minute he is dead, and then he lives, but there is no second on the clock when he goes from one to the other.  In the tomb he passes from chronos to chiros, from the mundane world to the deeper God world.  Mary Magdalene tried to hold onto him, to keep him in her time, but he said no.  You cannot hold chiros time, but you can experience it.  You cannot hold onto deep prayer but you can experience it.  The Risen Jesus holds both the world of time and the world beyond time in his risen body.  He can suddenly show up in a room.  There is not sequential entering, but rather an awareness of his presence.  He can eat food and you can see his wounds.  He is not a mystical vision.  The Risen Christ is unique.  When you die, you enter the timeless presence of God.  It has no days.  You will be totally unaware of the passing.  Suddenly you are in the timeless.  Only those at your deathbed will be aware of "the time of your death."  

Time

There are two kinds of time in the spiritual life.  One is called "Chronos" time and the other is called, "Chiros" time.  Chronos is the time on your clock, seconds, minutes, and is sequential.  Chiros time is what you experience in deep prayer when you are unawares of any time passing.  Chiros is not sequential, has no seconds or minutes to it.  Being asleep is something akin to chiros time.  You are in time but deeper than time.  If someone asks how long were you meditating, you could give them clock time, such as "twenty minutes."  But if they ask how long you were in deep prayer, you cannot say because you are beyond time, deeper than time.  So what?  So what is the use of a Catholic asking when does the bread become God?  They are looking for clock time and doctrines try and give clock time answers.  But the change is not in chronos time. God works in chiros time, beyond time.  People who become contemplatives get this.  There is no "when" or "at what moment" or at what priestly words or actions.  That is all chronos-speak.  The reason that I, a Catholic, love to participate in the Eucharist is that I get to enjoy chiros time, the timeless energy of God transforming things.  God happens, but not in your idea of time.  This is why contemplatives don't spend much time in doctrine.  To experience the really real, you have to put down the book at some time and just be.  Stuff happens that your clock cannot know. 

Gitanjali

 As Tagore tells the story, a king in a golden chariot comes down and alights in front of a beggar.  The beggar rejoices, thinking that the king will give him something.  But the king holds out his hand and says, “What have you to give to me.”  The beggar, Tagore, reaches into his purse and hands the king the smallest piece of corn he can find.  The king takes it and ascends again in his golden chariot.  That night the beggar empties his purse and finds a nugget of gold the same size as the small grain of corn he had given to the king.  What if the beggar had given his all?  We all want to get.  The question is, what will we give?  

The Right Place

 Am I in the right place?  Sometimes, we ask ourselves this question.  It can be a good question, but so often it is accompanied by inertia.  We seem to become less functional, less positive in action, less service to others.  If this is so, it is because we are spending all our energy on the question.  I find that the question answers itself if I try to "bloom where I am planted" as the saying goes.  Be of service, have a spiritual practice, and be open to new things, all help me.  I am in a monastery.  I do not sit around wondering why or try to answer why for others.  Is it their business?  I find the days fly by, and I feel a sense of belonging because I am helpful to others, practice a meditation, and am open to inspiration and discovery.  If the question of place needs an answer, it will come in time.  Time needs time.  I carry on.  

Change

Why don't we change for the better?  As someone said, "Only a wet baby likes change."  Change is painful, so we avoid it, that is, until not changing is more painful than change.  Say you don't like to exercise and people tell you it will be better for your health, but you feel ok, or not too badly, so you don't exercise.  Then you go to a doctor who examines you and says you will have a horrible and painful dying unless you exercise.  So then you exercise.  Change beats non-change in this case.  Surrender to a new way of life is not so heroic as we like it to sound.  Often we surrender out of fear of old patterns.  I never met an alcoholic who said their initial reason to stop drinking was it made them healthier, or feel better.  Alcoholics drink to escape feelings.  Eventually, the exerciser may come to like exercise, and the drinker to like sobriety.  Otherwise, old patterns will win out.  

Moving On

 Someone said that there are times when we are right where we are supposed to be.  OK, but we don't have to stay there.  I assume they mean that we might be in a bit of a bad spot, but it is a teachable one.  OK.  Teach me.  I am open.  But after the lesson, I might need to get on with my life.  You did not get the job for which you interviewed.  You are frightened, upset, feeling rejected, less than, but none of this analyses why things did not work out.  So analyze and then move on to the next thing, interview.  If you wallow in the rejection, nothing positive comes of it.  If an addict you might act out, or think of killing yourself, or doing a geographic move.  You find out that the love of your life is cheating on you.  Thoughts of murder, self-inflicted wounds, busting up all the furniture come to mind.  You learn nothing.  So analyze what happened and why.  Then move on before you do real damage.  Yes, you will have bad feelings but you won't do bad things.  Maybe be useful to another person or group that might need a little attention.  I make bad decisions, but I try not to wallow in them or act out solutions based upon self-centered fear or bondage to self.  

Wisconsin

 Maybe we should think twice before we complain about the weather, climate, where we live.  It might have a quality still hidden from you for your benefit.  Today, in Tokyo, an American woman, unknown in major marathon circles, Molly Seidel, won a bronze medal in the Marathon.  The weather for the race was hot and sticky, high humidity, all the stuff we complain about.  Where did Molly come from? Wisconsin, with summer heat and humidity.  And she went to Notre Dame, also miserable in summer and early Fall.  She was bred for heat and humidity. Tokyo was familiar to her body.  So all you people who complain about your heat and humidity, there may be a benefit there for you.  Just because there are some things in life you find disagreeable, does not mean that they are bad for you.  So you Houston blog readers, get out there and suck in all that summer weather.  And wave to all the runners who you think are crazy.  They have their dreams.  Molly did.  And it came true.  Her miracle.  And Wisconsin has sausage and cheese. 

Crucial

I used to want to be important until just a few years ago.  Now I think it is better to be "crucial."  For one thing, importance has eluded me.  But the things that I do now can still be crucial though not important in a long lasting or memorable way.  Maybe a blog I write will be helpful to someone that very day and forgotten by the morrow.  But when they read it, a crucial difference was made in their life.  Importance is long term but crucial is immediate and can even be life-saving or affirming.  Many an important person makes no real difference in your life or mine.  I have known crucial people in my life who will never be important to the world, but were important at that moment of my life, crucially important.  So maybe you might let go of chasing the elusive importance and focus on being your best self that might be enough for someone, somewhere, who may but pass through your life for a moment.  Sometimes letting people know that you notice their existence, rather than ignoring them, can make a difference in their lonely life.  Anyhow, thanks for reading my blogs.  

The Burying Memory

As someone said, how can you forgive if you spend all your energy trying to forget?  You try to forget because it pains you to remember.  But you won't really forget.  You will just bury the memory beneath daily consciousness.  But the energy of the memory will continue to work on you in a negative way.  I have found it so.  Rather, I try to forgive, or work on forgiveness because if I can forgive then I am getting healed from the past.  Someone called this healing, "the inner surgery of the heart."  Once I have undergone this surgery of the heart, I am healed and then I can forget in a healthy way.  There are some things that did hurt in the past, but they do not hurt now.  I can recall somethings but without pain or negative reactions.  Forgiveness is very sobering for me, even if it changes nothing else or anyone else.  

Privilege

 Some people think of helping others as something we should do out of obligation, as in "love your neighbor."  There is another group, with whom I find myself, that believes helping others, being of service, is a privilege.  Why a privilege?  Because it is an opportunity that helps to make oneself well.  Service is a privilege because it makes me a better person, gets me out of negativity, and displaces bad behavior on my part.  I become, in that moment of being helpful, a less selfish, self-centered and self-pitying person.  When I was a kid and cleaned my room I was resentful while doing it.  I wanted to go out and play.  But I was a kid then.  I don't want to be a kid now.  When I clean my room now, I am grateful that I have a room,  with stuff in it that is useful to me.  While I am cleaning the room I generally do not practice bad behavior.    There is one exception.  When the vacuum bag is full even before I start to vacuum, I do put the last person who used the vacuum, on my resentment list.  

Olympics

 I love to watch track and field and every four years, when the Olympics come around, I tend to put God on hold.  I tend to get off my spiritual rhythm to catch events on the computer.  Not good I know.  Living in a monastery I am supposed to be getting holy, but the Olympics are here now.  So I told God I would be putting God on hold for about 10 days.  But God has been speaking more directly to me lately, and said, "OK, Terry, I will put you on hold now and after you die, and I will put you in a warm place, very warm."  UUH!  Not good.  So I apologized to God and said I would do my regular mediations and such.  But now when I sit and pray, all I think about are the Olympics, wondering how so and so is doing, or who is winning what.  I hope I am getting at least partial credit for my prayer efforts during these Olympics.  If you have temptations to give up prayer for something else, or ignore God in some other preoccupation, know that you are not alone.  Do your best.  We will meet in that warm holding pen someday down the road!

Strangers

 I have been in a lot of Catholic Churches and one thing I find consistent is that Catholics don't talk to strangers.  There is often talk, from the pulpit or in bulletin, about welcoming the stranger, or you can find a home here, or we are a family, and so on.  But it seems everyone thinks it is someone else's job to do.  It is so much different in Addiction Recovery meetings, and here you have a lot of people with low social skills, fear based lives, and non-believers in deities.  But they are truly family and do welcome the stranger.  Maybe it is because such behavior was shown to them when they first walked into the rooms, feeling like strangers.  They have been to hell, and are desperate to not return.  Catholics maybe think that they have some private deal with God and will be just fine in their cocoons.  But their Jesus did not talk about going to church on Sundays.  He talked about welcoming the stranger.  

A Program

 I have heard people call the 12 Step Addiction Recovery Process, a “Program.” I think of a program as something you tune into or turn on like a radio or TV, at a certain time and when it is over you go on to something else.  To me, this would be like someone going to church or synagogue for an hour a week and then doing other things.  In my tradition going to church for an hour a week would not make me much of a Christian.  Working the steps when a mess arises probably would keep someone from their addiction and make their life a bit less a mess.  But if it were a way of life, then I think we could become our best person we were meant to be.  A “way of life” is more ongoing than a “program.”  It is a new freedom.