Limited Freedom

 God may have made me free, but God did not make me omnipotent, all-powerful.  I am free to pray or not to pray.  God is not forcing me.  My decision.  But just because I decide to pray, does not mean that God must reveal Divine Presence, Power or Love.  God is free too.  Though I want to be free, I seem to want God to NOT be free.  When I pray, I want God to, you know, show up, reveal something to make me warm and fuzzy spiritually.  But then that would be controlling God.  That would make me omnipotent.  I am not so powerful.  I may have freedom, but not power.  God is the Power.  

Hey Out There

 We sometimes wish that people would just leave us alone.  Stop bothering us.  So they do leave us alone.  Then we get upset, or at least I do feel a bit uneasy.  Too much alone.  No one is paying attention to me.  I am not important or needed.  Maybe insignificant?  If this thinking takes over then my worst behavior acts up.  I make some absurd attempt to make myself the center of attention.  Fantasy can do this.  An attempt to manipulate some scenario by people-pleasing can do this.  The wanting to be left alone, unbothered, and then to wanting attention, are both all about me.  One solution is to stop paying attention to me as central to the universe.  Mediation ignore this dependent “ME” and recognizes a relationship that is always here.  

San Francisco Happiness

 One of the problems with the San Francisco populace is that so many people move here to be happy.  It is very self-referential.  People with this focus do not come here for the weather, or the low cost of living.  They are not happy wherever they were, and seek geography as the solution.  It may be one of the reasons so many people are or become addicted to drugs and alcohol.  It is a pursuit of happiness or escape from misery. They have a spiritual problem of self, but seek a solution that is more about self, rather than less about self.  Such people do not move here to be of service to others, unless that might make them “happy.”  I came here in 1969, and am here as I write this blog, as a rather self-imploded person.  No time for religion, or prayer.  Time for party when not working.  I still have friends in my life who I met here, which is a miracle of their acceptance of me.  So if you are thinking of making a move, or are unhappy about where you are, try not to make it all about you.  And don’t come here for the weather!

The Experience

 One of the reasons that children educated in Catholic Elementary school leave the practice of going to church when they move on from school or parent control, is because the faith they have up to the time of departure was not their own.  It was the faith of the teacher or parent or authority figure they followed.  They believed in the person’s faith, but did not have one of their own.  Why? Because they never had their own personal experience of God, by whatever name you give the experience, that was profound enough to connect them to worship or practice.  They may be very good people.  Atheists can be good people too.  Faith is not about morality.  It is about relationship, and one of love, not guilt or dutiful following of rules.  My experience came in silence and stillness.  And to this day I pursue it still. 

Defects

 I am reminded that when I don’t like someone because of some defect in their character, or some shortcoming that I see in their personality, I need to not so much focus on their so called deficiencies, as I see them, but look at my own.  I am supposed to be a believer in an in dwelling Power, God, Spirit.  Am I perfect?  Do I not have faults and character defects?  Yes, and this Indwelling Spirit dwells in me in spite of myself.  My God is not Judge, but Love.  If God can love me in my imperfections, maybe I could cut others some slack too.  And besides, maybe what irritates me about others comes down to me not getting my way, my imperfect way.  

Less Or More

 I may lose my office at the parish in Boulder.  It will be decided in June.  Seems the parish wants to offer baby-sitting to school teachers.  They would use the office of one of the priests for that and move him to my office.  So far I am at peace with this since it sounds like a good ministry offering and I am not there all that much.  Plus, I have no control over the decision so why get upset over what is beyond my control.  Many a Saint has said it is better to have less than to have more.  Maybe it will help get in touch with my smallness, or nothingness in the best sense.  Having things does not make me better or more important.  Detachment and letting go have been good practices for me.  Maybe this is a test.  

A Version

 When I talk about becoming your best self, true self, I find for me this is an improved version of the old me.  I don’t completely change.  I still have my past, my old past.  Scars heal, but they may still leave a mark.  It is like getting fit.  You might lose some weight, or get better body proportions, but you don’t get shorter or taller.  So I try to be spiritually fit, a better version of the old me.  I have tendencies, thoughts, memories, but I don’t act on them like I used to.  They don’t have the power over me that they used to have.  I will always like chocolate, and I might think of eating it, but then I don’t.  Well, maybe I am not THAT changed!  Keep working on our better version.  Tolerance in our progress will help.  It takes daily practice.  

Purgatory

 I am not so sure about this place called purgatory.  Someone said it sounds like church as social control.  Believe and behave.  You can earn purgatory.  Nothing about God’s unconditional love.  No one goes to heaven because they were good.  We go to heaven because God is good.  I think Jesus was trying to get this across, what with his eating with persons called, “sinners” by the religious officials and the culture of the “good and proper” people.  Don’t worry about the afterlife.  Work on the present life.  Try to love people who do not earn your love.  That is how God loves you.  

Real God

 When you love, God gets visual.  I don’t mean love as a response to being loved, but love when it calls for no conditions.  When you love this way, no judgment, no prejudice, not even a return, then the God you might not even think exists, becomes visual in you, the non-believer.  You don’t even have to believe, or have faith or go to church, synagogue, mosque, and you make God visual by this way of loving.  A lot of people have creeds, perfect attendance, but God is rarely visual in them.  God has your back.  Take a risk.  Love without judgment.  

Sharing

 Sometimes I get what I consider an insight.  It may come from something I read, and the light goes on for me.  Or it just comes to me like an “Aha!”  So I will share it in a blog.  My blogs are my way of sharing something that might be of use to someone else.  We all have gifts, insights from experience, and even some “Aha!” So why not share them with others?  Don’t worry about the results.  That is an ego thing or a control thing.  If you have learned how to do something well, then why not pass it on to someone who could make use of your experience and hard work?  Plus, I think we gift ourselves when we give it away.  

Communion

 I sense that the deepest level of communication is communion, a realization of Oneness.  This Oneness I cannot look upon as an object. Then it would not be Oneness.  Instead, it is like being in a darkness, thought-empty, the candle of my separate self light blown out.  Afterwards, as I go about my day, the ordinary, the seemingly mundane, has this Presence, in which I am present to the moment.  All is pregnant with light and life and even love.  Holy Communion is the enactment, in sacrament, of this experience.  We enact what we do not yet experience, Oneness.  The actual receiving, hands held out empty, is wordless, like contemplative prayer.  Everyone is receiving the same food, as they enact oneness, though they do not experience it yet.  When they leave the assembly, it is as separate people, to their own cars, apartments, coffee shop or grocery.  We continue to talk to those we know and ignore those we do not know.  But Holy Communion is a start.  

Too Much Out Of Too Little

 Someone called them, “swimming pool” problems.  Leaves from trees fall into your swimming pool.  You get all upset.  You make a big deal out of a small problem.  You still have a swimming pool.  You still have trees for shade and for birds to nest in.  The leaves in Spring and Fall are full of new color, unless you live in California where they never seem to fall off.  I recall having the use of an outdoor hot tub.  When it got dirty or there was debris, I would whine.  Poor me has to clean the pool and check the chemical levels.  I am working on my whining quotient.  Let problems stay right sized.  Be grateful.  

Futile

 God cannot be explained, but also cannot be resisted.  The experience of Presence in absence, the extraordinary in the ordinary, a Fullness in the Nothingness, defies words.  Most of us live in the futile argument of does God exist or not exist.  This is all mental concepts, arguments, proof pointing.  Such concepts do not change us, make us better or worse persons.  In the world of ideas and thoughts, God is just another thought, idea, concept, like the belief in the Big Bang or Evolution.  For me, this Presence is One and cannot be resisted.  I am part of, immersed, bonded to One.  Silence and solitude is intimacy, but intimacy does not confine the One.  Ordinary life shines with Oneness, for those who do not resist.

The Empty

In a way, I seek loneliness.  Why?  To feel lonely in some way, is to remind myself that nothing can fill it but the solitude and silence of letting go, entering into the void of meditation, abandoning a focus on thoughts and mental images that might fill the void like sweets might fill an empty stomach.   In this empty place, the imagination does not nourish.  Yet, it is not nothingness.  It has a fullness about it.  Sometimes, it is not easy to sink into this light in the darkness.  It can be like trying to submerge oneself in deep water while wearing a life vest.  But if I do not seek to be alone, loneliness will find me anyway.  And if I am not prepared by a spiritual way, it will be devastating.  I cannot shop, eat, drink or busy my way out of it.  

The Wasteland

 Part of my prayer life cultivates the rich soil of my soul.  This comes with beautiful prayers, liturgy of song and majestic music, stained glass windows and beautiful architecture.  It is relative easy to cultivate rich soil.  But now I seem called to cultivate the sandy soil of my soul that appears empty and barren of life.  At times, I wonder if I should not just pick up a good novel to entertain myself or do some helpful task with obvious results.  Be active and helpful.  The sandy soil is that part of the soul within which God hides all God’s spiritual richness.  How to cultivate?  Counter-intuitive.  Do nothing.  Wait. Be still.  Trust.  Be patient.  It is I who will grow from this seemingly barren soil.  

Fullness Of Silence

 Silence is the poverty of sound, but in that poverty is the richness of God.  In silence our deepest self, our center, is gifted with fullness.  Many of us run from silence because it seems that nothing is there or here.  It feels lonely, maybe boring, too inactive.  But the silence is wedded to waiting.  We wait.  We wait hidden from the world while in this silence.  Patience.  Trust.  You don’t need to be a monk, hidden, obscure from the world’s eye and activity.  But you must step away from the noise, the busyness, and from being noticed, being important, at least for that time of being in the silence.  Become no one for a bit of time.  This is the stance of one in interior prayer.  

Thinking

 Just because I think something is so, does not make it real.  I give explanations to myself for what I observe, and so it must be so.  Right?  Wrong.  I suffer at times from an illness of perception as someone called it.  I perceive and judge.  Then I find out later that I perceived something all wrong.  This returns me to my main task, which is just work on me and leave others alone in whatever I "see" them doing or not doing.  Walk in my own shoes.  I cannot walk in anyone else's. 

A Miracle

 Today, I am 45 years ordained a priest.  I was ordained in our Mother Church in New York City with 8 other Paulists.  I was very nervous.  I was supposed to love God.  But I was very much thinking, "Do I really belong here?"  A Catholic priest?  But I had been preparing for five years, so I was as ready as I could be.  There were moments when I thought that ordination was the cure for my chronic imperfections.  I did not know the half of my imperfections at that time.  But grace won out.  Over the years, after I learned that I was not going to save the world, I helped a few people.  Since I was rather self-centered, helping a few people was a miracle.  God was at work making some good things happen with imperfect me.  I was lucky that my first church work after ordination was Aldine, Texas.  There, the people taught me how to be a priest.  They must have seen some potential.  God was at work.  God still is, and I am still here.  

The Wow

If you pursue the interior journey of contemplative prayer, you will come upon your own nothingness soon enough.  Well, who wants that!  So then we skip the interior journey and pursue the secular journey with gusto and enthusiasm.  Our refrigerator is too small, too loud, too big, built wrong on the insides.  Get rid of it and buy a new one.  Seems reasonable.  You get the new one installed and you soon get a Wow moment.  It is just right.  It fills you up.  But in a little while, it just becomes, well, a refrigerator.  The wow loses its luster.  You buy something else and so the cycle of wow and ordinariness goes on.  But in the spiritual pursuit, you start with seemingly not much or an awareness of your faults, your pettiness, your smallness, and yes, then your nothingness.  But then comes the wow!  And it will never more be ordinarily.  This wow is the discovery of your treasured self, hidden within nothingness.  

 

Unseen

Does it bother you when you are ignored, feeling unseen by the world around you?  We tend to become discontented when we feel or are unseen, if we are focused too much on the exterior, the transient, the outside illusory of fantasy and fiction.   If so, we might tend to work harder on self-assertion, as in “Hey, look at me!”  We try harder to please, to be needed, to be significant.  Or we just escape into the self-observation of fantasy where we are truly important and central.  All of this misses the interior journey into the obscurity of the One who is hidden.   I am beginning to welcome hiddenness and obscurity.  It is where I discover my truer self.  

Rewiring

 I think of biofeedback as a rewiring of our emotional and cognitive life.  Deep meditation is a way to get wired to the mind of God.  When I think of purifying the heart, I imagine the heart being wired to emotions, thoughts, habits, such that the heart is unable to love and connect to the One, the Power.  With regular meditation, spiritual feedback, if you will, I get rewired to this Unknowable God, who is Love.  I seem to become better balanced, for a while, in my emotional responses to situations.  My thinking becomes less resentful, less judgmental, less feeling separate from the world around me.  I am moving closer to my heart's capacity to love.  It seems that without some power greater than me, I am sunk.  

The Healing

 So when does my hidden, obscure, no thing God act?  My God acts in and when I recognize my own weakness, defects, shortcomings, mess ups, in my ordinary and everyday life.  Character defects, bad habits if you will, don’t show up occasionally.  They are habits that I cannot change on my own broken will-power.  In stillness and silence, I wait. Pay no attention to my agenda or thoughts.  Let go of control.  Just be. In time, this practice will reveal some hidden mess in me, or some mess I thought was minor, but found out was a major component of how I meet the world or ordinary, daily life.  If prayer goes deep, the roots of the mess become dislodged in God Power.  How do I know? Because in the everyday, outside the meditation time, I act and think better, more connected to others and their pain or gifts as the case may be.  Selfless love and compassion is quite a trip.  

Hidden

 God is hidden.  Not a very good promoter.  Many people say there is no God.  They looked here and there, but came up with nothing.  Well, nothing is God too.  God is no thing.  Some people do believe in a God, but cannot make much use of their God in their conventional programs for happiness.  But, I have found that this hidden, no thing, obscure and ignored God can be loved.  I find it in my deeper meditation.  Suddenly, the here and now draws me in to a sense of Oneness.  So if I am going be One with “The One” should I not take on attributes of being hidden, obscure, unknown?  So you see why the ego does not much care for such meditation, much less contemplation. If you want to be a big deal in the culture’s conventional programs for happiness, that is, more power, control, esteem, don’t bother asking the God I have found.  God seems to be more about less.  

Solitary

 The Solitary, one who seeks prayer in stillness and silence, becomes critical, not of the world around them, but first, critical of themselves.  The solitary moves away from being simply rebellious or self-opinionated.  The desert experience in prayer is not for the blame game.  Rather, the solitary knows the mess of the world, all its anxious seeking for power, control, esteem, all its anxiety and fear, because the solitary first sees it in themselves.  Therefore, they have compassion, they sense a suffering with, even though the world may be unaware of the reasons for its own misery.  The solitary hopes for and then experiences mercy, and unconditional love.  This is how it responds to the world, and exemplifies such response to others.  The wilderness of silence is a healing from bitterness and resentment.  In the prayer of obscurity, alone, one can be healed even of loneliness.  

The Stopping

 I have heard people say that they want to stop their drinking.  So they focus on not drinking behavior.  Maybe they exercise more.  Eat a bit healthier.  Go to bed earlier.  It may work for a short time.  Why only a short time?  There is another word that rhymes with drinking.  It is “thinking.”  They did not change their thinking.  Will-power alone cannot do long-term change.  Self-will does not work because the thinking is self-centered.  For that to change you need some deeper, or spiritual solution.  The source of this solution is within you, but it is not you.  It is a power you don’t have, but is available to you if you are willing to take some steps, some advice.  From whom?  Try someone who had your drinking problem and is now rather more at peace than you are.  As individuals they are rather anonymous.  As a group they are called Alcoholics Anonymous.  

Filling Up The Empty

 Why would you not want to pay attention to your mind, your thoughts, in mediation?  I do this so as to allow the mind to be drained of anxiety, fear, resentment, blame and shame, to name a few thoughts and emotions.  When I sit in the silence and ignore my thoughts, it seems as if a drain pipe is opened and thoughts get flushed away.  Then what?  Then the emptiness can be filled with love.  Who does the filling? Love does the filling and I don’t have to know who or how.  Afterwards, I find that the world did not change.  But my response to situations did change.  I forgive.  Accept. Listen better.  Try to be part of the solution and not the problem.  That emptiness is elevated, transformed.  None of it is done on my own will-power.  

Associates

 Just because you call someone “brother” or “sister” or “neighbor” where you live does not make it so.  It is how you are with that person that makes the relationship, not geographic nearness, or fraternal titles.  If you have nothing much to do with this other person, except in the service of your pursuit of your own particular interests, then that person is neither  brother nor neighbor.  They are mere “associates,” as in a business of getting things done, your things, that is.  

Someone Else

 I am trying to be “someone else.”  In living with men, which I have been doing for many years now, I find that there are some common household and work tasks that is no one person’s job.  Common towel laundry, linens, dishes, food on a counter, garbage/trash might be in this category.  If no one is assigned, who ends up doing this?  Someone else, as in “Oh, someone else does that.”  In fact there is no such person as someone else.  It is a fiction to replace the reality that the speaker is not going to bother.  Men prefer to do things that feed their egos.  I used to get resentful of this, but resentment is not a good way to spend time living with others.  So I am now trying to be the “someone else,” when I see things left undone.  And I try to take God with me.  God Power is what gets me to be positive about living with men.  

God Slot

 I tend to slot God.  I give God a certain time of the day for meditation.  God gets slotted for a half hour to forty minutes.  Then I get up and go about other ego-satisfying or anxiety-reducing activities.  I am trying to get out of this habit.  It did take a while to give God any slot in my day and I was so proud of me for making God room in my day.  But now I want God to be more than forgotten or in the shadowy background of my routines and projects.  When I catch myself in fantasy, whining, resentment, fear, or other debilitating ways to fill my time, I stop, and reflect that God is in and around me.  It is a moment of solitude, when I am truer to myself and what I am about.  Which is?  A glance at eternity in this moment of time.  

An Inviting Word

 Do you speak to be heard, or do you speak so as to be spoken to?  Some people speak out of fear of being ignored, becoming insignificant, unimportant.  With their many words, ego-producing profound insights, they rattle on with the presumption that someone is listening.  They endure your response so that they can talk some more. I believe that less can be more.  With a few words, thoughtfully chosen out of my own comfortable silence, I might encourage someone to speak from their heart.  My few words might give them the trust that I want to listen, that I care.  It can narrow that gulf between us.  What gulf?  Ask someone how they are?  “Fine,” as a response, is the gulf.  

May Day

 May One is referred to as May Day.  For many people it calls us to Spring, to getting outside, to getting into the budding of nature in mid-Spring.  What is waiting for you outside is the silence of nature.  It is the silence away from shopping and traffic.  Nature is very active with new life, sap flowing within trees, leaves stretching out, flowers beginning to peak up at the sun, and at you. But so little noise to do so much work.  How about you?  Can you be of little noise, even better, no noise.  Stop in the midst of nature, let her arms of silence embrace you.  This silence is the real, the lasting.  We, in our noise, are mere interruptions.  We will pass on no matter how bustling, busy, productive we are with our voices, our tools, our anxieties to accomplish.  We so want to be heard, for we fear insignificance, being ignored.  Silence does not mean no one is listening, nor that no one cares.  Be still.  You are loved.