Walking Alone

 When I was in Boulder, Colorado in the late Spring, Summer and early Fall, the weather was just right for an evening walk down to the Pearl Street Mall.  I would walk alone looking here and there at people, storefronts and foliage.  What I noticed is that rarely was there a woman doing the same thing.  One of the reasons, and many women know this, is that it is simply not safe, or at least not as safe as me walking alone.  There might be a woman going from one place to another, on a mission, shopping, getting something done, performing a task.  But not just meandering along in curiosity about their world around them.  Too many men see women not so much as individuals, persons, as objects to satisfy something in the man.  In such a culture, women are made for men, and not to be themselves.  I ask myself how many girls are taught to find a man than to find themselves.  To be taught to not find yourself is to be taught “non-existence.”  

Sabbath People

Meditation makes me a Holy Saturday person.  Or I have to be a Holy Saturday person each day to allow myself to be drawn into the depth of meditation.  Why?  I need to be in silence, stillness, like one dead, empty of my personal, self-centered agenda with all its character defects.  And I wait for the God who does not seem to be anywhere.  For a Christian like me, this would be Holy Saturday.  God is dead, gone, but wait.  Yes, wait.  In silence and solitude.  Buried in wordless and thoughtless prayer.  At least thoughts of what I want to “get.”  So, while you are all getting ready to celebrate Christmas, keep the balance.  Busy shopping, parties, feasts, family and friend reunions are all very busy.  I will try to remember I am a Holy Saturday person as well.  Keep a balance.  

Liquid Living

The life of an alcoholic is “Liquid Living.”  Their life requires alcohol.  They cannot go long without it so they are liquid living persons.  Maybe they don’t have it everyday, at least in the beginnings, but eventually, should they live long enough, it becomes daily.  You feel sorry for them?  Well, at least they know what they need even if it is killing them.  How about you religious believers who belong to some religion, say Christian.  Baptism says you are a Christian.  But if you can go long periods of time without needing Christian things are you really “Christian Living?”  At least the alcoholic knows what they need and they have a  recovery program, steps, fellowship that can help them to a better life beyond liquid living.  What has the Christian who ignores their Bible, their Big Book, the sacraments for many types of Christians save Christmas and Easter?  Baptism without living like a Christian can be deadly.  It is the same with whatever makes you call yourself a Hindu, Buddhist, Jew, or Muslim.  So many “believers”need recovery programs, but don’t know it and die a sad death, unfulfilled.  And they don’t take their stuff with them.  

Dismal Outlook

 When you are looking ahead and the future seems dismal, it may mean that you are paying too much attention to yourself.  You are not thinking, for instance, of what you could do for others, or how could you improve life around you, or what good can you add to the lives of those you will see today.  Dismal futures are about thinking too much of oneself.  You say, “No, I am thinking of how miserable it is for another person.”  Well, a lot of people are miserable but it does not bother you.  When it does bother you it is about your peace of mind too.  So when you think of a dismal future for you or for others, try to see what you can do to make life more positive.  Visit the sick, or write a letter.  Call on the phone and listen.  Don’t leave a message.  They may not return your call.  Call until you can talk to the person.  Takes a lot of time away from thinking about yourself.  

Bubbles

 Why does a child reach up to grab at a bubble floating around in the air?  Because they think there is something inside.  But when they touch the bubble it bursts and there is nothing left of it.  Nothing inside.  So the child goes for another bubble.  Over and over.  At some point the child might just like breaking bubbles.  Lots of the things we do and reach for are rather empty but we go for them time and again.  How many of the same thing do you need to buy?  At some point the purchases fill up nothing but space in your life.  So when I am shopping, I have to ask myself, “Am I chasing bubbles?”  And for the Alcoholic, the next drink is just a bubble.  

Choice Or Change

 A lot of people choose a religion or belief system because they think it is the correct one, all others being degrees of incorrectness.  Its importance is the truth of what it professes to be so. But often the choice is not supposed to be about right versus false or off center, but about surrender and transformation.  Often there is the least surrender of one’s will, one’s wants, by those who profess to be right.  I am not so interested or fascinated by someone saying that they are a Buddhist or belong to AA, as in how this choice has led to surrendering their ego-centeredness.  It is what one does and not what one believes that makes the big difference.  

Sacraments

 The church has what it calls “Sacraments.”  These sacraments both reveal and conceal.  On the one hand they reveal to the believer that God is present in the host, the white round wafer, that is received at mass.  But catechisms, and dogma can only reveal.  There is more to a sacrament than what dogma can reveal which is why the host, when consumed, needs us to rest quietly with what we have just done.  A Sacrament requires us to meditate in silence and stillness to allow what is concealed to be slowly revealed, over time, God’s time.  And what is revealed will ultimately change us for the better.  It works the same way to some extent in recovery.  The Big Book reveals a lot about alcoholism and the person.  But if there is no meditation on the steps, the recovery process, one is often left with information and not transformation.  Going to a meeting downstairs or church upstairs and then leaving right after to “get on with your life” won’t make the necessary change that we all need to be our best self.  You need the quiet time if not there than sometime that day.  

Choice

 Once you have lost the power of choice you need a spiritual practice, to include a power you did not have, to get onto the correct path.  You over eat or eat the wrong stuff and it becomes a habit you cannot break.  What now?  Find spiritual help as in someone(s) who have found a way to break the habit, and/or a spiritual power of some sort.  For some, this would be God or a Higher Power.  But even if you break the habit, or lose the interest in food as you once had, the habit does not die.  It goes away, and waits.  Sneaky, yes.  Bad habits want to kill us, and make us miserable on the way out.  So just give up the spiritual solution practice on a daily basis and the bad habits will take over again and well, just don’t give up the daily practice.  That means every day daily.  

Outsides

 It seems to me that I have made a decision to be happy or miserable depending upon what happens on the outside.  Cold, windy day, then I am going to be unhappy.  Medical insurance issues not working out as I planned or want?  Miserable day.  Sore hip?  Miserable days.  And so it goes.  Lots of miserable days because I cannot seem to control the outside to get what I want.  But what if?  If what?  What if my day depends on my response to what happens on the outsides?  Oh, I did not think of that.  Must be a higher power or something gave me this notion.  Or someone who is really on a spiritual path and not a fantasy path.  I cannot control what happens so much of the time, if ever.  Stuff happens.  But I do have some control as to how I respond to life coming upon me.  So I try to see today as a gift rather than another cross to endure in the never ending effort to get my way.  Trudging. 

Hunger

 Hunger does not feed us, right?  It tells us that we are empty and need to eat something.  But not always.  Sometimes hunger does feed us. Hunger feeds the heart when it knows suddenly, that it is in need of something that it cannot fill by any other means than waiting.  Meditation/prayer is the food for the soul and we cannot go to get it from a store or cupboard or refrigerator.  We must wait and feed on this hunger until a Fullness comes to satiate the heart.  The hunger of the heart awakens us, calls us back to the road of Fullness.  What emptied us?  Detours.  

On Hold

 It seems very annoying to be “put on hold” when we are trying to get something done with one agency or another.  I have a land line in my room, so if I am going to try to work with some agency on an issue I usually call on the land line on speaker. Then I can use my cell phone for something else or walk around the room or do whatever for the many minutes that I am on hold. But prayer is a lot like being put on hold.  God does not seem to give an instant response.  “Are you still there God?”  I feel some early connection as I move into my prayer and then…what?  I am on hold.  But don’t do something else.  Just wait patiently, longingly.  God is at work.  God seems anything but quick in my prayer.  So in this age of instant communication on smartphones, I have to wait on God in the time and true old fashion way, God’s way.  The spiritual life is not connected with the internet.  

My Address

 If you are wanting to contact me by mail this Christmas, my address is

Old St. Mary’s Church, 660 California Street, San Francisco, CA 94108

Stability

 What is stable in our prayer life is not our interior state.  One day it is fine and the next we feel a mess, chaos, darkness, futility.  No, what is sable is our commitment.  So many of us give up a prayer practice because the insides seem uncontrollable and so fluid in ups and downs.  But what is up, is often simply feelings.  They come and go, but God does not come and go.  God shows up and is always present but under different aspects.  We don’t control God but we can control our commitment to pray.  That is our stability.  And that commitment requires some discipline in our daily life.  Don’t leave a daily commitment to chance or whim.  If it is not central, it will fall away because the results are so fluid.  I don’t wait until I want to pray.  That would be a disaster.  

the Desire To Change

 A lot of people say that AA is for Alcoholics, but that is not quite accurate.  AA if for people who want to stop drinking.  So it is an action program on a daily basis, since that is the way many of them drank.  It is not about having a title, an identity, “Alcoholic.”  I meet a lot of people who do have a title but have no action. A person says, “I am a Catholic.”  But their ‘actions” seem no different from someone who does not have that title.  You get baptized and now you are a “Christian.”  But then no action.  I am not much for religion or recovery that is without action.  Since I tend to be a forgetter or one who lives on yesterday’s action, I need to be vigilant on a daily basis.  Saying, “I am a priest,” but no action is pitiful.  

Immaculate Conception

 Today is the Feast of the Immaculate Conception.  What is that? Well, it is about God beginning surprising plans in little, out of the way, secret places and ways.  It is an event in life, that no one knows about but God.  It seems to be the way God works out divine plans for each of us.  I have come across many a sober addict who upon reflection can recall that their journey to recovery began in some very small, almost unnoticed way.  It got buried in their unconscious until one day it popped up and they began to stop the addictive ways of life.  My desire to be a priest was planted in a small daily activity when I was a kid.  It took me almost 30 years to respond.  God does not give up.  Maybe the journey with your spouse, your great love, began with a glance, a simple look, an everyday event that in time awoke you to love.  Happy Feast Day Mary!  

Burial

 It is not really all that important where I get buried, just as long as I am buried somewhere.  I don’t want to be idolized or kept on someone’s table top.  It is just ashes of what was.  What is important is that God can find me.  Since God is everywhere, then God can find me.  I like that the Catholic Church in its mass has a prayer that all the dead be remembered, not so much by us as by God.  I believe that God finds me right after my last breath. If God wants the ashes or bones or whatever, then that is fine.  I don’t need body parts.  I need relationship.  I try to remember that when I am sitting alive in meditation, I am not at the gym for my body, but working on inner parts that do not go to dust when I die.  

Life In Ruins

 I always send out a flyer to a person, my friend Mary, who notifies a huge list of people who come to my teachings in Boulder, Colorado or who go online with zoom.  I teach tomorrow, December 7.  I just found out that I forgot to send my friend Mary the flyer months ago.  I was sitting here preparing my reflections, looking forward to being of service and help to many others.  Well, now my life is in ruins.  I will show up and be with the people preparing terrific treats and coffee, my friend Phil who records and zooms the talk, and me.  To make it worse I won’t even make plane fare back to San Francisco.  Is this God telling me I am done, washed up, over the hill?  My last talk ever?  Well, I will go to the Nutcracker ballet tonight in Denver and try to put this behind me for a few hours.  But check your email lately and at least see what you are missing.  I will be missing you.  

Winner and Loser

 Some countries have elections.  When there are two candidates, each quite popular, but very different,  lots of people tend to vote.  One candidate wins and all their voters are happy.  The loser voters tend to be very unhappy, with maybe some hope for things to be not so bad.  Whatever.  Within a year, the winner is more unpopular than when the election was decided.  Why?  Well, the voters who “won” voted because they thought happiness was in material things.  Material things did not materialize as expected.  So whether my candidate wins or loses, I tend to wake up each day with gratitude for what I do have, much of which is not material.  And then I try to see how I can keep this body in fit spiritual and physical condition to be of help to others, regardless of who they voted for in any election.  I don’t vote for any miracles.  The miracle worker I believe in got crucified and would have won no elections with his program for happiness.  

A Memorable Prayer

 Now I lay me down to sleep,

I pray the Lord my soul to keep, 

And should I die before I wake,

I pray the Lord my soul to take.  

We teach this prayer to children at night before they go to sleep.  It is filled with trust, the awareness that this life will end as we know it, and  hope.  Children sleep fine with this prayer.  It does not ask for everything, but for something important.  We teach connectivity to the child.  Then we grow up and forget it all.  Maybe we start the journey back to God with just such a prayer.  Try it and get on your knees if you can still do that.  For me, getting down is easier than getting up.  

Up Close

 Why are religious people so busy and active in trying to find God or make God present?  God is everywhere.  Nirvana, the Kingdom, is in our midst, not far away.  We searchers might be far away but the kingdom is not.  Some build and finance beautiful worship spaces and I do enjoy such places but I must beware that my God is not bound by the walls of these physical places.  The buildings don’t make God especially present any more than does a mountain top or Fall trees.  But we feel the presence more in some spaces and places because of their physicality.  But maybe God is hiding in places and situations where we least expect.  The struggle is not so much between belief and non-belief as it is in awareness and cluelessness.  

Little Power

 Sometimes I pursue and seek “A Lower Power.”  A lower power might help me to get what I want, to be filled rather than empty to be satiated and full.  With what?  With all the things I think I want that will make me feel problems free.  If I have insurance medical issues I want my little power to fix it so that I will feel better.  Control, relaxed, no worries.  I pray to my lower power to come and fix my life and I give this power the tools.  But I find that I am not particularly changed from the better by my lower power being at work.  I am still all about me and my issues, my comforts, my sense of control, and esteem.  Now if I would seek a Higher Power, then I would have to surrender, say “Thy will, not mine, be done.”  I would have to trust and even follow directions from this power.  I may not get what I self-focused want, but I might get what I need.  

Unknowable

 You have God issues?  You don’t understand, or you don’t believe in a God?  But you would like something/someone to help you? Well, why not just call this God “The Unknowable.”  It fits a lot of people and a monk, Thomas Keating, wrote about such a God.  And Keating was a believer.  The problem with traditional concepts of God is that these concepts seem to imply an understanding of their God.  This is ignorance posing as knowledge.  It is comforting so I don’t mess with it.  But really, God is beyond anything or anyone that we could imagine or think up.  But unknowable does not mean non-existent.  It does mean you are humble enough to believe in what is beyond your limited capacities.  This to me is faith.  

Benedictine

 In the movie, “The Sound Of Music,” Mother Abbess seems to be much more patient with the wayward young postulant, Maria, than the other nuns seem to be.  They want her tossed out because she just does not follow the rules.  She is forever late for things.  The Abbess is patient because they are all Benedictine.  Saint Benedict, the founder of the Benedictines, wrote a rule in which he devotes 14 chapters to the handling of the “wayward.”  I lived with the Cistercians who are Benedictine, for several years of my life and was blessed with their patience.  I am “wayward.”  I am a wayward Paulist, full of faults, yet I seem to fail in becoming shamed enough to do better.  I was allowed to live with the Cistercian’s high up in the Rocky Mountains, because of their patience with me.  There, in those mountains, I heard the sound of music, God in all the Silence.  So, be patient with the wayward.  

Granma

Christmas Season is a dilemma for Christian Grandmothers.  They want their grandchildren it be baptized and become good followers of Jesus, but he said to sell all you have and come follow me.  He also said that the one who does not renounce all their possessions cannot become his follower.  But grandmas go shopping and buy all kinds of stuff for their grandchildren that go under the Christmas tree.  And the kids gobble up all those possessions.  What to do?  Personally I would rather be a bad Christian with lots of Christmas presents than a good one with nothing.  But then, I am but a work in progress and running out of time.  And my grandmothers are long since deceased.  

The Eagle

 You cannot see the air but you can see the eagle hovering up in the sky.  The sight of the eagle tells you there is air that you cannot otherwise see.  It is the same with God.  God cannot be seen, but a person who is loving reveals the unseen God.  So if you decry the lack of belief in God, why not just become a loving person today and let God do the rest.  There are many “believers” but not as many revealers.  

The Kiss

 When a leaf falls from the tree does it just die, of no more value to nature?  No, as one poet states, when the leaf falls from the tree it kisses the earth to help bring it back to life.  The earth is nourished by that dying leaf and in the spring the earth will come alive again, if you will, from its dormancy.  We all have value and purpose, living and dying.  In a sense we are dying from the moment we come into his world.  But dying to self is most important because that is when we can give a kiss of life to others who need regeneration.  In recovery one person gives up something in order to nourish someone else.  A mother does this for a child as does a father.  To feed our self-centeredness is to starve other people.  

The Mountain

 You can see a mountain top from a distance, but seeing it does not get you there.  You have to climb to the top.  In climbing, the path often obscures the view of the mountain altogether.  You just seem to see the path. If you stay on the path you will reach the top of the mountain.  The experience of being on the mountain top is most often better than seeing it from afar.  So it is on any spiritual journey or recovery.  You can see, through others, in reading, the place where you want to be.  But seeing it in others does not get you there.  You have to get on a daily path.  Often the goal you seek is hidden by daily efforts, daily life, obstacles along the path.  But if you stay on the path, you will get there in due time.  And Happy Thanksgiving!

Courting Death

 Do you ever find yourself courting death?  Of course not you say.  But every time that you try to be someone you are not, to live someone else’s life, you are courting death because the life you were made to live, your own real life, is dying.  It is not being fed with attention and effort.  To get your real life off life-support, you must first forgive yourself for trying to be someone you are not, some hero or famous person, or someone else highly esteemed by whatever group you value.  Performers, entertainers, athletes are forever being mimicked.  After forgiveness, then find a mentor or sponsor who can help you to become yourself instead of someone else, a false self.  Then with patience and discipline, practice, practice.  And be grateful that you have a purpose each day when you wake up.  

Simple

 Just because something is simple does not make it easy.  Prayer is simple as in meditation.  Just stop talking and listening to outside voices.  Don’t pay attention to your mind full of stuff.  But that is not easy.  We don’t like being with ourself, alone.  We like the company of noise, chatter, mind on a rush of thoughts and images.  I tell myself, that if I cannot be with myself then why should anyone else want to be with myself.  It ends up that many people who are restless, discontent, and irritable, are also quite lonely.  They cannot even stand their own company.  They often end up finding some addiction as their escape when no one else is around to fill them up.  But can you really be filled up when the interior abyss is so deep?

Joseph

 Joseph, the husband of Mary who is the mother of Jesus in Christianity is one of my favorite saints.  Why?  He was pretty much left out, so second place in the life of Jesus, his son.  Mary gets top billing, with lots of visions and apparitions over the centuries.  but Joesph, not so much.  I can relate to him because I often feel like a second place guy, left out, pretty much forgotten in the course of things in my life.  I am no big deal as a Paulist in my religious order to which I belong.  I don’t do much that is memorable, like a book or a group I started.  So Joseph is my guy.  He did his job, the best he could given the circumstances, and then was forgotten.  He was important for a bit of time, in a brief story or two.  He was needed, as we all are at some point.  So if you feel like a second place person, forgotten by people, Joseph is your guy.  

Mustafa

 I always thought that the popular movie and play, “The Lion King”referred to Jesus Christ, the Incarnation, death and Resurrection.  Now the Disney movie is coming out. “Mustafa, the Lion King.”  God takes on a creation form, in this case a lion.  It is not expected.  It is a bit of an orphan to everyone else.  The cub grows, learns, and becomes a leader.  Then he dies for his people and later comes back.  Everyone seems to enjoy the Lion King, but if I talk about God coming as human, growing up, trying to lead and then die for all people, and the rise again, that is another story.  And for many people it is just a story.  So enjoy the movie.  But know that Disney did not make it up from nothing.  

Dryness

 In the spiritual journey we sometimes run into dryness.  This is when we don’t feel like doing something that we know is good.  We have no positive feeling for it.  But we don’t let feelings control our actions.  We pray when we don’t feel like praying.  The Will is important here.  We simply will ourselves, decide to pray, which we know is the correct response.  A person in recovery does not wait around until they feel like going to a meeting.  They just go.  A Christian does not wait around on Sunday until they feel like going to worship.  They simply go.  I don’t always feel like praying or being selfless, or helpful to another person.  I do it as an act of the will.  Nor do I try to feel good about the good I may do.  My Higher Power is at work.  I need trust and humility.  

Me First

 The first person I need to love when I wake up is me.  If I don’t love me, I will trash my day and the day of others.  The first thing I do is say a prayer of gratitude for the day.  Often I am reminded of something to do that is good for me.  I give no space in my mind to, “I don’t feel like doing that,” or “I don’t need to do that,” when I know it is really good for me.  To start out on the wrong foot is to begin to give space to guilt and shame that can come along later.  Then the day will go downhill rather quickly.  I try to do good things for myself early after getting up.  I stretch a little.  Make my bed so my room does not have that trashed look.  Then get the newspaper for the house from outside our front door, four flights down the stairs.  Then coffee and fill up my water bottle.  Put out my blog for the people who still read it.  Then uplifting reading, a little, and meditation.  Then I can be of service to others.  

Misery Attracts

 Gods is attracted to misery.  It is not that God loves people to be miserable, but it allows God to show mercy.  Trouble is, people in misery don’t realize the gift of mercy being shown them.  So they wallow in misery.  But people in recovery, people who have been able to climb out of a hole in their life, a bottom, have know this mercy.  It is called Grace.  It is freely given to those who are miserably powerless to get out of misery.  The same with emptiness and weakness.  God is attracted to it because God can fill it up with love, acceptance and GRACE.  All free.  So don’t give up if you are in a bad place of misery, emptiness and weakness.  God is at work.  

Trials

 Trials are really a training ground for you to become detached, to let go of self, and ego.  When we focus on the trial is it not all about the self?  “I really want that drink or drug,” and where is the focus?  On yourself.  Let go of self.  How?  Surrender.  Turn the ego self over to your higher power or God.  Rather than the ego fighting for control, a lost cause, you turn yourself over to the God Power.  Admit that the ego cannot control your life.  The ego you that wants the drink, takes the drink.  But the recovering you, is not so ego focused.  The turning over of the will and life to God gets you out of yourself and you don’t drink.  Trials are to get us back on track when we have drifted off.  Like any successful athlete who trains every day, you need to do this admittance of powerlessness and need to turn your life over, every day.  You then have a “fit” spiritual condition.  

Intention

 When you have an intention to pray for something or in a particular manner do you ever find your mind drifting off into something not related to your intention in prayer?  This is because we can control our intention, such as the intention to meditate in quiet and stillness.  But we cannot control our attention.  The mind can drift off into its own world time and time again.  When we catch ourself doing this we try to bring ourself back to our intention, only to have the attention take off again.  The intention and act of trying to pray is enough.  Don’t beat yourself up for inattention.  

Great Injustices

 The pope of the Catholic Church at this time, Francis I, seems to be very focused on the unwanted in society, who can suffer great injustices in a world of prejudice.  Why doesn’t he just talk about Jesus?  Well he does.  Jesus was rejected by the powers of his world, religious and political.  He was innocently crucified.  This was a great injustice.  He was poor himself.  He was unwanted by many who had a lot of material goods.  He rejected religion that aligned itself with power.  The Pope lives in a small apartment.  He does not live in the big papal quarters of previous popes.  It makes one think about the road to holiness.  

Singleness Of Purpose

 When people get together to share about their transformation process, their spiritual journey, they know enough to keep their opinions to themself.  Spiritual groups that I know of that seem to work, stick to talking about the masters who have been successful in the journey.  So they often quote literature that everyone can agree is the “real deal.”  Singleness of purpose means that you are there to help one another and especially to help the newer ones among you, just starting on the journey.  Wisdom is in the literature, such as Sutras, Big Book, Bible, Koran, Vedanta, and books that seem to gleam wisdom from such sources.  Opinions are ego trips.  In such meetings I never try to say, “In my opinion,” because it is just that and I am a mere beginner on this path.  My purpose is not to show off but to show up and help another to grow.  

Christmas Card God

 A lot of people who are angry and have given up on God wanted a Christmas Card god.  Christmas cards are full of nice pictures, sweet scenes, baby and angels, happy parents.  Everything is going well.  That is the god a lot of people want.  They want their god to make everything go well, in the direction they think is “well.”  No one ever sends out Good Friday cards.  They are too gruesome.  Lots of suffering and pain.  No one likes suffering and pain, even if that is the only way to transformation.  If Recovery programs and the 12 steps were all that easy, many more addicts would jump on them.  If Christianity were always Christmas, there would be a lot more church going Christians, and a lot more believers.  Even Zen says that you will suffer first.  Lots of people want the airy buzz but do not want to do the hard, daily, boring at times, work for transformation.  

Feeling Sorry

 Can you tell someone you are sorry for something you did, even if you don’t feel any sorrow?  Yes.  Feeling sorry is not under your control.  Saying you are sorry is an act of the will.  You can control that to some extent.  But you cannot control your feelings.  Think of feeling angry.  You feel angry.  You did not decide to feel angry.  It just came up emotionally.  But you can decide to act other than angry.  It is an act of the will.  Now some people, addicts for instance, have broken wills.  They kept wanting to stop but never could.  Their will-power was too damaged.  But in recovery they get a will that works much better.  Through the steps which they decide to do even if they do not “feel” like doing them, they can get to where they apologize for bad behavior.  They don’t have to wait to feel anything before they do  most any of the steps.  

The Disturbance

When you become disturbed about a situation do you generally blame the situation for your feeling disturbed?  This seems to be the case when not sufficiently on a spiritual path.  The outsides control the insides.  Choice has been taken from us.  We are powerless to be otherwise.  Feelings rule.  I suggest that maybe something might be the matter with us when we let outsides have this effect.  Otherwise, we try to change the outsides to make us feel better.  There is an axiom that says, whenever we are disturbed, no matter the cause, there is something wrong with us.  In most cases I believe this is so with many of us.  Choice has not been taken from us.  We have given it up.  Why?  Because choice takes work, a spiritual practice that works on our insides so that we can exercise choice when stuff happens.  Life on life’s terms does not mean we must be miserable when things don’t go our way.  

Inside The Tomb

 Imagine yourself inside the tomb, the stone rolled to close the opening.  Total darkness, with a dead body beside you.  The dead body is Jesus.  You can do nothing to change the situation.  That is, he is dead and you are encased.  But what is your response in attitude?  Do you have any hope that things will get better.  There is no indication that the darkness and death will change.  Do you take any comfort that you are next to Jesus though he is dead?  And what is there of him in that dead body?  Maybe he has gone to the nether world to see Adam and Eve.  Just you and Jesus’ dead body.  I suspect most people “of faith” would despair.  Most everyone outside the tomb has done so.  Inside the tomb filled with darkness, you do have a choice how to respond.  If you believe, you simply wait and put up with all the feelings that arise.  You will to wait, in trust, in hope, with courage, in spite of feelings and apparent reality around you.  It is rock bottom time, and you still trust that there is a power that will act.  This is the faith of a spiritual recovery.  

Icon Cleaning

 When doing a 4th step inventory of the mess in our lives, it is a bit like cleaning an Icon painting.  You know that something is not quite right bu you don’t know the dirt of the icon until you begin to clean it.  The dirt comes to the surface with the cleaning.  Things look worse than before.  But then the dirt forms a crust and falls off, like a 5th step.  The icon, newly clean, reveals a beauty that was hidden by the dirt.  So do the recovery steps in order, and you will see a better you that was hidden by your addictive lifestyle.  

For What?

For what purpose do you live?  What is your reason for being?  Why ask this?  I ask it because many people believe that where they live will make them happy.  So many people live in San Francisco Area and they are not happy.  They thought that this beautiful area would bring them the happiness they did not have wherever else they had been.  It is a town of transplants.   I hope that I have a reason for my being here, a reason and purpose for my life.  “Retirement” is not a reason nor purpose.  What does one do in retirement that has purpose?  Sobriety is not a purpose.  People often go back to their addictive behavior and lifestyle because they did not find a purpose beyond sobriety.  They did not develop a life outside the rooms of recovery.  I wake up with gratitude that I can have some purpose again in my life this day.  I want to be a gift in this life that is given to me.  

The Neighbor

 How can I say that I love my neighbor if I am into spiritual competition with them?   This is where a person sits in a recovery meeting or in their worship service and start the interior dialogue that downgrades someone else in the group.  “I am glad I am not like that person,” is often the monologue.  Love connects.  If we are thinking “separation” thoughts, compare/contrast thoughts, then we lack love for the neighbor.  

Better Than Who?

 There can be a tendency among those in recovery or who go regularly to their worship services, to think that they are better than those who don’t or are not in recovery.  They suffer from the tendency to superiority.  It is illogical and a deficiency in their spiritual practice.  They compare, which separates.  “There but for the grace if God go I,” is more the attitude that I try to practice.  There was a time when I neither went to church nor was in recovery.  Then Grace came into my life.  A free gift, unearned.  I try not to forget the past.  It keeps me right-sized.  

The Clothes

 Dressing like a priest does not make me a priest in the way I am supposed to live my vocation.  Nor does a habit make a nun.  Action is what makes us who we are at the moment.  When I walk around San Francisco in my priest clothes, I must realize that people are looking at me with some sense of what this might mean.  Plus, it is a way for me to say that God is in our midst.  So I had better act as if a loving God is in their midst.  It keeps me on my toes in the public sphere.  A lot of people have dropped religion because they recall adults, dressed in their Sunday go to Church clothes, who were not very nice before or after the liturgy.  Those in recovery must act the same inside the meeting as they do outside the meeting.  

Where Is God?

 Many people say that there is no god or higher power or any of this spiritual stuff.  I think that a belief in a God or Higher Power would be more in vogue if more people who say they do believe would realize that the Power they believe in dwells in them.  A Higher Power has no body but the one of the person who has had their life changed by his belief.  The Higher Power speaks through the words of the believer.  This is why service is important for those who have had a positive experience of a Higher Power or God.  

Grace

 Stories about recovery from addiction are not really stories about success over failure.  That would be more a story of personal efforts, the hero overcoming the odds by their Herculean efforts to recover from addiction.  No, recovery is really a story about Grace, the free gift from a power that the person does not possess on their own.  It is an outside and an inside power.  It is not them but it is in them.  To recover is to discover this power.  I look at my life as a priest and realize that it is a story of grace, not my great holiness, that has kept me on the path of my vocation or gotten me back onto it when I might have drifted off the mark.  So if your life is one of grace accepted then let us start our day with GRATITUDE!

A Way Of Life

 Alcohol is mentioned only in the first of twelve steps in Recovery.  Those twelve steps are really a way of life.  Some of these steps have been copied from other spiritual paths but they are all put into a good order for a spiritual path.  Sobriety is only a small part of recovery.  Addicts who successfully kick the habit on a daily basis don’t stop the 12 steps simply because they do not experience the addictive cravings or desires or drugs as a solution.  They continue to practice the twelve steps as a way of living that is quite full.  Their lives and efforts carry the message to others.  I cannot say the same for many of the baptized or bar mitzvahs.  

Agnostic At Prayer

 Some people say that they are agnostics because when they prayed they felt nothing.  So they assumed that nothing was “out there.”  Thus they are unsure of a god or power or whatever.  They want sensible piety, feeling.  They do not yet know about purification and dryness.  They will believe only if they get some kind of buzz.  It is like the alcoholic who believes alcohol works for them because they get some kind of buzz.  Until they don’t.  Then they realize that the buzz was a false path.  Prayer is not about buzz.  It is about change, your change as a person.  I have seen people become quite complete and full as a person who feels not much of anything when they pray.  But they keep praying.  

The No Experience Prayer

 Why must you have an experience, an emotional buzz, a nourishing feeling or thought when you pray?  This is all about self.  Sometimes, to get out of self, we are given nothing but blah, blah when we pray.  It feels like nothing is going on.  Yet, beneath all these “abandoned” feelings, something very deep is going on, but we cannot always connect to it.  The solution?  Just keep on praying in some disciplined fashion.  You don’t need to change books or position you sit in or walk.  Just stay with it.  Eventually this dark night, this seeming emptiness, will pass.  Prayer is not all about you.  It is relationship.  It is about becoming One.  It will take time, especially if you started out praying, to get something.  

The Creator

 A man and a woman may say that they are creating a new life, a child.  But are they really the creators, or are they ultimately participating in the action of the Creator who started the whole process of creation from nothing?  The Original One began a process, a dynamic in which the universe participates.  So, in a sense, the new life is begun by God.  We humans are part of a long process in which everything new with life if from the Original One.  And so belongs to the Original One.  I find it comforting to think that no matter who dies in my life, I still belong to One who lives always and lives in me as part of my created life.  For this reason I still say thank you when I wake up each morning, for another day in this evolving universe.  I may be a small part of something very big, the universe, but I am still part of, with another day to grow into a fully me.  

All Saints

 Yesterday in my church was the celebration of “All Saints Day.”  And I know a lot of saints.  They did not get the title “Saint.” But they lived the life of one.  They might seem rather normal, not standing out in any special way to the world, but I know how far they have come to get to what we might call ‘normal.”  My saints used to be frighteningly bad in destructive behavior.  They had low social skills in group settings or even in one on one.  They were often restless, irritable, irritating, and destructive. They lived in discontent.  Now they are what you might call normal.  But I know the spiritual work they did to get where they are today.  They are not self-made.  They had help from others and from some power that is not their own.  So they are my saints.  

Don’t Stare

 It is OK to look back on some bad behavior, but don’t stare at it.  You want it as a source of information to someone who might need to know how you improved your life from bad/not too good/disastrous/mediocre, which is where they might be at the time.  The past can be helpful to remember how far you have come.  But to stare at it is to start down the old well-traveled road of shame and guilt.  Stop punishing yourself.  The past is done.  Live in the present moment.  There is not much gratitude for what you have if you are not present to it now.  And forget about “I should be better.”  Just work on today and “better” will come along in due time.  False pride is very sneaky.  It hides behind the “should.”  You are alive today, so there is a plan for you.  

Don’t Forget

 It is important to keep in mind the experience that got you going onto your spiritual path.  I mean what got you really going away from some dysfunction or mediocrity, or one foot in and one foot out. and onto something that began to change your life for the better.  I believe that all of us have a call or a purpose, or reason for our particular life.  It just takes some of us longer to get going.  Often there is this one moment, this one event, circumstance that changes our perspective.  From that moment we move ever so slowly or more quickly toward who we are meant to be.  So don’t forget that moment or event or circumstance.  And Happy Halloween!

Sea Ranch

 Today I am preparing for my annual vacation at Sea Ranch, California. I won’t tell you where it is because it is not crowded and my sister and Jane like it that way. It is the one real vacation I take each year. We usually go late in October into November for eight days which includes my sister’s birthday. We shop groceries locally and cook at home each evening, early before the World Series or football.  We both enjoy cooking, reading, outdoor exercise and one another.  We have done this almost every year since 1988 when I discovered the place.  It is better than a retreat for me.  The right place, the right person, and God joins us.  Or we join God.  

Good Morning

 I recently found out that the Paulist Fathers, the religious order group to which I belong, retired me, that is, put me on retirement status.  I did not ask for it.  It was just done the beginning of July.  I don’t know that it changes much of my life. If I tell people I am retired they think I do nothing.  Or do something else since that is how they understand retirement.  A priest in a sense never retires.  It is like someone in recovery.  They can retire from a lot of things, but never from recovery.  I seem to be pretty busy wherever I am, so retirement does not seem to have settled into my experience of life becoming different.  One day at a time.  

A One Timer

 A drunk who creates a big scene or drama at an event with family or associates, friends, can become a “One Timer.”  I call it the kind of event after which you leave and everyone else says, “Let’s not do that again,” as in never invite that person.  Well, I was afraid that I would be a one timer recently when I was invited to teach bread making to a group of teens.  I feared that I would not make very good bread, or their oven would not work or the Dutch oven would be defective and so on.  They would all say, “Thank you, Father, for coming,” and after I walked out the door, they would all agree, “Let’s not do that again!”  But I think I passed the test or else the bread did.  It was not great Rye Bread, but good enough so I would not end up in that dreaded club, “A One Timer.”  

Disturbance

 People tend to get upset when their life is “disturbed.”  They prefer sameness, no suffering, change or upheaval.  But think of soil into which you want to plant some seed or water to make it more fertile.  The earth needs to be disturbed, loosened, softened up and maybe even chopped at if it is too hard and crusty.  Poor suffering earth!  But then all this is so that the soil can begin to grow something new, something helpful to others.  The soil surrenders its tranquility to serve the needs of others.  So how about you who seek silence and stillness?  I rather would like to stay open to whatever this Great Power has in store for my growth and service to others.  

The Door

 If you feel that your love is not sufficient to convery the love of a Higher Power that you want to convey to someone else, not to worry.  Think of your love as the doorway to a more Ultimate Love, or Power or God.  OK.  You don’t yet love unconditionally and unselfishly.  But in trying to do this, in your humanness, you are pointing to a deeper and more complete love.  Love as best as you can and that is like opening your door to the love of your spiritual center, that is within you.  Prayer keeps you on your path, and points you in the direction you long to live.  A little humility helps here.  My love may be very incomplete but I keep trudging along.  Patience.  And practice.  

Conversion

 Conversion is moving to becoming your best self.  The best self is a feeling of being at home, at home within yourself.  No matter where you are or live, if you are living your best self, then you feel at home.  Geographic moves don’t do this.  It is the false self that moves to somewhere else physically, but it never feels like home because one is not comfortable in their own skin.  So they live a false self, trying to fit into the new environment.  The true self lets the environment fit into the true self.  One does not have to fake anything, or try to become popular of do drinking, drugging to fit in.  This is why the interior journey must be done before the exterior journey.  I moved to San Francisco.  It will be a good fit if I am a good fit within my own skin.  

Somebody Else

 People often believe or feel that they belong to some group because they show up at group meetings.  Some people believe they belong to a group because they live with them.  Nothing more is required.  These are the somebody else people.  When something needs to be done they think somebody else will do it.  Or they might say, “who is going to do that.”  But they never volunteer to be the “who” they just mentioned.  They become mere bystanders in any setting.  It can happen in families, or any group, club, organization setting.  In business you can at least fire them.  The bystander generally does not get paid.  

Belief Optional

 Lots of people who have addictions avoid recovery programs because they don’t believe in a god.  They think belief is required.  Belief is not required.  Desperation, and emptiness that no longer can be filled, suicidal leanings are more what is required.  The gift of desperation is just that, a gift.  It gives the addict the willingness to ask for help.  The belief that you cannot stop your addiction on your own is all the belief that is needed.  

Conversions

 The first conversion is to your realization that you are human, that is, you are flawed, imperfect, in process.  You realize your faults and shortcomings.  You begin to stop blaming others and other situations as the primary problem.  You begin to take your own honest inventory.  You then begin to move to the second conversion which is compassion for others.  They do not live up to any standard you set.  They have shortcomings and character defects too.  Why?  They are human.  Now you start to sense the oneness you have with all people.  You become less judgmental, prejudicial and resentful of the world that is suffering, like you,  all around you.  Compassion means to “suffer with.”  You might then begin to apologize to some people for your bad behavior toward them, rather than focus on their behavior.  Conversion is not about changing others, but changing oneself.  In recovery there are steps for all this.  

Understanding

 The god of one’s understanding is often the problem with a relationship to Ultimate Reality, Oneness, Presence, Power.  I find that people who reject belief, and usually with some emotional attachment to that rejection is because their understanding did not hold up.  They prayed to their god that their friend would live.  Well, the friend died.  So that god did not exist or else their friend would have lived.  Often the rejector had a god that was supposed to fix outside stuff according to the plans of the rejector.  Another reason people reject a god of their understanding is because of the person(s) or institutions that pushed belief.  They focused on the messenger and probably have a good resentment against the messenger, but rejected the message.  Rejecting a Higher Power, the person goes on trying to find happiness and fulfillment in outside stuff, and this might include booze, drugs, and all kinds of outside things and people.  When one gives up this rejection and begins to listen to believers who they admire and trust, the Higher Power will find them.  

Outside Stuff

 I will never find happiness and peace in outside stuff.  The idea that the right partner, the right job, car, house, neighborhood or whatever out there will give me the peace I seek is false.  Peace and lasting happiness is on the inside.  This is one reason, the big reason, that I pursue some spiritual practice.  I need to exercise my insides through reading and meditation.  Except for the first cup of coffee in the morning.  This is an outside thing, but it seems to work every time.  It gives me early in the day happiness.  With half and half or course.  

Intention

 Prayer does not have to feel good.  Our intention is important and somewhat under our control.  I can begin to pray with an intention, such as praise or thank you, or a request.  That I pay attention when I pray is not so much under my control.  Often I lose attention to the prayer.  But I still do the prayer and still have my intention.  Attention is not within my power.  Does your mind never drift off as you pray or meditate.  You intend to be quiet and still, to give your whole self to the Divine, the Power, the Ultimate Reality, God, and you soon are thinking about some issue totally disconnected to your intention.  Control what you can, intention, not what you can’t, attention.  

Happiness.

If you are looking for peace and happiness in relationships, things and money, you are likely to search in vain.  They are all passing.  If you can stay in a committed relationship this can be peaceful and happy.  young people often think that if they just get the right spouse, the right job, the right neighborhood with house, I will be happy and at peace.  Does not work very often.  Peace and happiness is within and cannot be found in another person, geography or job.  I am shifting my living to San Francisco more and Colorado less.  I will try not to look in all he wrong places for fulfillment.  

Efficiency

 Beer is not the smart way to imbibe.  It has lots of calories, takes up a lot of space and can be rather more expensive…than vodka.  Vodka is lower in calories, takes up less space and is cheaper than beer.  And you imbibe less vodka liquid than beer because vodka is rather powerful. Some people say they prefer their cold beer, but I doubt that the sixth beer from your big cooler has much to do with cold or not cold.  Whereas you don’t need a cooler for your vodka.  It’s fine not being cold.  So if you are a budding alcoholic there is an efficient way to get drunk.  I would recommend abstinence.  But if you are a mild drinker, called “normal” by drunks, vodka is efficient.  

Patrick

 Patrick is helping with my blog

Partick

 Patrick is helping me with my blog. 

The Backdoor

 Many people reject places of worship because they experience or have heard about them as judgmental, exclusive, dogmatic, elitist and uninviting.  So be it for that experience.  But then they reject any God.  For one reason is that they cannot find the backdoor.  They only tried the front door of institutions.  There is a backdoor.  The institutional power they rejected or felt rejected.  But there is another power that is found through the backdoor such as welcoming recovery programs, or groups that help the rejected, the poor, the messed up, the lost.  Sometimes simply being of service helps to find this backdoor power.  For addicts, it is the only power that will truly save them from themselves.  And for some, the backdoor may lead through recovery, and service, to the front door, but from the inside, and not the outside.  

A-Mends

 Amends can be broken into two phrases:  “A” and “mend.”  The A when connected to the mend means we tell someone we are sorry for what we did.  We apologize.  We may even confess a shortcoming that fueled the bad behavior.  But this does not focus on the “Mend” part of amends.  To mend means to fix.  Here you are trying to fix what is broken in you, that which leads to bad behavior and harm to self and others.  Apologizing is only half the action.  We have to work on the self on a daily disciplined and focused activity, such as prayer and meditation.  You are broken and need fixing/repair/overhaul.  You only have power to break.  Some other Power is needed for the fixing.  

The Not-God

 I am not God.  If someone decides to act badly or destructively to themselves, I try not to go into a guilt trip or blame myself, that I could have or should have done more.  I am but a mere human being offering  help, preaching, teaching, befriending.  I don’t know the effects that I might have in my aim to be helpful.  But I do know that I am better off for trying to be of some service.  The results are not in my control.  I am not God.  

To Do Or Not To Do

 If a person wants to drink themselves into oblivion day after day or on a binge, there is not much I can do for them directly.  I can pray for them.  Self-destructive behavior is rather oblivious to help.  But if someone wants to stop this behavior, then that is my business.  As a priest I run into people who are on self-imposed misery.  I am powerless here.  But then I seem to be found or find people who want to get out of this madness they are in.  That is my business, to be helpful to those who want help.  I believe you can help the helpless if they want help.  

Anger At What?

 Some people are very angry with a god who did not come through for them.  So they stopped believing in God, but they stayed angry.  As someone pointed out, now you are angry at something you don’t think exists.  If someone says they do not believe in a god because they have never much thought about it or were never taught anything, they are rarely angry.  They might be puzzled at believers, but they are not angry.  When I find anger and non-belief in the same person, their atheism is suspect.  You cannot be angry at what does not exist.  Maybe that is why Step Two in recovery programs is about asking to be restored to sanity, so you can at least be angry at what does exist or drop the anger.  

Pluto

Remember when Pluto was a planet, the ninth and farthest from the sun?  And then it was declared “no planet.”  As one astronomer said, this does not make it worse than it was before simply because its ID was changed.  “Planet” is not a status, but rather an identification of something.  Pluto is still Pluto.  Nothing changed in Pluto.  So why do we people get all upset when someone changes our identification.  We are still the same person.  So many of us cannot accept ourselves without some title, which we think gives us a better status.  We are still the same person.  Title does not change us.  Whether someone calls me “Father” or not, does not change who I am.  If someone calls you a “name” out of disrespect or hate, that does not change who you are.  Don’t see yourself through the eyes of others.   

Spiritual Principles

 If you are an addict to something and you go to recovery meetings faithfully, read the literature, work inventory steps, you will find your flaws, character defects, such as selfishness and fear.  But all you have gotten so far is knowledge.  And as one person said, “Knowledge avails us nothing,” when it comes to addiction.  You have to live by spiritual principles.  Have a Higher Power and pray to this power in words and then meditation.  I have heard of many a person who went to lots of meetings for a while, read the books, worked some steps, but never prayed or formed any relationship with a Higher Power and then they went out, their lives got worse and so on.  Spiritual principles will make us loving people.  

The Purpose

 Not everyone on a communion line will have the same response to the host they receive.  If they receive a couple times a year, holidays, family visits and such, I doubt that the host means much.  They see with the physical eye that the host is a round white wafer.  They taste with the physical tongue nothing much.  Sacraments, to be effective, must be approached from a heart level.  Someone why sees with the eye of the heart, and tastes with the heart of the tongue, will have a rather profound experience of that wafer.  Persons receiving at this level, depth, might then be able to see beneath the actions of others, hear deeper than the words spoken, and then speak with the tongue of the heart to the pain buried deep with that other person.  Jesus on the cross saw in his public executioners something deeper, some pain they buried, so that they could do what they do.  And he said, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they are doing.”

Being Young

 If you are willing to grow, to learn, to be open to something new and healthy, then you are “young” as in young at heart.  Age does not matter.  Children are often eager to learn.  Why does that stop at some point in “adulthood?”  Why do people get set in their ways?  They begin to identify themselves with their work, their exercise, their race, economic status and voting identity.  They begin to talk only to people with whom they agree.  They want to live in places where everyone is about the same…like them.  I have met many a senior who is still willing to learn.  They go to classes, workshops, try new things, talk to people (and Listen) with whom they disagree.  You don’t have to travel all the time.  Sometimes that can be an excuse for being uncomfortable in your own skin.  But not always.  So you may be senior in years but young at heart in attitude and openness.  

The Bottom

 The bottom of your disaster/bad habit, whatever it might be, is not to be compared with the bottom of someone else’s disaster.  Otherwise, you compare and contrast and the convince yourself, “Well, I am not so bad,” and do nothing.  If this is so, you will hit a lower bottom because your activity has become habitual.  So whatever your bottom is, it’s one that got you to finally do something about your life so that you don’t get worse.  If down the road of positive action to renew or recover a better life, you look at the past and say, “I don’t want to go back there ever again,” then you are using the past in a positive way to keep on the better road you are on now.  Look ahead but don’t forget.  It keeps us humble.  

Emotionally Open

 If someone says to me, “There is no god,” that is pride speaking.  In reality we don’t know.  Even a believer or one who says, “There is a god,” does not know for sure with the mind.  I appreciate when someone says, “I don’t really know.”  This admits to a certain ignorance and humility.  I think that humility will take us further along the road of emotional growth than will false pride.  The emotionally insecure refuse to be open.  They close themselves off by certainty.  No more discussion.  

The Guide

 A guide will always be successful if they stay on the path for others to follow.  If others refuse to follow, or wander off the path, go it alone, the guide is not responsible for their contrary behavior.  Just stay on the path.  Besides, someone unexpected may wander into the path seemingly lost, but newly found.  A guide is not a counselor with an office to which people come and the guide says do this or that, while the guide just stays in their office.  A guide leads by example.  A guide was once in need of guidance.  That is how the guide discovered their knowledge.  I don’t tell people what to do.  I might make suggestions but they are suggestions I still practice.  But I must model the path by the manner and way I live my life.  Emotional balance keeps me on the path.  

Old Friends

 When I was young, I could move and make new friends.  People at that age I was in, were open to new friendships.  Many of them had moved too.  But now that I am much older, I find that I need to retain those old friends.  The ones from early school days remind me of who I am before I tried to reinvent myself.  The friends I made in my career years I need to keep.  We share some common memories that are precious to growing into mature adulthood.  People my age are not so interested in making new friends.  They have their friends, and are a bit set in their ways.  This is why assisted living places that are good, make a big effort to bring people together.  Old people learn how to be alone since they have lost so much.  But alone is not usually a healthy or even natural way of life.  So, as I move along, I try to retain and revisit these old friends I have made over the years.  Houston, Knoxville, Boulder, New York City, you just may find me about.  

Surrender

 When you are in a battle with something and you surrender, it doesn’t mean you always lose.  Surrender can mean that you drop your weapons that are failing you, and pick up something new to continue to battle.  What are the old weapons?  Resolutions, wishful thinking, false pride, and willpower.  These are all broken weapons.  And you were doing battle alone, with no help, no group support.  You find new tools.  At first, the enemy, your nemesis, seems to go away in defeat.  It is not defeated,  But rather retreats and waits to see if you will be consistent with your new tools.  False pride says, “I win.”  You drop the tools, and the enemy returns.  Your life goes from bad to worse.  Whatever the solution that worked, it must be done on a daily basis and not in isolation.  Surrender to the old way and trust in the new way.  It works if you work it.  

The Problem Remover

 Alcohol is a bottle of problem remover.  Drink the bottle and no more problems.  It is a way to manage one’s life, until it doesn’t.  For a while this solution puts one at ease.  Then the problem remover bottle becomes a dis-ease.  All short term solutions to problem solving management in one’s life are just that: short term.  Once we stop the short term solution we may come to discover that the real problem is not any one issue, but oneself.  Feelings arise and are faced.  One’s life appears totally out of control.  One cannot manage.  Many people say that alcohol was their problem when in fact it was themself who is the problem.  People use many other outside things to solve the problem of self.  None of this works long term.  The solution to self is done with others and not alone.  And it is very much an inside job as well.  

Progressive

 Alcoholism is progressive.  Other things are too.  But alcoholism is sneaky.  You think you are cured, but all the while it is progressing within you.  It is pretty much that way with anything I try to be rid of.  Bad habits don’t go away just because I did some good practice today.  Skip tomorrow and the habit will come back because it is always progressing.  Maybe that is why we have to keep doing our examination of conscience and admit our faults to someone even if they did not go public today.  They lurk.  Keeps me on my toes.  

I Have Arrived

 I have arrived as a supermarket shopper.  I picked up about six things, too few to stand in line for a cashier, but maybe too many to get any help from self-checkout.  I have never used self-checkout without a store employee doing it quickly for me with my one or two items.  So I found my store savings card and told the helper lady that I was ready to be helped.  She said, “There is an open machine right there.”  I took her off my prayer list.  So I went over and stared at the incomprehensible.  A voice said what to do but not how.  I put my store card here and then there and then finally al beep.  I assumed that i had registered my store card.  Then the voice said what to do with each item but not how to do it.  So I put the bare code here and then there and then the beep.  There was more correct than here.  And so it went.  I tapped, “No bags.”  Then the voice asked how I wanted to pay?  I stared.  Then I saw the visa sign and tapped that.  Then the voice said to follow the diagram as to where to put my card.  I stared.  And stared.  Then I saw the card machine on the far left side.  I put my card in and a beep.  “You were successful,” said the voice.  I have arrived.  Easy peasy!!!

The Group

 If you have a conversion of some sort, such as religious faith or recovery from addiction, don’t try to do it alone.  You need the group.  A lot of people of faith gather with others of that faith, in order to help carry one another along.  It keeps one from isolated conversion, which is a kind of oxymoron.  With the group you might learn how to live your new conversion.  You only know how to live the old way with maybe some old lethal companions.  Just learning how to live life on its own terms needs the example of one another.  And a group can always give you a second opinion.  Conversion does not mean you are no longer crazy.  

Never Too Young

Why do so many young people think they do not have problem with something that keeps recurring?  It is often because they are young. “I am too young to be…” is what they might say.  They think their recurring issue of bad behavior, for instance, can still be controlled when they “grow up.”  Or they compare and contrast with others and say, “I am not that bad.”  The problem with waiting until you “get that bad” or desperate, is that death, illness, injury, disease, unemployment, and broken marriage vows, may come first.  So don’t wait.  And we older people, let us not be afraid to say, “You need help.”  Any maybe even be part of the help.   

Over And Over

 Why do we have to continue to examine on conscience on a daily basis?  It is because our shortcomings, bad habits, are like weeds.  If we do not attend to the garden of our heart, stuff will come up to choke us off from being our better self.  In recovery this would be as step 6 and 7.  Since we cannot eradicate our faults all by our own will-power, prayer comes into play.  We need a higher power than our own will-power.  Humility helps here of course.  

Te Recovering Farmer

 Agriculture, like Recovery, is essential for life.  The persons involved have some things in common.  They must both have patience.  They ultimately rely on a power higher than themselves.  Alone, they are subject to a lot of things they do not control.  So they have to trust that their work, on a daily basis, will pay off.  No days off.  They must be humble enough to know they need outside help.  They will need trust, and of course hard work.  But all this is worth it, or so I believe, and I am not a farmer.  

Moving On

 Many people wait until I am about to move on from where I live, and minister, to tell me nice things about myself, my importance in their life, how helpful I have been.  Why they wait I do not know.  The Monastery in the Snowmass Mountains will not be my home, but rather a place I will come to visit from time to time, while it is still here as a monastery.  It has not been sold as of now.  In moving  I have been downsizing my “stuff” and things in my life that are so convenient but weigh me down.  I gave away a lot of things to the local people.  When I get to Boulder I am going to do a lot of downsizing there too.  No one ever said they liked me or what I did for them because of all my stuff.  So I want to live more simply.  As I age, I need less.  I probably needed less before I aged, but that is another story.  I will take all the complements with me.  They fill up my heart better than my shopped stuff.  

Yesterday

 Don’t try to capture yesterday.  You had a good meditation yesterday?  Or just a good day?  It is past.  Whatever the reason for a good yesterday, it does not guarantee today.  So I try to think of myself as a newcomer, and indeed this is my first time in today.  A newcomer is open to new things.  A newcomer does not try to keep living their past.  A newcomer may have goals but is open to what others have to say, their experience.  So a newcomer is a listener, not judgmental.  Be open to surprise and to new information, especially if it does not fit what you have known in your past.  Instead as judging people, I try to find out why they said, do or think something of which I have no knowledge or a different experience.  People tend to open up if they think I am listening and care.  Be a newcomer every day.  

Expiration Date

 We all have an expiration date, so why use today to be purposefully miserable?  Sometimes we simply need an attitude adjustment to make for a better day in life’s uncontrollable circumstances.  Sometimes it is simply to do something that fills the heart.  There is sadness when someone we love experiences their expiration date.  We miss them for sure, but then we can recall why we miss them.  Maybe the joy they brought us, or maybe the sadness that they never did find life fulfillment.  But even in this sadness we can find solace and relief that we did not go down that same path, that we did find a life worth living. Joy is contagious.   

Self-Pity

 Self-pity is not a good tool to have in our tool box of responses to whatever comes up in our day.  The spiritual path, the recovery path, the growth in human potential path puts self-pity into the memory box.  Sanity does not forget the past.  The past mess can be useful in reminding us of how we have grown, and in being able to relate to others in their still-wallowing self-pity.  Our story becomes one that helps others relate to us and listen because they come to realize we were once just like they are now, an incomprehensible stage of life.  

Emptiness

Contemplation has the experience of emptiness, which is why many people avoid it on any continuing practice.  Yet it is not emptiness, but is an experience beyond anything we can define, and beyond limits.  Contemplation has no outer edges that define its space.  Contemplation brings us into the limitless.  The mind cannot handle this but the heart sees and is fed by this prayer.  This emptiness in prayer is not passive as in inert.  It is full of energy, Power, and  freedom so we can act in a more selfless and loving way towards other people and situations.  We no longer use the go to response of resentment and judgment, but rather acceptance, compassion, service and love.  Contemplation is the stepping aside practice so that we can step back in on the right foot.  

Oh So Dry!

 Some people can stay dry, away from the booze, or some other addictive substance on ego…for a while.  There is no real spiritual growth yet, and little selfless service for others.  In addition, resentments build up and the attitude one has is rather negative.  As one person said, prayer, if any, is lip-service.  Life is not much fun, though you might still have a job and family and car and house.  Eventually, it all falls apart.  For the more normal people, a lack of a spiritual life beyond lip-service, will result in the same resentment mountain and bad attitude.  I would suggest sobriety, that is, surrender, have a daily prayer practice that is not all about your ego, accept that life around you which you cannot change.  Work on yourself and the attitude will change and the resentment list will diminish.  Ego is short-term, and then comes the cliff.  

Ignore The Message

 Many a Christian tends to focus on Jesus as divine, but seem to ignore what he said.  He never really focused on a belief in his divinity.  Rather he gave the sermon on the mount and said, “Follow me.”  Rather convenient if you don’t much care to follow Jesus, being he talked about being the servant of all, the first shall be last, forgive all the time, sell all you have and so forth.  Even my Church had a time when it was a mortal sin to skip mass on Sunday, but never a mortal sin to skip following Jesus as in the Sermon on the Mount.  This made the pursuit of power and riches, as in kings and queens, emperors all that more convenient.  So I tend to recommend spiritual programs that emphasize service, selflessness, surrender to the power and trying to do what Jesus said.  “Come and follow me.”  

In The Way

 Meditation is not so much about what you believe as it is about getting out of your own way.  Get beyond or beneath your busy brain.  If you get out of your own way, your own thoughts and opinions, then what do you rely on?  A Power greater than your thinking for starters.  If you stop relying on you in your meditation, then perhaps you will begin to rely on something other than yourself.  Once you stop running your own prayer show, you allow some other power to get involved.  And you just might become your better self.  This process might sound like “going out on a limb.”  Well, where is the fruit?  

A Small God

 Some of us who are skeptical about God’s existence tend to make their  God too small.  That is, they make it small enough to comprehend or deny.  I don’t think a small god can do anyone any good.  You have to get beyond what you believe or deny.  That god is all in your head.  God is much bigger than anyone can comprehend.  God is energy and is revealed through the heart not the head or imagination.  Meditation is the path to the heart.  It is why Step 11 in the AA Recovery program tells the initiate to meditate.  Belief is optional.  Learn to meditate and things will go much better in life and recovery.  Small gods are for the more self-centered, less helpful oriented people.  Small gods can pave the way to make oneself the center of our world.  My God is beyond what I can think up or imagine.  So I don’t so much try to think God as to experience the Power.  

Fallen Condition

What is our “fallen” condition as said in the Bible?  It is the loss of freedom to be our truest self.  What prevents a fallen person from being their truest self?  Greed, fear, ongoing resentments, an angry ego, desire for more things than are needed, including knowledge which sometimes avails us nothing.  There are many educated and prosperous people who are enslaved by ego, who try to find happiness in all they know or own.   People can tend to focus on internet for more knowledge of useless information, or shop till they drop, or buy and build.  None of these have proven to be steps to interior freedom.  Democracy can try to make us free, but with no spiritual path, freedom is elusive.  

Soul

 The “soul” is our truest and most personal identity.  But to get to it, we must go through a process or journey of discarding the clothing of other identities because they do not manifest our authentic self.  They are discovered as a bad fit.  Growing up we tend to put on masks, things exterior to our deepest self, things that are at best only partial of who we are.  The spiritual journey then requires courage and discipline.  Courage, because we do not live up to what others might require us to be for their own false sense of self.  To become an insider to our truest self, we may be required to leave others groups that support a false, partial self.  Alcoholics would call them “drinking buddies!”  Discipline, because it becomes an everyday practice of spiritual formation.  We never really graduate, or rest on our laurels.  

Default Position

 My default position used to be “self-centeredness.”  What is in it for me?  How will this affect me?  Me and more me.  It works if I want isolation, loneliness and unhappiness.  I would rather not have much of those things if self-imposed.  So what is my new default position?  Honesty.  Be honest with myself.  Know and admit when I am doing things only to please me at the expense of others.  This admittance opens me to some space for a change in attitude, from all about me, to being about others, as in “we are all one.”  Am I being helpful or hurtful?  My meditation and spiritual reading does focus on me, but this is so that I can go forth being of service to others.  I have found a more fulfilling way of feeling good about me.  It is not always easy.  Attitude helps to ease the way.  

The Desert

 The call into the desert in meditation is not about separating from the world as if the world is bad.  We are all part of the world, nature, creation.  The desert is not running away.  It is about distractions.  The desert is about being called away from distractions, so that we can wake up to what are distractions as opposed to what is important.  Distractions fill up our life when we are anxious, fearful, selfish, resentful, and bored, to name a few causes of what multiplies distractions in our life.  Meditation quiets us down and separates us from these distractions just enough to see them for what they are: unnecessary impediments to being our best self which will include service to others in need.  I try to go into the desert a couple of times a day.  It gives me a good balance.  

The One Lost

There is a story in the New Testament of the Bible told by Jesus, about the shepherd who leaves the 99 sheep and goes after the one that is lost.  On the surface it looks like bad economics.  Cut your losses.  Don’t chase after them.  You only lost one percent, not so bad.  But the story is more about Nirvana, Oneness, than about economics.  If you can see and feel from the heart, as does the shepherd, you know that the lost sheep separates the whole, which is 100 sheep.  They are all equal and thus One.  To be lost is to be separated from the whole.  The herd is incomplete.  So the shepherd trusts in the 99 and goes to seek that which will restore wholeness, oneness.  There is not a sliding scale of value, no rating as better than, and certainly no punishment for being lost, drifting off.  We are all called on the spiritual journey to restore the reality of Oneness.  We all participate in it, if we have to eyes to see.  

Pray First

 Why is it important to pray first in the morning before all your laundry list of work and tasks?  Early morning prayer is an act of trust and humility.  The trust is that your God Power is at work on your behalf, and the humility is that you need this Power to stay sane and be your true self through the day.  The best of what you will do that day in your list, will be through your contact with this Power within you.  Prayer time actually frees you up to do what needs to be done because you are not so anxious or fearful as to try to do too much.  Prayer takes time.  But so does insanity.  

Popularity

It is better to be disliked or rejected for who you really are, then to be liked for who you are not, so someone found out.  It takes a lot of work to keep up the facade of someone you are not, just so you will be accepted by whoever or whatever.  The stress of a job interview or college entrance interview or process of applying for so many things.  What do they want?  You ask yourself and it is so stressful, and false to try to “get in” then to be rejected for not being what they want.  There is a place for you, but you don’t find the place until you find you.  I keep working on that even to this day.   

Sex Too Soon

 Sex too soon in a new relationship is problematic.  It can keep you in a relationship when it is pretty obvious that you need to get out, it is over.  Sex can give you the sense that you have made some commitment that in fact you have not really been able to make.  Sex can become an “implied” commitment.  And the other person may be a wonderful person, a great person, but just not someone great for you.  So it is important to know who you are and sex won’t do that.  Sex can also be as escape from super lonely.  But most often, “too soon” sex makes you feel lonelier.  And you still don’t know the other person.  That takes time.  And skill.  

The Basements

 I admire churches, not so much for what goes on upstairs, but for what goes on downstairs, in the basement rooms.  Addiction recovery meetings of one sort or another go on there, mostly alcohol addiction.  The church is told that these people will never be cured, but they can go into remission if they do certain things including the meetings.  So the church gives one of the members a key to open up, set up, clean up, and close up.  There is no other church guard or front desk person around.  The church has entrusted their physical property to crazy people, insane people, spiritual toddlers, to the use of church stuff.  And it works.  Some of these addicts may eventually go upstairs, but the meetings are not convert work of the church upstairs.  It is once desperate, lonely, selfish, bizarre behavior people, now recovering by helping  the newly desperate one.  It works if you work it.  

The Bar

 People don’t go to bars to drink.  They can do that at home.  They go to bars to meet friends, or out of loneliness.  Sometimes the meeting of friends is filled with an empty sense within us.  You need not go to a bar to meet friends.  You could meet a lot of other places and enjoy one another.  If I am with friends I don’t need a drink to loosen me up or relax me.  If I am all stressed from work, the drink will only be a temporary fix.  The work will still be there all stress-filled the next time I go to it.  Bars can be quite noisy, the most popular meeting bars, so you have to shout to be heard.  This is fun?  I would be a rich man had I learned this in college.  And applied it.  

New Things

 We can become scared of trying new things, which can be old things that we let go of long ago.  For instance, we start out being whoever we really are.  But then social pressure from wherever comes into play and we then try for approval, acceptance, the spotlight, all which requires us to try and become someone else, someone we are not.  Eventually, exhausted and unfulfilled, if not at the jumping off point, we decide, with help, to try and become who we really are, the person we started out to develop as a child.  If we are not desperate enough, at the jumping off point sometimes, we will be too scared to try and become our truer self.  The interior journey, help from others who really care about us, and the effort it takes, requires us to let go of the false self we have tried to become.  Fear paralyses us.  Meditation can give us sufficient peace to trust we are on the right path, finally.  

The Me Work

Some say that the hardest relationship to work on is oneself.  What is so hard about working on me?  Put the brakes on who you are trying to be, that is not you, and just be yourself.  Not easy.  Culture, society, media and groups with who we associate, can have a big influence on us.  We can end up trying to be someone who is not our real self.  And while working on this “character” we spend no time on finding out who we are.   I think that to find out who I truly am, I need some spiritual reading from people who have figured out how to do this.  Then I need some meditation to bring me to this truer inner self.  But it is worth the work and often a lot less expensive than trying to be someone I am not.

Trust Your Wings

 Some people say to me that they do not see or feel a god or higher power in their life.  They have a spiritual practice, are helpful to others, read spiritual writings, but don’t “feel” a god.  Well, maybe it is not always about feeling.  Does a bird see the air?  Does the bird always feel the air?  But at some point, the bird spreads its wings, begins to flap and flies.  Lots of trust here.  It has a bird-brain.  Trust and act.  To feel and see, is not so important.  Don’t try to think yourself to a spiritual life.  

Wounded

 Some people treat recovery from bad behavior like someone who has recovered from a gunshot wound.  They then think they are bulletproof.  I have seen so many people who join some religion, spiritual practice, or recovery program.  They get some healing.  They feel well.  Then they stop doing what made them well.  Spiritual practice is like a medicine that you cannot stop taking and expect to remain healthy.  Whenever I get away from what has made me sane and spiritually healthy and whole, I begin to fall apart.  It is a daily practice.  Yesterday’s efforts were good for yesterday.  Today is a new day for gratitude for yesterday and the chance to be in good shape today.  

Opposites

 The opposite of the spiritual life is the self-centered life.  How do we get out of the self and into the spiritual?  First, identify the problem.  You do something that feeds self-centeredness, thinking it will make you happy.  Drinking too much as a solution to happiness, is insanity.  You identify the problem and the behavior.  If you are addicted, sanity is not natural to you.  So you do what you need to do to maintain sanity.  Lots of steps here.  But once you reach a spiritual practice on a daily basis, like meditation/spiritual reading, you then begin to live out the spiritual life.  For the addict this would be their step twelve.  For all of us it would include self-less action for the benefit of others, especially persons who were where you once were.  

Sanity Timing

 How do you know your level of emotional sobriety?  A measure of emotional sobriety is when you first think something bad happened.  Then how long until you realize that nothing bad had really happened.  Our measure of happy, joyous and free can be measured by how small the gap is between something bad happened, to nothing really bad had happened.  We will always have a gap because the spiritual life is about progress, not perfection.  So it is a good idea to do an examination of conscience during the day if not at least at the end of the day.  

Assumption

 For Catholics, August is the month when they celebrate the Feast of the Assumption.  It is August 15, when many Catholics are on holiday or getting ready for school for their children, so mass attendance is not all that great.  But the event of the Assumption has a deep meaning for us all.  In the Creation story God made Eve so that she would live in Paradise Garden without death.  Also, she would not suffer from giving childbirth.  But that did not work out.  Mary, the mother of Jesus, is supposed to be the “New Eve.”  To do this she has to follow God’s plan and not succumb to tricky, insidious evil.  She did this in part by not holding onto her plans.  She surrendered, which is key to transformation.  She was humble.  Now, recovering people can tune into all this.  So, when Mary dies, she does not corrupt.  She goes to God intact, God’s original plan for us all.  So why not us too?  Well, instead of whining about why we have to die and get buried and corrupt or burn into asses as in cremation, maybe we should accept that she is one of a kind, but a kind that points the way.  So I work on surrender and humility and letting go of my plans.