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.