Silence

 There is nothing like the silence of this monastery.  Why is that?  Perhaps it is because the whole environment is permeated over the years by a lot of silence.  It gets into the very walls and furnishings.  By no means are we always silent.  But we are sufficiently silent, and no tv or radio or vehicle traffic in our midst.  I have been to places where it can be very quiet for a time, but it is not the same depth of silence in this monastery.  This monastic silence makes me realize just how noisy I am.  Silence within helps the silence around me.  

A Delayed Joy

 Mother Nature, on God’s behalf, left me a tree still in Fall colors on the day I returned to the Monastery.  The trees are not all bare at this time.  One survived, so that I could have one more glimpse of Fall, in early November, up here in the mountains of Colorado.  And an Aspen to boot.  As I look through the golden leaves of the aspen branches while they sway in a gentle chill breeze, I see snow capped mountains and above and beyond them, a deep blue sky.  All of this I can see from my  room window.  It is as if God is saying, “Terry, see, it is a good idea for you to be here.”  So maybe get out of yourself, look around, and see that maybe it is a good thing for you to be where you are.  

The Good Times

It is easy to trust in the good times.  I know of people in early recovery from addiction, that as their out of control life begins to get better in sobriety, they often have a lot of trust in the group, another person who guides them along the early path of recovery, and even trust in a God of some sort.  But then real life shows up.  Why not?  The newly sober person now has work, relationship with another person that had been in tatters, maybe a family.  Real life has challenges.  It makes demands for emotional maturity, perseverance, discipline.  If the recovering person does not double down on their efforts in sobriety, trust goes out the window, and soon enough so might the person.  Trust is easy when things are going your way.  I have found it so.  

Crisis!

 Is your life a challenge or a continuing crisis?  When asked that question, I laughed out loud.  I must admit that too many times my life is lived emotionally as a continuing crisis.  Situations are unsolvable, unless I take drastic action.  I am victim of other people's failures.  My life is in ruins.  But I am working on it.  How?  Well, I say when I awake, that I turn my life over to my God.  And I throw in my self-will too.  Every time that I take back management of my life, solo, I enter criss mode.  I have to stay or return to a spiritual connection to keep life as a challenge.  We have no cell phone service in voice mail, nor many a text up here at the monastery, but the medical world contacts me more and more on cell phone and I don't get the message unless I go out in my car and drive to a cell connection.  If a crisis, I move to a big city.  If a challenge, I await advice from nearby mountain people.  And try to live a life of gratitude.  

Reseeding

 Like many kids, I was brought up with a faith, a religion.  I was baptized Catholic.  I  was "seeded" with faith.  As a boy in the Bronx, my religion had certainty.  I was surrounded by authority figures who did the rituals and obeyed the rules.  Life was good in that cocoon.  But as I grew up and moved out on my own, my field of faith went fallow.  I did not work it.  I ignored my land of faith.  Weeds of life grew up in it.  Eventually, I decided that a spiritual path was better than the destructive weeds that were doing all too well and choking life out of me.  I needed to reseed my field, but now it had to become my faith, and not one given to me as a boy.  I think of adult faith and practice to be one of reseeding.  I have to work on the weeds of life everyday.  They don't go away, but they no longer choke me, nor do I feed on weeds as my only food.  Like the farmer, it is perseverance, trust in a spiritual power, and hope.  It works.  I work it.  

What?

Whenever someone says something to me, and I respond with, "What?" I know that I am not listening.  I hear the sounds, but I am not listening to the words or meaning.  If I don't learn to listen, then I will never get to listening to learn.  There is a lot to be learned by listening, but first I have to listen.  If the teacher in class were to ask me a question and I responded with, "What?" my score was going down the drain with that professor.  If the professor were to start out by saying, "Mr. Ryan, etc. etc." I would perk up when I heard my name and then listen to the question.  But some professors would trick me by saying the question first and then calling my name at the end.  I would try for an escape by saying, "I did not understand the question."  Usually made things worse.  Over the years a spiritual practice has helped.  I try to BE HERE NOW.  I have learned a lot by becoming a better listener.  But there is still the occasional, "What?" 

All Saints Day

 As I understand it, Christians believe in God becoming human, Jesus, and dying, innocently, on a cross, suffering for the sins of others.  If this be so, why do so many Christians whine about suffering due to the failures of others to do their job, or pull their weight, or neglect tasks, that the so-called innocent end up doing or paying the price.  Is this not what their God become human did?  Life often seems to be full of the guilty getting away with something, while the innocent pick up the pieces.  If even a God could not escape that, why should the whiner?  I keep this in mind when others make a mess and don't clean up after themselves.  Cleaning up for the neglectful, the clueless, seems to me to be bearing my cross.  Jesus said, "Come follow me."  I don't think he whined about the unfairness of his world.