OK WITH IS

It  sounds crazy but it has taken me a lifetime to make peace with what is.  When things are not going the way I thought they should go, I have to consciously say, "It is what it is" with conviction and accept the reality of the situation. When I can do this, I find immediate release from the pressure of having to change something I have no control over. Without this pressure I am free to explore new options instead of just wishing things were different. I suppose this less frantic way of addressing things I don't like is a part of the aging process: a process of seeing the big picture of life. It feels good to be in this place. I no longer have to push the river.

Move Anyway

Charlie wonders if his swollen, painful feet are trying take him somewhere.  Since I can't walk very far or very fast, I have been forced to go inside myself to do any real exploring. As T. S. Eliot advised, I must "be still and still moving into another intensity . . . for a deeper communion." It is what I called in my previous blog, "home." The home I understand is my truest self,  a self in God where the Holy Spirit serves as a "homing device." The "God-shaped void" is calling. The challenge is that I have to leave behind my "false self" or ego. That is good riddance but hard to shake. But there is a dependable guide in this exploring. "The love of God has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has  been given to us." (Romans 5:5). I now have opportunity to practice what I often preached: the call to human being rather than mere human doing.  I am continuing to take my meds and do my p.t. with a view to being more active again. Meanwhile I do most of my exploring inside.

MY ADDICTION

Lord, I confess to an addiction. I have this addiction to having to be right even when it seems to make others wrong.  I have to be right even to the extent of denying the deeper truth. I recognize this as a product  of my ego when my deeper self encourages me to break this habit. Time and time again I settle for the  easy road of using my own beliefs to justify my positions and look for someone else's opinions that seem to justify my own.  In my relationship to you  I use proof texts in the Bible in the same way.  In my saner moments I know you are "The way, the truth and the life". I need to know you more than I need to know what others have said about you (There has been so much confusion about you in the last 2,000 years).
I need you to be my way, my truth and my life. Help me go within myself, past the mind chatter and into the quiet.  There I experience being "still and knowing God". I'm home.