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.

A NEW FLASHLIGHT

I need  a new flashlight.  This little light of mine doesn't always shine deeply enough for me to see my innermost self, my true being.  Too often I can't see through my ego to see my soul. I guess what I lack at these times is what is called insight. In the darkness I can't distinguish my desire to "right" from the truth about who I AM. Whatever is going on outside of me is often so bright it distracts me from my internal focus.  For starters: this long series of 100 degree days, a government that can't get its act together, the plight of the economy, worried people all around me, wars and rumors of wars, violence and character assassinations, unconscious and loveless people, etc.  Maybe I don"t need a new flashlight, but need to more consciously let "the Light of the world" shine in my depths and beyond. John said, "He came into the world to bring life and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not overcome it."  So I have enough light after all.

GOTTA SAY SOMETHING

Even though I surrendered my clinical therapy credentials ten years ago, I still trick myself (in some conversations and relationships) into thinking I need to "help" someone with what I think their problems are. They need to be straightened out. They need to know what I know and they don't. By my need to be right, I make them wrong. I gotta say something to change their mind or behavior. I gotta say something when I should be quiet and attend to them as the persons they really are. Only be keeping my mouth shut can I see and hear who the really are.  They are usually not at all what I conceptualized them to be. This is a prejudice problem in the sense of my judging them before I really know them. But it is an understandable mistake since all if us are deep down much more than we appear to be. Each of us are conditioned to think and behave in ways that conceal our real selves. It is only possible to know the essence, the innermost being, of one another. We must get past what they have been conditioned to look like.  For that I need to be still and drop all my preconceived notions about the others including my diagnoses of what I think they need to change. Only then will I be able to see them and love the genuine soul before me. Ironically, with this kind of love and acceptance they often change what really needs to be changed.

TRASH DAY

Today is the day we take out the trash.  We collect it from all the wastebaskets, dump it in a big blue rollaway container and because I am still dealing with swollen, painful feet, Martha will roll it out to the street.  Soon a bigger blue rolling truck will pull up, scoop up our trash, drive off to a place out of our sight but not out of existence. Three days later it's the same routine to get rid of the recyclable trash.  Next comes the clearing out the clutter of usable stuff.  This reminds me that every day is a good day to empty my collected mind trash. It seems to be a never ending job since I have a habit of tuning into the daily news where my mind scoops up a little good news mixed in with but a whole lot of contaminated information. No, that is not right. The news, like Shakespeare said in another context, "Is neither good nor bad but thinking makes it so." The thinking I need to do is to discern the difference  between fact and the many media interpretations of it. The truth that I need about the world gets confused with the slants, multiple prejudices and spins on reality. The media seems to need to dramatize the facts so we will buy whatever they are selling. I, in turn, create my own dramatic fiction to suit my biases.

We throw away the trash at our house so we can more fully enjoy the treasure that is our home and our very lives. Sometimes I can do much the same with the daily news. It is worth digging. There is so much to treasure in our country and world.  The Creator God still says, "It is good." Almost time for the evening World News. Good night.

OUTLIVING EMOTIONAL DEPENDENCIES

At 81 I'm living the good life. CHARLIE WONDERS if it is good because I have outlived many of my dependencies on short-lived externals. Temporary and superficial contributions to my happiness, successes, self-actualiztaion, etc. turned out to be just that--temporary, if not just illusionary.  What I thought was so important for well-being were all part of the cycle of life that includes winning and losing, living and dying, ups and downs, sickness and health. Nothing stays nailed down.

So what in our life situation is permanent, solid, and without change? Not very much. When Jesus said, "Don't hoard your treasure down here where it gets eaten by moths and corroded by rust or--worse!" he wasn't just talking about money. All earthly externals we depend on to make us feel good about ourselves will meet the same fate--decay. Any externals we use this way will end or change in unpredictable ways. The Old Testament teacher in Ecclesiastes wrote,"I applied my mind to seek and to search out by wisdom all that is done under the sun and saw all the deeds that are done under heaven . . . I saw all the deeds that are done under the sun and see, all is vanity and a chasing after the wind."  Is this bad news?  No! It is fact. It was has been called "the law of impermanence of all things."

This awareness is one of many gifts of old age. With everything I depended on gone or going, my fear of loss diminishes. In retrospect I see how everything passes away except one thing--my true self, my essence, my being which belongs to a loving God.  Ultimately, the only thing left is our soul, living forever in eternal life.