Faith

“If the thought ever comes to you that everything that you have thought about God is mistaken and that there is no God, do not be dismayed. It happens to many people. But do not think that the source of your unbelief is that there is no God.

“If you no longer believe in the God whom you believed in before, this comes from the fact that there was something wrong with your belief, and you must strive to understand better that which you call God.”
(Leo Tolstoy 1828 – 1910)

There are many quotes about faith which I have considered to start this post, but I like the above quote best today.  

I know a man who has evidently never had a peak experience that changed his life.  I think that man is a living saint.  I think so because “Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed.”  This man has lived his entire life in the path of God because he believes.  He chooses the right, and suffers when he must endure what is not right.  He is single-hearted in his love of God.  

Choosing the right because it is right can get very, very old.  The “everydayness” sets in and we are tempted to the darkness because it offers excitement and change.  The whole American culture is addicted to breaking things and killing people even in its entertainment, not just in its global domination.  The rest of entertainment tends to be about sex, which is used to sell everything.  There are people who are famous just for being famous.  Warhol’s prediction about everyone being famous for 15 minutes has pretty much come to pass, in this age of global media and the internet.  

What, then, is faith good for?  Another American question.  If something has no immediately evident utility, or visible purpose, or is not profitable, why bother with it?

I suggest that what faith is good for, is a good grasp of reality.  Faith is good for realizing we are not the center of the universe.  Faith that we live and move and have our being in God is good for health and long life.  Faith can keep us choosing the right and refusing to harm ourselves or others when our character defects are out of control.  

In my case, faith keeps me going in spite of chronic pain and the knowledge that I may have done more harm than good in my life.  I need to live long enough to do more good than harm.  I need to do that because I have had a peak experience that changed me forever.  I have had more than one such experience.  The Hound of Heaven has been after me since I was born, and I no longer run.  Knowing people such as the man I mentioned above is such an experience.  

When I was four years old I nearly died.  I experienced that as getting out of my body and waiting to see whether it would live or die.  I knew that if I died, there was somewhere else to go and someone there waiting for me who loved me unconditionally.  

I had another experience of basically being “struck sober.”  I hit bottom and went to AA and haven’t had to take a drink in over 35 years.  I frequently have prayer experiences of being silent in the presence of he One Who loves us, in the way two old people sit together in loving silence and have no need for words.  

I am so different from who I was as a child that I ought to have a different name.  Well, maybe I do.  I am now Sister Patti.  I live to serve, and I am happy.  My faith sometimes wavers in spite of all my blessings.  But when I do what I ought to do every day, my faith grows strong, and I am happy.  

Be happy.  Have faith, even if you don’t believe it yet.  Just take the actions you would take if you did believe it.  

Love and prayer for all.
Sr. Patti+

Happiness

For me, happiness consists in doing what I ought to do as the beloved of the Beloved because it is what I want to do.  It has taken many years for me to see that, and to work towards it, and even today I could throw it all away in an instant.  I could take a drink.  I could make a selfish decision, or deliberately hurt someone because they had hurt me.  I could get things out of order and not do what I need to do in order to be spiritually fit. 

Those things I must do include keeping watch on myself, in a gentle, loving way, to see that I don’t become too hungry, angry, lonely, or tired.  (AA’s famous “HALT” expression.)  Those four things can send me spinning out of true very quickly.  When I don’t want to or don’t “feel like” following God’s will for me, I try to remember that feelings are not facts, and that the one thing I can count on about feelings is that they will change. 

But the bottom line today, for which I am so very grateful, is that I am never alone.  I can always reach out to my soul friend and say my feelings rather than acting upon them.  I can tell someone I am lonely or tired.  I can be courteous, kind, just and loving when my self-righteousness might urge me to be brutally honest.  I can go into my prayer space and listen for the One Who loves me.

I have these choices because someone loved me until I could love myself.  I have these choices because God pursued me all of my life until I stopped running and now….well, now I am happy.  That doesn’t mean I don’t have problems.  As long as we are alive, the world will throw us a curve ball every now and then.  It’s just that “I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I’ve committed unto Him against that day.”

If you want to be happy, take the actions you would take if you wanted to change into the transformed you.  “Fake it till you make it” we say.  That doesn’t mean pretend.  It means take loving, generous, transformative action.  Put God’s will first, even if it feels like being asked to walk blindfolded and barefoot through a room full of broken glass.  Shake and snivel and shout at God the whole way, if you need to.  Whine if you must.  But never, never stop.  I will never be judged for not being a saint – only for not being me.  And so I try each day to live out of the ground of my being.  I try, I fail, I get up and try again.  And I maintain my sense of humor, because I am just an average woman struggling along the “road to happy destiny.”  Just a regular old gal.  A happy one.

Love and Prayer for all,

Sr. Patti+

Fear -- False Evidence Appearing Real

In AA, we say that some people die of terminal uniqueness.  They are sure that they are different.  Their story is unique and no one can possibly understand.  I suspect that at the core of this is a feeling that if they let us see who they really are we will not love them.  I trace my recovery from the day I let go of that fear and told someone every bad thing I had ever done.  He looked at me with love in his eyes, welcomed me to the human race, and we began to make my list of all the people I had harmed and prayed for willingness to make amends to them all.  In my case, it was a priest, because I was raised Roman Catholic.  Some people find the courage to tell their story to their sponsor.  Some to a spiritual director or other soul friend.

In order to change the world we must first overcome our fear and change ourselves.  In order to create peace, we must find within ourselves the conscious contact with God that will permit us to have the Peace of Christ.  Some, they say, are born humble, some achieve humility and some have humility thrust upon them.  I was of the third type.  In this context, humility is the awareness of ourselves as we truly are, scars and all, and the peace of heart to be that person in God's hands. 

The conquest of the fear of rejection sets us free from the self-centeredness that plagues us and the whole world.  The promises of AA have come true for me:  I do not regret the past or wish to shut the door on it.  I have a conscious relationship with God as I understand God and I know peace.  I have to work at it every day, because I am not unique.   I am not a saint.  I am a sober drunk who has learned to live in such a way that I have a new happiness and joy.  My peace does not depend on any of the people, places or things around me.  When I am in "fit spiritual condition" I know the holy liberty of the children of God. 

I say all this in case someone should read this one day and be encouraged to find a friend to help them learn to pray and to begin the journey of transformation.  Anyone can do it.  Anyone who can be honest with themselves.  You don't even have to believe in God.  The principles of transformation work anyway.  I have seen it again and again.  Never give up.  Fear is false evidence appearing real.  Don't fall for it.  Reach out and ask for help. 

Spiritual Progres

How do we make spiritual progress?  Having practiced the principles of AA for over 35 years, I would answer that we must remain honest, open and willing.  We must practice daily self-examination (inventory), pray (talk to the God of our understanding) and meditate (listen to our God). I pray for knowledge of God's will for me and the power to carry it out.  Usually God's will is, do the next thing.  We must remember that we don't achieve enlightenment alone...we only get to keep what we give away. 

I have been thinking about this because of an acquaintance who is more or less stuck spiritually because of an inability to be honest within herself.  AA teaches that such people are not at fault; that they seem to have been born that way.  Nevertheless, such people can become like a practicing alcoholic -- a whirlwind crashing into all the people, places and things around them beyond what others are willing or able to endure. 

I have been praying about her and realizing I have to put her in God's hands.  I have to pray for her and let her go.  It would be egotistic of me to think I can "save" her.

If people don't want what we have (which ought to be, inter alia, the peace of Christ), we have to "refund their misery" and move on.  I seem to have to learn this lesson over and over.  And I sense that God smiles and says, "Welcome to the human race."

Not as the World Gives

Born in sorrow

Grown in chaos

We struggle to find love

To leave the world a little better

To give away something of ourselves

In hopes of showing just one person

The value of silence in times of confusion

            Of holding on for one more day.

Wise in pain

With suffering a friend

Comes our Beloved

With comfort and with courage

The lord of our quantum dance

Along the lines of probability

To teach us how to find each other

            Finding Him

***************************

There is no more wonderful thing in this life than conscious contact with God.  It is worth every effort, any sacrifice.  Many teachers have come my way, some of them people who I felt at the time were terrible people; people who hurt me or someone I love.  Some were and are truly holy people who leave me in awe of their simplicity and single-heartedness in the pursuit of God's will.   Today I am grateful for all of my teachers and ask God's blessing on every one.

Here is a poem I was given during a dark time in my life.

Treasure Hidden in a Field of Despair

The sadness flows around me

I can neither explain nor escape it.

The sun shines but my heart weeps

An abyss of pain that overshadows all.

Small sorrows yield rivers of tears

I can only say, “Jesus, Son of David have mercy on me”

The disconnect between reality and my feelings

Is jarring

Crazy-making distance between

What’s going on and the wild cry

“What’s going on???”

The music of God is silenced by

Crashing metal noise.

My peace is hidden from me

Behind torrents of anguish.

Jesus, Son of David have mercy on me.

Yet what glint of dawn is this

Arising from the void?

What whisper there upon the wind

Sounds so tenderly sweet, so kind?

            It is the Lord, come with mercy

For me.

            O Jesus, Son of David,

Long have I loved thee.  Long have I sought thee.

And I would again enter the dark if it be thy will,

For nothing can separate us.  Love is stronger than death.

And the dark an illusion created by self-centeredness

And the weakness of humanity.

            O Jesus Son of David,

Let it be done unto me according to thy word.

Amen.

Angels in the Hallway

Once upon a time my sister was in the hospital for a biopsy.  Only two people could visit her at a time, so I was waiting my turn at the end of the corridor while our parents were visiting her.

All at once the hallway seemed to me to be filled with angels so tall and majestic they barely fit, their wings brushing the walls and ceiling, their very being shining almost too brightly.  Jesus was at the head of them.  He said quietly, “Come, let us comfort our sister.”  With that, he led them into the room.

I thought I had told her about it.  I never told our parents because they already thought I was crazy.  Apparently, I had not told her.  Mea culpa, Sister. 

My sister is so close to God she sometimes thinks it’s dark when she is simply standing in His shadow. 

Amen.

I write under obedience....

Mother Cait has put a link to this blog on  my web page in the Celtic Christian Church website.  Sigh.  Therefore, I am obliged to write! 

Seriously, I have been thinking of ways to leave a legacy of my love of God before I go on to the other side and party with all my other peeps there, and here we are.  This is going to be one of the places I try to share my experience, strength and hope with others.  I have been given so much in my life, and I really should try to pass it on. 

I will start today with this little bit:

The Wild Horde

 When I think about the People of God, I see them as a Horde of Pilgrims.  Some of them forge ahead, like scouts, finding new paths towards God, exploring byways and wildernesses.  Some report back, some do not.  Some lag behind, having found a pleasing place where they feel comfortable. 

Some are slow because they are lame or otherwise handicapped, or because they cannot accept help along the way.  Others decide to settle down and make villages and families.  Some race about trying to convince others that their way forward is the most direct and safest path.  Some set up shop as professional horde guides and refuse to recognize that the entire group is actually headed in the same direction.  

 

Some build dwellings and say among themselves how good it is to dwell here together.  Many of that group practice a hospitality that enables the whole tribe to keep moving forward.  Some particularly fearful ones try to build walls to prevent others from falling off the edge of the world  and being forever lost.  Of course they won’t explore the other side of the wall, so they never realize how much of the tribe has discovered the wall is permeable and can be simply walked through.

They are infinitely diverse, this horde, and infinitely beautiful.  In a way each of them is Christ on His journey.  It is deeply transformative, this journey, and can be experienced as an adventure, as a perilous quest, as a miserable slog, even as a painful torment.  Much depends on whether or not the pilgrim is the center of her own universe, or whether Christ is the center of that pilgrim’s reality. 

As the least and most lame of the pilgrim horde, I am learning to let them be Christ to me, and to allow the Christ in me be what they see when they look at me.  I have fallen in love with the whole, crazy, clanging, loud, wild bunch of them.  I find them a fascinating, endless, wondrous creation, which shows forth the Glory of God.  I find us to be a fitting expression of the One Who loves us.

Amen.