The Insights Pile Up

Labor assures not only individual survival, but the life of the species. Work and its product, the human artifact, bestow a measure of permanence and durability upon the futility of mortal life and the fleeting character of human time. Action, in so far as it engages in founding and preserving political bodies, creates the condition for remembrance, that is, for history. - Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition

 I heard someone on YouTube mention this book. It sounded fascinating,  so I downloaded a sample. This morning I came to the above quote  it struck me as if lightening. 

It spoke to me of apiece of the puzzle that nuzzled me on the edges, but that had not been fully seen. I was upset about the treasures of my life being on their own, without their stories, without their meaning, in the hands of strangers.  This morning it all came together -  HE STOLE MY HISTORY!

The things I had told the story of my life, of my family's life. The artifacts were living history. People often said that being in my home was like being in a museum.  He threw it away by not paying storage, but weaving a web of lies and vowing to the end all fees were paid. He threw it away by somehow stealing my house payment, so getting it foreclosed, and weaving a web of lies, so that I didn't find out until a few weeks ago. He took my money and lied lied lied. He threw everything of value to me on a trash heap. 

He threw my life away with no remorse. 

So now, with my history gone, I begin again. 

God,  glorious and  eternal, also my companion, my guide, show me the highest way for me to walk the remaining portion of earth life that You grant me. Lead me, lift me, restore me. Fill this hole in my heart with Your Light. Help me release the past to You. Grant me strength and courage to move forward. I am so incredibly thankful that I know You are always with me. 

The Game of Life

 No matter the religion or denomination in which we are raised, our spirituality still comes through the first filter of our own life experience. 

—Richard Rohr 

And, I might add, how we interpret it; how we represent it to ourselves. In other words, our self-talk. 

This morning, I had a vision of the arc of my life, and one of my filters installed in me deeply early in my life. It has been a split underlying premise - one for others, one for my relationship with my self. It goes something like this - 1.) You are a bother; your feelings are irrelevant to me; you matter only insofar as you are useful to me. 2) I matter to me, I can keep going no matter what, God loves me. So, I didn't let the monsters of my life stop me. I kept on going, sometimes with great sorrow, but nevertheless, I kept on going.

The vision I saw this morning was very different from my usual visions. I saw a sort of video game or maybe a video pinball machine. Flippers sprang up to obstruct me, and I twisted and turned to avoid them or at least only get a minor hit. The flippers didn't care about me, they just did what flippers do. I happened to come upon them, and they sprang into action. I kept going past flipper after flipper. My path was a moving obstacle course.

Ever since birth, I have been under attack, so I somehow created an inner and outer strategy for my life. Another betrayer/attacker, veer to the side, keep going. Inside, I was comfortable with who I am, and I had a direct relationship with God to guide and sustain me.

So this whole thing with my deceased husband was the pièce de résistance, the attack/betrayal of monstrous proportions. Is it the final blow? Is this part of the game of my life complete? Maybe. I do hear the message, "The past is done," as in it's a wrap. 

It's been an interesting game, this life of mine. I've never understood boredom. I know it's all about developing my soul. I know I can only honestly answer the questions on the other side... Did I walk as I was called? Was I faithful? Was I able to be kind and tender no excuses? Did I love, forgive, show generosity? Not perfectly, but mostly, always striving that way. God knows my heart, but I know I have to answer the questions over there anyway. 

Plato, Socrates, and Critias

 I am enjoying rereading Plato.  I needed mind exercise to help me climb out of shock, maybe even PTSD. I just read a dialogue between Socrates and Critias basically on temperance, wisdom, and science.

It is fascinating mental gymnastics.  And I was drawn to muse over how few people of whom I am aware engage in such mental exercise and discussion nowadays. Most conversations I hear are about mundane things, other people, hurt feelings, business, etc. It seems, if people engage in discussion about ideas, it is mostly adversarial and not in pursuit if that illusive thing called truth.

I see shouting,  name calling, the Marxist thing called cancelling, shunning, falsehood to try to win an argument, and a lot of childish behavior. Maybe we should encourage the spread of debate societies and debate groups in schools with the rules they have always used. Each person is given a side to present and stand for, even if it's not their personal stand. It's sort of like walking in the other shoes to come to understand. Its eye and heart opening.

I ask, is civil, deep, searching, meaningful, respectful conversation gone from our "modern" world?  Can we bring it back? I yearn for it. Can we even maintain high civilization without it?

I often think of my Dad. One of his sayings to me was, "You can disagree without being disagreeable."

It's All About Now

 This morning I awoke with insights flooding my thoughts. One of the flows is about that illusive concept of the now. As many have said, including me, now is all we have, the only moment we can live and breathe and tnink and learn and love and be. The past is written and gone. The future is only there in our imaginations. This moment is it. 

All else is temporary blips in so many ways. I've been mourning all of my treasres stolen from me by my duplicitous husband. But it was all on temporary loan. When I leave the planet it all stays here. I've mourned my things out and about the planet without their stories. Now they are just interesting things adrift from their meaning. 

For examole - The painting I did in a fit of inspiration after my previous husband died; the painting that was about souls going back and forth from the spiritual realm to here; the painting that I later discovered was also a vision to Suzuki so that his description of his vision was as if he were looking at my painting; yes that painting is now just a pretty yellow painting sonewhere without me and without its meaning. Everything I had also had a story. I grieve for that.

 And then I saw my many family antiques. I knew a tiny bit about their stories. The little rocking chair my grandfather bought my mother when she was born, or the hand made braclet my other grandfather had made for my grandmother with their initials on either side, their pictures inside,  and the dent from my father's first tooth on the heart, etc.  

But each item had a rich story to the people who first had them in their lives, stories now lost. In fact, the vast, vast majority of the stories of people now gone are lost, even their very existence, except for a tiny few of the billions upon billions who have graced this planet, are unknown. Nobody even knows they were here, let alone their joys and sorrows, their accomplishments and failures. 

I realized this morning that my things, everyone's things, were always going to go without the story about them, for we were always going to leave this planet one day. Our very existence will be forgotten somewhere in the passing of time.

Yet I also saw that all we do is important, and we will be asked about it all, when we drop our bodies and our souls go forth.  We will not be asked about our things. We will be asked about our soul development and participation. Did we love? Did we forgive? Were we generoius? What did we do with the gift of life?

So we come full circle back to the now. Each moment of now we have some control over, at least over our input into it. Each moment we can choose love over hate or judgementalness. Each now we can choose forgiveness over resentment. Each moment we can choose generosity over selfishness or stinginess, Just as we can only breathe in this moment for this moment (we cannot breathe for any other time), we can choose to be lights, to shine our Christ nature, to be more than we knew we could be, now and then now and then the next now. We can take charge of who we are one moment at a time.

I know that is what really matters. I know that is what we will be asked about. I know each and every person is a sacred life, and is called to live each sacred moment in the highest and most lght-filled way possible. Life on earth is both a challenge and a gift. Life on earth is a school to develop our spiritual muscle, so to speak, and to rise up and be the light. I urge you to turn your light on the bright setting.

A Thought from Socrates

... a man who is good for anything ought not to calculate the chance of living or dying; he ought only to consider whether in doing anything he is doing right or wrong — acting the part of a good man [woman] or of a bad. -- Socrates during his trial

He wrapped up ideal human behavior in these few words, words that travel across the many centuries to us today and to countless others along the way.

 He places it in our hands to judge ourselves, to examine our choices moment by moment. 

As I look around, I sadly see a significant number of people who do not ask this of themselves. Or it seems highly unlikely they do by the results in their lives and the prob!ems we see and hear about daily.

To use Shakespeare's metaphor, all the world is a stage, we ask Socrates' question - what part are we playing? Are we playing a good part or a bad part? Are we a hero or a villain? Are we a bystander? Do we show courage and faith? 

Ask yourself Socrates' question, and answer honestly.

Inner Heart's Experience of God

 No man knoweth the Father but the Son." The passage as it stands reported in Matthew may be colored by later theology, but there is a nucleus of absolute truth hidden in the saying. There is no other way to know God but this way of inner love-experience. Only a son can know a Father. Only one who has trodden the wine-press in anguish and pain, and through it all has felt the enfolding love of an Abba-father really knows. Mysticism has its pitfalls and its limitations, but this much is sound and true, that the way to know God is to have inner heart's experience of Him, like the experience of the Son. --- Rufus Jones, "The Inner Life"

For me, the moments of direct experience of God are the true treasures of my life. Knowing we are loved, knowing that if we listen we will be guided, knowing we are not alone, all these and more make all of the difference.

As you know, I have trodden the wine press of anguish for a month and a half now, as well as other times in my past. Through it all, God has been with me, protecting me and keeping me from free falling into a deep hole, and whispering softly to me. Perhaps the anguish is burning away more dross, so my soul will be freer to express. 

I know there is more for me to do here on earth. At this moment it is not clear to me exactly what that is. That is fine, for I have some healing to do, some reassembling the shards of my heart and mind. There is still disorientation. It is softening. I know I will come out of this potholed valley and be stronger and clearer. As a mentor long ago told me, a knife has to be tempered in the fire be able to be a useful tool, and you must be tempered by the fires of life in order to be a more useful tool in the Hand of God.

You too may have gone through anguish. I pray you hear what I share from my heart to yours. 

God bless you dear spiritual friend.

The Naked Now

 In pondering the state of my life now, I had some insights this morning I want to share with you.

Spiritual advice has long been to live in the now, the only moment we actually have, the only moment we can breathe, the only moment we have to live. 

Gilbert has inadvertently given me that gift. He has stripped away from me my past and all of the mementos of it. He has caused me to change my views of the past, redefining and releasing. He has stripped me of my dreams for the future. None of the ones we dreamed together are possible now. It is all drifting away from me. Vivid memories and dreams are fading.

So I now stand in the naked now. I stand with no past and no future so to speak. Here in this unique moment in time, stripped of what was and what could have been, I am just here.

So now I come to God unencumbered, as I say, Take my hand Precious Lord, lead me on as You would. Thy will be done. Amen, Amen and Amen!