Hooray!

God Is for Us

Love is just like prayer; it is not so much an action that we do, but a dialogue that already flows through us. We don’t decide to “be loving”; rather, to love is to allow our deepest and truest nature to show itself. The “Father” doesn’t decide to love the “Son.” Fatherhood is the flow from Father to Son, one hundred percent. The Son does not choose now and then to release some love to the Father, or to the Spirit. Love is the full modus operandi between all three of them! (Remember these classic names are just placeholders. You can replace them with any form of endearment that works for you, but make sure something works!)

The love in you—which is the Spirit in you—always somehow says yes (see 2 Corinthians 1:19-20). Love is not something you do; love is Someone you are. It is your True Self. [1] Love is where you came from and love is where you’re going. It’s not something you can attain. It’s not something you can work up to, as much as something you allow yourself to fall into! It is the living presence of God within you, often called the Holy Spirit, or what some theologians name uncreated grace.

You can’t manufacture this by any right conduct. You can’t make God love you one ounce more than God already loves you right now. You can go to church every day for the rest of your life, but God isn’t going to love you any more than God already loves you right now.

You cannot make God love you any less, either—not an ounce less. You could do the most terrible thing and God wouldn’t love you any less. (You would probably love yourself much less, however.)

You cannot change the Divine mind about you! The flow is constant and total toward your life. God is for you!

You can’t diminish God’s love for you. What you can do, however, is learn how to believe it, receive it, trust it, allow it, and celebrate it, accepting Trinity’s whirling invitation to join in the cosmic dance.

Catherine LaCugna ends her giant theological tome on Trinity with one simple sentence. It’s taken her two-and-a-half inches of book to get to this one line, and its simplicity might overwhelm you, but I can’t end in any better place than she does:

The very nature of God, therefore, is to seek out the deepest possible communion and friendship with every last creature on this earth. [2]

That’s God’s job description. That’s what it’s all about. The only things that can keep you out of this divine dance are fear, doubt, or self-hatred. What would happen in your life—right now—if you accepted being fully accepted?

It would be a very safe universe.

You would have nothing to be afraid of.

God is for you.

God is leaping toward you!

God is on your side, honestly more than you are on your own.

Gateway to Silence:
Dance with Us.

The Golden Hour

I stepped out on the beach for an evening walk on Wednesday,

and it was absolutely magical.

There was golden light outlining everything--

the sand, the water, the waves, the birds, the people walking the shoreline with me.

All I could do was bask in it and be oh so grateful I had shown up.

It came as a gift--unrequested, undeserved, uncontrollable--

and it was the golden glow of

sheer, amazing 

GRACE.

Yes!

Blue Boat Home

Everything is holy now...

Dancing with R. Rohr

Join in the Dance

Once you learn to take your place inside the circle of praise and mutual deference, all meaningful distinctions between secular and sacred, natural and supernatural, fall away. In the Divine Economy, all is useable, even our mistakes and our sin. The cross shouted this message of “failure undone and used,” yet we still struggle to hear or accept it.

Everything is holy now. The only resistance to that divine flow of holiness and wholeness is our human refusal to see, to enjoy, and to participate.

We are each a transmitter station, a relay station, but sadly this is somehow humiliating for the ego. I was so happy when I first preached in Germany and found out that my last name, Rohr, was translated as “conduit” or “pipe.” Alleluia!

But my ego self is not satisfied to be a pass-through account; it wants to be a substantial “Richard Rohr!” Yet this small, egoic frame of reference is going to be gone in a few years in the form that I presently identify with. All I can be is a part of the circle of praise. Just knowing that I’m part of the team becomes more than enough, especially when I recognize that it was all given to me freely anyway.

I didn’t ask to be born. I thank God I was born, and I’m grateful to be here. My sister, St. Clare of Assisi, is reported to have said right before she died, “Thank you for letting me be a human being.” There it is. It’s almost too simple and too clear. We each get our little chance to dance on this stage of life, to reflect the glory of God back to God and to participate with everything and everyone else.

Once I was able to move from pyramid thinking to circular thinking, by reason of the Trinity—ah! My mind let go of its own defenses and stopped refusing and resisting the dance. Being a wallflower is not much fun.

Here’s how Thomas Merton more poetically puts it:

For the world and time are the dance of the Lord in emptiness. The silence of the spheres is the music of a wedding feast. The more we persist in misunderstanding the phenomena of life, the more we analyze them out into strange finalities and complex purposes of our own, the more we involve ourselves in sadness, absurdity and despair. But it does not matter much, because no despair of ours can alter the reality of things; or stain the joy of the cosmic dance which is always there. Indeed, we are in the midst of it, and it is in the midst of us, for it beats in our very blood, whether we want it to or not.

Yet the fact remains that we are invited to forget ourselves on purpose, cast our awful solemnity to the winds and join in the general dance. [1]  YIPPPPEEEEEEEEE!

Gateway to Silence:
Dance with Us.

Signs of LIFE happening NOW!

River Ride

What, then, is the path to holiness? It’s the same as the path to wholeness. And we are never “there” yet. We are always just in the river. Don’t try to push the river or make the river happen; it is already happening, and you cannot stop it. All you can do is recognize it, enjoy it, and ever more fully allow it to carry you.

As John O’Donohue put it:

I would love to live
Like a river flows,
Carried by the surprise
Of its own unfolding. [1]

This is the great surprise, and for some a disappointment: this divine Flow has very little to do with you. The Flow doesn’t have to do with you being perfect, right, belonging to the right group, or even understanding the Flow. Jesus never has any such checklist test before he heals someone. He just says, as it were, “Are you going to ask for or allow yourself to be touched? If so, let’s go!” ~R. Rohr

and 35 years ago, I somehow knew this:

"Don’t Push the River"

                                      

Life is a river—its course is unknown.

Its waters run deep and its current is strong.

And it’s winding its way to a point far beyond.

This river of life has a mind all its own.

 Don’t push the river—just let it flow.

Life comes to us when we learn to let go

And just go with the current, go with the flow

Of the river of life—let your spirit grow .

You can’t push a river—it’s simply unwise,

And if you persist, then you’ll miss the surprise

Of discovering life to its fullest degree,

Open to change and excitingly free.

 Roll on river—roll on life!

 There’s certainly merit in plotting a course,

But the trouble arises when we try to force

The creation of that which must come naturally.

We miss some new possibilities.

Don’t push the river—just let it flow.

Life comes to us when we learn to let go

And just go with the current, go with the flow

Of the river of life—let your spirit grow .

(Sarah Mulkey, 1981)

Home again!

 with sweet beach memories...

 "I feel your absence every day."

 Sacred times and spaces...

An Optimist

 I brought JOY home!

 Never dies...

 End

 of

Summer

Sister Time!

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Back to the Shore

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Vulnerable - Available?

I would name salvation as simply the readiness, the capacity, and the willingness to stay in relationship. As long as you show up with some degree of vulnerability, the Spirit can keep working.

Self-sufficiency makes God experience impossible.

Please trust me on that. That’s why Jesus shows up in this world as a naked, vulnerable one—a defenseless baby. Talk about utter relationship! Naked vulnerability means I’m going to let you influence me; I’m going to allow you to change me. The Way of Jesus is an invitation to a Trinitarian way of living, loving, and relating—on earth as it is in the Godhead. We are intrinsically like the Trinity, living in an absolute relatedness. To stand outside of this flow is to live within the deepest meaning of sin. We call this flow love.  We really were made for love; outside of it we die very quickly.  ~R. Rohr

Fullness of Love

"God is a “fountain fullness” of love."

St. Bonaventure

Our sense of disconnection is only an illusion.

Nothing human can stop the flow of divine love;

we cannot undo the eternal pattern even by our worst sin.

God is always winning, and God’s love will win.

Love does not lose, nor does God lose.

Nothing can stop the relentless outpouring force

that is the divine dance.

~R. Rohr

I love you, Sus

Along the way...

Looking Up

On my way home from seeing "Sully", I looked up.

(Song to follow--Flying Home--when it's released)

Looking back...

South Padre~Mother's Day 2013

Last trip...

9.11.16

Chris Knight, First Responder

Bless them all!

"You are in what is."

God for us, we call you “Father.”
God alongside us, we call you “Jesus.”
God within us, we call you “Holy Spirit.”
Together, you are the Eternal Mystery
That enables, enfolds, and enlivens all things,
Even us and even me. 

Every name falls short of your goodness and greatness.
We can only see who you are in what is.
We ask for such perfect seeing—
As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be.

Amen.

~R. Rohr

Practice: The Virgin Prayer

God regarded her in her lowliness.  —Luke 1:48

You must seek to be a blank slate.
You must desire to remain unwritten on.
No choosing of this or that.
Not "I am good because."
Nor "I am not good because."
Neither excitement nor boredom.

Remaining Nothing,
An unchosen virgin,
And unchoosing too, just empty.
No story line by which to start the day.
No identity enhancers nor losses
To make yourself valuable or not.

Nothing interesting, nothing uninteresting,
Neither against, nor for something.
Nothing to recall from yesterday.
Nothing to look forward to today.

Just me, naked, exposed,
No self to fix, change, or find,
Nothing to judge right or wrong,
Important or unimportant,
Worthy or unworthy,
I stand and wait,
neither powerful nor powerless,

For You to name me,
For You to look upon my face,
For You to write my script,
For You to give the kiss,
In your time and your way.

You always do.
And it is always so much better.

“And she gave birth to her firstborn” (Luke2:7), who was the Christ.

Gateway to Silence:
Surrender to love.

Still living and loving...

Right on time...

Jeff's Newsletter - September 2016

Your tiredness has dignity to it. There is no shame in admitting  that you cannot go on. You have been on a long journey from the stars. Even the courageous need to rest.   - Jeff Foster

How DOES he do it?

It's a sad day...

Our Daisy...R.I.P.

The Mulkey boys have grown up with Daisy.
She has been a wonderful family dog.
And, she has been really sick for the past several months.
The boys have known this,
and Daisy has been allowed to begin her leaving
in the space where she has been most loved,
right here at home.

Yes...it's love...always LOVE.