Undeniable. Indescribable.

God is love.

It was the center of Sunday's Mass and homily message. We talked about it at Saturday evening's youth group. And I've been thinking about it a lot too.

A lot-alot.

Because, well ... God. Is. Love.

He makes us in His image; His life, mixed with ours, courses through our veins. And I believe this love seeks to generate ever more of the same by reaching out through each of us to the world beyond our fingertips.

We all know love is the best part of life, when it's working. And when it's not we know how it leads to us feeling limp, drab & disconnected; alive and dead at the same time.

I call this, going through the motions (GTTM). Like the "Cloverfield" gand did before the monster came.

GTTM. The place of far gone self, remade in self-love, that is redeemable only if we can somehow get to Beth before the building falls (see the movie.)

Well and good, I suppose. But how much easier to just love in the first place. That's where the real heroes are. Present to love. Everywhere.

-- m1230

House of Light

I want to be a house of light. I want God's light inside of me so that I, too, can be a light to the world.

That's my only real ambition.

But where will the light come from? Will God grant it freely or will I have to find it to acquire it? Or perhaps go begging with outstretched heart & hands? Whichever way, I am willing.

I want to be a house of light so that everything I do tells others God's light is in me and that God's light is available to them too, and that this light is miles better than our own fake light or the kind of dark that masquerade's as light. God's light is only ever the best light, never dark and never dim.

But our light does. On our own our light can dull very quickly. Our heart knows this, which is why, during those times of personal power outage, it cries out to us to change the bulb.

Because I Can't Not

We're born with it, this itch to do something, make something, invent something. Maybe it's cooking. Or building with Lego. Maybe it's singing songs no one else will hear. Maybe it's carefully planning a kind of spontaneous expression with paint, pencil, chalk, or chocolate. Or sitting at a piano, touching down different notes until they fall into pleasant form. Whatever it is we all have it in us, this urge to create, to tell a story with words or things, virtual and real, allegorical or unadorned, that helps us to say who we are and how much more we can be.

Another diamond.

General Joan

Joan of Arc was maid [sorry, couldn't resist] to love God with her all; to drink of His surpassing love, while suffering greatly her yearning for deepening unity with He Who engulfs, refines, renews (and in Joan's case-- annihilates) so that she in her imperfection, and we in ours, may draw near.

Her example (like those of many saints) points to vast landscapes of interior life God desires to open & with us, that He may reveal new vistas of hope and possibility, new rivers of availing grace, all seemingly beyond our knowledge and sight yet still somehow within our grasp.

It takes tremendous courage to give oneself completely to God. This is the soul's doing prompted & enabled by the Holy Spirit. And to one degree or another, all of us who seek God are called to the same heights of intimacy Joan climbed & attained, by way of the same humility, faith & obedience.

How beautiful the mysteries of God that a simple cry for help becomes the key that unlocks the door [of the heart] that can only be opened from the inside ...

(more up... )

Going "Up" and Pulling "'Down"

There are a few basic precepts around how to reach God effectively, where the request for (re-)connection is less a demand for personal leverage (to be diplomatic) and more an appeal for reconciliation; less a form of trite manipulation on your terms, more a humble admittance of your own past wrong-doings on His. So the 'Up' button might better be called a 'Down' rope, to the extent that we get from God the answers we need after we do something first, which action involves doing spiritually & literally our part to restore the relationship God wants to have with us; a relationship of unmerited blessing & grace spurred on by His unconditional love, that is always our divine gift & promise (it's only a breath away He says), but that lately (well, since Adam & Eve) has been waylayed by that wrecking ball: Sin.

Simply put, God expects us to act as though He Were God (He Is) and we were His creation (we are), which simple act of ascent quite naturally presupposes a reshuffling of the hierarchical deck, so to speak, so that the King is always top card.

"Return to me and I will return to you [read Zechariah Chapter 1 verse 2]," says the Lord; or to paraphrase, since He has given us every possible opportunity to share in His life both now and forever, "You first."

And so we can come to God, from wherever we've gone or now happen to be, with this simple understanding: He calls us to return to Him as a child returns to a doting Father, trusting in His limitless Mercy, believing in His miraculous love.

Yes, the door opens from the inside ...

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How to Think, What to Say

I don't want to be one of those people who take forever to get to the punch-line; or like a soap-opera that moves ahead like a limping snail, drag out the climax forever.

What I really want to do is just tell you what you need to do to get God's attention. Because it's what you and me and everybody else, more than anything, really wants to know. And once we leave aside the old "God isn't listening" or "doesn't care" conceit, or better yet, kill and resurrect it for a vital hope that can believe that He not only listens but also, really-really wants to answer us, well then, hey, why delay?

So this is how we reach the brand new beginning of a brand new life and even better change: ASK GOD FOR HELP.

That's really it, the it being so fully it because implied within it is such incredible, powerful change; change of a sublime, supernatural nature that has to occur first within you in order for you to even mount your simple plea. Change in other words that involves deeply, interior-ly, your ability to choose and make distinctions; the ability to distinguish, for instance, your need for change, and that in your present condition (i.e., living life your way) you truly lack what it takes to change really much of anything at all.

Asking for God's help also means that you've wrestled with pride and found it wanting. Pride makes the bearer blind (The Bible tells us it comes before the fall), which is why it takes a miracle (on the scale of the one that keeps the carnage out of everyday morning rush-hour traffic) to poke a hole through its dense screen large enough for the original you to see through.

There is a mountain of self to overcome to reach the high place where God awaits us, where we can say, Please God help me, and know that we mean it for all we're worth. But once said, the weight indeed will start to lift, the burden shift, and the muck begin to slide away.

-- m1230

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Before the Big Rinse

The realization of needing or wanting to become "reset" must necessarily come with the humble understanding that on our own we tend to drift pretty far off-line from where we started.

We get slimed or slime ourselves usually because we want to vest our personal interests in someone else's abilities, power or connectedness, hoping for success-by-extension (hitching your wagon to someone else's pony) .

Fear is what drives this.

Becoming muck in the process may not occur to us until later. By then, no matter how much we success we glom, we know deep inside who & what we are, and we don't like it much. Now the wheel of self-fulfilling prophecy kicks in, driving us to greater heights at ever greater cost, which is why rich guys, after a little run of bad luck, often with no visible motive at all, sometimes dive off buildings.

Knowing that we're constantly in need of God's help can get lost in both the bluster & cacophony of self. It takes a very brave -- or desperate -- person to own all the way up thru the pain of denial and say, "I can't continue living like this."

And so, then what? And so, God. But how? ...

(more up...)

Why God?

... We have this somehow innate belief that the most difficult things in life can be turned around, with the right combination of helpful techniques (viz 'The Secret') in something akin to the wink of an eye.

In a sense this is true. Yet only God can definitively accomplish it. Only He can rescue us from our lastest peril in something like miraculous time. In fact He does this regularly, though usually the miracle arrives early, unbidden & unseen, heading off the vast majority of calamties we, in our clumsy, reckless and often wilful existence, are otherwise destined for. And because He does such sovereign works mostly anonymously too, we don't recognize Almighty God's unique abilities to save & rescue until we really need Him, usually after the fact, on the other side of some terribly botched job or other, normally when we're already up to our necks in it and have no way out on our own-- no way out but His ...

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Push the God "Button"

Here is a Truth. It is one I have lived and continue to live when the worst parts of me (cue the flesh) override my undisputed, God-given, best sense (cue the Spirit).

I hate to admit that I have this quandary more frequently than I like or should. But there it is. The unreconciled stuff, brought closer to the surface by God`s sanctifying blow-torch, just throbs, like a cartoon thumb, after so many repeated hits of the kind of Grace that strips as it purifies.

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How to Get It Off You

Push reset. That's the way to undo all the goo. But the button isn't always so simple to find. To begin to find it, one must become honest, to the point of self-scrutiny (by that I don't mean merciless self-scrutiny or scrupulosity, that kind of personal assessment that just always only hurts, but the other kind that is a little more flexible and negotiable and forgiving, considering that we're human and stinkers at core). Undoing the goo takes a kind of noble pursuit, a yearning to do and be good (or at least better) which same yearning we then drag kicking & screaming from the outer-limits of our overly temporal existence, into the willing circle).

De-sliming takes not just not doing what is wrong and learning to avoid its traps -- but also doing right consistently -- which takes a decent backbone as well as discernment, which, of course, is part of the cost of sucking-up, and reason why (dimunition of which) we get our slime on in the first place.

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