2.22.2021 (that’s a lot of 2s!)
Good morning God,
I love you
I LOVE YOU
That’s settled.
***
Thank you for the explanations about your armor. Thank you for all the saving and clarity that you have provided this week. Thank you for saving me from my endless tiring thoughts. There they are again—looping neurosis—but each time it gets harder and harder to discern. He’s tricky. You don’t always recognize it until the tree has fallen on top of you and there’s no getting up.
Before getting up this morning, as in, I’m awake but haven’t yet risen, the first thing I thought about was peace and the idea that we are to place our feet in peace. I connected with a lifelong understanding that unless I am centered and in peace, which comes from being fully connected to you, I dare not walk. I’ve learned over and over that effort without peace and a sense of purpose is driven madness. You are a chicken with your head cut off and this leads to a lifeless pursuit of tasks. And yet I was doing it again. Grudgingly, day after day, I was trying to get thru my tasks as best I could and resenting every minute of it. I didn’t recognize my steps as non-peace. I would have said that non-peace is angst, and what I had simply felt like dread. Given last year, dread seems reasonable. I know that every day isn’t a theme park and yet all of us just spent the entire year stuck in “It’s a Small World Afterall!” I, and everyone else I know, am feeling a little sick to my stomach.
I have plenty of data to support this feeling: covid lockdown, a world of madness and division, difficult work situations, difficult relationships, winter blues…it’s natural to feel dread, right?
For Heaven’s sake, I know better, which does not equate to my ability to do better all the time.
In God’s world you are to be in peace and love and joy, every day. This seems like a tall order, and it is, but the alternative is to be in dread and misery and depression everyday. Which weirdly is what lots of us do. Why does that seem easier than choosing peace, love and joy? Well for starters, Satan, evil or let’s call it the Other Team, wants you to feel bad. Because if you feel bad you’ll take it out on someone else who will take it out on someone else. So forth and so on. The next thing you know we all want to drink paint or drive off the cliff. God instructs on HOW and WHY you need to maintain love, forgiveness and peace. If you don’t, the alternative is dismal and destructive.
It doesn’t take God to know that your vessel does not run optimally—or anywhere near functional—when you fill it with negative, destructive thinking. You don’t have to believe in God for this truth to make itself, self-evident. We know this. And yet I had become deluded. A peaceful and centered mind is easily achievable. You chose it. That’s it. Done. Have a nice day.
From my couch I’m sitting here looking at piles of snow. We’ve had a lot of snow and a lot of sunshine, so now my yard is a hard crusty crunch. I know that spring is coming and soon all this white will be bright green. Imagine that I didn’t know that and in my deep need to see the grass, I suited up and ran out there with my shovel. It’s laughable. I don’t fight the snow. If I am tired of frozen white, which I am, I can go somewhere. Which I am.
I did it. I bought a one-way ticket to Arizona. I am going to crash and sit and walk and talk to God and have a meal or two with the Leprechaun and family and wait for God to tell me where to go next. This is how I want to live my life. This is how I have always wanted to live my life but until you do it, you have no idea how hard it is to fully drop your nets and go.
***
When you are an immature thinker, which doesn’t necessarily denote age, but it doesn’t hurt to have been knocked around a bit, you truly are deluded that circumstances make a difference. They don’t. You eventually learn that no matter your circumstances, you are who you are and generating the perfect circumstances is akin to pushing a boulder uphill. Sit down and go to God. I have enough personal data to write 15 books on the efficacy of doing this, which I plan to do, but take my word for it. Don’t generate circumstances, it’s exhausting. Go to God and let Him generate them for you. Then sit back, receive and say thank you. Which for some reason is far harder for me to do (and apparently all of us) then work my ass off to generate circumstances. I am 52 this year, and I finally noticed that I am exhausted.
People who don’t notice that they are exhausted make good athletes. Keep going you dumbass, failure is not an option! This worked for me for many years, but God has me going down a different path. He doesn’t want me yelling at myself anymore. He doesn’t want me hitting bottom and then digging madly to prove that it’s a false bottom. He wants me to just hang out and be happy.
Folks, this might be the hardest thing I’ve ever done.
So don’t be surprised if I show up on your doorstep. Especially if you live somewhere tropical or warm and beach-like.
God wants me to be in peace and joy. For my own good.
It’s I, prideful man, who thinks I need to save the planet. To be heroic in all my efforts. And I plan to do this by yelling at everyone to shut up and be peaceful and stop hurting each other!!
God says look in the mirror and let me worry about the planet. So, before getting up, I put my peace-shoes on. With every step I take, ripples emanate out as I walk in peace. I gracefully change the planet because I have dared to walk in peace.
- Peace with myself, and most importantly, who and how God made me
- Peace with my circumstances, especially the ones I deem unnecessary or unfair
- Peace with my neighbor; I’m happy to report I’m pretty good at this one…
- Peace with time; how achingly slow some things take and how blinding fast other things disappear.
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand what the world would look and feel like if we were all in peace and joy.
God wants you to feel good. He wants YOU to feel good. In doing so he’s trying to help you navigate planet earth. We live in a physical world that we can see. There are car crashes and breathtaking mountains. And we live in a spiritual world that we can’t see. There are angles and demons, legions on both sides. Lots of people believe in the spiritual dimensions, but we only want to acknowledge or talk about the good side because we are afraid of sounding daft, or scared. You can’t see the spiritual, but you can know it, and knowing is so different than seeing. And if you know anything there are forces that vie for your every attention.
God: GO IN PEACE
Molly: No thanks God, I’ll just keep slugging away with my bitter, crappy attitude.
We are so daft. I can be so daft. Our vessels (body+mind+spirit) run beautifully when we are in peace and joy. Peace and joy are high octane. You can’t run over someone who is in peace and joy. Depression, anger, bitterness, unforgiveness…this person is ready to come apart at a moment’s notice. One flick, and KaBlam! It all falls down.
***
As a little kid my Catholic Father, whom I love dearly, took us to church with him on Sunday’s when he was in town. Whoowee that man had some gumption! My handsomely dressed ex-military pilot father quietly and routinely with the best posture you’ve ever seen, walks up to the finger bowl, dips his finger and touches his forehead, his breast, his right shoulder then his left and calmly steps aside. Then, in my mind’s eye a Linus cloud explosion of scratching, hitting, pointing, shushing, and giggling rolls in after him and when the dust settles, we see 3 little gap toothed, fluffy haired, freckle faced wee ones. We are each wearing our itchy clothes, plastic shoes and as-good-as-it-gets behavior. Dad gives us the glance that strongly suggests that all calamity is to cease at this very moment, and I remember walking into what seemed like such a grand and foreign and bizarre place. I was nervous and uncomfortable and survived the exhausting stand-up, sit-down, kneel routine by clinging to the promise of spaghetti afterwards.
At 5 everyone looks old; the cloaked gentleman on stage presenting a chalky and dusty version of heaven and hell looked to me as if he was 4 minutes from falling over. Adults seemed so rigid and stiff. We always sat at the back; I loved the stained glass, how it comes to life in the sunlight and decorates the smell of the room with air and ozone and earth. When you cram that many adults into rows of hats and hair the forced organization feels like a stuffed closet. I wanted to explode, run up and down the aisles, laugh and giggle and dance but I dare not out of respect for my father. I doubt he ever sat me down and said Molly, sit there, do nothing, look bored and don’t move but that’s exactly what I did and it seemed to work. I just copied what everyone else was doing.
Then came my favorite part. In all seriousness. I loved it. I waited and waited and waited for it. All of a sudden there is the clatter of standing and shifting and turning. Peace be with you.
Peace be with you
Peace be with you
People shook hands and smiled. I got to see all the goofy, funny things people hang on their necks and pin to their odd clothing choices. And they clasp your little hands in cupped palms and the best part of each container comes spilling out. Peace be with you.
When you are 5 every sermon is a month long. You wait and wait and wait…pick at your underwear, pick at your nose and then BLAM! Peace be with you. It takes forever, but it’s worth the wait.
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