The energy in the universe is not in the planets, or in the protons or neutrons, but in the relationship between them.
Remember, mystery isn’t something that you cannot understand – it is something that you can endlessly understand! There is no point at which you can say, “I’ve got it.” Always and forever, mystery gets you!
I have often wondered why people never want to put a stone monument of the Eight Beatitudes on a courthouse lawn. Then I realize that the Eight Beatitudes of Jesus would probably not be very good for any war, any macho worldview, the wealthy, or our consumer economy.
Basically, the first half of life is writing the text, and the second half is writing the commentary on that text.
In fact, I would say that the demand for the perfect is the greatest enemy of the good.
Only hour by hour gratitude is strong enough to overcome all temptations to resentment.
Love flows unstoppably downward, around every obstacle – like water. Love and water seek not the higher place but always the lower. That’s why forgiveness is often the most powerful display of love in action.
Invariably when something upsets you, and you have a strong emotional reaction out of proportion to the moment, your shadow self has just been exposed. So watch for any overreactions or overdenials.
Love is not something you do; love is someone you are. It is your True Self.8 Love is where you came from and love is where you’re going. It’s not something you can buy. It’s not something you can attain. It is the presence of God within you, called the Holy Spirit – or what some theologians name uncreated grace.
One has to wonder, do we really want people to grow, or do we just want to be in control of the moment?
We suffer to get well. We surrender to win. We die to live. We give it away to keep it.
Controlling people try to control people, and they do the same with God – but loving anything always means a certain giving up of control. You tend to create a God who is just like you – whereas it was supposed to be the other way around.
Setting out is always a leap of faith, a risk in the deepest sense of the term, and yet an adventure too. The familiar and the habitual are so falsely reassuring, and most of us make our homes there permanently. The new is always by definition unfamiliar and untested, so God, life, destiny, suffering have to give us a push – usually a big one – or we will not go.
If something comes toward you with grace and can pass through you and toward others with grace, you can trust it as the voice of God.
And we must – absolutely must – maintain a fundamental humility before the Great Mystery. If we do not, religion always worships itself and its formulations and never God.
Sacrificial religion was all exposed in Jesus’ response to any mechanical or mercenary notion of religion, but we soon went right back to it in many Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant forms, because the old ego will always prefer an economy of merit and sacrifice to any economy of grace and unearned love, where we have no control.
The bottom line of the Gospel is that most of us have to hit some kind of bottom before we even start the real spiritual journey.
Your concern is not so much to have what you love anymore, but to love what you have – right now. This is a monumental change from the first half of life, so much so that it is almost the litmus test of whether you are in the second half of life at all.
So get ready for a great adventure, the one you were really born for. If we never get to our little bit of heaven, our life does not make much sense, and we have created our own “hell.” So get ready for some new freedom, some dangerous permission, some hope from nowhere, some unexpected happiness, some stumbling stones, some radical grace, and some new and pressing responsibility for yourself and for our suffering world.
Western people are a ritually starved people, and in this are different than most of human history.