The extraordinary unification of God thoughts

God was thinking out loud with me over the last few days, and He offered me some of His thoughts, as if they were mine, and I love when He does that, so I texted them to myself, and here they are:

"Discernment is 'seeing others as they are;' judgment is 'seeing others as you are;' and only God knows the truth about any of it."

"The pathway to bliss goes through the most intense suffering, right before delivering you to pure joy - suffering of such intolerable immensity that it obliterates all resistance to it, which is, quite ironically, the primary source of it."

"There can never be enough deep listening and compassion for all the pain in this world; that's why He chose to come here personally, to live a perfect life, to die a horrible and painful death at our hands, to show us that He deeply understands and cares about us, and ultimately to rescue us once and for all through the absolute and total sharing of His Spirit."

I love when He speaks in such simple complexity, or is it complex simplicity, ... whatever. They're the same either way. He is always unifying everything, as Henri Nouwen notices in the closing chapter of Life of the Beloved:

"The spiritual life counteracts the countless divisions that pervade our daily life and cause such destruction and violence. These divisions are interior as well as exterior: the divisions among our most intimate emotions and the divisions among the most widespread social groupings. The division between gladness and sadness within me or the division between the races, religions, and cultures around me all find their source in the diabolical forces of darkness. The Spirit of God, the Spirit that calls us the Beloved, is the Spirit that unites and makes whole. There is no clearer way to discern the presence of God's mSpirit than to identify the moments of unification, healing, restoration, and reconciliation. Wherever the Spirit works, division vanishes and inner as well as outer unity manifests itself. What I most want to say is that when the totality of our daily lives is lived 'from above,' that is, as the Beloved 'sent' into the world, then everyone we meet and everything that happens becomes a unique opportunity to choose for the life that cannot be conquered by death. Thus, both joy and suffering become part of our unified way to spiritual fulfillment - they become the same."

And here's an interesting final note that I hadn't thought about until now, so I pulled it out of my pants pocket and remembered that my fortune cookie note from last night's dinner said:

"Life always gets harder at both the summit and the nadir, for they are the true life of maximum vulnerability, risk, and exposure; therefore, they are the same thing."

And then just as I was ready to send this (above) full message out, this (below) fell into my morning mailbox from the Henri Nouwen Society, and the synchronicity demonstrated once again, that God is working to unify everything:

Right Living and Right Speaking

To be a witness for God is to be a living sign of God's presence in the world. What we live is more important than what we say, because the right way of living always leads to the right way of speaking. When we forgive our neighbours from our hearts, our hearts will speak forgiving words. When we are grateful, we will speak grateful words, and when we are hopeful and joyful, we will speak hopeful and joyful words.

When our words come too soon and we are not yet living what we are saying, we easily give double messages that can cause much chaos and destruction. Giving double messages - one with our words and another with our actions - makes us dangerous hypocrites. However, God is always working everything to the good, so may our lives give us the right words, and may our words lead us to the right life.

Pure joy (vs. circumstantial happiness) happens only when we choose it, or allow it, usually long after we've given up our hot pursuit of it.

"Again and again I therefore admonish my students in Europe and America: Don't aim at success -- the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue naturally, and it only does so as the unintended but allowed, if not chosen, side effect of one's personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one's surrender to a being other than oneself. Happiness must happen 'as a result of' our dedication and/or surrender, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it all that much, and certainly not nearly as much as the greater cause to which you have become a willing slave. I want you to listen to what your conscience commands you to do and go on to carry it out to the best of your ability and knowledge. Then you will live to see that in the long-run -- in the long-run, I say! -- success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think about it."

-- Viktor Frankl, in Man's Search for Meaning
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktor_Frankl)

"The beat of my heart has grown deeper, more active, and yet strangely more peaceful, and it is as if I were all the time storing up inner riches … My life is one long sequence of inner miracles." The young Dutchwoman, Etty Hillesum, wrote that in a Nazi transit camp in 1943, on her way to her death at Auschwitz two months later. Towards the end of his life, Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, "All I have seen teaches me to trust the Creator for all I have not seen," though by then he had already lost his father when he was 7, his first wife when she was 20, and his first son, aged 5. In Japan, the late 18th-century poet, Issa, is celebrated for his delighted, almost child-like celebrations of the natural world. Issa saw four of his children die in infancy, his wife die in childbirth, and his own body partially paralyzed."

-- the first paragraph of an article by Pico Iyer entitled: "The Joy of Less," found yesterday morning in the New York Times "Happy Days; The Pursuit of What Matters in Troubled Times" section
http://happydays.blogs.nytimes.com:80/2009/06/07/the-joy-of-less/?em&emc=eta1
(in case you want to read the whole article, and it's really pretty good)

And look how the above line up with the next perfect gift from my buddy, Henri Nouwen:

We Are the Glory of God

Living a spiritual life is living a life in which our spirits and the Spirit of God bear a joint witness that we belong to God as God's beloved children, (see Romans 8:16). This witness involves every aspect of our lives. Paul says: "Whatever you eat, then, or drink, and whatever else you do, do it all for the glory of God" (Romans 10:31). And we are the glory of God when we give full visibility to the freedom of the children of God in the world in all its chaos and madness. When we live in communion with God's Spirit, we can only be witnesses, because wherever we go and whomever we meet, God's Spirit will manifest itself through us.

I love every opportunity to demonstrate the freedom of God's Kingdom with my life and my life's work, with this "second chance" He's so gracefully and graciously given me, even when it initially might not feel very good at all, which is when it really matters the most, getting over that temporary hump that leads to this freedom.

"Live as if you were living already for the second time (which I am), and as if you had acted the first time as wrongly as you are about to act now if you go unconscious (which I did)."

-- Viktor Frankl

"What is to give light must endure prolonged burning."

-- Viktor Frankl



"When you discover your vision, your mission, your God- given purpose - which takes precisely what it takes, by the way - you will feel its hot, unquenchable demand. It will fill you with passion, joy, enthusiasm, and a burning desire to give your entire life focus to it. But beware - the joy only is possible after you have been totally burnt down to the ground."

-- Yours Truly

"When you think of the mystical experience of many authentically devout followers, you may ask yourself whether joy and suffering aren't aspects of the same phenomenon on a very high level. An analogy, crazy for sure, comes to mind: Extreme cold burns! It seems nearly certain, no, it is certain, that we can only go to God through our suffering and that this extreme suffering becomes extreme joy because it finally is the same thing."

-- Jacques Maritain

And then my dear brother and friend, Anil, in India, who I have never met in person but who I know deeper than sight and skin could ever reveal, sends me a warm acknowledgement in response to a previous message and then offers an example of this one before he knows its going out. I feel so connected to you, my friend, and thank you for being alive on this planet at the same time as me, and for finding me. Here is an example of a simple man, living a simple life with all of his energy and a deep sense of purpose - a HERO - who clearly knows joy through suffering, and who makes it crystal clear to any true observer that he is not really suffering in the least.



Suvendu Roy of Titan Industries shares his inspirational encounter with a rickshaw driver in Mumbai.

Last Sunday, my wife, kid, and I had to travel to Andheri from Bandra. When I waved at a passing auto rickshaw, little did I expect that this ride would be different than any other.

As we set off, my eyes fell on a few magazines (kept in an aircraft style pouch) behind the driver's back rest. I looked in front and there was a small TV. The driver had put on the Doordarshan channel.

My wife and I looked at each other with disbelief and amusement. In front of me was a small first-aid box with cotton, dettol, and some medicines. This was enough for me to realise that I was in a special vehicle. Then I looked around again, and discovered more - there was a radio, fire extinguisher, wall clock, calendar, and pictures and symbols of all faiths - from Islam and Christianity to Buddhism, Hinduism, and Sikhism.

There were also pictures of the heroes of 26/11 - Kamte, Salaskar, Karkare, and Unnikrishnan. I realised that not only my vehicle, but also my driver was very special.

I started chatting with him and the initial sense of ridicule and disbelief gradually diminished. I gathered that he had been driving an auto rickshaw for the past 8-9 years; he had lost his job when his employer's plastic company was shut down 10 years ago. He had two school-going children, and he drove from 8 in the morning till 10 at night. No break unless he was unwell. "Sahab, ghar mein baith ke TV dekh kar kya faida? Do paisa income karega toh future mein kaam aayega." (Sir, what's the use of simply sitting at home and watching TV? If I earn some income, then it will be useful in the future for my family.)

We realised that we had come across a man who represents Mumbai - the spirit of work, the spirit of travel and the spirit of excelling in life. I asked him whether he does anything else as I figured that he did not have too much spare time. He said that he goes to an old age home for women in Andheri once a week or whenever he has some extra income, where he donates tooth brushes, toothpastes, soap, hair oil, and other items of daily use. He pointed out to a painted message below the meter that read: "25 per cent discount on metered fare for the handicapped. Free rides for blind passengers up to Rs50". He also said that his auto was mentioned on Radio Mirchi twice by the station RJs.

The Marathi press in Mumbai know about him and have written a few pieces on him and his vehicle.

My wife and I were struck with awe. This man was a HERO! A hero who deserves all our respect. I know that my son, once he grows up, will realise that we have met a genuine hero. He has put questions to me such as why should we help other people with our lives that will certainly keep this chance incident alive in my memory.

Our journey came to an end; 45 minutes of a lesson in humility, selflessness, and of a hero-worshipping Mumbai - my temporary home. We disembarked, and all I could do was to pay him a tip that would hardly cover a free ride for a blind man.

I hope, one day, you too have a chance to meet Mr Sandeep Bachhe in his auto rickshaw - MH-02-Z-8508.

Happy Birthday, Mark!

"Every moment of fear, hardship, regret, or stress over the years, whether it was about his past behavior or mine (and I gave him plenty to worry about), is more than countered by moments like this of pure joy, gratitude, and "love so big it hurts." This picture was taken as he was showing me around his new home town - Doylestown, PA - with his wife, Amy (yes, that's her putting up with us in the back seat, and yes, we were quite unintentionally wearing the exact same shirt, sharing our devotion to and love of the Phillies - ha ha ha). I choose to let it all overflow with reckless abandon, proud to be this awesome dude's father. And sorry, folks, that you have to look up my nose to 'get the joy'."



Happy 27th Birthday to my adorable, fun-loving, hysterical, ingenious, inimitable, remarkable, stupendous, tremendous son! I love you, buddy, every single cell and thought of you, and so wish I could be with you on your birthday, but I feel very "with you" in every way that matters most. Have a fabulous day being fully and extravagantly celebrated as the truly amazing man you are!

Technological fantasy land - we are under serious and insidious attack

"We live in a fantasy world, a world of shallow illusion; the great task in life is to seek deeper realities."

-- Iris Murdoch

"One's real life is so often the life that one does not lead, because we're too busy with our 'presentation'."

-- Oscar Wilde

"Pride and rabid pursuit of popularity make us artificial, while humility and rabid pursuit of Him make us real."

-- Thomas Merton

"The paradox of reality is that no image is as compelling as the one which is fixed in the eye of the warped mind."

-- Shana Alexander

"Advertising and market mania treat all the latest hot products and services with the same reverence and seriousness once reserved only for sacraments."

-- Thomas Merton

"We live in an artificial reality. Our inner life is flooded with images of better lives and worlds evoked by mass media. These images shape our desires, as well as our experiences. ... In the design of our daily surroundings – landscape, shops, public and domestic space, as well as the 'virtual space' created via technological connectivity in the form of on-line social networking environments – spectacle, sound bites, and flashes of fantasy experience often seem more important and compelling than any concepts like authenticity, integrity, or spiritual reality, and it is eating us alive."

-- De Vleeshal

Evidence of the truth of the above:
http://tech.yahoo.com/news/ap/20090615/ap_on_hi_te/us_tec_internet_family_time

All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.
From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king.

The Lord of the Rings - The Fellowship of the Ring, by J.R.R. Tolkien



Rising from the ashes of chaos, darkness, and doom, from the forcedness of our own performance, from the demands we place on others, from the loneliness of the world's artificiality, how do we remember what's real and true? How do we remember who and Whose we really are? And then comes this, another gem from Henri Nouwen, received just in time:

Witnesses of Love

How do we know that we are infinitely loved by our God when our immediate surroundings keep telling us that we'd better prove our right to exist, and that we can't ever get that quite right?

The knowledge of being loved in an unconditional way, before the world presents us with its ridiculous conditions, cannot come from books, lectures, performance-based awards and trophies, popularity through technological social networks, television programs, or weekend workshops. This spiritual knowledge comes from intimate and personal interactions with real people who witness to God's love for us through their words and deeds. These people can be close to us but they can also live far away or may even have lived long ago. And it only takes a moment with them or reflecting on them to be reminded. Their witness announces the truth of God's love and calls us to act in accordance with it.

Yes, there are people out there, and I'd like to think I'm one
of them, whose only interest in life is to do this for a friend:

Problem as misnomer

In case you're "inclined to whine," here's a "declining nine." I can see very clearly at this point in my life that every problem I think I have is because of a choice I've made - "to see or not to see," that is the question. When I choose to see, I act with His insight, love, and understanding (because I am always being invited to), and my experience of my circumstances naturally reflect that attitude, beauty, and peace, no matter how dangerous or difficult things might seem in my mind's or the world's estimation. And when I choose blindness, I act with fear and its totally irresponsible sidekick, judgment, and I am surrounded by chaos, confusion, and ugliness, all while having so many people and things to blame for my pain and upset. It really is that simple, folks. There is nothing else to learn. If you want a little proof, notice that your complaint about another usually has an exact mirror image in their complaint about you. This is not hard to confirm, by the way. Often we dare not do this, however, because it "outs" us and opens the door to possibility. Who's right in this? Nobody. The only one right is the one who chooses to see things differently and generously and unconditionally. We challenge this system at our own risk. It's really not worth it.

"When is a problem really not a problem? When you can see His Truth clearly."

-- Yours Truly

"Isn't it interesting how the way we perceive the problem always turns out to be the biggest problem."

-- Stephen Covey

"It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare; it is because we do not dare that things are difficult."

-- Seneca

"If your happiness depends on what somebody else does or doesn't do, then I guess you really do have a problem."

-- Richard Bach

"Don't be pushed, frustrated, and annoyed by your problems. Instead, be led, inspired, and empowered by your dreams."

-- Yours Truly

"The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort, convenience, and pleasure, but where he stands at times of challenge, conflict, and controversy."

-- Martin Luther King, Jr.

"A problem is simply an invitation to remember the truth - that there is always only one problem, and that is a conscious disconnection from God, and there is always only one solution, and that's conscious re-connection."

-- Sandy B. (Twelve Step Guru)

"The most important thing about a difficult problem is not its solution; it's the strength we gain in the process of finding the solution, or the growth we experience in it not being so easily or quickly found, and while we painstakingly and thankfully persevere, anyway."

-- Yours Truly

“People don’t really want their lives fixed, even as they seem to be crying out for it. Nobody really wants their problems solved - their dramas dissolved - their suffering eradicated - their distractions obliterated - their circular, convoluted stories untangled and resolved - their messes totally cleaned up - their hardest relationships reconciled. Because what would they have left then? Just the big, scary unknown and all of the possibilities and responsibilities that go along with the conscious co-creation of an extraordinary 'real life'."

-- Chuck Palahniuk

When I finally see how and "that" I'm doing it, I can eventually STOP pulling the jail cell door closed, locking myself inside my own prison.



Most, if not all of our problems are misperceived and misunderstood, and so much energy is wasted trying to 'solve it,' vs. surrendering ourselves to 'being solved'." We are the stickiest problem we have, by far, and yet we often can't see that while the eyes in our head are looking at our "projection." The movie of our lives is in the can (in our brains), and then we put it in the projector (our clever ego selves). What's "on the screen" (what we see and perceive as "others") is not a separate thing from us; it comes from us when a little focused light shines through. God focuses the light and shines through us; we provide the characters, music, script, and story - the resulting "movie" (the story itself) is what is to be solved, not the characters in it (who often no longer really even exist for us). It is important to understand that it is not seperate from us. Otherwise, we waste a lot of time in utter futility attempting to solve the wrong problem.



So remember, as God shines on and through us for our own benefit, to focus on "letting Him solve us," looking first at ourselves (as the projector - being our ego and defensive tactics that defiantly don't want to look at our own responsibility" for our problems - and the memories and stories on the reel and in the can - being our brains and our unconscious habitual way of looking at things), not on the screen or wall at "characters," at what we think those dastardly "others" are doing or causing in our lives. In our adult experience, they are only doing (or certainly "seem" to be doing) what we unconsciously "scripted" and "directed" them to do as we left our unresolved childhood, and God is dramatically re-writing the script (aligned with His story) and re-directing us. But it is totally up to us to take His direction.

If you live, God will live with you.

Oddly (because I don't usually do this), I have been reading two books at the same time: Life of the Beloved, by Henri Nouwen, and this one I'm referencing today, Veronika Decides to Die, by Paulo Coelho, and both are written with the absurd and ironic backdrop of mental illness and psychiatric institutions (something I didn't know when I first started them, at least not consciously). One is a non-fiction, real-world community called L'Arche in Canada, where Henri Nouwen spent the last 10 years of his life serving and learning, much to his own amazement, and one a fictitious hospital in Slovenia called Villete (based on a real-life experience the author had in Brazil during his youth in the 1960's), and, strangely enough, the common ground of these books is that you often find much more sanity on the inside of these places, in their so-called madness and fantasy world, than you do on the outside in the so-called real and sane world.

Meet Mari, a lawyer and wife, who had herself placed in Villete supposedly to deal with her terrifying panic attacks, but mostly it was just to escape her life's relentless drudgery and responsibilities. Here, she appears ready to move on and out and back to her life, and is reflecting on that possibility with a friend, a schizophrenic, yet brilliant young man named Eduard (many of his experiences happen to match the authors in early life):

"'I feel like starting to live again, Eduard. I feel like making the mistakes I always wanted to make, but couldn't, or at least felt that I couldn't, but I just never had the courage to take risks, while facing up to the possible feelings of panic that might very well come back, but whose presence now will merely weary vs. defeat me, since I really do know now that I'm not going to die or faint because of them. I can make new friends and teach them how to be crazy too in order to be wise. I'll tell them not to follow the manual of good or appropriate behavior but to discover their own lives, desires, adventures, and to take the risk to really live. I'll quote from Ecclesiastes to the Catholics, from the Koran to the Muslims, from the Torah to the Jews, from Aristotle to the atheists. I never want to be a lawyer again, because I was so dead while doing it, even while being good at it, but I can use my experiences in the profession to give lectures about men and women who knew the truth about this existence of ours and whose writings can be summed up in one word: Live. If you live, God will live with you. If you refuse to run His risks, He'll retreat to that distant heaven and be merely a subject for philosophical (even occasionally theological) speculation. Everyone knows this, but no one takes the first step, perhaps for fear of being called insane. At least, we haven't got that fear, Eduard. We've lived quite comfortably for quite a while here, haven't we? But we've already been inmates of Villete, and what worse than that could they call us?'"

-- Mari to Eduard, in Paulo Coelho's Veronika Decides to Die

And here's Zedka (another not really insane inmate) ready to move on, and for such eloquent reasons, as she describes to Veronika:

"If I stay here any longer, I won't leave at all. I'm cured of my depression, but in Villete, I've learned that there are other kinds of insanity. I want to carry those with me and begin to see my life with my own eyes. When I came here i was deeply depressed. Now I'm proud to say I'm insane. Outside, I'll behave like everyone else. I'll go shopping at the supermarket, I'll exchange trivialities with my friends. I'll waste precious time watching television. But I'll know that my soul is free and that I can dream and talk with other worlds that, before I came here, I didn't even imagine existed. I'm going to allow myself to do a mfew foolish things, just so that people can say: 'She's just been released from Villete, you know.' But I know that my soul is complete, because my life has meaning. I'll be able to look at a sunset and believe that God is behind it. When someone irritates me, I'll tell them what I think of them, and I won't worry what they think of me, because everyone will say, 'She's just been released from Villete.' I'll look at men in the street, right in their eyes, and I won't feel guilty mabout feeling desired by them. But then immediately after that, I'll go into a shop selling imported goods, buy the best wines my money can buy, and I'll drink that wine with the husband I adore because i want to laugh with him again. And laughing, he'll say: 'You're crazy!' And I'll say: 'Of course I am, I was in Villete, remember!And madness freed me. Now, my dear husband, you must have a vacation every year, and make me climb some dangerous mountains, because I need to run the risk of being fully alive.' People will say: 'She's just been released from Villete, and now she's making her husband crazy, too.' And he will realize they're right, and he'll thank God, because our marriage is starting all over again, and because we're both crazy, just like those who first invented love."

-- Zedka to Veronika, in Paulo Coelho's Veronika Decides to Die

And one final tidbit from a letter that Mari left for Eduard:

"When I was still a young lawyer, I read some poems by an English poet, and something he said impressed me greatly: 'Be like the fountain that overflows, not like the cistern that merely contains.' I always thought he was wrong. It was dangerous to overflow, because we might end up flooding areas occupied by our loved ones and drowning them with our love and enthusiasm. All my life I did my best to be a good cistern, never going beyond the limits of my inner walls. Then, for some reason I will never fully understand, I began suffering from panic attacks. I became the kind of person I had fought so hard to avoid becoming: I became a fountain that overflowed and flooded everything around me. The result was my internment in Villete, where, quite thankfully now, I have seen things that have set me free. ... And now I am off in search of my adventure, even though I'm sixty-five and fully aware of all the limitations they say age can bring. I'm going to Bosnia (this was during the violence, massacres, and genocide in the early to mid-90's). There are people waiting for me there. Although they don't yet know me, and I don't know them, but we really need each other. And I'm strangely sure that I can be useful, and the danger of an adventure is worth a thousand days of ease and comfort."

Yes, and I can speak from intimate personal experience, sometimes it takes a little dose of insanity to kick us into gear, ... and life! Speaking of which, check out this crazy madman who is fully alive at the top of Mt. Washington (elevation 6,288 ft.), with no one else around and winds howling and whipping him and his little jeep around at about 100mph!

Man, did I feel Him up here, at just one of about a dozen or so places He brought me to be totally alone with Him to check out His amazing wonders, one of which was ... ME!!!!! Talk about a "peak" experience!

Living as the Beloved - lunacy made perfect

For those who don't know me, this is not ongoing ramblings about perfect love emerging naturally out of a perfect life - no, this is about a life and a love and a man's heart all rising from the ashes of human calamity, callousness, carnage, chaos, confusion, corruption, and cowardice - mostly my own. This is about a life and a capacity to love that has been fully redeemed, rejuvenated, restored, and resurrected, based on an awareness of my chosenness that can only come on one's knees, paying full attention.

I found myself there long ago, in the wreckage of my folly, and now have chosen to simply stay there, which makes me look like a real lunatic at times, but which - for me, at least - is a lunacy made perfect by the One who adores me.

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"AS THOSE WHO ARE CHOSEN, blessed, broken, and given, we are called to live our lives with a deep inner joy and peace. It is the life of the Beloved, lived in a world constantly trying to convince us that the burden is on us to prove that we are worthy of being loved. But what of the other side of it all? What of our desire to build a career, our hope for success and fame, and our dream of making a name for ourselves? Is that to be despised? Are these aspirations in opposition to the spiritual life?

Some people might answer 'Yes' to that question and counsel you to leave the fast pace of the big city and look for a mileau where you can pursue the spiritual life without restraints. But I don't think that that's your way. I don't believe that your place is in a monastery or a community such as L'Arche or the solitude of the countryside. I would say, even, that the city with its challenges is not such a bad place for you and your friends. There is stimulation, excitement, movement, and a lot to see, hear, taste, and enjoy. The world is evil only when you become its slave. The world has a lot to offer - just as Egypt did for the children of Jacob - as long as you don 't feel bound to obedience to it. The great struggle facing you is not to leave the world, to reject your ambitions and aspirations, or to despise and reject money, prestige, or success, but to claim your spiritual truth and to live in the world as someone who clearly doesn't belong to it.

I believe deeply that all the good things our world has to offer are yours to enjoy. But you can enjoy them truly only when you can acknowledge them as affirmations of the truth that you are the Beloved of God. That truth will set you free to receive the beauty of nature (God, did it ever in NH!) and culture in gratitude, as a sign of your Belovedness. That truth will allow you to receive the gifts you receive from your society and celebrate life. But that truth will also allow you to let go of what distracts you, confuses you, and puts in jeopardy the life of the Spirit within you.

Think of yourself as having been sent into the world ... a way of seeing yourself that is possible if you truly believed that you were loved before the world began ... a perception of yourself that calls for a true leap of faith! As long as you live in the world, yielding to its enormous pressures to prove to yourself and to others that you are somebody and knowing from the beginning that you will lose in the end, your life can be scarcely more than a long, painful struggle for survival. If, however, you really want to live in the world, you cannot look to the world itself as the source of that life. The world and its manipulative strategies may help you to survive for a surprisingly long time, but they cannot help you live because the world is not the source, eve of its own life, let alone youirs.

Spiritually, you do not belong to the world. And this is precisely why you are sent into the world. Your family and your friends, your colleagues and your competitors, and all the people you may meet on your journey through life are all searching for more than survival. Your presence among them as 'the one who is sent' will allow them to catch a glimpse of the real life. Everything changes radically from the moment you know yourself as being sent into this world. Times and spaces, people and events, art and literature, history and science, they all cease to be opaque and become transparent, pointing far beyond themselves to the place from where you come and to where you will return. It is very hard for me to explain to you this radical change, because it is a change that cannot be described in ordinary terms; nor can it be taught or practiced as a new discipline of self-knowledge. The change of which I speak is the change from living life as a painful test to prove that you deserve to be loved, to living it as an unceasing 'Yes' to the truth of that Belovedness. Put simply, life is a God-given opportunity to become who we are, to affirm our own true spiritual nature, claim our truth, appropriate and integrate the reality of our being, but, most of all, to say 'Yes' to the One who calls us the Beloved.

Once you are able to catch a glipmse of this spiritual vision, you can see how the many distinctions that are so central in our daily living lose their meaning. When joy and pain are both opportunities to say 'Yes' to our divine childhood, then they are more alike than they are different. When the experience of being awarded a prize and the experience of being found severely lacking in excellence both offer us a chance to claim our true identity as the Beloved of God, these experiences are more similar than they are different. When feeling lonely and feeling totally connected and at home both hold a call to discover more fully who the God is Whose children we are, those feelings are more united than they are distinct. When, finally, both living and dying bring us closer to the full realization of our spiritual selfhood, they are not the great opposites the world would have us believe; they are, instead, two sides of the same mystery of God's love. Living the spiritual life means living life as one unified reality. The forces of darkness are the forces that split, divide, and set in opposition. The forces of light unite everything. What the demon divides, Spirit unites. The spiritual life counteracts the countless complaints and divisions that pervade our daily life and cause destruction and violence, and it all starts within ourselves, in the way we are thinking and being about any given situation.

There is no clearer way to discern the true presence of God's Spirit than to identify those moments of unification, healing, restoration, and reconciliation, where it previously didn't seem possible. If they are not present, the Spirit is not being invited into your heart. Wherever the Spirit is invited and at work, divisions vanish and inner as well as outer unity prevails."

-- Henri Nouwen, in Life of the Beloved

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And then another Henri love note dropped in my In Box, as they do every Nouwen then, and it fit perfectly, so here it is.

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Choosing Love When It's Hardest

How can someone ever trust in the existence of an unconditional divine love when most, if not all, of what he or she has experienced is the opposite of love - fear, hatred, violence, and abuse?

They are not condemned to be victims! There remains within them, hidden as it may seem, the invitation and possibility to choose love. Many people who have suffered the most horrendous rejections and been subject to the most cruel torture are able to choose love. By choosing love they become witnesses not only to enormous human resiliency but also to the divine love that transcends all human loves. Those who choose, even on a small scale, to love in the midst of hatred, fear, or just total disregard are the people who offer true hope to our world. Seek them out and learn what they know. It is not that complicated, really. They have discovered that their only healing and hope lies in His arms, and that it is not only "good enough," it turns even the most cruel of circumstances into the most surprising of blessings, that you are then invited and naturally want to share.

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If you would like just one stunning example of the above, find this book, and be prepared to weep for hours:

Chosen Insanity

"The happier people can be, the unhappier they are. ... People just can't cope with happiness."

-- Dr. Igor, director of the mental hospital, Villete, in Paulo Coelho's Veronika Decides to Die (a book Anne read and recommended to me, saying that so many I work with would truly love it, and, after having barely started, I believe her.)

"Look, you haven't come here to find out how your daughter is, but to apologize for the inconvenient fact that she tried to commit suicide."

-- Dr. Igor again, this time to Veronika's mother, as she was visiting Villete for the first time after her daughter's failed suicide attempt and was sharing with him how she couldn't possibly understand why Veronika would have done such a thing, with all that she and her husband had done and provided for her

"There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. If Orr was crazy, he could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did ask, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle.
'That's some catch, that catch-22,' he observed.
'It's the best there is,' Doc Daneeka agreed."

-- from the movie, "Catch-22", based on the 1961 best-selling novel by Joseph Heller, where Doc Daneeka explains why he cannot ground Yossarian or Orr due to insanity

[Major Sanderson:] "You have a morbid aversion to dying. You ... probably resent the fact that you're at war and might get your head blown off any second."

"I more than resent it, sir. I'm absolutely incensed."

"You have deep-seated survival anxieties. And you don't like bigots, bullies, snobs, or hypocrites. Subconsciously there are many people you hate."

"Consciously, sir, consciously," Yossarian corrected in an effort to help. "I hate them consciously."

"You're antagonistic to the idea of being robbed, exploited, degraded, humiliated or deceived. Misery depresses you. Ignorance depresses you. Persecution depresses you. Violence depresses you. Slums depress you. Greed depresses you. Crime depresses you. Corruption depresses you. You know, it wouldn't surprise me if you're a manic-depressive! So, you admit you're crazy, don't you?"

-- another wacky scene from the movie, "Catch-22", based on the 1961 best-selling novel by Joseph Heller

Thought: The psychiatrist's logic is ridiculously flawed. He names things commonly accepted as terribly objectionable in society - like death, bullies, misery, violence, and corruption - and sees Yossarian as crazy for not simply accepting them.

"Modern man must descend the spiral of his own absurdity to the very lowest point; only then can he look beyond it. It is obviously impossible to get around it, jump over it, or simply avoid it."

-- Vaclav Havel

In the sphere of the intellect, absurdity and perversity remain the masters of the world, and their dominion is suspended only for brief glimpses of truth at the outer limits of reason."

-- Arthur Schoepenhauer

"The irrationality of a thing is no argument against its existence, rather a condition of it."

-- Friedrich Nietszche

So, if you want to better understand the absurd notion of Catch-22, here is the ultimate example: that only by dying can you truly live. If you desperately need to live, and put all of your focus on protecting your life, you will not know how to really live, and you will die. But if you consciously choose to die, you will thereby learn how to live, freeing yourself to do so. In other words, "if you have a concern for your own safety in the face of worldly dangers that are real and immediate, then you are experiencing a process of a rational mind. If you're crazy, you could be totally free of such concerns. All you have to do is step outside them, in faith; and as soon as you did step outside them, you would no longer be crazy and would have full freedom to fly whenever you chose to. Now you would be crazy to attempt flying and totally sane if you refused to, but if you were sane you would quite naturally fly. If you flew, then you were crazy and didn't have to; but if you didn't want to you were totally sane and had to try."

Ha ha! Isn't life's absurdity delightful! Dive in and explore. And on the other side of it, with all drama removed, is peace.



Yes, sometimes "running away from" is really "running to" - isn't that interesting? For example, running away from my bad habits to His healthfulness, from my blind unconsciousness to His awareness and insight (even when the "seeing" is, at least temporarily, painful), from my burden and "responsibilities" to receptivity of His free and perfect gifts, from the world's chaos and madness to His calm clarity and cohesiveness. If that makes me insane, so be it; I am blissfully crazy.