January 13, 2022
Thought for Today
“We are not bitter, not because we have forgiven but
because there is so much to be done that we cannot afford to waste valuable time
and resources on anger.”
Govan Mbeki
[Johannesburg Weekly
South Africa]
Thursday, January 13, 2022
Wednesday, January 12, 2022
January 12, 2022
PRAYER AND ILLUSION
Spending time in prayer can be a great illusion.
People who pray or people who don’t pray, as well as
people who make inward fun of people who pray, can be
involved with a great illusion.
People who pray have a unique opportunity to be in touch with this illusion.
People can do that.
Better time with God can do that.
Better becoming quiet, becoming
still, becoming empty, becoming closer to God, can help me see who I am in
comparison to God.
People who become close to God can say some strange and
nasty things about themselves when this happens, One reads words like “worm” or “nothing” or “lowest of the low,” or “l am
the greatest sinner”, etc.
A pebble looking at a mountain feels small. A drop of
water falling into the ocean gets lost. A great violinist is not noticed. It’s the music – the opening of one’s ears
and eyes and hearts – becoming lost in the river of the music – as it flows –
and we are all becoming one.
It's the same as being in the desert. One can experience illusion … or maya or feelings that one is lost.
On a mountain, in the ocean, in the desert, one can
become face to face with God. One can
also become face to face with the devil.
The fight is on.
Temptations are illusions – illusions to greatness and to
grandeur - to see rocks as bread or the
ability to leap to greatness without any effort. The temptations Jesus was
hit with in the desert can hit us as well.
The desert tells us all. It’s death without water.
Nothing grows. Sand can become
the stuff of silicone chips – but that takes work – work – and the cooperation
of thousands. Sand can become soil for food – lots of food if we are willing to
work and cooperate with nature.
Pausing to pray – to get away from it all, to be in the presence
of God - can still turn us some of these things to reality – but beware:
illusions can remain illusions – and we don’t even know it.
© Andy Costello, Reflections 2022
January 12, 2022
Thought for Today
of criticism or praise.
just as I suspected:
Hafiz
A Year With Hafiz,
Page 115,
translateld by
Davide Ladinsky
Tuesday, January 11, 2022
A FATHER’S PRAYER
A father wonders about his kids.
Different: at times he often worries.
“Am I treating this one fair?” “Am I treating this one too easy?”
He doesn’t tell anyone about these worries. Well once and
a while, he mentions it to his wife or a
friend at work.
Television stories of other people’s kids – or what happens
to the son or one or the guys at work trigger these thoughts – or sometimes it’s
just a boring basketball game or a hated meeting – and off he goes with his
wondering and his worrying.
These become his prayers – the down deep prayers – that he
doesn’t even know he’s praying about.
And they slip out without his even knowing it in his
behaviors – a surprise trip for a hamburger with his kid – or a $20 dollar bill
slipped quietly into a shirt pocket when his kid is going on a school outing –
a man’s way of saying, “I love you.”
Then the teenage years appear. Both he and the kids are
older and different. Distancing is happening.
It’s all part of the package of being human.
The worries and the wonderings become more scary: drugs,
sex, car accidents, the wrong crowd….
The possibilities of a new way of doing life pops to the
surface.
Fathers begin saying things to their wives they never said
before. Conversations and listening become
longer.
Fathers begin to say prayers to God they never heard themselves
saying before.
And sometimes teenagers see their parents holding each
other – going for walks or a hamburger – saying a prayer together.
Each is beginning to get a greater awareness of what God has
gifted them with: family, faith, future, questions, more wonders and more
worries.
© Andy Costello, Reflections 2022
Monday, January 10, 2022
January 10, 2022
EXPANSION AND CONTRACTION
The urge to pray and the urge to sin both seem to be ways
of expanding ourselves – to become greater, better, bigger, more than we feel we are.
When I feel small, when I feel all alone, when I feel
empty, I feel less.
It’s then I want to feel bigger, better, richer, fuller,
more than I am.
So I better reach out for God in prayer – who then sends
me – to love my neighbor.
Or I do the opposite: I try to put down my neighbor, so I
can use him or her as a pedestal.
Or I use my neighbor – or cheat my neighbor – or steal
from my neighbor.
Paradoxically, when I pray or when I sin, I contract. I
shrink. I become smaller.
This religious stuff is always tricky like this.
When I commit a real good – or should I say – real bad – sin,
I end up humbled, rejected, cut down, and reduced.
When I reach out for God, I meet greatness - but end up feeling small – empty in God’s presence.
But I also can now fit through the eye of the needle.
I can now become filled up on the other side with the
riches of the kingdom.
Jesus taught all this.
Jesus is God – and emptied himself – when he became one
of us and emptied himself even more by becoming our servant. [Cf. Philippians
2: 5b-11]
He was put down, contradicted, crucified, for what he was
telling us to do – to do the same thing – but now Christ fills the universe.
© Andy Costello, Reflections 2022
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