“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]
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.
In a vision I heard this clearly whispered: Study those who sing the most, but are free of criticism or praise. Following that advice, things turned out just as I suspected: Istarted spending
more time with birds.
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.