In Yoke

Be my mirror, able to sort out the thoughts and intentions of my own sullied and sinful heart. Please Lord Christ, liberate me from my own self. By your spirit, help me not to evaluate, judge, or act. Help me to be nothing, so that I may receive something. Save me, Lord, from my own tyrannical ego, my own self, my own tyrannical ego/self -From my own judgments -from my own opinions -from my own feelings about everything, about anything Through your Spirit - enable me to allow your love to guide and control my seemingly always undisciplined emotions. May my own tyrannical emotions, and ego, my own self, may it die.  Like the mystics say, may I “die before I die”.   So that my life and my motives may be “born again”. May my personhood and my “personality” be in direct continuity with your life, your love, your “mind”. For I am created in Your Image.  Who “I am” is a further breathing forth of the eternal and perfect “I AM WHO I A...

God has given us a dark wine so potent that, 
drinking it, we leave the two worlds. God has put into the form of hashish a power
 to deliver the taster from self-consciousness. God has made sleep so 
that it erases every thought. God made Majnun love Layla so much that
 just her dog would cause confusion in him. There are thousands of wines 
that can take over our minds. Don't think all ecstacies
 are the same!
 Jesus was lost in his love for God.
 His donkey was drunk with barley. Drink from the presence of saints,
 not from those other jars. Every object, every being,
 is a jar full of delight. Be a connoisseur,
 and taste with caution. Any wine will get you high.
 Judge like a king, and choose the purest, the ones unadulterated with fear,
 or some urgency about "what's needed." Drink the wine that moves you 
as a camel moves when it's been untied, and is just ambling about. ---------------Mathnawi IV, 2683-96
The Essential Rumi, Coleman Bark...

Living in Wisdom The Bhagavad Gita Passages for Meditation Arjuna : Tell me of those who live in wisdom, Ever aware of the Self, O Krishna; How do they talk, how sit, how move about? Sri Krishna: They live in wisdom Who see themselves in all and all in them, Whose love for the Lord of Love has consumed Every selfish desire and sense craving Tormenting the heart. Not agitated By grief or hankering after pleasure, They live free from lust and fear and anger. Fettered no more by selfish attachments, They are not elated by good fortune Nor depressed by bad. Such are the seers. Even as a tortoise draws in its limbs, The wise can draw in their senses at will. Aspirants abstain from sense pleasures, But they still crave for them. These cravings all Disappear when they see the Lord of Love. For even of those who tread the path, The stormy senses can sweep off the mind. But they live in wisdom who subdue them And keep their minds ever absorbed in me. Whe...

  Fr. Richard Rohr expresses the almost indescribable meaning of "The Christ". It is Universal. I resonate with his insight into how he views the second coming of Christ. Fr. Rohr:   Christ is the radiant light of God’s glory and the perfect copy of God’s nature, sustaining the universe by God’s powerful command.  —Hebrews 1:3, Jerusalem Bible Christ is not Jesus’ last name. The word  Christ  is a title, meaning the Anointed One, which we so consistently applied to Jesus that to us it became like a name. But a study of Scripture, Tradition, and the experience of many mystics reveals a much larger, broader, and deeper meaning to “the Christ.”  Frankly, it is a metaphysical concept more than a religious one, although almost all people today would see it as a religious name for Jesus. The above passage from Hebrews says that Christ “sustains the universe.” Christ is a religious concept because it can be used to describe rea...

I must confess a "grandfather like" sense of presence in the Spirit this morning. Because of the miraculous messaging system that is Facebook, I can more ably sense more accurately what I have felt after having been able to be mobile and agile for the past three years.  For those of you who have known me for years, you may not have realized that for about 9 years, I was blessed( along with Leslie) to have served as a college parent/small group docent at Calvary Baptist Church in Waco, most of the time in the Camelot period when Julie PR was pastor.(1998-2007-and then intermittently on to 2009).  I was also being taught by my spiritual director, Burt Burleson, about the wider scope of the Spirit’s progressive voice. During this period of time, I was "the college minister" to so many individuals. The people I was blessed to have met during this time where little Baylor Bear “cubs”—college students, who were drawn to this community because of the compelling ...

Fr. Richard Rohr spoke to me in his post this morning. The Ark of the Covenant Monday, June 27, 2016 In his book The Soul's Journey into God , Franciscan theologian Bonaventure uses a most wonderful Old Testament metaphor to describe the contemplative mind; he says it is like the Ark of the Covenant housed within Israel's temple. Exodus 25 describes in great detail how the Ark was to be built. It was first of all a kind of traveling temple so the Israelites could carry God around with them, wherever they went, until they finally settled the Ark in Solomon's permanent temple. But it didn't really hold God, which would have been idolatrous. The Ark of the Covenant was instead the "place-holder" for God--a brilliant metaphor! The open space above the Ark of the Covenant was rightly called the "Throne of Mercy." Two golden cherubs protected the empty space, directly facing each other. "In that space," God...

To what do you pay attention? Can you see your inner and outer attention as an investment in your own Reality?  Are others drawn to you because you do focus your attention their way?  Do you “pay” attention to people? To their biographical identity?  The chit chat, surface level conversations—is usually based on another person’s biographical identity. “ Where are you from? where did you grow up? where did you go to school? for which team do you pull for? what do you do for a living? Who’s your daddy?” ( ad infinitum) As life proceeds, and the scroll of the present continues to be advanced into our view,  we hardly ever get the option as friends/observers who are learning from one another—of moving past the issues and identifications of our biographical identity to focus on the higher and nobler causes of identification and attention.  This is what Helminski calls our Functional Role in life.  I am convicted today that -First, The Cre...