Constipation and God's plan

 I had surgery last week and used narcotics for 3 days which has constipated me something awful.  This week my meditations have been back on Lao Tzu.  I focused on these phrases:

    The Tao is an empty vessel; it is used but never filled. 

            Oh unfathomable source of ten thousand things!

and

     Oh hidden deep but ever present! I do not know from whence it comes.

              It is the forefather of the ancestors.

So I meditated on "The Tao" or "The Way".  This concept is akin to God saying, " I am the alpha and the omega." He was here before our ancestors, before the earth; mind blowing!  [ The narcotics may have helped a bit!]  And this all powerful, unfathomable being wants to have a relationship with me; again mindblowing.  

The more I meditated the more I realized this being has a plan for the world and for us.  With our free will we can fight it with wars, killing and selfishness but His plan will come to fruition in the end. It is like constipation.  I like to think I am in control of my own bowels.  I can willfully take drugs to change the speed of the colon either working with or against God's plan.  I can control the external sphincter of the colon.  I can move my colon where I want but in the end the colon is going to function the way God intended it to function as part of His plan and stuff is going to come out in the end!  

So I think  we will be happiest if we realize God has a plan and try to plug into that plan.  We do this by trying to do God's will.  In the East this is finding "The Way".  God's plan is good for us and good for the universe.  We just have to be humble enough to find it and then have the courage to help execute it.  Easier said then done I know!

Pax

Joe

Talking less

 Very busy week; I only meditated once this week.  It was a section from Loyola to his followers on how to act.  the first line is:

 Preserve yourself in peace and true humility of the soul,

     keeping silence when silence should be kept and,

              when you must speak,  speaking with discretion.

It made me think of a Yoda type character who never speaks but when he does every word is golden.  My dad was like that.  I am not.  I am getting better at only speaking when " I must".  I am working on listening.  

There is the other side of the coin here too. Some people are uncomfortable speaking up.  Loyola is telling us that there are times that "we must".  As always we should speak with discretion and not give in to gossip and idle chatter.  

Finally, all of the above needs to be grounded in peace and true humility of the soul.  With this as our ground, when we do get into a discussion with someone, it will be for the good of everyone involved.

Pax

 

Joe  

Get it done

 This week I was reading St Ignatius Loyola and ran across this line:

           if you can, do today

                            what you promised tomorrow

He was telling his followers to not shy away from unpleasant tasks but to get them done quickly and to be reliable.  This makes sense because if we are always striving to do God's will with all our work and tasks we should want to get it done.  Part of bringing the kingdom of God a little closer today.  

Now I am definitely a procrastinator when it comes to tasks I don't like.  I am always they will be magically done before I get to them.  Clearly, if they are the right thing to be doing, and are part of God's plan, then I should be doing them promptly and joyfully.  Certainly a mindset I will need to work on but it gives new meaning and status to many things I don't like to do.   I just need to get it done.

Pax

 

Joe 

   

Road trip happiness

Before Covid I mentioned to my son that we should visit every major league baseball stadium.  I thought it would be a good father/son thing to do.  We have gotten to only 5 of the 30 so this year he wanted to add 2 more over the 4th of July weekend to get us back on track.  This would involve driving about 1,000 miles and visiting Pittsburgh and Cincinnati.  With so many variables I downscaled the trip to just Pittsburgh, 3 days and just under 700 miles.  I left the "side trip" to Cincinnati with the 300 mile extra day as an option TBD based on how everything was going.  I was willing to be open to the Holy Spirit but the weather was iffy and I didn't know how I would be feeling physically plus after 32 years of marriage I really hate being away from my wife. 

The morning of day 2, we had yet to go to the game, my son was in the shower so I had a good 15 minutes to meditate.  For some reason instead of thinking about the glory of God [ how I start all my meditations] all I could think about was Cincinnati.  I thought about the 100 reasons it wouldn't work from no research done, to parking problems to traffic to no seats even available if we bothered to look.  Then God spoke to me.  

 You wrote," being a great dad means being present." Do you think all those things really matter?  I am present to you, so you be present for your son.  

Well needless to say we went to Cincinnati. More importantly, I stopped worrying about all the things that could go wrong and focused on being present in the moment with my son.  The schedules didn't have to line up perfectly, if we hit traffic so what? [ We didn't BTW]  I felt joy almost every moment of the here and now for the rest of the trip.  It made me think of a saying from my friend Chuang Zu a disciple of Lao Tzu:

    While there is a certain amount of planning that needs to be done, one can carry it to excess as I had done.  We must do our best to plan and then leave the rest in God's [ or the universe's or Tao's] hands.  The key is not to be so busy that we lose the moments of life like I almost did.  

Pax

 

Joe