Friday, March 9, 2012

March 9th

Today I read this in Richard Rohr's daily meditation:

"Struggling with one’s own shadow self, facing interior conflicts and moral failures, undergoing rejections and abandonment, daily humiliations, experiencing any kind of abuse or your own clear limitations, even accepting that some people hate you: All of these are gateways into deeper consciousness and the flowering of the soul. These experiences give us a privileged window into the naked (read “undefendable”) now, because impossible contradictions are staring us in the face. Much-needed healing, forgiving what is, weeping over and accepting one’s interior poverty and contradictions are normally necessary to invite a person into the contemplative mind. (Watch Paul do this in a classic way from the depths of Romans 7:14 to the heights of his mystic poetry in most of Romans 8.)

In facing the contradictions that we ourselves are, we become living icons of both/and. Once we can accept mercy, it is almost natural to hand it on to others. You become a conduit of what you yourself have received."

From The Naked Now: Learning to See as the Mystics See, pp. 125-126

That's what I've been struggling with the past few days. I'm learning, little by little, not to struggle at all, but to simply rest my entire self, with all my ragged loose ends, in the hands of Christ.

Doing that is good for the soul.

It makes me think of this passage:

"Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy-laden and overburdened, and I will cause you to rest.

[I will ease and relieve and refresh your souls.]

Take My yoke upon you and learn of Me, for I am gentle (meek) and humble (lowly) in heart, and you will find rest-

(relief and ease and refreshment and recreation and blessed quiet)

for your souls.

For My yoke is wholesome-

(useful, good--not harsh, hard, sharp, or pressing, but comfortable, gracious, and pleasant),

and My burden is light and easy to be borne."

Matthew 11:28-30, Amplified Bible