Blog Posts Where Race is an Aspect of the Themes
This is my 12th and last blog for 2023. I also wrote 12 in 2022. The inspiration to write these occurs in the last 6 months of the year. I will wait to see what occurs in the last 6 months of 2023.
Thank you for reading my website content and the blogs you have read. I attempt to only write stories or ideas that may convey meaning. As earlier talked about ideas for me may represent a spiritual reality or a spiritual being. Please allow me to share a few personal thoughts.
Over the course of my life, I journaled every year for the last 50 years. On retiring 2.5 year ago I re-read all my journals. Some were dark and I discarded them. Some had nuggets of wisdom from various therapists I worked with over the years. Therapy has been one of the great gifts in this journey. Understanding and dealing with past traumas and life experiences frequently is best worked through with the wisdom of a professional. I am not a therapy junkie. I am delighted to quit therapy and observe small growth and even pat myself on the back. Then something arises at work or in relationships and I re-start to receive outside support and wisdom.
My Father was a self described alcoholic. He quit drinking at age 56 and had 32 years of sobriety before passing at age 88. Because in MN I was able to learn about alcoholism as a disease, I pestered my father for years about his drinking. When he quit and was realizing the spiritual benefits of AA he was profusely grateful and wrote me numerous letters of gratitude.
Each year on the start of the New Year I wrote resolutions like many of us. 3 resolutions were always present:
- Drink less – I drank very little,
- Exercise more – I almost always exercised 3 to 4 times a week,
- Spend more time in meditation.
As of 2021 on retirement I now:
- Do not drink at all,
- I exercise almost every day,
- I meditate each day.
What a gift! Fortunately, at 72 I have a modicum of physical, emotional, and spiritual health.
On retiring in 2021 I lived with the question: Not my will, but Thy Will Be Done? The answer came – just write. Hence the blog. These blogs for 2 years have focused a lot on stories and spirituality. Yet we all go through emotional issues with family, work, and relationships. Therapy has been an integral part for me being able to get through many of life’s bumps in order to find meaning and solace.
I want to end with a few small gifts. Below are edited excerpts from pages 153 and 154 of Thomas Merton’s book “Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander.” These pages amongst many others led me to go meet him. Click here to read a past blog post on meeting Thomas Merton.
Thomas Merton’s Fourth and Walnut Experience
Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander pp 153 – 154
In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness, …
I have the immense joy of being a human being, a member of a race in which God Himself became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now that I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun. …
Then it was as if I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, … the core of their reality, the person that each one is in God’s eyes. If only they could all see themselves as they really are. If only we could see each other that way all the time.
There would be no more war, no more hatred, no more cruelty, no more greed … I suppose the big problem would be that we would fall down and worship each other. But this cannot be seen, only believed and “understood” by a peculiar gift.
… At the center of our being is a point of nothingness … a point of pure truth, a point or spark which belongs entirely to God, which is never at our disposal, from which God disposes of our lives, … This little point of nothingness and of absolute poverty is the pure glory of God in us. It is so to speak His name written in us … It is like a pure diamond, blazing with the invisible light of heaven. It is in everybody, and if we could see it we would see these billions of points of light coming together in the face and blaze of a sun that would make all the darkness and cruelty of life vanish completely … I have no program for this seeing. It is only given. But the gate of heaven is everywhere.
Following is a favorite spiritual idea/being from Rudolf Steiner’s book: “Guidance in Esoteric Training.”
More Brilliant than the Sun
Purer than the Snow
Finer than the Blue Sky
Is the Self
The spirit in MY Heart
This Self am I
I am this Self
I continue to live daily with: Not my will, But Thy Will Be Done? I pray we will see and experience each other as the Divine Sun’s that we are!