let it snow, let it snow, ...

 

Copy and pasted below is this morning's meditation from Fr Richard Rohr's center for action and contemplation. With the week's theme of "Integrating the Negative," today's post is "family related," which somewhat escapes me because the writer's family situation is obviously quite different from mine; though I have no illusions that I'm considered wise by my family of beloved ones who think they know me best! 

But I do apply it to life in general in that over the course of my life there have been many who called me "wise," though, again, I know otherwise, and so did they as they got to know me better. 

And if they see me as "good," I know better than that as well, fully understanding Jesus' comment to the man who called him "good," "Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone." 

But to call myself back on course, what I get out of today's meditation is its wisdom of facing, living into, and seeking beauty in "What Is" as opposed to What I might prefer. It could be an oblique allusion to what I watched on television yesterday and into the evening, and expect to be watching into the foreseeable future, but it is not, it really isn't. 

Well, maybe. Somewhat.

As I look out across St Andrews Bay, over Shell Island, and into the Gulf of America.

It could also refer to today's wretched weather forecast of wind, freezing rain, and snow. Yes, dammit all to hell, SNOW, the "blue" weather in the weather radar map above is snow. But look: schools are closed today and tomorrow, so I don't have to worry myself to death about Kristen driving from Across the Bridge into town to the school where she teaches, so that's beauty, a beautiful development. With loving best hopes for those who do have to go outside today, I'll be able to see the beauty of the miserable weather from right here in 7H. Assuming the heater continues to keep the place nice and warm, I'll look out the window across St Andrews Bay and enjoy creation. "Hail, wind, and rain, loud blowing snowstorms, sing to the Lord a new song!" 

One ship is due in today, maybe I'll get to watch her glide by, seemingly just out of reach! Our cars are below and safe, though one is aged and the other is aging! Linda is here and both of us are in reasonable health for late octogenarians. My January shipment of coffee club coffee has arrived. We have interesting cream soup of crab and shrimp in mind for later, though I intend to go up the street before the weather goes crazy, to buy oysters to add to it. O beautiful, for spacious skies, I have a beautiful life, with beautiful company, in a beautiful place. The beauty is easy to see, fun to behold, and it's all good. May Jesus tarry another day or so!

May you find yourself in the meditation below, as one who's mature enough to accept, accommodate, and find beauty in life as it is.

RSF&PTL

T89&c

Spiritual teacher Mirabai Starr considers how our imperfect families and relationships are opportunities to practice divine love, acceptance, and compassion: 

It’s hard to give up our fantasies of a life where beauty is built in and we don’t have to work at finding it. It’s easy to recognize the presence of the sacred in the saintly hospice chaplain who turns your mother’s deathbed into a temple…. But what about your boring job, your addicted partner, your hometown that feels more like a strip mall than a community? What about your dining room table at dinner time?  

One of the things it means to be an ordinary mystic is to bow at the feet of your everyday existence, with its disappointments and dramas, its peaceful mornings and luminous nights, and to honor yourself just as you are…. A mystic finds the magic in the midst of the nitty-gritty, the crusty spaghetti sauce pot in the sink and the crocus poking out of a spring snowfall, the unsigned divorce papers on the kitchen table and the results of your latest blood work on your computer screen.  

I know that’s not always easy. I am continually challenged to stop arguing with reality and instead soften into what is. For instance, my students may think I’m wise, but my kids seem to think I’m a dork. I don’t love this disconnect. Like you, maybe, I set myself up with an array of preconceived notions about the kind of family I would like to make, and then beat … myself [up] when things don’t work out the way I envisioned. 

Through accepting reality, we find a greater capacity to love what is.  

Over time, I learned to let go of my fantasy of the perfect family and to find beauty, meaning, and wholeness in the heart of reality. Unpredictable, ever-changing, humiliating, and humbling reality. I began to take a look at the white supremacy embedded in my liberal self-image, noticing the odor of a white savior complex rising from my resentment that my brown children did not appreciate all I had done for them. Eventually, I even came to love unlovable me, against all odds.  

Chances are, if you are a parent, whether adoptive or biological, you too have experienced the collapse of your parenting fantasies. You also have received an open invitation to accept the kids you have and forgive the parent you are, with a degree of humility bordering on humiliation and a dash of humor that can sometimes carry maniacal overtones…. 

This is the human condition. And at the very center of your own shattered dream, the face of the sacred flashes and glimmers. The holy disaster is a beckoning. Come. Enter the fire of love and let it remake you again and again. To be an ordinary, everyday mystic is to take your rightful place on the throne of what is.