It's All Good

I am not an overly 'religious' person, in some ways of meaning... I believe that people are smart enough to follow Good for Good's sake, and Good will take care of them.  Good and God in this way are interchangeable, to a degree.  If you do Good, God will take care of you.  This doesn't mean that you have to be a goody-two-shoes, but you really should at least follow your own conscience. 


We've been studying Meister Eckhart, who was ex-communicated from the Catholic church for heresy, shortly after his death a few hundred years ago... Many of the things he said and did were contrary to the powers-that-be of the day... and made people angry.  He talked, as a priest, to the ordinary folks in their own tongue... In ways that they could understand... He said things like that they could find God within themselves...The Church didn't like that - their path was through the priest...

And truthfully, we can all look for God "out there" but .. he's "in here", and has been all along...  If we can't find Peace, how can we find Him?  If we can't look in the mirror and say I love you, I respect you, how can we expect Him to look at us and say those things?  I am not saying He wouldn't - I am saying that at some deep level, we believe that he couldn't or wouldn't.  I lived with it for years... He was Out There somewhere, and I couldn't even see myself, so how could He see me?

We have to set aside the concept of looking for that person or thing that's over there, invisibly watching us from the sofa, and take a few quiet moments and look deep inside our own selves.  Most of us are scared to death to do that, but hey - if you believe in the Man, you believe He doesn't make mistakes... and if he made You, then You are one of his perfect creations...  And if you are, then you can find some part of Him down in there - even if somehow life's buried it under many layers of 'stuff' that you may never hope to wade through.

When I grew to the point that I could look in the mirror with some semblance of self respect, I began to see the Good in me... that is, the God in me.  (side note - I am not a God... just an ordinary human... I am referring here to the spark of divinity that is present inside of us all - the good center of our soul that we bury very deeply underneath all the layers.  (Yes, Shrek fans, I AM an ogre)).

Anyhow, I am going off on a tangent, which I occasionally do.  I wanted to quote something from one of his sermons:

It is my custom to say - and it is a fact - that every day we shout and plead in the Lord's Prayer:  "Thy will be done!" - and when his will is done, we grumble and are not pleased with it.  Whatever he does, we should be glad, and those who are will always live in peace.  Sometimes you think or say "Ah - but it would have been so much better otherwise," or "if that hadn't happened, this would have turned out so much better."  As long as you see it that way, there is no peace for you.  You must take everything for the best. 

My son and I had a chat a week or so ago about 'something bad' in his past.  I made reference to what I supposed it might have been... and he said he couldn't believe he had made such a horrible mistake.

And I have this vision of a life that goes along, in a humdrum fashion, little ups and downs, but essentially neither good nor bad:

This could be called 'drifting along'.



Then one day when we least expect it, the nose-dive occurs:

Something happens to take us down a few notches... It could be our own fault, or someone elses, or no ones... but none of that even matters.  It is what it is.  It is life.  Life happens...  And usually, for a reason, even if we don't understand it.

So sometimes this 'Crash Boom' period may go on for hours, days, months, even years... We slowly but surely climb out of this pit... And if we earnestly try to do so, we'll be finding ourselves, maybe rather suddenly, in a new place:















As I told my son... If he hadn't done the 'crash boom' and learned a lot of stuff along the way, he'd never have reached the place where he is today.  He's still got a long ways to go, but then so do the rest of us.... But what happened then was then, it isn't today.  In his situation, that was past history.  It was dead.  Today is what today is.  Dwelling on the past accomplished nothing... Looking ahead to the future is practical.  But Being in today, with it's ups and downs, accepting that it isn't all your fault or anyone else's... it's just LIFE.  Part of being human.

That's what it's all about.  Accepting that "It's All Good."