It is just one trivial day today. There were no rains. The temperatures are becoming more unbearable now. Here in the Valleys California, we had temperatures of up to 99° in the afternoons before the slow cooling down began at nightfall. Now the temperatures are between 85° and 95° and that is a lot easier to live with.
Life is often a series of challenges outside a monastery and particularly when a former monk has to get something done working hard for his own living and his family's! That is how these rambling writings come to you. Outside the monastery, life is not that easy and is indeed complicated and not many of the brothers inside a monastery realize that until they themselves try to live it outside the Cloister. An ex monk must pass through all these challenges and know how to make life work. The virtue of patience and the virtue of perseverance kick in.
Indeed a challenge for some people in the spiritual life, and for me from time to time, is when we do not feel well physically or emotionally or mentally. Most of us don't have much control over such types of ailment or lack of strength.
All my life I have been blessed with fairly good physical health. There were times when stress made me ill physically. In general, however, I am well-built physically from my years of working out inside and outside the monastery. My emotions are a challenge at times.
Because I come from a fairly troubled family, I learned early on not to deal with emotions and shut down myself and build walls around me and so I had to learn how to deal with emotions as an adult. Mentally I am in good condition. One time I began to daydream from stress, but again was able to deal with that.
For me, life has been a challenge of learning how to keep an approximate balance of all of these kinds of things in my life. One of the great lessons was that none of us can afford to ignore all aspects of life or any of them individually. For instance, I tried to live without emotions for a long time because that protected me from being hurt emotionally. At other times I ignored my physical body, for lots of complex reasons. Mentally I had to learn that what I put into my mind begins to form me. That is still a challenge: reading and thinking in a way that nurtures the spiritual life; staying away from harmful thoughts just as I try to stay away from harmful deeds.
When I was young, I really did not like myself. That dislike had to be cured slowly and is an ongoing process of truly loving myself. Loving myself means trying to do what is right in all areas of my life and accepting myself when I fail. The strongest lesson for me was that I could only love myself if I truly accepted that God loves me just as I am right now. That particular lesson was probably always present in Christian writings, but I personally begin to embrace it only in my early forties, after I came to the monastery Christ in the Desert.
In my life before that reality of God's love came to my attention, I often felt sorry for myself and unfaithful to God. Now I know that I am unfaithful to God in so many, many ways--and yet know that He loves me and forgives me when I turn to Him once more. This awareness of God's love has been the most transformative element in my whole life, even though it has not yet made me a saint!
He is always with me and I am not always with Him. He is always with me and delights when I turn just the smallest attention to His presence. Yet, I don't always do that. He forgives me over and over when I turn to Him and yet at times I still find myself trapped in myself rather than opening my heart for His presence.
Why do I not turn to the Lord completely? Honestly, all I can say is that there is still a resistance within me. I am still attached to my own pleasures and ways of doing things and not attached entirely to Him. I don't always use the normal means of turning to Him. I am not always faithful to prayer. I am not always faithful to my meditative reading of the Scriptures. I am not always willed to struggle against my own faults. Yet I trust in Him completely.
I remember a retreat master in one of the faculty retreats I attended with the San Beda College Grade School faculty asking me one time: do you have a firm purpose of amendment toward all your sins and failings? I said that to the best of my ability, I do have that. Then he asked me: then why are you not yet a saint?
My personal experience of life is that I have been transformed a lot and that God continues to transform me. I cooperate more with God now than I did some years ago, even though I am still weak and sinful. From my point of view, He is transforming me and it is a process and I will be in that process until my death. My heart rejoices in His presence and in the knowledge of His love for me. My heart trusts Him and knows that He will not abandon me no matter how weak and faithless I am.
Thanks be to God.
Indeed a challenge for some people in the spiritual life, and for me from time to time, is when we do not feel well physically or emotionally or mentally. Most of us don't have much control over such types of ailment or lack of strength.
All my life I have been blessed with fairly good physical health. There were times when stress made me ill physically. In general, however, I am well-built physically from my years of working out inside and outside the monastery. My emotions are a challenge at times.
Because I come from a fairly troubled family, I learned early on not to deal with emotions and shut down myself and build walls around me and so I had to learn how to deal with emotions as an adult. Mentally I am in good condition. One time I began to daydream from stress, but again was able to deal with that.
For me, life has been a challenge of learning how to keep an approximate balance of all of these kinds of things in my life. One of the great lessons was that none of us can afford to ignore all aspects of life or any of them individually. For instance, I tried to live without emotions for a long time because that protected me from being hurt emotionally. At other times I ignored my physical body, for lots of complex reasons. Mentally I had to learn that what I put into my mind begins to form me. That is still a challenge: reading and thinking in a way that nurtures the spiritual life; staying away from harmful thoughts just as I try to stay away from harmful deeds.
When I was young, I really did not like myself. That dislike had to be cured slowly and is an ongoing process of truly loving myself. Loving myself means trying to do what is right in all areas of my life and accepting myself when I fail. The strongest lesson for me was that I could only love myself if I truly accepted that God loves me just as I am right now. That particular lesson was probably always present in Christian writings, but I personally begin to embrace it only in my early forties, after I came to the monastery Christ in the Desert.
In my life before that reality of God's love came to my attention, I often felt sorry for myself and unfaithful to God. Now I know that I am unfaithful to God in so many, many ways--and yet know that He loves me and forgives me when I turn to Him once more. This awareness of God's love has been the most transformative element in my whole life, even though it has not yet made me a saint!
He is always with me and I am not always with Him. He is always with me and delights when I turn just the smallest attention to His presence. Yet, I don't always do that. He forgives me over and over when I turn to Him and yet at times I still find myself trapped in myself rather than opening my heart for His presence.
Why do I not turn to the Lord completely? Honestly, all I can say is that there is still a resistance within me. I am still attached to my own pleasures and ways of doing things and not attached entirely to Him. I don't always use the normal means of turning to Him. I am not always faithful to prayer. I am not always faithful to my meditative reading of the Scriptures. I am not always willed to struggle against my own faults. Yet I trust in Him completely.
I remember a retreat master in one of the faculty retreats I attended with the San Beda College Grade School faculty asking me one time: do you have a firm purpose of amendment toward all your sins and failings? I said that to the best of my ability, I do have that. Then he asked me: then why are you not yet a saint?
My personal experience of life is that I have been transformed a lot and that God continues to transform me. I cooperate more with God now than I did some years ago, even though I am still weak and sinful. From my point of view, He is transforming me and it is a process and I will be in that process until my death. My heart rejoices in His presence and in the knowledge of His love for me. My heart trusts Him and knows that He will not abandon me no matter how weak and faithless I am.
Thanks be to God.
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