faith

This post is for…

/ Bill Schulz / 2 Comments

…anyone who is struggling with depression, addiction; anyone who may be giving up, suicidal or self-harming.

I know you. I think I know what you are going through. I’ve been there.

Nine years ago on December 22, 2016, a cold, icy day, with freezing rain pouring down, I pulled into my garage thinking it would be a good time for me to die there. I was so turned around and struggling to recover from addictions, the darkness of the winter solstice seemed to have found a home within me.

After what felt like hours, I realized that my plan was selfish and would only serve to hurt the people–family, friends–who had been caring for me, carrying me until I could get back on my feet. I reached out to people, wise friends and family, who gave me good orderly direction. They told me to listen to the professionals who, without hesitation, were there to guide me.

I spent Christmas and several days after in a mental hospital, a place where I found rest and a sense of peace that I hadn’t felt for several years. I’m not saying that the path was easy, far from it. But I was on a different path in a different direction.

Kenosis is a theological term. In short, it means that we empty our own will and become entirely receptive to God’s will for us. The God that I came to know and hear was not a Catholic or Christian God, not Allah, not Yahweh, not Buddha but an internal light that shone on my place in the unified field of existence.

Over time I learned to listen to the wisdom of others who had lived through similar experiences, no longer trying to control the direction of my life.

So today I bless you and pray you can make the turn to life, the life you are meant to live.

If you are interested in a completely anonymous chat, please contact me.

My world in December 2016:

My world today

On this day when the earth begins to turn towards the light, I wish you peace and all good things.

Evening by Rainer Maria Rilke

/ Bill Schulz / Leave a comment


The sky puts on the darkening blue coat
held for it by a row of ancient trees;
you watch: and the lands grow distant in your sight,
one journeying to heaven, one that falls;

and leave you, not at home in either one,
not quite so still and dark as the darkened houses,
not calling to eternity with the passion of what becomes a star each night, and rises;

and leave you (inexpressibly to unravel)
your life, with its immensity and fear,
so that, now bounded, now immeasurable,
it is alternately stone in you and star.

Translated by Stephen Mitchell

It is not complicated to lead the spiritual life. But…

/ Bill Schulz / 1 Comment

It is not complicated to lead the spiritual life. But it is difficult. We are blind and subject to a thousand illusions. We must expect to be making mistakes almost all the time. We must be content to fall repeatedly and to begin again to try to deny ourselves, for the love of God.

It is when we are angry at our own If that is all our self-denial amounts to, our mistakes will never help us. that we tend most of all to deny ourselves for love of ourselves. We want to shake off the hateful thing that has humbled us. In our rush to escape the humiliation of our own mistakes, we run head first into the opposite error, seeking comfort and compensation. And so we spend our lives running back and forth from one attachment to another.

If that is all our self-denial amounts to, our mistakes will never help us.
The thing to do when you have made a mistake is not to give up doing what you were doing and start something altogether new, but to start over again with the thing you began badly and try, for the love of God, to do it well.
– Thomas Merton, from The Sign of Jonas