The Great You

October 31, 2019 / Bill Schulz / Leave a comment

All of us are much larger than the good or bad stories we tell about ourselves. Don’t get caught in “my” story, my hurts, my agenda. It’s too small. It’s not the whole you, not the Great You. It’s not the great river. It’s not where life is really going to happen. No wonder the Spirit is described as “flowing water” and as “a spring inside you” (John 4:10-14) or, as it states at the end of the Bible, as a “river of life” (Revelation 22:1-2). Your life is not really about “you.” It is part of a much larger stream called God. The separate self is finally an illusion for those who stay on the journey of prayer.

– Richard Rohr

The Great Reality

October 31, 2019October 31, 2019 / Bill Schulz / Leave a comment

Deep down in every man, woman, and child is the fundamental idea of God. We can find the Great Reality deep down within us. And when we find it, it changes our whole attitude toward life.

– Alcoholics Anonymous

Here’s one for Galway Kinnell

October 30, 2019 / Bill Schulz / Leave a comment

Midnight Bucolic

Love the jacket.
Love the scarf,
red, isn’t it?

Is this Vermont?
The sheep nodding
in the valleys.

Put on your boots,
the ones like Dad’s.

The leaves just tinkle
as we walk by.

Hey friend
who taught me
nightmares,

is it me
or is it
the camera angle,

when you sit there,
jacket hung
on its Shaker
peg,

you look like Frost
in his barn
listening to the hens
gaggling all night.

shame & guilt

October 19, 2019 / Bill Schulz / Leave a comment

Jesus was concerned with the healing of human shame and human guilt. He was always taking away people’s shame, always taking away their low self-esteem, and reintroducing them to the village, the temple, the priesthood, and their families. He was healing relationships even more than just healing bodies. And now many would say that we (the Church/Christians) have ended up being the chief purveyors of guilt and shame, instead of healing it and transforming it into life and light. We have decided, for some reason, that it is better to remind people of their unworthiness and brokenness, instead of their potential to be temples of the Holy Spirit. It became taught and learned helplessness in far too many cases. – Richard Rohr, OFM

the light of truth

October 15, 2019 / Bill Schulz / Leave a comment

The light of truth burns without a flicker in the depths of a house that is shaken with storms of passion and of fear. “You will not fear the terror of the night.” And so I go on trying to walk on the waters of the breakdown. Worse than ever before and better than ever before. It is always painful and reassuring when he who I am not is visibly destroyed by the hand of God in order that the simplicity in the depths of me, which is God’s image, may be set free to serve God in peace. Sometimes in the midst of all this I am tremendously happy, and I have never in my life begun to be so grateful for God’s mercy.
– Thomas Merton, Journal entry, October 22, 1952

(photo: Monastery of Christ in The Desert, NM – September 2018)

clay feet

October 14, 2019October 14, 2019 / Bill Schulz / Leave a comment

Everyone has clay feet. It does not matter how far up the ladder of supposed holiness they might be, the clay feet that belong to the human condition are still there. We have to depend on God to keep them from cracking or breaking into pieces.
– Fr. Thomas Keating – from Divine Therapy and Addiction

accept, change, know

October 11, 2019 / Bill Schulz / Leave a comment

a puddle in the pig lot

October 10, 2019October 10, 2019 / Bill Schulz / Leave a comment

Brilliant and gorgeous day, bright sun, breeze making all the leaves and high brown grass shine. Singing of the wind in the cedars. Exultant day, in which a puddle in the pig lot shines like precious silver.

Finally I am coming to the conclusion that my highest ambition is to be what I already am. That I will never fulfill my obligation to surpass myself unless I first accept myself – and, if I accept myself fully in the right way, I will already have surpassed myself.
– Thomas Merton, journal entry – October 2, 1958