watch your thoughts transform reality

When you feel anger or resentment, ask God to help you feel it, learn from it, and then release it. Ask Him to bless those who you feel anger toward. Ask Him to bless you too.

When you feel fear, ask Him to take it from you. When you feel misery, force gratitude. When you feel deprived, know that there is enough.

When you feel ashamed, reassure yourself that who you are is okay. You are good enough.

When you doubt your timing or your present position in life, assure yourself that all is well; you are right where you’re meant to be. Reassure yourself that others are too.

When you ponder the future, tell yourself that it will be good. When you look back at the past, relinquish regrets.

When you notice problems, affirm there will be a timely solution and a gift from the problem.

When you resist feelings or thoughts, practice acceptance. When you feel discomfort, know it will pass. When you identify a want or a need, tell yourself it will be met.

When you worry about those you love, ask God to protect and care for them. When you worry about yourself, ask Him to do the same.

When you think about others, think love. When you think about yourself, think love.

Then watch your thoughts transform reality.

Melody Beattie – The Language of Letting Go

These Exhaling Sounds

     Is the sweetness of the cane sweeter
than the one who made the canefield?

Behind the beauty of the moon is the moonmaker.
There is intelligence inside the ocean’s intelligence
feeding our love like an invisible waterwheel.

There is a skill to making cooking oil from animal fat.
Consider now the knack that makes eyesight
from the shining jelly of your eyes.

Dawn comes up like a beautiful meal being served.
We are hungry and distracted, so in love with the cook.

Don’t just be proud of your mustache
as you drive three donkeys down the road.

Instead of gemstones, love the jeweler.
Enough of these exhaling sounds.

Let the darling finish this
who turns listening into seeing.

– Rumi (translated by Coleman Barks)

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Photo: Runaround Pond, Maine – June 2019

Should God expect any less of us…

The desire we must possess, according to Bonaventure, is essentially the desire of the heart for the good. What would Bonaventure say to a contemporary world that upholds money, wealth, power, and prestige as the principal desires? His answer would probably be that given to the Poor Clare Nun: desire God alone. Pure desire is what Bonaventure teaches and his advice on how to strive for this is simple: one must turn one’s entire heart, mind, and soul to God. Since that which brings happiness and peace rests in God, only the desire for God can lead to happiness and peace. In the incarnation, God has turned his entire being, all that he has and all that he is, to us. Should God expect any less of us than what God has given and continues to give to us?
– —from the book Crucified Love: Bonaventure’s Mysticism of the Crucified Christ by Ilia Delio, OSF

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