Mike Paschall . com

I got up at 4:00 a.m. this morning. So many things swirling in my mind. The hand to hand combat I witnessed last nite made me tense. I did sleep, but it was condensed. So, I got up. I thought I needed to study. I do need to study, but that isn’t why I got up that early.  This is why I got up. This is why I needed to be awake…

This, then, seems to be the work of the Spirit: to keep you vulnerable to life and love itself and to resist all that destroys the Life Flow. Notice that the major metaphors for the Spirit are always dynamic, energetic, and moving: elusive wind, descending dove, falling fire, and flowing water. Spirit-led people never stop growing and changing and recognizing the new moment of opportunity. How strange to think that so much of religion became worship of the status quo and a neurotic fear of failure. It does make sense, though, when we consider that the ego hates and fears change and failure.

Rohr continues,

What, then, is the path to holiness? It’s the same as the path to wholeness. And we are never “there” yet. We are always just in the river. Don’t try to push the river or make the river happen; it is already happening, and you cannot stop it. All you can do is recognize it, enjoy it, and ever more fully allow it to carry you. —Richard Rohr

I forget about the river sometimes. I seem to be able to critique constantly how we dam up the river, forge, harness or pollute the river… but rarely do I just admire and refresh myself in those mysteriously majestic waters. You catch my drift?

Our refusal to be vulnerable thwarts the ever-so naked plunge into the river’s life flow. Our fists are too curled. Our breathing too rapid. Exposure is so dangerously scandalous to our protection mechanisms.

The river doesn’t require us to change… to get it right… attain perfection. We only have to muster the courage to enter. The river does the rest.

Live every day inside this magnificent truth: GOD LOVES US ALL!

Mike