A Pastor friend of mine in his 80’s is an avid reader. Whenever I see him I ask for a recommendation. The latest is Falling Upward by Richard Rohr. His writing gave me a new perspective on trials.
Isaiah 8:14 God is both sanctuary and stumbling stone, Yahweh is a rock that brings Israel down, the Lord is a trap and snare for the people.
“Sooner or later, if you are on any classic “spiritual schedule”, some event, person, death, idea, or relationship will enter your life that you simply cannot deal with, using your resent skill set, your acquired knowledge, or your strong willpower. Spiritually speaking, you will be , you must be, led to the edge of your own private resources. At that point you will stumble over a necessary stumbling stone, as Isaiah calls it; or to state it in our language here, you will and you must “lose” at something. This is the only way that LIfe-Fate-God-Grace-Mystery can get you to change, let g of your egocentric preoccupations, and go on the further and larger journey. I wish I could say this is not true, but it is darn near absolute in the spiritual literature of the world.
There is no compelling reason to leave one’s present comfort zone in life. Why should you or would you? Frankly, none of us do unless and until we have to. The invitation probably has to be unexpected and unsought. If we seek spiritual heroism ourselves, the old ego is just back in control under a new name. There would not really be any change at all, but only disguise. Just bogus “self-improvement” under our own terms.
Any attempt to engineer or plan our own enlightenment is doomed to failure because it will be ego driven. You will see only what you have already decided to look for, and you cannot see what you are not ready or told to look for.
So we must stumble and fall. I am sorry to say. And that does not mean reading about falling, as you are doing here. We must actually be out of the driver’s seat for a while, or we will never learn how to give up control to the Real Guide.. It is a necessary pattern. This is the kind of falling I mean by necessary suffering.
It seems that in the spiritual world, we do not really find something until we first lose it, ignore it, miss it, long for it, choose it, and personally find it again – but now on a new level.”
Note from Neal:
What are stumbling over today? What is making you depend on God because your own resources can’t handle it? Look for God.