Listening To The Call

Long ago, I went to university, a school of engineering, and I became and engineer. Then, years later, I desired to shamelessly follow Jesus and live a life of prayer. I entered a Benedictine monastery, a school for the Lord's service. The monastery gave me tools of contemplation and prayer. These tools have stuck with me just as much as engineering. I didn't stay at the Benedictine school to teach. I finished my novitiate and moved on to be a journeyman of sorts.

After a strange and sudden ejection from the monastery, I re-entered secular life. I spent a couple of years as a Roman Catholic. During this time, I realized that the Church was not an institution I could support with my personal moral fibers. I also came to believe that denominational Christianity was doing very little in helping people realize their true Christ nature. No one was "doing the things he did."

I continued to investigate various ideas: meditation, raw foods, fasting, Essenes, hermits; and eventually A Course in Miracles. Somehow, this Course has became my area of spiritual specialization post graduating from the school for the Lord's service.

I have spent a great deal of time being upset that 4 years of monastic life divorced me from society. I simply can't join with the normal societal flow of eating and drinking and watching TV and gabbing away about nothing. But it is also true that I can only hear one voice at a time. If I want to hear The Voice for God, then I must stop listening to the voice of the world.

This does not at all mean I hate the other people. I just can't participate in their world. I can look with the Christ Vision given by the Voice for God; and accept its peace at any time. This practice is what I am doing out here. When I look with Christ vision, I am projecting peace; and this is all The Spirit asks of me.

Inspired by Chapter 31.I of the ACIM text:
Hear not the call for pain within yourself.
But listen rather to the deeper call
of love which asks in quiet for peace and love.
And all the world will give you peace and joy.

2012 has turned to 2013.
I am about to turn from 53 to 54.
I run another mile. I drive another mile.
I work another day. Another dollar is deposited into my account.

In spiritual dollars, I am rich. That is enough for me.