Beside Restful Waters

by Greg Hermann

“Simply that you are”

Fr. Richard Rohr offers a ‘simple’ practice to share with us an alternative to living within the continuous and fruitless business of our minds. Today, I leave you with his gift.

PRACTICE: SIMPLY THAT YOU ARE

We must find a prayer form that actually invades our unconscious, or nothing can change at any depth.

First, “take God at face value, as God is. Accept God’s good graciousness, as you would plain, simple soft compress when sick. Take hold of God and press God against your unhealthy self, just as you are.

Second, know how your mind and ego play their games: “Stop analyzing yourself or God. You can do without wasting so much of your energy deciding if something is good or bad, grace given or temperament driven, divine or human.”

Third, be encouraged and “Offer up your simple naked being to the joyful being of God, for you two are one in grace, although separate in nature.”

And finally: “Don’t focus on what you are, but simply that you are! How hopelessly stupid would a person have to be if they could not realize that they simply are.”

Hold the soft warm compress of these loving words against your bodily self, bypass the mind and even the affections of the heart and forgo any analysis of what you are or are not.

“Simply that you are.”

Namaste!

Next week, thoughts on ‘Hopelessly stupid’.