Help Wanted

Help Wanted

Greetings, fellow trudgers on “the road of happy destiny”…
For anyone struggling with asking for—or accepting—help from a “Higher Power”, I’ll be happy to share any responses I receive from this Craigslist posting.
Happy trails!

From the Desk of…

From the Desk of...

Greetings, fellow trudgers on “the road of happy destiny”…

How’s 2010 shaping up for you so far? I’ve been having a challenging time of it. It may have to do with my avoiding some “Good orderly direction” I received some time ago. It was gently suggested to me that I might want to write a “Letter to God” [Shorthand for: a Higher Power as I may or may not understand him/her/it].

I thought to myself, “Yes! I must do that! Right after I finish reorganizing the basement, and get that root canal taken care of.” Nonetheless, having been told that the answer to suggestions from our caring guides should be “yes,” I went about it. Guess what: it only took me five minutes. Well… give or take five hours. Er, five weeks, I should have said. Okay: it took me months. Months and months. I’ve lost count how many months. What can I say, postal delivery to God is quite slow in my case. Thoughtfully slow: apparently I tend to do a lot of editing and rewrites, where God is concerned.

So you can imagine how delighted I was when—lo and behold—God wrote back! The response arrived faster than my letter went out. It was suggested to me that I keep the letter from God close at hand. You’re close at hand, aren’t you? So, here it is—and hey: I’m showing you mine—feel free to show me yours.

Happy trails!

PS  Today’s Quiz: What’s the first thing one should say to God? Answer: Good morning.

Here’s the text of the letter in the image above

Thanks for writing. I know it wasn’t easy. I know you find it difficult and embarrassing to ask for help. I am touched that you reached out.

You work so hard. You expend tremendous energy.  The intensity of your struggle takes so much of your life force to keep up. Holding on to those grievances, to your losses, to the familiarity of emptiness, to predictability instead of delight in surprise, to putting compresses on painful old wounds using those remedies which stopped working years ago, just because they’re the only cures you know how to apply on your own… it must be exhausting.

You wake up feeling such weight. Your heart cries out that you are alone. You feel angry and hurt. You feel shame and regret. You feel you have kept people away who love you. You are astonished and dismayed at how you’ve squandered gifts you’ve been given.

Sometimes, instead of facing your day with gratitude and resolve, you face it in woundedness, in the victimized patterns you grew up with. You mindlessly march down an old road, echoing the chants of voices from deep in your past: “Life is hard, and then you die,” “I’d rather just be by myself,” “Relationships are just too difficult;” instead of openly acknowledging that you deeply need others, and want to feel needed by them as well.

First off, you don’t need to do this alone. I have more than enough energy for both of us.

Second, what have you got to lose? You don’t have to trust. You don’t have to have faith. All you have to do is ask. Ask for trust. Ask for wanting to trust. Ask for faith. Ask for the willingness to receive faith. Ask for forgiveness. Ask for wanting to forgive. If you don’t “want to” forgive yourself or others, then ask for wanting to want to.

Ask for directions. Tell me what you want. I’ll show you how to get it. The signs will surround you. They will be unmistakeable—if you are watching and listening, and feeling.

Stay sober in every sense of the word. I really want you to live a sober, meaningful life — it’s not a moral question for me. It’s a question of sight, of vision. If you’re not living in a sober and serene manner, you’ll have blinded yourself. If you’re blind, you’ll miss all my directions, guidances and messages of great beauty and love. You might find yourself down a wrong path again—and at that moment you’ll turn to me and ask, “How did I get here?” Make your spiritual condition your most important job.

Do all this one moment, one hour, one day at a time… but start in this moment. I have all the time in the world. Literally.  You don’t..