Post Easter

Isn't it great to live on this side of Easter? I don't mean just THIS Easter, but the original Easter. Years ago I was in a study group with a wise woman who said she wondered if she would be so courageous if she were living in the days Jesus was alive.
Forgive me if I have written about this book before, Everything Belongs, by Richard Rohr, but it is simply too good not to mention every time I think about it. This book on contemplative prayer is one of my very favorites. I was re-reading a chapter today and so many sentences jumped off the page:

Many people become their thoughts. They do not have thoughts and feelings; the thoughts and feelings have them. It is what the ancients called "being possessed"
by a demon.

We won't see things as they are, we will see everything as we are.

We live too much in reaction to others. There's something strangely sweet about negative or accusatory feelings. It's a strange way to achieve moral superiority:
to feel right because someone else is wrong.

My minister preached on some of these things this past Sunday morning-- If we spend so much time focusing on what others are doing wrong, And pointing it out to them, why would anyone want to be a Christian? As Gandhi said, "I do so like your Christ, it is the Christians I do not like. They are so unlike Christ.

Don't misunderstand me, I needed to hear these words as much as anybody. I need to hear them every day.