My 85 yr old cousin posed a spiritual challenge to me. - my answer:

[UTUSN]

He sent the daily meditation type thing, quoted below, and added, "This reflection explains why and how I can belong to the fellowship. See whether you can also identify."

He sounded patronizing without meaning to, the way the quoted author uses judgmental labels while advocating the opposite.

So my answer:

I'm a mass of contradictions. I entertain being intellectual yet look at the horoscope. Not because I believe it but because I take signs from wherever, high and low, tea leaves and entrails. So I poke here and there, not profoundly, just the gist as a diletantte - Catholicism, existentialism, Taoism, Buddhism, pop psychology, anthropology, whatever.

But what I don't do is to "belong." Whatever the intellectual construct, as long as I'm living in a world with other people I have to live with all those other people's "primitive" beliefs and customs.

I can say that nobody has to live with depression, PTSD, whatever - the cure and solution being Existentialism or Buddhism: The answer to emotional pain is that it doesn't matter, the universe doesn't care, ignore/deaden the pain, it's gone. But so long as you're living, someone or something will remind you and it is back. I can say that, as an Existentialist, nothing matters, rituals and customs don't matter, but then the logical outcome is, well then commit suicide, but if not then you are still in society, which means you still have to kowtow to rituals and customs. Anthropology still reigns when there is more than one person involved.

So as for your proposition of "fellowship," yes I want it, know it, and sometimes feel it, but also am in contact with rudeness, negativity, arrogance and judgment, snobbery, absence of validation, and everything else that people, including me, dish out.

Yes, I know this thought of fellowship. I'll take it when it happens, like I do a daily horoscope. How's this for my meditation? The one you sent is wonderfully expressed by that author. (Well, he sometimes uses old pejorative language, like "gumption." ) Bottom line: I don't commit, am confused, don't belong anywhere but am stuck everywhere - which adds up to: Am a Pisces.

*******QUOTE*******

https://email.cac.org/t/ViewEmail/d/B57F7D39815ED6EE2540EF23F30FEDED/7FE390F0A0CC346A33C48669A65BFAC1?alternativeLink=False

Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation
From the Center for Action and Contemplation
Week Four: Everyone Belongs
Fellowship for All
by Brian D. McLaren, We Make the Road by Walking: A Year-Long Quest for Spiritual Formation, Reorientation, and Activation (New York: Jericho Books, 2014), 173, 174–175.

.... Fellowship is a kind of belonging that isn’t based on status, achievement, or gender, but instead is based on a deep belief that everyone matters, everyone is welcome, and everyone is loved, no conditions, no exceptions. It’s not the kind of belonging you find at the top of the ladder among those who think they are the best, but at the bottom among all the rest, with all the other failures and losers who have either climbed the ladder and fallen, or never gotten up enough gumption to climb in the first place.

Whatever else this uprising will become, from that night we’ve known it is an uprising of fellowship, a community where anyone who wants to be part of us will be welcome. Jesus showed us his scars, and we’re starting to realize we don’t have to hide ours.

So fellowship is for scarred people, and for scared people, and for people who want to believe but aren’t sure what or how to believe. When we come together just as we are, we begin to rise again, to believe again, to hope again, to live again. ....

*******UNQUOTE******

[wyn borkins]

1. Off-Topic (And Non-Spiritual)

Just saying hello
By fellowship of the ring
That time long ago

[UTUSN]

2. Alrighty then. So, um...hello back

[highplainsdem]

3. Just meditate -- mindfulness meditation -- and the hell with trying to put any

kind of spiritual framework or philosophy on it, especially anything you don't agree with.

https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2018/04/harvard-researchers-study-how-mindfulness-may-change-the-brain-in-depressed-patients/

https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2018/04/less-stress-clearer-thoughts-with-mindfulness-meditation/


It's best to let your own experiences guide you. But that's easiest when your mind is working better, and meditation can help with that.

[keithbvadu2]

4. Feelgoodism?

Feelgoodism?

As soon as it mentions Jesus, it is not inclusive fellowship.

[UTUSN]

5. Cousin is sincere within his parameters.

[keithbvadu2]

6. 'within his parameters' - Sounds like you got him pegged.

[UTUSN]

7. Everybody has a metaphysical comfort zone, no?

There's a half generation between us. He's tail end of the Jaycees, I'm fringe/pseudo hippie. We've got our limits and not as smart as we think we are.

He tends to talk down even, as with the text he provided and his message, when professing the "inclusivity" you noticed.

[UTUSN]

8. His response, then mine back.

*** His reply:

“I identify (with what you said).
‘Kind of belonging’ is the author’s phrase.
That is what I should have used. I kind of belong.

*** My reply:

And *I* should have said in the part of “what other people dish out,” ---and what *I* DISH OUT to other people, TOO. If anybody is “negative, critical, judgmental” *I* am, and I have shutting people OUT (not welcoming, not allowing fellowship) down to an art.

And upon my first reading of your author, despite my and the popular consensus acceptance of “unconditional love”, which I mostly attribute to and accept from my dogs and other animals (less to people), when I ran through his list of unconditionals, I stalled on the word “welcome” (EVERYONE).

As you know, I don’t welcome out of hand.

*** But here is the amusing length I go to in NOT comporting “welcoming”:

You know I collect bells, 75 or more so far. So a few years ago I found this gate bell with a fleur de lis on top, and the fleur thing is another magnet for me because of our drop of the French in us. So I snapped it up despite my usual swearing NO MORE BELLS!

Once mine, preparing to drill it up, I developed a problem: In the bottom part, there was displayed, “WELCOME”.

So for the next few days it became an obsession to find a welder to CUT OFF the “welcome.” The dude who’d done work for me before said he didn’t have the (tool?) needed, “plasma.” And he referred me to somebody else, who did.

(Side note, welders I’ve had contact with appear to be seriously intelligent, understanding and WELCOMING, professionally competent, and excellently communicative.) So the second dude heard me out about cutting off the “WELCOME” and was *STUNNED*. He had the plasma that was needed and was willing to take on whatever a customer wanted done, but the content of my desire was almost REPELLENT to his good nature!

His first reaction was: “You want to TAKE OFF ‘WELCOME’?????!!!!”

When his shock wore off, he proceeded to fulfill the job. When the “welcome” part dropped into the cooling water bucket, I asked to take it with me, which I did. And I have it as a paper weight. And the bell is at the gate with its fleur.

If the welder ever passes by, am sure he shakes his head every time.







.

[UTUSN]

9. WELCOME

[Skittles]

10. "my 85yr old cousin"

that is just....so cool

[UTUSN]

11. Not as cool as *YOU* and I'm sure you're referring to *ME* as kewlest of the kewl!

[Skittles]

12. well we all know you are a geezer

I had a laugh today, a new virtual coworker, I surmised on a call that he was pretty young, he piped up with "I'm not that young, I am thirty"

[UTUSN]

13. I *hate* young people!1 - and what are you - a geezerETTE?!1 - stay tuned, a graphic is coming

[Skittles]

16. I am fast approaching official-geezerdom

yes INDEED

[UTUSN]

14. Here, just for you:

[UTUSN]

15. He ain't stupid, just old