Right All The Time

"One of the sources of futile struggle in the spiritual life is the assumption that one has to become a person without problems, which is, of course, impossible."

Thomas Merton - A Vow of Conversation

How nice to encounter clear thinkers along the way who help me crawl out of my self-made muddle. Merton is one of those "this is the way, walk ye in it" figures for me.

That little snippet above points to a freedom of spirit we crave and typically grub along without. I have problems. I'm frequently wrong and expend a ton of energy to hide my unconfessed and all too frequent goofs . I must then, be that big piece of doggie doo-doo that the world revolves around and will always be a loser in the spirituality department. Abandoning the need to always be right is a liberating exercise. Ditching that itch liberates because the illusion of perfection and being always correct is just that - an illusion, a phantom.

When I choke down the truth serum that error - sometimes colossal error - is a large part of my make-up, the blinders recede a bit and I inch toward the truth. Though not fully arrived, I do begin to see reality from there and so I keep my head down and "press toward the mark." Truth, even truth about self, is at once light and airy, winsome, disinfecting and liberating.

 "The truth shall set you free." No joke.