"IT is a madness that will make you sane." Sunrise July 18, 2014

All quotes from
The Paradox of Grace
by
Stephen Roberts

See Read More at end for Full Writing by S. Roberts

It is a relentless love that will not be quenched, beat-up, and stuffed into ecclesiastical dark robes
only to wander the side alleys of our spiritual existence.

It is an ocean for a planet lost in a desert of unknowing

It ignores all your weaknesses and hang-ups and will chase you down
until it burns as an inner sun inside your soul.
You will then discover the dance of utter powerlessness and unbounding strength
as they join an eternal dance in a mysterious embrace.

It is a madness that will make you sane.
A blindness that will make you see.
A mystery that will make you wise.

Love seeks no gold stars on attendance charts, nor does it ever take notice of all our fatal narcissisms.
It simply loves – unconditionally – that is its beauty, that is its power.

Divine love is deaf to our constant fretting and flapping about our “magnificent” victories.
It does not need to impress God for God is already impressed with us.
Maybe it’s time we quit powdering our spiritual face hoping he will notice us?

Grace does not play our games,
it refuses to sit at our poker table and will enter into no bargaining
with our elite plans to perfect and conquer life
– for once and for all, it prefers we become fully human,
yet no longer an I,
for the Life abides within.

The Paradox of Grace
by
Stephen Roberts


Grace is not for the super spiritual that drip other worldliness and mystery.

It is not for the spiritually muscular who have a mix of Rambo and Jesus floating around as their hero.

It is not for the academic sages that stun the planet with intellect the size of a small office block.

Is is not for the noisy, bubbly, feelicious folk who brand their slick spirituality for the adoring masses.

It is not for misguided mystics who prefer to mimic reality altogether and float into a nether void and ignore the suffering of the planet.

It is not for the always-smiling who live up a mountain so high that angels fear to breathe that rarified air.

It is not for those who have every principle and practice down to a bleeding comma and pounding full-stop.

Yet, paradoxically, it is for all the above and for everyone else in between.

It is for those on the edge who shuffle through this mire of existence longing for a greater reality.

It is for the unnoticed, the unknowing, the marginalized, the despised, the social and spiritual freaks who rebel against religion’s long shadow.

It is for those who know weakness, questions, doubts, fears, and frustrations.

It is for the stupid, the ignorant, the unwise, the insecure – people just like you and me.

It is a relentless love that will not be quenched, beat-up, and stuffed into ecclesiastical dark robes only to wander the side alleys of our spiritual existence.

It is an ocean for a planet lost in a desert of unknowing.

It is something you can never work for, pay for, or manipulate divinity with your sweatshops of performance and do-it-yourself spirituality.

It ignores all your weaknesses and hang-ups and will chase you down until it burns as an inner sun inside your soul.

You will then discover the dance of utter powerlessness and unbounding strength as they join an eternal dance in a mysterious embrace.

It will stagger you, apprehend you, leave you drunk with a wine of contentment more intoxicating than a thousand vats of the choicest blood red grapes.

It will shift you out of despair and gloom, causing your eyes to see in colors you never knew existed.

It will rend your mind, tear open your heart, reorder your world and shake your soul in a wrestling light of oneness.

It will shock you at times and the scandal of its flame will burn all your precious religious systems to ash.

So come drunkards, whores, fools and vagabonds and feast upon a feast of love that eclipses all shame and labels

One sip will last a lifetime; one mouthful a thousand more.

You cannot mix it with water, nor add any ice, nor heat it up or boil it down. You drink it straight from the bottle in the cellar of glory. Then you will see this universe is a drunken universe.

It infuriates religion’s bureaucrats. The spiritual elite, whose robes and letters tower high in their forests of certainty, grind their teeth at its ridiculous simplicity.

It laughs at all our snobbish rules, regulations, requirements and reasonings.

It lives beyond all our charismatic superstars and exegetical popes who pamper truth with their burning theories of mystery.

It is a madness that will make you sane. A blindness that will make you see. A mystery that will make you wise.

It teaches us to quit all our superstitious insurance policies of perfecting our spirituality, be it prayer, meticulous serving, or sowing, all in our vain efforts to appease religion’s grumpy deity.

Our capitalist gods and goddesses, the ones we forge in the foundry fires of our ingrained foolishness, they prefer the workaholic religionist over those simply content to be.

Love seeks no gold stars on attendance charts, nor does it ever take notice of all our fatal narcissisms. It simply loves – unconditionally – that is its beauty, that is its power.

Divine love is deaf to our constant fretting and flapping about our “magnificent” victories. It does not need to impress God for God is already impressed with us. Maybe it’s time we quit powdering our spiritual face hoping he will notice us?

• Grace does not play our games, it refuses to sit at our poker table and will enter into no bargaining with our elite plans to perfect and conquer life – for once and for all, it prefers we become fully human, yet no longer an I, for the Life abides within.

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