Friday, November 4, 2011

Getting Older and More Forgetful

My brother-in-law seems to have come up with a new anacronym (I almost wrote anachronism, and there, folks, is an excellent example of where my brain is going) for the way our minds have begun to work (shall I stop before I say the dreaded words "in our old age?"):  "CRS" or can't remember squat, only I think he put a different word in for the "S."  Sometimes I think my worst nightmare is that I will remember only the things about my life that I don't want to!  Or that just as I begin to figure out Life, I will forget what I figured out. 

Anthony deMello was a Jesuit priest, author, speaker, and if you haven't read "Awareness,"  you should think about it (I'm trying to quit saying "You SHOULD").  It is a collection of his writings and talks.  He is amazing.  In "Good, Bad or Lucky" (p. 30), he passes on this wisdom from someone else, "The lovely thing about Jesus was that he was so at home with sinners, because he understood that he wasn't one bit better than they were."  He went on to say that "We differ from others--- from criminals, for example-- only in what we do or don't do, not in what we are.  The only difference between Jesus and those others was that he was awake and they weren't."  "The Pharisee wasn't an evil man, he was a stupid man."  That's us, stupid, thinking we are better than others... we're just lucky, maybe, to be awake or aware, or becoming a little more so that way every day... maybe a little more like Jesus?

See, this is good stuff, and I don't want to forget it.  I just want to forget all my stupid mistakes, and hope everyone else concerned does, too.  When I need to remember something important, maybe someone will direct me back to my blog.  From deMello:  "I dare not stop to think, because if I did, I wouldn't know how to get started again."

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