This evening I was having a substantial amount of mouth pain and a small amount of back pain and I chose to be angry and self-pitying about how difficult my life is. I do have some challenges but what I wish to emphasize is that I chose to be angry and disgruntled since it felt like a useful release of those feelings. I wanted to be angry for a while. Having gone through that for a few hours, it is now gently raining outside and I can hear and feel the rain hitting the roof and the deck. I am at peace and life feels like a wondrous experience. I still have some pain but it doesn’t seem to matter much. As St. John of the cross said "He should learn to remain in God’s presence with a loving attention and a tranquil intellect, even though this seems like idleness to him. Soon he will find little by little that a divine calm and peace with a wondrous, sublime knowledge of God, enveloped in divine love, will be infused into his soul".
