http://www.flickr.com/photos/mtsofan/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
“If the lost word is lost, if the spent word is spent
If the unheard, unspoken
Word is unspoken, unheard;
Still is the unspoken word, the Word unheard,
The Word without a word, the Word within
The world and for the world;
And the light shone in darkness and
Against the Word the unstilled world still whirled
About the [...]
Category Archives: God
Although I do not hope to turn 0
Quiet authenticity. 3
I enjoyed this post by Don Miller, which is sort of about what Pat Robertson said about Haiti but which is mostly about being thoughtful about your faith and thoughtful about what it means to respond to people who, it seems, are not being very thoughtful at all.
This, for me, was the pertinent quote:
When I’m [...]
Categories: General, God, Introspection
Beautiful and terrible things will happen. 1
The grace of God means something like: Here is your life. You might never have been, but you are because the party wouldn’t have been complete without you. Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid. I am with you. Nothing can ever separate us. It’s for you I created [...]
Categories: General, God, Introspection
Like the stars across the heavens flung. 6
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ciamabue/ / CC BY 2.0
When Descartes said, “I think, therefore I am,” he did us no favor, but further fragmented us, making us limit ourselves to the cognitive at the expense of the imaginative and the intuitive. But each time we read the gospels, we are offered anew this healing reconciliation and, if we will, [...]
Categories: God
If I can’t train her eyes to love. 1
This is a poem by Todd Boss. I found it on this Wisconsin Public Radio page when I was looking for poems to post for the solstice. I am a little tired of rehashing “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” (“the darkest evening of the year”) every year, and I liked that the NPR [...]
You’ll miss all the heavenly glory. 5
A few years ago, I read a book called All This Heavenly Glory by Elizabeth Crane. The quote that the title comes from (from a Bruce Lee movie, of all places) has stayed with me: “If you gaze too hard at the finger pointing to the moon, you’ll miss all the heavenly glory.” I think [...]
Categories: Books, God, Introspection
There was more than one lobster present at the birth of Jesus? 22
I am posting this for the Tour of Homes. Obviously it is more word-focused than most of the tour posts are, but our house is under construction and we kept decorations to a minimum this year. There’s a big plastic sheet keeping drywall dust out of my living room, which isn’t really something I’d like [...]
Categories: Funny Stuff, General, God
Alchemy. 1
As we move into Advent we are called to listen, something we seldom take time to do in this frenetic world of over-activity. But waiting for birth, waiting for death–these are lightning times when the normal distractions of life have lost their power to take us away from God’s call to [...]
Categories: God, Introspection
Jesus Girls: True Tales of Growing Up Female and Evangelical edited by Hannah Faith Notess 9
When Mike and I wanted to join the church that we got married in, we had to go through an interview process. I am not sure exactly who interviewed us, but I was asked about my testimony. I stumbled through it with my usual hesitation . . . what do you say about your testimony [...]
Oh, marvelous me! For I am the ruler of all that I see! 6
This week’s sermon was on Yertle the Turtle, not a Seuss story that I am particularly familiar with. As three of our members read some of the pertinent parts, I was struck by the idea that it was a particularly pertinent weekend to hear the story of a turtle building his kingdom on the [...]
Categories: God
It has been remade. 16
I have a tendency to define myself in terms of what I do not have rather than seeing the many blessings I have been given. This is, of course, ridiculous, but every time I try to step away from it, I realize that it is one of the core definitions of who I am. [...]
Categories: God, Introspection
Guide us to thy perfect light. 4
Our Sunday School class has been going through Philip Yancey’s Soul Survivor, and this week was Annie Dillard. I am quite a fan of Annie Dillard, and have quoted before this favorite passage of hers:
“On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside of the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of conditions. Does anyone have [...]
Categories: Family, God, Introspection
That I may know and understand. 4
O Lord, mercifully receive the prayers of your servant who calls upon you, and grant that I may know and understand what things I ought to do, and that I also may have the grace and power faithfully to accomplish them; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy [...]
Categories: God, Introspection
Who are afraid of being left by those we love, and who get hardened by the hurt. 1
This year, our church’s Lenten theme was about restoration. Every week, someone gave a focus on how God has restored some aspect of their lives – a woman who was abused as a child has now become a counselor; a man who spent many years focusing on himself is now married and he and [...]
Categories: Family, God, Introspection
A message I can feel. 1
I don’t know anything about Tullycraft, but one evening I was listening to the radio station that Mike DJed for over the summer, and I heard this beautiful haunting song. I made Mike call the station and find out what the song had been, and it turns out that it was “The Lonely Life [...]
Categories: God, Introspection, Marriage, Music
Memento mori. 4
At church on Wednesday, they said that the Ash Wednesday service is next week. Ash Wednesday? It’s almost Lent already? How did this happen?
I was doing yoga that night, and at the end there is a position called Savasana, which I believe is called the “corpse pose.” I have been told [...]
Categories: Books, God, Introspection
Stephen. 2
I got a letter today from my sponsored child, Stephen, who lives in Kenya.
It’s upsetting to get a letter like this when you are worried about someone. All I know for sure is what I have read on CNN about the turmoil in that country, and that Compassion lists his center as [...]
Categories: God
This only serves to confirm my suspicion. 4
(That I’m still a man in need of a savior.)
I happen to be a fairly capable person. I can do things and take care of things and figure things out. Sometimes I want to play the princess, to be rescued, but I am more likely to be in the midst of figuring out [...]
Categories: God
Most Amazing Word. 0
Thank you, God, for being born,
You who first invented birth
(Universe, galaxies, the earth).
When your world was tired & worn
You came laughing on the morn.
Thank you, most amazing Word
For your silence in the womb
Where there was so little room
Yet the still small voice was heard
Throughout a planet dark & blurred.
Merry Christmas! Wondrous day!
Maker of the universe,
You [...]
Categories: God
The Bethlehem explosion. 0
The inn was full. When Joseph knocked,
his wife was already in labour; there was no room
even for compassion. Until the barn was offered.
That was the precipitating factor. A child was born,
and the pattern changed forever, the cosmos
shaken with that silent explosion. -Madeleine L’Engle
—
It is happening now. It is happening in a [...]
Categories: God