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
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
“Humility, like darkness, reveals the heavenly lights.” -Henry David Thoreau
When I was in high school, we did a section on Thoreau and Emerson. I found nothing to like about them, and in my reflection, slammed them quite a bit, calling them self-centered and self-important. I still have very little use for them, but I have [...]
Categories: Introspection
“The time is ripe for looking back over the day, the week, the year, and trying to figure out where we have come from and where we are going to, for sifting through the things we have done and the things we have left undone for a clue to who we are and who, for [...]
Categories: Introspection
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
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
We’re not really leaving the house much these days. The books, they are being read. The football, it is being watched (not by me). The turkey, it is still being eaten. My main accomplishment today is that I didn’t shower until something like 2:00 because we went to the farmer’s market and then ran errands [...]
Categories: Introspection
“What we hunger for perhaps more than anything else is to be known in our full humanness, and yet that is often just what we also fear more than anything else. It is important to tell at least from time to time the secret of who we truly and fully are . . . because [...]
Categories: Introspection
When I was younger, we always went trick-or-treating. My dad loved Halloween and wanted us to love it too, so he told us exciting tales of pillowcases full of candy. We weren’t allowed to dress as witches or fortune-tellers or demons, but we were encouraged to enjoy the holiday. I watched this change over time, [...]
Categories: Family, General, Introspection
I, I love you
When you don’t
When you don’t do anything
When you’re useless
I love you more
When you don’t do anything
When you don’t move, when you don’t try
When you don’t say anything
When you don’t move, when you don’t win
When you don’t make anything look
I, I love you
When you don’t
When you don’t do anything
When you don’t want, when [...]
Categories: Introspection
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
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
I’ve been reading Acedia & Me by Kathleen Norris, which is very good. Acedia is a sort of listlessness and despair. It was originally one of the “eight bad thoughts” but never made it onto the list of “seven deadly sins.” One of the points that she makes that I need to [...]
Categories: Books, Introspection
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
Eef Barzelay’s new CD has a song called “I Love the Unknown,” which was also on the Clem Snide CD Your Favorite Music. We are big Eef fans in this house, and I have been listening to his new CD a lot. As I was singing “I Love the Unknown” in the shower [...]
Categories: Family, Introspection, Music
Did you think maybe we would make it through this summer without any Harry Potter entries? Surely you are not quite that naive!
My plan was to reread the series this summer, but since they are packed, Mike and I have been listening to them instead. The other day, I paused the iPod and [...]
Categories: Books, Introspection
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
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
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
And thus ends the longest vacation that Mike and I have had together since our honeymoon. Of course, we didn’t go anywhere, or do much of anything, which was one reason it was so glorious. We had a lovely Christmas, and after that, we spent the rest of the break sleeping in, enjoying [...]
Categories: General, Introspection