We all want love. It’s as simple as that. When we don’t get enough of it, we try to fill it with other things. Or worse, that we don’t realize that that is what we have always desired, and the things which we distract ourselves with acts as a barrier, a wall we erect around ourselves to protect us from what we in our heart of hearts needs. How sad is someone who has never known love? Perhaps I exaggerate, and it must be true that every human being feels the faintest traces of it, at least — no one is completely devoid of the experience. But one thinks that there is the converse, that there are some broken hearts that never seem to heal, that something opens the would afresh every while that it seems to have scabbed over. The pain is, however, a reminder that love is real. We don’t react to nothing. Maybe to hope against all hope, and to know what this experience is. Such rewards we think little of, thinking instead of what we lack.
28 Jun 2010
25 Jun 2010
The Holy Spirit is … born from Love and is of Love, all its treasures are of love, and if we are to believe our Gospels it is received by love and love only. I am aware that to talk of love vaguely like this is not much help. I know how difficult it is to die to pride and self-concern, to the cowardice of a spiritual apathy that dare not face itself for what it fears to know. I know how difficult it is to remember, and to act as though we knew, that only forgiveness has a Resurrection, resentment has not — all those things that are the great and tormenting enemies to Love and its gracious freedoms.
in the rush to know, in the onslaught of information
the dream sometimes deteriorates with the speed of the doing
to find destiny forms new plans from the ashes of the old
22 Jun 2010
This is what Paul learned: when you think you are strong, it is then that you are weak. For we tend to overestimate ourselves, I think, when things are going our way. And conversely, when things are falling apart, we feel as if we are the cause for all that goes wrong. We are strong when we think we are weak because in fact, we are handling the hurt somehow, managing the frustration, and it is this fact which actually makes us think we are about to break. The idea about these things is that it is mercy, both of them: that the world does not always pull out the rug from under us when we think we are strong; and that purpose lies behind all that goes wrong, such purpose sometimes not to be achieved in any other way. Of course, it is easier to count it joy when things go our way, but with the eyes of faith, may we learn to look through any pain, too. May we find our strength in our weakness.
19 Jun 2010
At times I am tired. I have done too much, seen too much, heard too much. Too much that can’t be undone I have done with my own hands. Anything like a prize seems never to be in reach, always further along the path, sometimes not even the barest light at the end of a long, long tunnel. I know the Lord has equipped me in full for all that comes my way, but we are human, we are weak. And even He had His moment where He felt that the Father had abandoned Him. But as I wonder about what it would mean to give up, it comes to me that I have been doing it the right way, if I feel like this. I have been pressing forward with enough of my energy if I feel spent of it. There is hope in the hopelessness, another instance where there is treasure to be had in whatever moment you inhabit. And really, giving up is not what I have become, not anymore: what now the Lord has made of me, through these years where He has been my guide.
16 Jun 2010
Some may come and some may go
We shall surely pass
When the one that left us here
Returns for us at last
We are but a moment’s sunlight
Fading in the grass
– The Youngbloods
13 Jun 2010
the eternal day passes, and another,
now so quickly that they end before they begin
it is not time warping, but your perception
and while everything is in a constant beginning
what has ended, after it goes, is the ending
10 Jun 2010
Night falls, yet still burning bright the memory of noon.
Night falls, and slowly does infinity appear above us.
Night falls, the Wheel never to stop, fortunes before us.
Night falls, sometimes not to be ready for the darkness.
Night falls, sometimes to prepare for the dreaming to come.
Night falls, and we wait to spring the surprise on them.
Night falls, to find the day seems shorter as we progress.
7 Jun 2010
Happiness is always a by-product. It is probably a matter of temperament, and for anything I know it may be glandular. But it is not something that can be demanded from life, and if you are not happy you had better stop worrying about it and see what treasures you can pluck from your own brand of unhappiness.
– Robertson Davies
The absence of alternatives clears the mind marvelously.
– Henry Kissinger
The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts.
– Bertrand Russell
It’s kind of fun to do the impossible.
– Walt Disney
Success is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm.
– Winston Churchill
History never looks like history when you are living through it.
– John W. Gardner
It is the final proof of God’s omnipotence that he need not exist in order to save us.
– Peter De Vries
4 Jun 2010
Dreadful are those descriptions in which Isaiah, Jeremiah, Joel, Habakkuk, and others, deplore the disorders of the Church of Jerusalem. There was such general and extreme corruption in the people, in the magistrates, and in the priests, that Isaiah does not hesitate to compare Jerusalem to Sodom and Gomorrah. Religion was partly despised, partly corrupted. Their manners were generally disgraced by thefts, robberies, treacheries, murders, and similar crimes. Nevertheless, the prophets on this account neither raised themselves new churches, nor built new altars for the oblation of separate sacrifices; but whatever were the characters of the people, yet because they considered that God had deposited his word among that nation, and instituted the ceremonies in which he was there worshipped, they lifted up pure hands to him even in the congregation of the impious. If they had thought that they contracted any contagion from these services, surely they would have suffered a hundred deaths rather than have permitted themselves to be dragged to them. There was nothing therefore to prevent their departure from them, but the desire of preserving the unity of the Church. But if the holy prophets were restrained by a sense of duty from forsaking the Church on account of the numerous and enormous crimes which were practised, not by a few individuals, but almost by the whole nation, — it is extreme arrogance in us, if we presume immediately to withdraw from the communion of a Church where the conduct of all the members is not compatible either with our judgment, or even with the Christian profession.
where time and space intersect is where now the world becomes
where there is no change does nothing exist, beyond all comprehension
then: the Endless changes not, yet is within all things, and breathes
