Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Thinking Today...To Go and Follow...
"It's time to go..."
Peter tried to regain some initiative: "We left everything we owned and followed you, didn't we?" "Yes," said Jesus, "and you won't regret it. No one who has sacrificed home, spouse, brothers and sisters, parents, children--whatever-- will lose out. It will all come back multiplied many times over in your lifetime. And then the bonus of eternal life!"
~ Luke 18:28-30 The Message
Peter tried to regain some initiative: "We left everything we owned and followed you, didn't we?" "Yes," said Jesus, "and you won't regret it. No one who has sacrificed home, spouse, brothers and sisters, parents, children--whatever-- will lose out. It will all come back multiplied many times over in your lifetime. And then the bonus of eternal life!"
~ Luke 18:28-30 The Message
Monday, June 28, 2010
My Name Is Trinity...
"It's the question that drives us Neo, it's the question that brought you here..."
~ The Matrix
Obedience to the whispers of the Trinity..."It's time to go..."
"The answer is out there..."
~ The Matrix
"So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; those who seek find; and to those who knock, the door will be opened.”
~ Jesus
~ The Matrix
Obedience to the whispers of the Trinity..."It's time to go..."
"The answer is out there..."
~ The Matrix
"So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; those who seek find; and to those who knock, the door will be opened.”
~ Jesus
For A Friend...Maggie...
"And so she woke up
Woke up from where she was lyin' still.
Said I gotta do something
About where we're goin'.
Step on a fast train
Step out of the driving rain, maybe
Run from the darkness in the night.
Singing ah, ah la la la de day
Ah la la la de day..."
~ Bono
"If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him."
~ Jesus
"The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor."
~ Jesus
"I wanna run, I want to hide
I wanna tear down the walls
That hold me inside.
I wanna reach out
And touch the flame
Where the streets have no name.
I wanna feel sunlight on my face.
I see the dust-cloud
Disappear without a trace.
I wanna take shelter
From the poison rain..."
~ Bono
Woke up from where she was lyin' still.
Said I gotta do something
About where we're goin'.
Step on a fast train
Step out of the driving rain, maybe
Run from the darkness in the night.
Singing ah, ah la la la de day
Ah la la la de day..."
~ Bono
"If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him."
~ Jesus
"The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor."
~ Jesus
"I wanna run, I want to hide
I wanna tear down the walls
That hold me inside.
I wanna reach out
And touch the flame
Where the streets have no name.
I wanna feel sunlight on my face.
I see the dust-cloud
Disappear without a trace.
I wanna take shelter
From the poison rain..."
~ Bono
Saturday, June 26, 2010
Thought...
"If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him."
~ Jesus
The religious technocrats of Jesus' day confronted him with what they believed were the standards of a life pleasing to God. The external life, they argued, the life of ought and duty and service, was what mattered. "You're dead wrong," Jesus said. "In fact, you're just plain dead [whitewashed tombs]. What God cares about is the inner life, the life of the heart" (Matt. 23:25-28). Throughout the Old and New Testaments, the life of the heart is clearly God's central concern. When the people of Israel fell into a totally external life of ritual and observance, God lamented, "These people . . . honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me" (Isa. 29:13).
Our heart is the key to the Christian life.
The apostle Paul informs us that hardness of heart is behind all the addictions and evils of the human race (Rom. 1:21-25). Oswald Chambers writes, "It is by the heart that God is perceived [known] and not by reason . . . so that is what faith is: God perceived by the heart." This is why God tells us in Proverbs 4:23, "Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life." He knows that to lose heart is to lose everything. Sadly, most of us watch the oil level in our car more carefully than we watch over the life of our heart.
In one of the greatest invitations ever offered to man, Christ stood up amid the crowds in Jerusalem and said, "If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him" (John 7:37-38). If we aren't aware of our soul's deep thirst, his offer means nothing. But, if we will recall, it was from the longing of our hearts that most of us first responded to Jesus. Somehow, years later, we assume he no longer calls to us through the thirst of our heart.
~ John Eldredge, The Sacred Romance
~ Jesus
The religious technocrats of Jesus' day confronted him with what they believed were the standards of a life pleasing to God. The external life, they argued, the life of ought and duty and service, was what mattered. "You're dead wrong," Jesus said. "In fact, you're just plain dead [whitewashed tombs]. What God cares about is the inner life, the life of the heart" (Matt. 23:25-28). Throughout the Old and New Testaments, the life of the heart is clearly God's central concern. When the people of Israel fell into a totally external life of ritual and observance, God lamented, "These people . . . honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me" (Isa. 29:13).
Our heart is the key to the Christian life.
The apostle Paul informs us that hardness of heart is behind all the addictions and evils of the human race (Rom. 1:21-25). Oswald Chambers writes, "It is by the heart that God is perceived [known] and not by reason . . . so that is what faith is: God perceived by the heart." This is why God tells us in Proverbs 4:23, "Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life." He knows that to lose heart is to lose everything. Sadly, most of us watch the oil level in our car more carefully than we watch over the life of our heart.
In one of the greatest invitations ever offered to man, Christ stood up amid the crowds in Jerusalem and said, "If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him" (John 7:37-38). If we aren't aware of our soul's deep thirst, his offer means nothing. But, if we will recall, it was from the longing of our hearts that most of us first responded to Jesus. Somehow, years later, we assume he no longer calls to us through the thirst of our heart.
~ John Eldredge, The Sacred Romance
The Heart Of Darkness...U2 - One...
"Did I disappoint you or leave a bad taste in your mouth?"
~ Bono
Well, it's too late tonight to drag the past out into the light.
We're one, but we're not the same.
We get to carry each other, carry each other... one...
~ Bono
~ Bono
Well, it's too late tonight to drag the past out into the light.
We're one, but we're not the same.
We get to carry each other, carry each other... one...
~ Bono
The Heart Of Darkness...U2 - One Tree Hill...
"And in the world, a heart of darkness, a fire-zone
Where poets speak their heart then bleed for it..."
~ Bono
And when it's rainin', rainin' hard
That's when the rain will break a heart.
Rainin', rainin' in your heart
Rainin' in your heart.
Rainin', rain into your heart
Rainin', rainin', rainin'
Rain into your heart.
Rainin', ooh, rain in your heart, yeah.
Feel it...
~ Bono
Where poets speak their heart then bleed for it..."
~ Bono
And when it's rainin', rainin' hard
That's when the rain will break a heart.
Rainin', rainin' in your heart
Rainin' in your heart.
Rainin', rain into your heart
Rainin', rainin', rainin'
Rain into your heart.
Rainin', ooh, rain in your heart, yeah.
Feel it...
~ Bono
The Heart of Darkness...A Metaphor To An Interior Reality...
"And in the world, a heart of darkness, a fire-zone
Where poets speak their heart then bleed for it..."
~ Bono
"I couldn't have felt more of lonely desolation somehow, had ... belief or had missed my destiny in life.”
"I remained to dream the nightmare out to the end…comes too late – a crop of unextinguishable regrets."
"But his soul was mad. Being alone in the wilderness ... faith, and no fear, yet struggling blindly with itself."
"He cried in a whisper at some image, at some ... no more than a breath:
'The horror! The horror!'"
~ Joseph Conrad, The Heart Of Darkness
Where poets speak their heart then bleed for it..."
~ Bono
"I couldn't have felt more of lonely desolation somehow, had ... belief or had missed my destiny in life.”
"I remained to dream the nightmare out to the end…comes too late – a crop of unextinguishable regrets."
"But his soul was mad. Being alone in the wilderness ... faith, and no fear, yet struggling blindly with itself."
"He cried in a whisper at some image, at some ... no more than a breath:
'The horror! The horror!'"
~ Joseph Conrad, The Heart Of Darkness
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
Grace in Community...
Did God as Jesus come here to earth to demonstrate to us how to be, to relate with each other? For in the end, is it not each other that we most need?
“When community happens the way God designed us to live, it is always inclusive and never exclusive….Healthy communities are always permeable. You are never forced in, but you are always welcome.”
~ Erwin McManus
“When community happens the way God designed us to live, it is always inclusive and never exclusive….Healthy communities are always permeable. You are never forced in, but you are always welcome.”
~ Erwin McManus
Saturday, June 19, 2010
Hmmm...
“I'm afraid that no one sees me,
What will they say when I'm gone,
It occurs to me I think I miss you,
I think I miss you all along…”
~ B.C.
A Divine Milieu Repost...U2 - Wake Up Deadman & Walk On...For Catherine and David...
And love is not the easy thing
The only baggage you can bring...
And love is not the easy thing....
The only baggage you can bring
Is all that you can't leave behind
And if the darkness is to keep us apart
And if the daylight feels like it's a long way off
And if your glass heart should crack
And for a second you turn back
Oh no, be strong
Walk on, walk on
What you got they can't steal it
No they can't even feel it
Walk on, walk on...
Stay safe tonight
Walk on, walk on
What you've got they can't deny it
Can't sell it, can't buy it
Walk on, walk on
Stay safe tonight
And I know it aches
And your heart it breaks
And you can only take so much
Walk on, walk on
Home, hard to know what it is if you've never had one
Home, I can't say where it is but I know I'm going home
That's where the hurt is
I know it aches
How your heart it breaks
And you can only take so much
Walk on, walk on
Grace In The Struggle...
“...the feeling associated with giving up something loved – or at least something that is a part of ourselves and familiar – is depression. Since mentally healthy human beings must grow, and since giving up or loss of the old self is an integral part of the process of mental and spiritual growth, depression is a normal and basically healthy phenomenon.”
~ Scott, M. Peck, The Road Less Travelled
“Sheer undiluted slog…agony, agony, agony…”
~ Susan Howatch
Rob Bell on Suffering and asking the “how” and not the “why” - the art in suffering and the creative process...from, Drops Like Stars...
"The Art of Disruption
The Art Honesty
The Art of the Ache
The Art of Solidarity
The Art of Elimination
The Art of Failure"
“But no matter how much the mess and distortion make you want to despair, you can’t abandon the work because you’re chained to the bloody thing, its absolutely woven into your soul and you know you can never rest until you’ve brought truth out of all the distortion and beauty out of all the mess – but it’s agony, agony, agony – while simultaneously being the most wonderful and rewarding experience in the world – and that’s the creative process which so few people understand.”
~ Susan Howatch
“What good will it be for you to gain the whole world, yet forfeit you soul.”
~ Jesus
“…having nothing and yet possessing everything…”
~ Paul
Grace...
I would be remise if I did not thank another muse, Violet Adler for inspiring some of my recent posts and encouraging me in my demurring meanderings of the soul. As well as reminding the doubter in me, that, in the words of Michael Creger, "we need people like you among us."
A Preamble to "A Cup of Grace" Gathering...
Comments on Gordon Crosby: A Mission Church Leader (Church of the Savior)
"Although, from one point of view, Crosby increasingly divested himself of leadership in the congregation, from another he demonstrated how profound his practice of it was. He refused to be the one to whom others always looked for guidance and instead released them to take the lead and then assisted in any way he could. What was at the heart of Crosby’s capacity to do this? According to Elizabeth O’Connor, a key member of the community and chief chronicler of it’s a activities, it is his ‘willingness to question’ and his readiness ‘to give up the old and embrace the new.’ This springs, she says, from a wonderful ‘flexibility of spirit.’ Crosby also displays an acute capacity to listen to God, not only in moments of withdrawal but also in the most ordinary situations. For example, the idea for a coffeehouse that would be a hospitable place not only for church members but also for people in the neighborhood looking for a place to hang out did not come during a time of secluded prayer but Cosby reflected on the liveliness and interaction in a tavern compared to a dull church service he had just visited. ‘I realized that there was more warmth and fellowship in that tavern than there was in the church. If Jesus of Nazareth had his choice He would probably have come to the tavern rather than to the church we visited.’”
~ Robert Banks and Bernice M. Ledbetter. Reviewing Leadership: A Christian Evaluation Of Current Approaches. Grand Rapids, MI. 2004. pp. 128-129.
"Although, from one point of view, Crosby increasingly divested himself of leadership in the congregation, from another he demonstrated how profound his practice of it was. He refused to be the one to whom others always looked for guidance and instead released them to take the lead and then assisted in any way he could. What was at the heart of Crosby’s capacity to do this? According to Elizabeth O’Connor, a key member of the community and chief chronicler of it’s a activities, it is his ‘willingness to question’ and his readiness ‘to give up the old and embrace the new.’ This springs, she says, from a wonderful ‘flexibility of spirit.’ Crosby also displays an acute capacity to listen to God, not only in moments of withdrawal but also in the most ordinary situations. For example, the idea for a coffeehouse that would be a hospitable place not only for church members but also for people in the neighborhood looking for a place to hang out did not come during a time of secluded prayer but Cosby reflected on the liveliness and interaction in a tavern compared to a dull church service he had just visited. ‘I realized that there was more warmth and fellowship in that tavern than there was in the church. If Jesus of Nazareth had his choice He would probably have come to the tavern rather than to the church we visited.’”
~ Robert Banks and Bernice M. Ledbetter. Reviewing Leadership: A Christian Evaluation Of Current Approaches. Grand Rapids, MI. 2004. pp. 128-129.
Divine Milieu...Neil Diamond - Done Too Soon...
“Perhaps grace comes in release. Release from our demons and all that it is that has haunted and darkened our hearts, all that has caused us to grow old too soon without an abundant life. When grace comes, release comes, life comes and then freedom. It is better to be done too soon and have been fully alive than to be done to soon and have merely exist till death, for you are already dead.”
"And each one there
Has one thing shared:
They have sweated beneath the same sun,
Looked up in wonder at the same moon,
And wept when it was all done
For bein’ done too soon,
For bein’ done too soon..."
"And each one there
Has one thing shared:
They have sweated beneath the same sun,
Looked up in wonder at the same moon,
And wept when it was all done
For bein’ done too soon,
For bein’ done too soon..."
Friday, June 18, 2010
Life in the Spirit and Keeping the Faith...And Perhaps Grace Eventually...
Note: I wrote this last year during the first couple weeks of July.
“Good will conquer Evil and the truth will
set me free. And I know some day I will find
the key.”
~ Bruce Springsteen
“All things truly wicked start from an innocence.
So you live day to day and enjoy what you have and
do not worry. You lie and hate it and it destroys you
and every day is more dangerous, but you live day to
day as in a war.”
~ Ernest Hemingway
“To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best
day and night to make you everybody else, means to fight
the hardest battle which any human being can fight, and
never stop fighting.”
~ E.E. Cummings
“And when the promise was broken,I cashed
in a few of my dreams…”
~ Bruce Springsteen
“This place that is my home I
cannot stay…”
~ Bruce Springsteen
"Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muß
man schweigen"
~ Ludwig Wittgenstein
I have been thinking about the above lines from Hemingway and Springsteen lately as I consider the options that I have before me now and as I ponder which path to go down. Inside me and as I conjure up strength to write I think of Wittgensen as I do not know what to speak and I think I should just remain silent as it is difficult to summon any clarity or vision in the midst of turmoil and confusion and indeed each day now while I am awake does feel, “…as in a war.” A friend of mine who has encountered and has been living with much emotional pain and trauma commented recently to me that, “It is amazing what you can accomplish when you are operating on auto-pilot.” This is so true and describes my means of getting through each day for the past four weeks. What frightens me about auto-pilot is that it may transform my heart into an, “…unaffected heart… (which) beats dispassionately…” (Manning, Abba’s Child, 152) and the heart struck reality that my life has been and may always be one of, “Years wasted in vain regrets, energies dissipated in haphazard relationships and projects, emotions blunted, passive before whatever experiences the day brings, they are like snoring sleepers who resent having their peace disturbed. Their existential mistrust of God, the world, and even themselves underlies their inability to make a passionate commitment to anyone or anything” (152). I think to myself – is this me, is this where I have landed?
I feel compelled to do nothing! I have come to the conclusion that there is no right answer to the questions that are so damn relentless in my mind. I have before me many possibilities and in the midst of the possibilities I ask, “How will I pass through this?” There are so many emotions welling up inside of me and I realize in some limited way that, “…emotions are our most direct reaction to our perception of ourselves and the world around us. Whether positive or negative, feelings put us in touch with our true selves. They are neither good nor bad: They are simply the truth of what is going on within us. What we do with our feelings will determine whether we live lives of honesty or deceit” (152). If this is true then I should be getting really close to my true self but I do not know what to do with him because he is a stranger to me.
I no longer believe that God ever intended or desired for me to be “perfect” in some abstract sense or even in a practical sense for that matter. He intended and desires me to accept his love and live in his love as well as I can from day to day, moment to moment, according to his grace. What else is there to do? Live in the presence of all my failures and successes and accept that Abba loves me the same in both circumstances and he actually expects much more failure from me than I expect out of myself (Brennan Manning). Rich Mullens wrote, “…We have a love that's not as patient as Yours was, still we do love now and then…” (Mullens, Lyrics from Hard To Get, Jesus Album) and this is how I feel most of the time that my love is caught between the “now and then”.
I no longer believe that forgiveness is something that just magically happens, it is a process trapped in time and willingness; neither of which I have much of right now. The thing about forgiveness is that, it is what Jesus asks me to do in no uncertain terms. Forgiveness is inextricable linked to loving as Jesus loved, these two things – love and forgiveness are essential to living in faith and in many ways are what distinguish disciples from the “world”. Brennan Manning bluntly puts it this way:
"The summons to live as forgiven and forgiving children is radically inclusive. It is addressed not only to the wife whose husband forgot their wedding anniversary but also to parents whose child was slaughtered by a drunken driver, to the victims of slanderous accusations and to the poor living in filthy boxes who see the rich drive by in a Mercedes, to the sexually molested and to the spouses shamed by the unfaithfulness of their partner, to believers who have been terrorized with blasphemous images of an unbiblical deity and to the mother in El Salvador whose daughter’s body was returned to her horribly butchered, to elderly couples who lost all their savings because their bankers were thieves and to the woman whose alcoholic husband squandered their inheritance, to those who are objects of ridicule, discrimination, and prejudice.
The demands of forgiveness are so daunting that they seem humanly impossible. The exigencies of forgiveness are simply beyond the capacity of ungraced human will. Only reckless confidence in a Source greater than ourselves can empower us to forgive the wounds inflicted by others. In boundary moments such as these there is only one place to go – Calvary" (Manning, 67-78).
So, I am back to the thought that there is no right or easy answers, so what path am I willing to go down. I often think of the movie The English Patient and as he lies dying on his bed in a small room somewhere in Italy from all the burns he has suffered, his only reprieve from the pain (both physical and psychological) comes from the injections of morphine. Through his mind runs all the thoughts and memories of his life, he knows that he is dying so his life runs again through the prism of his imagination – I ponder this and think – what will my thoughts go to or be about as I lay dying someday? How will the path that I choose at this juncture of my life be relived or thought of as I lay dying? I have been also thinking about what Frederick Buechner wrote, “Listen to your life…all moments are key moments and life itself is grace”
(Taken from http: //www.judithhougen.com/bio.html. 07/04/09).
This brings some comfort because perhaps God is really in the midst of all the pain that I am feeling and this experience is truly filled with “key moments?” Rich Mullens wrote, “We can't see what's ahead, and we cannot get free of what we've left behind, I'm reeling from these voices that keep screaming in my ears, all the words of shame and doubt, blame and regret. I can't see how You're leading me unless You've led me here. Where I'm lost enough to let myself be led, and so You've been here all along I guess. It's just Your ways and You are just plain hard to get” (Mullins, Lyric from Hard To Get). These words are so true and honest and get at where I am at but I keep asking myself if Jesus really has “been here all along?” At some level I believe that he has and is but I keep telling him, “I believe help my unbelief” – so then I ask, will he take the “mustard seed” of my faith and do something with it? I pray he does because I have no idea what to do now or if he does take my faith what life will look like in the midst of the messiness of living. Paul wrote that God, “… is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us…”(Ephesians 3:20 TNIV) but what do you do you do when your imagination is laid waste and your ability to ask is weighted down with doubt?
Hemingway wrote in A Farewell to Arms that, “The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places.” I find it interesting that Hemingway wrote that “the world breaks everyone” and that not “everyone” but “many are strong at the broken places.” I hope that as I now feel part of the “everyone” that someday I will be among the “many.” The theologian from New Jersey, Bruce Springsteen wrote, “…things will knock you down you don’t even see coming and send you crawling like a baby back home…” (Springsteen, Lyric from One Step Up, Tunnel of Love) – it is amazing to me how adept Springsteen is at capturing the universal human condition of pain, suffering and loss in his lyrics. Springsteen wrote about music that, “The best music is essentially there to provide you something to face the world with.” To me, many of his lyrics are reminiscent of the laments in the Psalms. Springsteen sings, “When the promise is broken you go on living, but it steals something from down in your soul. Like when the truth is spoken and it don't make no difference, something in your heart goes cold” (Springsteen, Lyric from The Promise, 18 Tracks). This line from his song The Promise so depicts how I feel today and I ask myself how do I move on, go forward?
Brennan Manning said, “When tragedy makes its unwelcome appearance and we are deaf to everything but the shriek of our agony, when courage flies out the window and the world seems to be a hostile, menanacing place, it is the hour of our own Gethsemane. No word, however sincere, offers any consolation. The night is bad. Our minds are numb, our hearts vacant, our nerves shattered. How will we make it through the night? The God of our lonely journey is silent. And yet it may happen in these most desperate trials of our human existence that beyond any rational explanation, we may feel a nail-scarred hand clutching ours…We make it through the night and darkness gives way to the light of morning” (Manning, 105-106). When will the morning come? When will I be able to say that I have joy when I see as Homer wrote, “Dawn in her yellow robe rise in the east out of the flowing ocean, bearing light for deathless gods and mortal men” (Homer, The Iliad, Bk.19, XIX)?
And when will I be able to feel all the truth of this:
"Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope: Because of the LORD's great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. I say to myself, "The LORD is my portion; therefore I will wait for him." The LORD is good to those whose hope is in him, to the one who seeks him; it is good to wait quietly for the salvation of the LORD. It is good for people to bear the yoke while they are young. Let them sit alone in silence, for the LORD has laid it on them. Let them bury their faces in the dust-- there may yet be hope. Let them offer their cheeks to one who would strike them, and let them be filled with disgrace. For people are not cast off by the Lord forever. Though he brings grief, he will show compassion, so great is his unfailing love. For he does not willingly bring affliction or grief to any human being" (Lamentations 3:21-33).
Paul comforts with this, “… we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed (2 Corinthians 4:7-9).
Yet, in all this I ask, “When will the morning come?”
Rich Mullins asked of Jesus,
Did You ever know loneliness
Did You ever know need
Do You remember just how long a night can get?
When You were barely holding on
And Your friends fall asleep
And don't see the blood that's running in Your sweat
Will those who mourn be left uncomforted
While You're up there just playing hard to get?
Bono, asks similar things,
Jesus, Jesus help me
I'm alone in this world
And a fucked-up world it is too.
Tell me, tell me the story
The one about eternity
And the way it's all gonna be.
Wake up, wake up dead man
Wake up, wake up dead man.
Jesus, I'm waiting here, boss
I know you're looking out for us
But maybe your hands aren't free.
Your Father, He made the world in seven
He's in charge of heaven.
Will you put a word in for me?
Wake up, wake up dead man
Wake up, wake up dead man (Bono, Lyric from Wake Up Dead Man, Pop).
So then I ask in the words of Paul, “What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?” (Romans 7:24) Paul’s answer, “Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (Romans 7:25) But this is all an intellectual exercise, how do I experience this release in my inner being so that it is who I am, my being, my true self?
I don’t know if there is an answer other than to live in brokenness and woundedness regardless of what the world or anyone thinks or claims to think and in this state of helplessness live in the hope that a life lived in the Spirit is being cultivated. Time itself is what is needed in some peculiar way even though time does not cure all things as Rose Kennedy, wife of Joseph Patrick Kennedy (a women very much acquainted with sorrow and pain) so eloquently wrote, “It has been said, 'time heals all wounds.' I do not agree. The wounds remain. In time, the mind, protecting its sanity, covers them with scar tissue and the pain lessens. But it is never gone.” As Paul said, “That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Corinthians 12:10). What other answer can there be? I worship a scarred God in Jesus Christ – he is still wounded for me, the love wounds from Calvary are not gone away and this is how I know he feels my pain in such an intimate way.
Manning wrote:
"Experientially, the inner healing of the heart is seldom a sudden catharsis or an instant liberation from bitterness, anger, resentment, and hatred. More often it is a gentle growing into oneness with the Crucified who has achieved our peace through His blood on the cross. This may take considerable time because the memories are still so vivid and the hurt is still so deep. But it will happen. The crucified Christ is not merely a heroic example to the church: He is the power and wisdom of God, a living force in His present riseness, transforming our lives and enabling us to extend the hand of reconciliation to our enemies" (Manning, 68).
We all believe to some degree or another whether we acknowledge it or not what T.S. Eliot wrote to be true, “What we call the beginning is often the end and to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from….We shall not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time” (Eliot, T.S., 58). The “truth” of our existence is bore out in weakness and brokenness and Jesus promises to meet us in a place of confused intimacy with him and while we are there he says, “A bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out, till he leads justice to victory”(Matthew 12:20).
I am now, “In the uncertain hour before the morning, near the ending of interminable night, at the recurrent end of the unending…” (Eliot, 52). But when the morning finally breaks, when the stone is angelically rolled from our symbolic grave and new life comes forth that is when Jesus will have lead “justice to victory”. But I wait in the “confusing in-betweens” when things are, “Not known, because not looked for but heard, half heard, in the stillness between the waves of the sea. A condition of complete simplicity (costing not less than everything) and all shall be well when the tongues of flame are in-folded into the crowned knot of fire and the fire and the rose are one” (Eliot, 59). The only true safe place on this journey is with Jesus but to grasp his hand takes some faith, some trust he will clasp on to my hand and never let go. Manning writes, “Resurrection power enables us to engage in the savage confrontation with haunted emotions, to accept the pain, receive it, take it on board, however acute it may be. And in the process we discover that we are not alone, that we can stand fast in the awareness of present riseness and so become fuller, deeper, richer disciples. We know ourselves to be more than we previously imagined. In the process we not only endure but are forced to expand the boundaries of who we think we really are” (Manning, 105). All life’s journeys, especially the journeys taken into one’s “heart of darkness” to where we discover that, “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure…” (Jeremiah 17:9) and where we confront the acute pain of our existence we must confront the truth that all this can only be endured with the help of the “divine power” that Paul wrote about because we all as Hemingway wrote, “live day to day as in a war” but the war is of the mind and reality is spiritual in nature. Will I trust this truth, that what is most real cannot be seen but must be believed and that, “For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:3-5). It can only be by this “divine power” that any life can be transformed and by this power that Jesus can say, "I am making everything new" (Revelation 21:5)!
So what do I do now? Trust Abba! Accept that life is hard and rife with difficulties as I live in a fallen world and yet I am held by Abba through it all. I have to accept and agree that, “When we accept the truth of what we really are and surrender it to Jesus Christ, we are enveloped in peace, whether or not we feel ourselves to be at peace. By that I mean the peace that passes understanding is not a subjective sensation of peace; if we are in Christ, we are in peace even when we feel no peace” (Manning, 45). If I can accept this and live in this grace and peace and with “divine power” move forward to anticipating a new dawn in my life then perhaps someday I will be able to share with others the glimmer of hope that shines through the cracks of our broken lives. What else can I do?
The Paraclete comes when I call for help and he brings others who he has providentially prepared alongside me as friends and co-helpers in the time of suffering and pain and in this way the Holy Spirit is the Comforter. The Paraclete is one who is “…’called to the side of,’ with the implication that the one has called for help…. What comes through in all the passages where the Paraclete is mentioned is that he is active in helping people” (Morris, New Testament Theology, 263).
It is within this community that the Paraclete brings together people that will join him in the activity of “helping people.” Henri Nouwen asked the question, “How can wounds become a source of healing” (Nouwen, The Wounded Healer, 87)? He sees the answer in community, and I would add within the community that God brings together to help in each person’s time of need and this is different and special for each person and is what binds us together with Jesus and each other in the intimacy of the Paraclete and we come to know love and relationship in this community of intimacy. Nouwen writes, “Making one’s own wounds a source of healing, therefore, does not call for a sharing of superficial personal pains but for a constant willingness to see one’s own pain and suffering as rising from the depth of the human condition which all men share” (Nouwen, 88). What is interesting to me in Nouwen’s thoughts on community is that he puts forth the idea that it is hospitality within that community that is what, “…allows us to break through the narrowness of our own fears….hospitality makes anxious disciples into powerful witnesses, makes suspicious owners into generous givers, and makes closed-minded sectarians into interested recipients of new ideas and insights” (Nouwen, 89).
I must say that when I first read this a week ago when I was searching too see what Nouwen had to say about finding one’s way out of brokenness and woundedness I was not ready to receive his thoughts. Even a week ago I was not at a place on my journey to accept that I could find comfort in a community. Over the last few days however I have kept going back to Nouwen’s ideas and as I contemplate them I have started to realize and appreciate the community the Paraclete has assembled for me over the past five weeks in my hour of darkness. Nouwen comments that, “…we live in a desert with many lonely travelers who are looking for a moment of peace, for a fresh drink and for a sign of encouragement so that they can continue their mysterious search for freedom” (Nouwen, 89). This describes me, “the lonely traveler” and my community has provided a “moment of peace, a fresh drink, a sign of encouragement” so I can continue on my journey. A community arises out of the awareness, “…that we do not have to escape our pains, but that we can mobilize them into a common search for life, those very pains are transformed from expressions of despair into signs of hope…hospitality becomes community as it creates a unity based on the shared confession of our basic brokenness and on a shared hope” (Nouwen, 93).
The Apostle Paul described community, the church, the body of Christ in this way, “The way God designed our bodies is a model for understanding our lives together as a church: every part dependent on every other part, the parts we mention and the parts we don’t, the parts we see and the parts we don’t. If one part hurts, every other part is involved in the hurt, and in the healing. If one part flourishes, every other part enters into the exuberance. You are Christ’s body- that’s who you are! You must never forget this. Only as you accept your part of that body does your ‘part’ mean anything” (I Corinthians 12:25-27 The Message). Or put another way, we feel and experience each other in some mystical, mysterious and yet very real way as we are connected to the Trinity and one another by a divine means that is making us one.
I would like to thank my community, my friends that have played such a vital, sacred and intimate role in my life over the past five weeks. Reflecting back now I have no idea how I could have kept going without them or how I will keep going without them.
Many friends have formed my community of paracletes and as Nouwen states, “A Christian community is therefore a healing community not because wounds are cured and pains are alleviated, but because wounds and pains become openings or occasions for a new vision. Mutual confession then becomes a mutual deepening of hope, and sharing weakness becomes a reminder to one and all of the coming strength….the wound, which causes us to suffer now, will be revealed to us later as the place where God intimated his new creation” (Nouwen, 94,96).
This community is what Jesus prayed for when he said, "My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one— I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me” (John 17:20-23).
Bibliography
Bono. Lyrics from the Pop Album.
Eliot, T.S.. Four Quartets. (New York, NY: Harcourt Brace and Company, 1943).
Hemingway, Ernest. A Farewell To Arms.
Hemingway, Ernest. A Moveable Feast.
Manning, Brennan. Abba’s Child. (Colorado Springs, CO: Navpress, 2002).
Morris. Leon. New Testament Theology. (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1990).
Mullins, Rich. Lyrics from the Jesus Album.
Nouwen, Henri, J. The Wounded Healer. (New York, NY: Image Books, Doubleday, 1979.
Springsteen, Bruce. Lyrics from Tunnel of Love and 18 Tracks Albums.
“Good will conquer Evil and the truth will
set me free. And I know some day I will find
the key.”
~ Bruce Springsteen
“All things truly wicked start from an innocence.
So you live day to day and enjoy what you have and
do not worry. You lie and hate it and it destroys you
and every day is more dangerous, but you live day to
day as in a war.”
~ Ernest Hemingway
“To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best
day and night to make you everybody else, means to fight
the hardest battle which any human being can fight, and
never stop fighting.”
~ E.E. Cummings
“And when the promise was broken,I cashed
in a few of my dreams…”
~ Bruce Springsteen
“This place that is my home I
cannot stay…”
~ Bruce Springsteen
"Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muß
man schweigen"
~ Ludwig Wittgenstein
I have been thinking about the above lines from Hemingway and Springsteen lately as I consider the options that I have before me now and as I ponder which path to go down. Inside me and as I conjure up strength to write I think of Wittgensen as I do not know what to speak and I think I should just remain silent as it is difficult to summon any clarity or vision in the midst of turmoil and confusion and indeed each day now while I am awake does feel, “…as in a war.” A friend of mine who has encountered and has been living with much emotional pain and trauma commented recently to me that, “It is amazing what you can accomplish when you are operating on auto-pilot.” This is so true and describes my means of getting through each day for the past four weeks. What frightens me about auto-pilot is that it may transform my heart into an, “…unaffected heart… (which) beats dispassionately…” (Manning, Abba’s Child, 152) and the heart struck reality that my life has been and may always be one of, “Years wasted in vain regrets, energies dissipated in haphazard relationships and projects, emotions blunted, passive before whatever experiences the day brings, they are like snoring sleepers who resent having their peace disturbed. Their existential mistrust of God, the world, and even themselves underlies their inability to make a passionate commitment to anyone or anything” (152). I think to myself – is this me, is this where I have landed?
I feel compelled to do nothing! I have come to the conclusion that there is no right answer to the questions that are so damn relentless in my mind. I have before me many possibilities and in the midst of the possibilities I ask, “How will I pass through this?” There are so many emotions welling up inside of me and I realize in some limited way that, “…emotions are our most direct reaction to our perception of ourselves and the world around us. Whether positive or negative, feelings put us in touch with our true selves. They are neither good nor bad: They are simply the truth of what is going on within us. What we do with our feelings will determine whether we live lives of honesty or deceit” (152). If this is true then I should be getting really close to my true self but I do not know what to do with him because he is a stranger to me.
I no longer believe that God ever intended or desired for me to be “perfect” in some abstract sense or even in a practical sense for that matter. He intended and desires me to accept his love and live in his love as well as I can from day to day, moment to moment, according to his grace. What else is there to do? Live in the presence of all my failures and successes and accept that Abba loves me the same in both circumstances and he actually expects much more failure from me than I expect out of myself (Brennan Manning). Rich Mullens wrote, “…We have a love that's not as patient as Yours was, still we do love now and then…” (Mullens, Lyrics from Hard To Get, Jesus Album) and this is how I feel most of the time that my love is caught between the “now and then”.
I no longer believe that forgiveness is something that just magically happens, it is a process trapped in time and willingness; neither of which I have much of right now. The thing about forgiveness is that, it is what Jesus asks me to do in no uncertain terms. Forgiveness is inextricable linked to loving as Jesus loved, these two things – love and forgiveness are essential to living in faith and in many ways are what distinguish disciples from the “world”. Brennan Manning bluntly puts it this way:
"The summons to live as forgiven and forgiving children is radically inclusive. It is addressed not only to the wife whose husband forgot their wedding anniversary but also to parents whose child was slaughtered by a drunken driver, to the victims of slanderous accusations and to the poor living in filthy boxes who see the rich drive by in a Mercedes, to the sexually molested and to the spouses shamed by the unfaithfulness of their partner, to believers who have been terrorized with blasphemous images of an unbiblical deity and to the mother in El Salvador whose daughter’s body was returned to her horribly butchered, to elderly couples who lost all their savings because their bankers were thieves and to the woman whose alcoholic husband squandered their inheritance, to those who are objects of ridicule, discrimination, and prejudice.
The demands of forgiveness are so daunting that they seem humanly impossible. The exigencies of forgiveness are simply beyond the capacity of ungraced human will. Only reckless confidence in a Source greater than ourselves can empower us to forgive the wounds inflicted by others. In boundary moments such as these there is only one place to go – Calvary" (Manning, 67-78).
So, I am back to the thought that there is no right or easy answers, so what path am I willing to go down. I often think of the movie The English Patient and as he lies dying on his bed in a small room somewhere in Italy from all the burns he has suffered, his only reprieve from the pain (both physical and psychological) comes from the injections of morphine. Through his mind runs all the thoughts and memories of his life, he knows that he is dying so his life runs again through the prism of his imagination – I ponder this and think – what will my thoughts go to or be about as I lay dying someday? How will the path that I choose at this juncture of my life be relived or thought of as I lay dying? I have been also thinking about what Frederick Buechner wrote, “Listen to your life…all moments are key moments and life itself is grace”
(Taken from http: //www.judithhougen.com/bio.html. 07/04/09).
This brings some comfort because perhaps God is really in the midst of all the pain that I am feeling and this experience is truly filled with “key moments?” Rich Mullens wrote, “We can't see what's ahead, and we cannot get free of what we've left behind, I'm reeling from these voices that keep screaming in my ears, all the words of shame and doubt, blame and regret. I can't see how You're leading me unless You've led me here. Where I'm lost enough to let myself be led, and so You've been here all along I guess. It's just Your ways and You are just plain hard to get” (Mullins, Lyric from Hard To Get). These words are so true and honest and get at where I am at but I keep asking myself if Jesus really has “been here all along?” At some level I believe that he has and is but I keep telling him, “I believe help my unbelief” – so then I ask, will he take the “mustard seed” of my faith and do something with it? I pray he does because I have no idea what to do now or if he does take my faith what life will look like in the midst of the messiness of living. Paul wrote that God, “… is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us…”(Ephesians 3:20 TNIV) but what do you do you do when your imagination is laid waste and your ability to ask is weighted down with doubt?
Hemingway wrote in A Farewell to Arms that, “The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places.” I find it interesting that Hemingway wrote that “the world breaks everyone” and that not “everyone” but “many are strong at the broken places.” I hope that as I now feel part of the “everyone” that someday I will be among the “many.” The theologian from New Jersey, Bruce Springsteen wrote, “…things will knock you down you don’t even see coming and send you crawling like a baby back home…” (Springsteen, Lyric from One Step Up, Tunnel of Love) – it is amazing to me how adept Springsteen is at capturing the universal human condition of pain, suffering and loss in his lyrics. Springsteen wrote about music that, “The best music is essentially there to provide you something to face the world with.” To me, many of his lyrics are reminiscent of the laments in the Psalms. Springsteen sings, “When the promise is broken you go on living, but it steals something from down in your soul. Like when the truth is spoken and it don't make no difference, something in your heart goes cold” (Springsteen, Lyric from The Promise, 18 Tracks). This line from his song The Promise so depicts how I feel today and I ask myself how do I move on, go forward?
Brennan Manning said, “When tragedy makes its unwelcome appearance and we are deaf to everything but the shriek of our agony, when courage flies out the window and the world seems to be a hostile, menanacing place, it is the hour of our own Gethsemane. No word, however sincere, offers any consolation. The night is bad. Our minds are numb, our hearts vacant, our nerves shattered. How will we make it through the night? The God of our lonely journey is silent. And yet it may happen in these most desperate trials of our human existence that beyond any rational explanation, we may feel a nail-scarred hand clutching ours…We make it through the night and darkness gives way to the light of morning” (Manning, 105-106). When will the morning come? When will I be able to say that I have joy when I see as Homer wrote, “Dawn in her yellow robe rise in the east out of the flowing ocean, bearing light for deathless gods and mortal men” (Homer, The Iliad, Bk.19, XIX)?
And when will I be able to feel all the truth of this:
"Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope: Because of the LORD's great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. I say to myself, "The LORD is my portion; therefore I will wait for him." The LORD is good to those whose hope is in him, to the one who seeks him; it is good to wait quietly for the salvation of the LORD. It is good for people to bear the yoke while they are young. Let them sit alone in silence, for the LORD has laid it on them. Let them bury their faces in the dust-- there may yet be hope. Let them offer their cheeks to one who would strike them, and let them be filled with disgrace. For people are not cast off by the Lord forever. Though he brings grief, he will show compassion, so great is his unfailing love. For he does not willingly bring affliction or grief to any human being" (Lamentations 3:21-33).
Paul comforts with this, “… we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed (2 Corinthians 4:7-9).
Yet, in all this I ask, “When will the morning come?”
Rich Mullins asked of Jesus,
Did You ever know loneliness
Did You ever know need
Do You remember just how long a night can get?
When You were barely holding on
And Your friends fall asleep
And don't see the blood that's running in Your sweat
Will those who mourn be left uncomforted
While You're up there just playing hard to get?
Bono, asks similar things,
Jesus, Jesus help me
I'm alone in this world
And a fucked-up world it is too.
Tell me, tell me the story
The one about eternity
And the way it's all gonna be.
Wake up, wake up dead man
Wake up, wake up dead man.
Jesus, I'm waiting here, boss
I know you're looking out for us
But maybe your hands aren't free.
Your Father, He made the world in seven
He's in charge of heaven.
Will you put a word in for me?
Wake up, wake up dead man
Wake up, wake up dead man (Bono, Lyric from Wake Up Dead Man, Pop).
So then I ask in the words of Paul, “What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?” (Romans 7:24) Paul’s answer, “Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (Romans 7:25) But this is all an intellectual exercise, how do I experience this release in my inner being so that it is who I am, my being, my true self?
I don’t know if there is an answer other than to live in brokenness and woundedness regardless of what the world or anyone thinks or claims to think and in this state of helplessness live in the hope that a life lived in the Spirit is being cultivated. Time itself is what is needed in some peculiar way even though time does not cure all things as Rose Kennedy, wife of Joseph Patrick Kennedy (a women very much acquainted with sorrow and pain) so eloquently wrote, “It has been said, 'time heals all wounds.' I do not agree. The wounds remain. In time, the mind, protecting its sanity, covers them with scar tissue and the pain lessens. But it is never gone.” As Paul said, “That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Corinthians 12:10). What other answer can there be? I worship a scarred God in Jesus Christ – he is still wounded for me, the love wounds from Calvary are not gone away and this is how I know he feels my pain in such an intimate way.
Manning wrote:
"Experientially, the inner healing of the heart is seldom a sudden catharsis or an instant liberation from bitterness, anger, resentment, and hatred. More often it is a gentle growing into oneness with the Crucified who has achieved our peace through His blood on the cross. This may take considerable time because the memories are still so vivid and the hurt is still so deep. But it will happen. The crucified Christ is not merely a heroic example to the church: He is the power and wisdom of God, a living force in His present riseness, transforming our lives and enabling us to extend the hand of reconciliation to our enemies" (Manning, 68).
We all believe to some degree or another whether we acknowledge it or not what T.S. Eliot wrote to be true, “What we call the beginning is often the end and to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from….We shall not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time” (Eliot, T.S., 58). The “truth” of our existence is bore out in weakness and brokenness and Jesus promises to meet us in a place of confused intimacy with him and while we are there he says, “A bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out, till he leads justice to victory”(Matthew 12:20).
I am now, “In the uncertain hour before the morning, near the ending of interminable night, at the recurrent end of the unending…” (Eliot, 52). But when the morning finally breaks, when the stone is angelically rolled from our symbolic grave and new life comes forth that is when Jesus will have lead “justice to victory”. But I wait in the “confusing in-betweens” when things are, “Not known, because not looked for but heard, half heard, in the stillness between the waves of the sea. A condition of complete simplicity (costing not less than everything) and all shall be well when the tongues of flame are in-folded into the crowned knot of fire and the fire and the rose are one” (Eliot, 59). The only true safe place on this journey is with Jesus but to grasp his hand takes some faith, some trust he will clasp on to my hand and never let go. Manning writes, “Resurrection power enables us to engage in the savage confrontation with haunted emotions, to accept the pain, receive it, take it on board, however acute it may be. And in the process we discover that we are not alone, that we can stand fast in the awareness of present riseness and so become fuller, deeper, richer disciples. We know ourselves to be more than we previously imagined. In the process we not only endure but are forced to expand the boundaries of who we think we really are” (Manning, 105). All life’s journeys, especially the journeys taken into one’s “heart of darkness” to where we discover that, “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure…” (Jeremiah 17:9) and where we confront the acute pain of our existence we must confront the truth that all this can only be endured with the help of the “divine power” that Paul wrote about because we all as Hemingway wrote, “live day to day as in a war” but the war is of the mind and reality is spiritual in nature. Will I trust this truth, that what is most real cannot be seen but must be believed and that, “For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:3-5). It can only be by this “divine power” that any life can be transformed and by this power that Jesus can say, "I am making everything new" (Revelation 21:5)!
So what do I do now? Trust Abba! Accept that life is hard and rife with difficulties as I live in a fallen world and yet I am held by Abba through it all. I have to accept and agree that, “When we accept the truth of what we really are and surrender it to Jesus Christ, we are enveloped in peace, whether or not we feel ourselves to be at peace. By that I mean the peace that passes understanding is not a subjective sensation of peace; if we are in Christ, we are in peace even when we feel no peace” (Manning, 45). If I can accept this and live in this grace and peace and with “divine power” move forward to anticipating a new dawn in my life then perhaps someday I will be able to share with others the glimmer of hope that shines through the cracks of our broken lives. What else can I do?
The Paraclete comes when I call for help and he brings others who he has providentially prepared alongside me as friends and co-helpers in the time of suffering and pain and in this way the Holy Spirit is the Comforter. The Paraclete is one who is “…’called to the side of,’ with the implication that the one has called for help…. What comes through in all the passages where the Paraclete is mentioned is that he is active in helping people” (Morris, New Testament Theology, 263).
It is within this community that the Paraclete brings together people that will join him in the activity of “helping people.” Henri Nouwen asked the question, “How can wounds become a source of healing” (Nouwen, The Wounded Healer, 87)? He sees the answer in community, and I would add within the community that God brings together to help in each person’s time of need and this is different and special for each person and is what binds us together with Jesus and each other in the intimacy of the Paraclete and we come to know love and relationship in this community of intimacy. Nouwen writes, “Making one’s own wounds a source of healing, therefore, does not call for a sharing of superficial personal pains but for a constant willingness to see one’s own pain and suffering as rising from the depth of the human condition which all men share” (Nouwen, 88). What is interesting to me in Nouwen’s thoughts on community is that he puts forth the idea that it is hospitality within that community that is what, “…allows us to break through the narrowness of our own fears….hospitality makes anxious disciples into powerful witnesses, makes suspicious owners into generous givers, and makes closed-minded sectarians into interested recipients of new ideas and insights” (Nouwen, 89).
I must say that when I first read this a week ago when I was searching too see what Nouwen had to say about finding one’s way out of brokenness and woundedness I was not ready to receive his thoughts. Even a week ago I was not at a place on my journey to accept that I could find comfort in a community. Over the last few days however I have kept going back to Nouwen’s ideas and as I contemplate them I have started to realize and appreciate the community the Paraclete has assembled for me over the past five weeks in my hour of darkness. Nouwen comments that, “…we live in a desert with many lonely travelers who are looking for a moment of peace, for a fresh drink and for a sign of encouragement so that they can continue their mysterious search for freedom” (Nouwen, 89). This describes me, “the lonely traveler” and my community has provided a “moment of peace, a fresh drink, a sign of encouragement” so I can continue on my journey. A community arises out of the awareness, “…that we do not have to escape our pains, but that we can mobilize them into a common search for life, those very pains are transformed from expressions of despair into signs of hope…hospitality becomes community as it creates a unity based on the shared confession of our basic brokenness and on a shared hope” (Nouwen, 93).
The Apostle Paul described community, the church, the body of Christ in this way, “The way God designed our bodies is a model for understanding our lives together as a church: every part dependent on every other part, the parts we mention and the parts we don’t, the parts we see and the parts we don’t. If one part hurts, every other part is involved in the hurt, and in the healing. If one part flourishes, every other part enters into the exuberance. You are Christ’s body- that’s who you are! You must never forget this. Only as you accept your part of that body does your ‘part’ mean anything” (I Corinthians 12:25-27 The Message). Or put another way, we feel and experience each other in some mystical, mysterious and yet very real way as we are connected to the Trinity and one another by a divine means that is making us one.
I would like to thank my community, my friends that have played such a vital, sacred and intimate role in my life over the past five weeks. Reflecting back now I have no idea how I could have kept going without them or how I will keep going without them.
Many friends have formed my community of paracletes and as Nouwen states, “A Christian community is therefore a healing community not because wounds are cured and pains are alleviated, but because wounds and pains become openings or occasions for a new vision. Mutual confession then becomes a mutual deepening of hope, and sharing weakness becomes a reminder to one and all of the coming strength….the wound, which causes us to suffer now, will be revealed to us later as the place where God intimated his new creation” (Nouwen, 94,96).
This community is what Jesus prayed for when he said, "My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one— I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me” (John 17:20-23).
Bibliography
Bono. Lyrics from the Pop Album.
Eliot, T.S.. Four Quartets. (New York, NY: Harcourt Brace and Company, 1943).
Hemingway, Ernest. A Farewell To Arms.
Hemingway, Ernest. A Moveable Feast.
Manning, Brennan. Abba’s Child. (Colorado Springs, CO: Navpress, 2002).
Morris. Leon. New Testament Theology. (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1990).
Mullins, Rich. Lyrics from the Jesus Album.
Nouwen, Henri, J. The Wounded Healer. (New York, NY: Image Books, Doubleday, 1979.
Springsteen, Bruce. Lyrics from Tunnel of Love and 18 Tracks Albums.
Divine Milieu...Bruce Springsteen - The Ghost of Tom Joad...
"He will reply, 'Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.'” ~ Matthew 25:45 TNIV
Desire...Something From John Eldredge...
As our soul grows in the love of God and journeys forth toward him, our heart's capacities also grow and expand: "Thou shalt enlarge my heart" (Ps. 119:32 KJV).
But the sword cuts both ways. While our heart grows in its capacity for pleasure, it grows in its capacity to know pain. The two go hand in hand. What, then, shall we do with disappointment? We can be our own enemy, depending on how we handle the heartache that comes with desire. To want is to suffer; the word passion means to suffer.
This is why many Christians are reluctant to listen to their hearts: They know that their dullness is keeping them from feeling the pain of life. Many of us have chosen simply not to want so much; it's safer that way. It's also godless. That's stoicism, not Christianity. Sanctification is an awakening, the rousing of our souls from the dead sleep of sin into the fullness of their capacity for life.
Desire often feels like an enemy, because it wakes longings that cannot be fulfilled in the moment.
In the words of T. S. Eliot,
“April is the cruelest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire.” (The Waste Land)
Spring awakens a desire for the summer that is not yet. Awakened souls are often disappointed, but our disappointment can lead us onward, actually increasing our desire and lifting it toward its true passion.
~ John Elderidge, The Sacred Romance
But the sword cuts both ways. While our heart grows in its capacity for pleasure, it grows in its capacity to know pain. The two go hand in hand. What, then, shall we do with disappointment? We can be our own enemy, depending on how we handle the heartache that comes with desire. To want is to suffer; the word passion means to suffer.
This is why many Christians are reluctant to listen to their hearts: They know that their dullness is keeping them from feeling the pain of life. Many of us have chosen simply not to want so much; it's safer that way. It's also godless. That's stoicism, not Christianity. Sanctification is an awakening, the rousing of our souls from the dead sleep of sin into the fullness of their capacity for life.
Desire often feels like an enemy, because it wakes longings that cannot be fulfilled in the moment.
In the words of T. S. Eliot,
“April is the cruelest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire.” (The Waste Land)
Spring awakens a desire for the summer that is not yet. Awakened souls are often disappointed, but our disappointment can lead us onward, actually increasing our desire and lifting it toward its true passion.
~ John Elderidge, The Sacred Romance
Thought...
“Tension is God’s gift to us, a gift that sometimes will not permit us to escape its presence. I believe that our creative energies are activated by just that kind of upsetting tension. It is in responding to this gnawing discomfort that we have the possibility of giving shape to dreams that are at once faithful to who we are and who we can become.”
~ Paula Ripple, Growing Strong at Broken Places
Divine Milieu...10 000 Maniacs - Because The Night...Thanks For The Suggestion...
"Desire is hunger, is the fire I breath,
Love is a banquet, on which we feed..."
“Take my hand as the sun descends…”
Love is a banquet, on which we feed..."
“Take my hand as the sun descends…”
Grace...
You know what…I have no words to express what I am feeling tonight…it all (life) has to be, is, bigger, broader, wider, more, less, all, and yet nothing, all at the same time and yet not in time, all we can and cannot imagine, more beautiful and astounding and horrible and ugly…it is all that and not that…it is and not is…all that is in-between - both in the silence and in the noise of the clasping of waves and the brightness and darkness of all that may or may not be and yet is. The why and the why not…the how and the what and not, the being and non-being…the knowing and not knowing, all the being and all the nothingness and yet all that there is at the same time…all the life and death, the sin, the brokenness and helplessness, the pain, the struggle, the loss…and the joy, smiles, laughter…forgiveness,mercy,acceptance of our own acceptance and the peace that comes eventually in the still moments of despair...
And, and, in the face and reality of it all that there can be and is, there is grace that comes smashing through it all to obliterate all that we can conceive of and to wash and clean it all and make it all new, as new as the morning and the rising of the sun that warms the faces that are full of tears from the darkness of the long night!!!
I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know…and yet I do...
The Cross, Love and Grace…"3"…Trinity…
Thursday, June 17, 2010
Hmmm...
“It has never been either practical or useful to leave all things and follow Christ. And yet it is spiritually prudent.”
~ Thomas Merton, The Monastic Journey
~ Thomas Merton, The Monastic Journey
Thought...
“The sky in a northern Minnesota summer can be compared to the broken soul in so many ways...you may feel cold, cloudy, with a chance of rain, sudden flash floods from above, windy while you let off some steam, lightning and thunder in your most angry of moments...but behind it all...there will always be a blue sky, and the warm smile of the sun just waiting for the emotional storm to finally end...."
~ Jo
~ Jo
For...Catherine, Trinity, Jo, Victoria, & All "The Broken, The Beaten & The Damned..."
"I'll make you smile until I can't anymore..."
~ Catherine
Come on up for the rising
Com on up, lay your hands in mine
Come on up for the rising
Come on up for the rising tonight
I see you Mary in the garden
In the garden of a thousand sighs
There's holy pictures of our children
Dancin' in a sky filled with light
May I feel your arms around me
May I feel your blood mix with mine
A dream of life comes to me
Like a catfish dancin' on the end of the line
~ Catherine
Come on up for the rising
Com on up, lay your hands in mine
Come on up for the rising
Come on up for the rising tonight
I see you Mary in the garden
In the garden of a thousand sighs
There's holy pictures of our children
Dancin' in a sky filled with light
May I feel your arms around me
May I feel your blood mix with mine
A dream of life comes to me
Like a catfish dancin' on the end of the line
Thought...
"Moments continue to go up in flames like the bush in Midian to illuminate, if only for a moment,a path that stretches before us like no other path. And such moments call out in a voice which, if we only had courage and heart enough, we would follow to the end of time."
~ Frederick Buechner
~ Frederick Buechner
Thought...
"Love consents to all and commands only those who consents. Love is abdication. God is abdication."
~ Simone Weil
~ Simone Weil
Divine Milieu...The Theologian From New Jersey - Lonesome Day...
Once I thought I knew
Everything I needed to know about you
Your sweet whisper, Your tender touch
But I didn't really know that much
Joke's on me, It's gonna be okay
If I can just get through this lonesome day
Hell's brewin' dark sun's on the rise
This storm'll blow through by and by
House is on fire, Viper's in the grass
A little revenge and this too shall pass
This too shall pass, I'm gonna pray
Right now all I got's this lonesome day
Better ask questions before you shoot
Deceit and betrayals bitter fruit
It's hard to swallow, come time to pay
That taste on your tongue don't easily slip away
Let kingdom come I'm gonna find my way
Through this lonesome day
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
A Walk, "3", and Grace...
“The way God designed our bodies is a model for understanding our lives together as a church: every part dependent on every other part, the parts we mention and the parts we don’t, the parts we see and the parts we don’t. If one part hurts, every other part is involved in the hurt, and in the healing. If one part flourishes, every other part enters into the exuberance. You are Christ’s body- that’s who you are! You must never forget this. Only as you accept your part of that body does your ‘part’ mean anything”
~ I Corinthians 12:25-27 - The Message
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
Divine Milieu...Bruce Springsteen, U2, Patti Smith - Because The Night...
"Desire is hunger, is the fire I breath,
Love is a banquet, on which we feed..."
Love is a banquet, on which we feed..."
Sunday, June 13, 2010
Grace Amidst The Fog…
Grace in the fog of life…the journey in the messiness and murkiness of living a real, authentic, abundant life...
“The Enemy always tempts us back to control, to recover and rebuild the false self.”
~John Eldredge
I am or have been incredulous because that which I can’t believe are those things which I can’t control. When I thought I was in control of things – those things, or life, did not seem strange, weird or unbelievable or random.
Perhaps, I was blind to such things and in being blind to them I was missing life and love and beauty. And the grace…the mere grace that comes in the surrender of attempting to control or do anything is amazing although unsettling in its initial appearing.
It is in the absence of doing,in resting in Jesus and knowing the love of the Father and that the Holy Spirit can have his way with our hearts - to tend and mend our brokenness and heal our loss and sadness.
"A thief is only there to steal and kill and destroy. I came so they can have real and eternal life, more and better life than they ever dreamed of."
~ Jesus
“The Enemy always tempts us back to control, to recover and rebuild the false self.”
~John Eldredge
I am or have been incredulous because that which I can’t believe are those things which I can’t control. When I thought I was in control of things – those things, or life, did not seem strange, weird or unbelievable or random.
Perhaps, I was blind to such things and in being blind to them I was missing life and love and beauty. And the grace…the mere grace that comes in the surrender of attempting to control or do anything is amazing although unsettling in its initial appearing.
It is in the absence of doing,in resting in Jesus and knowing the love of the Father and that the Holy Spirit can have his way with our hearts - to tend and mend our brokenness and heal our loss and sadness.
"A thief is only there to steal and kill and destroy. I came so they can have real and eternal life, more and better life than they ever dreamed of."
~ Jesus
Grace In Your Strength...To Be, Rather Than To Appear...
“If you want to know how the world really feels about you, just start living out of your true strength. Say what you think, stand up for the underdog, challenge foolish policies. They’ll turn on you like sharks…The world of posers is shaken by a real man. They’ll do whatever it takes to get you back in line - threaten you, bribe you, seduce you, undermine you. They crucified Jesus. But it didn’t work, did it? You must let your strength show up. Remember Christ in the garden, the sheer force of his presence? Many of us have actually been afraid to let our strength show up because the world doesn’t have a place for it. Fine. The world’s screwed up. Let people feel the weight of who you are and let them deal with it."
~ John Eldredge, Wild At Heart
Esse Quam Videri...
“Were you listening to me Neo or were you looking at the woman in the red dress? Look again…”
~ Morpheus, The Matrix
“…we cannot hear the real answer until we see we’ve got a false one. So long as we chase the illusion, how can we face reality? The hunger is there; it lives in our souls like a famished craving, no matter what we’ve tried to fill it with. If you take your question to Eve, it will break your heart….There is only one source for the answer to your question. And so no matter where you’ve taken your question, you’ve got to take it back. You have to walk away. That is the beginning of your journey.”
~ John Eldredge, Wild At Heart
"She'll look at you and smile
And her eyes will say
She's got a secret garden
Where everything you want
Where everything you need
Will always stay
A million miles away..."
~ Bruce Springsteen, Secret Garden
“It’s a deep lie wedded to a deep truth. Eve is a garden of delight (Song 4:16). But she’s not everything you want, everything you need – not even close. Of course it will stay a million miles away. You can’t get there from here because it’s not there. It’s not there. The answer to your question can never, ever be found there.”
~ John Eldredge, Wild At Heart
~ Morpheus, The Matrix
“…we cannot hear the real answer until we see we’ve got a false one. So long as we chase the illusion, how can we face reality? The hunger is there; it lives in our souls like a famished craving, no matter what we’ve tried to fill it with. If you take your question to Eve, it will break your heart….There is only one source for the answer to your question. And so no matter where you’ve taken your question, you’ve got to take it back. You have to walk away. That is the beginning of your journey.”
~ John Eldredge, Wild At Heart
"She'll look at you and smile
And her eyes will say
She's got a secret garden
Where everything you want
Where everything you need
Will always stay
A million miles away..."
~ Bruce Springsteen, Secret Garden
“It’s a deep lie wedded to a deep truth. Eve is a garden of delight (Song 4:16). But she’s not everything you want, everything you need – not even close. Of course it will stay a million miles away. You can’t get there from here because it’s not there. It’s not there. The answer to your question can never, ever be found there.”
~ John Eldredge, Wild At Heart
Friday, June 11, 2010
Grace...
“I’m lurching forward in my life again, and it feels as if someone finally cracked open a window that had been jammed.”
~Anne Lamott
"I'd rather be hated for who I am than loved for who I am not."
~ Kurt Cobain
~Anne Lamott
"I'd rather be hated for who I am than loved for who I am not."
~ Kurt Cobain
Thought...Anne Lamott...
“I wish grace and healing were more abracadabra kinds of things; also, that delicate silver bells would ring to announce grace’s arrival. But no, it’s clog and slog, and scotch, on the floor, in silence, in the dark.”
~ Anne Lamott
~ Anne Lamott
Thought...Rich Mullins...
“Jesus said whatever you do to the least of these my brothers you’ve done it to me. And this is what I’ve come to think. That if I want to identify fully with Jesus Christ, who I claim to be my savior and Lord, the best way that I can do that is to identify with the poor. This I know will go against the teachings of all the popular evangelical preachers. But they’re just wrong. They’re not bad, they’re just wrong. Christianity is not about building an absolutely secure little niche in the world where you can live with your perfect little wife and your perfect little children in a beautiful little house where you have no gays or minority groups anywhere near you. Christianity is about learning to love like Jesus loved and Jesus loved the poor and Jesus loved the broken....”
~ Rich Mullins, 1997
~ Rich Mullins, 1997
Thursday, June 10, 2010
Divine Milieu...Counting Crows - Color Blind...
“GOD's loyal love couldn't have run out, his merciful love couldn't have dried up. They're created new every morning. How great your faithfulness!”
~ Lamentations 3:22-23 The Message
~ Lamentations 3:22-23 The Message
Divine Milieu...Bruce Springsteen - One Step Up...
Bird on a wire outside my motel room
But he ain't singin'
Girl in white outside a church in June
But the church bells they ain't ringing
I'm sittin' here in this bar tonight
But all I'm thinkin' is
I'm the same old story same old act
One step up and two steps back
Hmmm…I almost posted this video for Bruce Springsteen’s song “One Step Up” last week and then I didn’t - maybe because it is too real, too authentic, and too painful?
Then this morning while having coffee with a good friend he told me story that was very similar to this song and the loneliness and desperation that sometimes comes from being human. The story I was told had a very interesting twist which I may tell another time but for now I want to linger in the truth of these lyrics.
It is no wonder that Brennan Manning wrote this about the Springsteen album that this song came off of:
“Most people understand imagery and symbol better than doctrine and dogma. Images touch hearts and awaken imaginations. One theologian suggested that Springsteen’s Tunnel of Love album, in which he symbolically sings of sin, death, despair, and redemption, is more important for Catholics than the Pope’s last visit when he spoke of morality only in doctrinal propositions. Troubadours have always been more important and influential than theologians and bishops.”
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
Grace In Goodbye...When 3 Becomes 1...
"Life is a series of hellos and goodbye’s...I guess it's time for goodbye again..."
“Thank-you for being my eyes when I couldn’t see…”
“An e-mail or two and then a card at Christmas…”
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
My Place Today...Be...
"Give your entire attention to what God is doing right now, and don't get worked up about what may or may not happen tomorrow. God will help you deal with whatever hard things come up when the time comes.
~Jesus
Be...be content and rest in the place I am at, in the moment I am in, in the now, between the past and the future...be and rest in this place, in the peace that is between the clasp of the waves. Know who I am...rest in that...be o.k. with that.
~Jesus
Be...be content and rest in the place I am at, in the moment I am in, in the now, between the past and the future...be and rest in this place, in the peace that is between the clasp of the waves. Know who I am...rest in that...be o.k. with that.
Grace In Being Lost & Finding Each Other...Be...
“We all got secrets. I got them same as everybody else – things we feel bad about and wish hadn’t ever happened. Hurtful things. Long ago things. We’re all scared and lonesome, but most of the time we keep it hid. It’s like every one of us has lost his way so bad we don’t even know which way is home any more only we’re ashamed to ask. You know what would happen if we would own up we’re lost and ask? Why, what would happen is we’d find out home is each other. We’d find out home is Jesus that loves us lost or found or any whichway.”
~Frederick Buechner
Divine Milieu...Neil Diamond...Jonathan Livingston Seagull...Be...
Lost
On a painted sky
Where the clouds are hung
For the poet's eye
You may find him
If you may find him
There
On a distant shore
By the wings of dreams
Through an open door
You may know him
If you may
Be
As a page that aches for a word
Which speaks on a theme that is timeless
And the one God will make for your day
Sing
As a song in search of a voice that is silent
And the Sun God will make for your way
And we dance
To a whispered voice
Overheard by the soul
Undertook by the heart
And you may know it
If you may know it
While the sand
Would become the stone
Which begat the spark
Turned to living bone
Holy, Holy
Sanctus, sanctus
Be
As a page that aches for a word
Which speaks on a theme that is timeless
And the one God will make for your day
Sing
As a song in search of a voice that is silent
And the one God will make for your way
Grace...In A Prayer...Hmmmm...
Κύριε Ιησού Χριστέ, Υιέ του Θεού, ελέησόν με τον αμαρτωλόν.
Domine Iesu Christe, Fili Dei, miserere mei, peccatoris
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, the sinner.
Monday, June 7, 2010
Sunday, June 6, 2010
The Night...
"Nightfall...pure torment for the broken soul...while the rest of the world sleeps, we stay awake to escape the nightmares and heartache that are sure to come...you will find the broken souls working themselves till they are so tired they sleep with no dreams or sitting at your local bar numbing the pain and pretending everything is fine..."
~Jo
Thought...When The Cup Is Empty...
"If you've never been someone’s mistake...then you will never understand the ache in your heart every day...the smiles are all band aids for the world, because it’s easier to make them believe you are fine than tell the world the truth..."
~ Jo
Alone...
When a wave of emptiness sweeps over your soul there is little to do to assuage the ache of the void and little to do to regain the breath of life to revive your soul.
Friday, June 4, 2010
Hmmmm...My Place Today...
I am or have been incredulous because that which I can’t believe are those things which I can’t control. When I thought I was in control of things – those things, or life, did not seem strange, weird or unbelievable or random.
Perhaps, I was blind to such things and in being blind to them I was missing life and love and beauty. And the grace…the mere grace that comes in the surrender of attempting to control or do anything is amazing although unsettling in its initial appearing.
It is in the absence of doing, and in resting in Jesus and knowing the love of the Father that the Holy Spirit can have his way with our hearts, tend and mend our brokenness and heal our loss and sadness.
"Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.”
~Matthew 11:28
Vertigo and Poetic Memories...
Catherine sent an e-mail about her two day excursion to Avila as well as some photos. Avila is a couple hour drive east of Madrid, but she said it was well worth it to visit the birth place of mystic and author Teresa of Avila. Teresa is one of Catherine’s cherished women of the Christian faith and the connections between Teresa and St. John of The Cross reminded me of Catherine and my friendship.
The e-mail and the stories in it about Madrid and Avila reminded me of kindred spirit of Catherine's and mine – Victoria. And the vertigo of poetic memories began again…
Some words from a novel I read years ago surfaced in my heart and like the ebb and flow of the waves on the ocean of our shared collective unconscious and life journey the words jarred loose something in my memory and the years and the moments were released and played again like a movie in my mind:
“We were never as close, Lisa and I, as that moment. I miss being that close to her. In a way I am still close to her, I am close in memory, and you would think being close and enjoying being close would prevent two people from drifting apart, but you’d be wrong.”
~Wilton Barnhardt, Emma Who Saved My Life
Grace in Tears and Being Human...
"Jesus wept."
~John 11:35
~John 11:35
"The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us."
~John 1:14a
God cried to manifest he was human and became human to manifest he was God...
For Jo Tonight...
“But of this you can be sure. Whenever you find tears in your eyes, especially unexpected tears, it is well to pay the closest attention. They are not only telling you something about the secret of who you are, but more often than not God is speaking to you through them of the mystery of where you have come from and is summoning you to where, if your soul is to be saved, you should go next.”
~Frederick Buechner
"To lend each other a hand when we're falling....perhaps is the only work that matters in the end."
~Frederick Buechner
~Frederick Buechner
"To lend each other a hand when we're falling....perhaps is the only work that matters in the end."
~Frederick Buechner
Thursday, June 3, 2010
“…we are flesh as well as spirit and that the touch of a hand has its own holiness.”
~ Frederick Buechner
When you experience Jesus through another person how can you ever let that moment go? It is eternal! You are forever connected to that person, that soul, for you have participated, been in communion with the heart of God.
~ Frederick Buechner
When you experience Jesus through another person how can you ever let that moment go? It is eternal! You are forever connected to that person, that soul, for you have participated, been in communion with the heart of God.
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
Thanks to Trinity, Catherine and Jo...
My friend Catherine’s sister has been visiting with me over the last couple of weeks after a mutual friend of ours, Trinity shared some of my life of late. Thanks to Trinity, Jo has been a wonderful friend to be around and talk with and she wrote me a letter yesterday that so reminded me of Catherine and her heart that it is so obvious they are sister’s and friends with Trinity as all three share the same beauty inside and out. This is what Jo wrote to me:
Now pay attention; this may be your biggest wakeup call ever. I was wondering something…why are you not doing missions work? You would be so good at it! I say fuck this country and get out there! Maybe that’s your calling? I don’t know but it seems like you need to be doing untraditional work somewhere in the world…your soul is deeply hurt and sad, I know this, but you need to be out there making a difference! It’s your personality. You were never meant to be sad and broken…remember this life is only a test and this is your wakeup call…I just think you need to know how special you truly are!!! Damn it, I wish I could explain that you can change the world with your presence and ideas but you have to put yourself out there!!!
Forget responsibility! Your family will understand, but you have to explain it in a way they will understand…people now days are so messed up they forget the important stuff like God and right and wrong…the world needs people like you!!!! I wish I could tell you that life will be easy and everything will get better but it’s not true, it will get harder and harder and harder…it’s how we show we have faith…you have a good heart!!!!! Use it!!! Use the love you are waiting to unleash on the world…ambulance is just a job, life is your test…be proud of who you are…
~ Jo
After reading this, all that came to mind was something Catherine always said to me…and that is - hmmmmm…
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
Vertigo...For Catherine's Sister Jo...
Lights go down, it's dark
The jungle is your head
Can't rule your heart
A feeling is so much stronger than
A thought
Your eyes are wide
And though your soul
It can't be bought
Your mind can wander
Hello hello
I'm at a place called Vertigo
It's everything I wish I didn't know
Except you give me something I can feel, feel
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