Funeral & Forgiveness

Have you seen the posts at "Dawn's Random Acts of Thought"? I particularly like this one:

Beware of refusing to go to the funeral
of your own independence.

-- Oswald Chambers

And from our friend, Dick Rooker:

Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.

-- Mark Twain

Secret of Faith

The great secret of a life of faith is to hang upon Jesus daily; to go to Him in every trial; to cast upon Him every burden; to take the infirmity, the corruption, the cross, as it rises, simply and immediately to Jesus.

-- Octavius Winslow

Notice the difference in this approach to life compared to the one Tiger described.  Where did he turn (and we turn)?  Where does faith ask us to turn?

I Deserve

I thought I could get away with whatever I wanted to. I felt that I had worked hard throughout my entire life and deserved to enjoy all the temptations around me. Thanks to money and fame I didn't have to go far to find them. I was wrong. I was foolish. I didn't get to play by different rules.

-- Tiger Woods


I have noticed that along with the things I work hard at...is a belief at times that I, too, deserve something. This seems pretty profound...a misunderstanding to be sure, but something of a great discovery about the vagaries of the ways we seek our independence.

Every Single Piece of You

God is going to redeem every single piece of you…He just is not going to submit his plan for doing so for your approval.

Pessimism

The nice part about being a pessimist is that you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly surprised.
 
-- George F. Will

Bald Eagles Presiding Over Winona Lake

More Winona eagle pics here....

Conclusions

I’ve reached all kinds of conclusions about you…because of all my conclusions about myself.

Unquenchably...His Work

The love I bear Christ is but a faint and feeble spark, but it is an emanation from himself:  He kindled it and he keeps it alive; and because it is his work, I trust many waters shall not quench it.

-- John Newton

Mashed Potatoes of Emptiness

More often than not, but not every time, I wake up with a fairly clear list of the ‘get tos’ I want for the ensuing day.  Things to think about, things or people to pursue, thoughts to jot down, things to get done – things I just want or need to ‘get to’.  More often than not, by the end of the day, something has mashed most of those things together into some kind of mush that makes it very difficult to return to any constructive activity related to my original morning plans.  At best only one thing still has a shape…and even then it is difficult to apply the kind of energy that is needed to do much about it.  Perhaps this is just plain ole tiredness.  I don’t like to admit that, but it could be true.  It feels to me though that it is a little more about something else…like an exhaustion result of so much stuff that has just run through my mind and body for the waking hours since sleep last jiggled things back into a recognizable shape and form.

Last night, for example, I just could not get to anything other than physical movement.  I was aware of wanting many things, wanting to get to many things, but even my attempts more often than not left me staring for minutes on end.  This morning, however, few things look like last evening’s mashed potatoes.  And, like the freshness of the morning’s sun on our new fallen snow, I feel ready to go. 

I do catch a whiff of last night’s starch though, and one morsel of truth lingers.  That there is an energy that is self-perpetuating about the activity and fill of life…and when that subsides, we must not try to jolt it back into gear.  There is something very valuable about waiting in an open space in our lives…something important about feeling emptiness.  It is as real and important as the constantness of being full. 

I wanted to find a jolt last night and abiding with all of my ‘options’ was a pervading sense that I need to remain…empty.  Such remaining allows something else to happen, other things to be detected that are often overwhelmed by our busyness, an acknowledgement of a dependence we so unconsciously avoid.  Emptiness is a good thing, a very good thing.  And, all the versions of 5-hour energy drinks that we now have in our society, should really be avoided.

There is a time for everything…and this is the time to be empty, to be alone, to feel ache in it.

Anxious; why?

And which of you by being anxious can add a cubit to his span of life? If then you are not able to do as small a thing as that, why are you anxious about the rest?

-- Luke 12:25-26

Save or Savor

AS WE LAY IN BED this morning, Norma asked what I was going to do today. “Save the world,” I replied in a deadpan voice. “Did you say ‘save,’” she asked, “or ‘savor’?” I laughed. “Try ‘savor,’?” she said.

-- Sy Safransky, Sy Safransky's Notebook

Whence and the Keeper

The Milky Way was created
by a herd of white horses
set loose, rearing and kicking,
galloping through the desert night,
leaving their white hoof prints
by the thousands upon thousands
across the empty black sands.

The Milky Way is a river of rising
rapids and frothy currents cresting
around bends, surging over white
boulders. It is a bridge of shining
ice cracking to pieces, slivers, chips,
gems, above a bottomless gorge.

That glowing arc, that band
of light is as ceremonious
as a congregation of luminous
plankton in a swirl of ocean current.
It is as devoted as a prayer
of pilgrims with lighted lanterns
moving across a barren valley
and up a steep mountain
to a future shrine.

Everything I see of the heavens,
I know by the earth. The Milky
Way is a pinwheel with four
spiraling arms composed of young
blue stars, old red stars at its bulging
center, and older citizen stars
of the ancient halo surrounding.

It protests war like a highway
of crushed and shattered bones,
promises like an avenue
of white violets and Easter lilies
laid for a passing corpse, floats
like a field of dandelion hairs
and spinning milkweed wings
scattered by a gust of cosmic
wind, sinks casually like coins
and strings of pearls tossed
from a carnival barge into the night.
By the earth I see whatever I see.

-- Pattiann Rogers

...from Image journal, Issue 63