Time after time I came to your gate with raised hands, asking for more and yet more.You gave and gave, now in slow measure, now in sudden excess.I took some, and some things I let drop; some lay heavy on my hands; some I made into playthings and broke them when tired; till the wrecks … Continue reading Make no improvements
Tag: pending-review
This and that
The universe was not designed with the comfort of human beings in mind. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi Flow p.8 I notice two themes in my writing: God and this body – which is not other than God's body – are to be trusted. I enjoin you to relax, to trust, to attend to them, and to live … Continue reading This and that
Practise kindness
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore. Naomi Shihab Nye In 3 reasons to prayer: 1, 2, 3, I wrote about what makes prayer difficult, why you avoid it, why you say you haven't the time or are not disciplined. In prayer you become, perhaps only dimly, aware of life's physical, emotional and … Continue reading Practise kindness
The borderlands of prayer
Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-two million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think [iPhones] are … Continue reading The borderlands of prayer
3 reasons to pray: 3
Somehow, this post got lost in the WordPress database. I have no idea what I wrote, but I found some notes. It was the third in a 3-part series on what is difficult about prayer, and why prayer is important. The first was about Pain. The second addressed Change. This third was about being Insubstantial, … Continue reading 3 reasons to pray: 3
3 reasons to pray: 2
We all tend to think that if we had been in charge of creation we would have kept all the nice things and discarded all the bad ones. The more we learn scientifically how the world works, the more clearly we see that this is just not possible, for fruitfulness and destructiveness, order and chaos, … Continue reading 3 reasons to pray: 2
Read from the heart
But these two ways of describing the mystery of God—the way of darkness and the way of light, the ambiguity of silence and the transparency of articulation—can never be separated. There is danger in posing a sharp dichotomy between apophatic and kataphatic approaches, as if one were superior to the other, as if the higher … Continue reading Read from the heart
Trust Me (conclusion)
[This is the conclusion to Monday's post, Trust Me.] So, in what can we trust? Firstly what it is not: I cannot trust that I will find a parking space. I cannot trust that I will get that job I want. I cannot trust that my life will go well. I cannot trust that I … Continue reading Trust Me (conclusion)
Trust Me
The God of the Bible is ever an elusive one. The only guarantee of divine availability is God's own promise to be present to those who empty themselves in perfect trust.Belden Lane The Solace of Fierce Landscapes p.63 God, I have been thinking about trusting You, and what trust means, for some months, if not … Continue reading Trust Me
Relax!
Relaxation is often presented as the beginning of prayer – what to do to get started. Then you are cajoled into the attempt to get elsewhere. This is to miss the point. Relaxation is not the antechamber of the temple. To relax is to pray. It is the temple. It is the return to this … Continue reading Relax!