Volume 6 Issue 1 ~~August 18, 2002
Food for Thought
I am sorry for the long pause between updates but hope to be back to posting Food for thought 4 or more times a year. Please feel free to submit anything you would like to share in this area.
-Dan
- Bernard of Clairvaux
Prayer is to look to the omnipresent God and to allow onself to
be seen by [God]....If you find yourself disturbed, dark with
no spiritual [joy], simply tell God, and let [God] see your suffering;
then you have prayed properly.
- Gerhard Tersteegen
[Read Matthew 21:23-32] It is natural, dear friends, if in our
helplessness we take the betrayer to taskor the betrayers,
if we clearly and sharply distinguish ourselves from them and
speak a verdict of condemnation... Do we see the danger? Or do
we not notice how increasingly our own will, our own passion,
our own stubborness sneaks into our confession? Do we not notice
how pious self-confidence puts itself in the place of faith? How
our need for retaliation displaces love? How our human goals shove
aside Christian hope? There is the danger: We confess, we say
"Yes" to the Lordship of Christ, but we are rarely conscious
of the fact that we only say "Yes" and in reality
struggle all the more strongly for our own esteem, for our own
thoughts, for our rights, for our program. Suddenly, we are standing
where the high priests and elders stood together with those Jesus
meant who said, "Lord, Yes!" and did not go!
- Martin Niemöller
THE PERFECT CHAMPION is the one who establishes complete control
over one's mind by overcoming temptations and the inclination
of one's nature to sin.
-VEN. JOHN TAULER.
Sometimes prayer yields answers that we don't recognize. One who
has much prays for more and does not recognize in the loss of
material wealth the providence of God. One prays for health and
does not realize that in sickness God teaches many things.
-Road to Emaus
Thought cannot comprehend God. And so, I prefer to abandon all
I can know, choosing rather to love [the One] whom I cannot know.
-Cloud of Unknowing
Beauty on the outisde never gets into the soul, but beauty of
the soul reflects itself on the face. Its loveliness refuses to
be imprisioned; it comes out in the eyes, the words, and the kindness
of the hands.
-Bishop Fulton J. Sheen
The spiritual life is first of all a LIFE. It is not merelt something to be known and studied, it is to be lived.
-Thomas Merton
Better a cheap coffin and a plain funeral, after a useful, unselfish
life, than a grand procession and a marble mausoleum, after a
loveless, selfish life.
-Anon.
"If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the universe, why do you live as if you still belonged to the world? Why do you submit to regulations, "Do not handle, Do not taste, Do not touch"? All these regulations refer to things that perish with use; they are simply human commands and teachings. These have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting self-imposed piety, humility, and severe treatment of the body, but they are of no value serving only to indulge the flesh." Colossians 2:20-23, NRSV (footnote rendering).
Live the freedom Christ has for you, a life to the full, the above rulles Paul quotes handle/taste/touch, made me think of the new legalism of Christianity, for the word handle can refect to sexual intercousre, and I feel it does little to no vilonece to reword the rules for today...
'Do not make love, Do not Kiss, Do not even Msturbate. ' Those actions are not what is destined to last enternally anymore than those human rules. There apears to be logic in following them, but all they do is lead to pride, actually indulging this lower nature.
Why is it that peple feel the need for these rules, because in a world with clear rules of black and white it is so easy to say this is right or they are wrong. But the book of Job and the Gosepls cry continually that there is no such thing as a hard and fast rule. Jesus makes it clear that love for God and for all, is the only way to live rightly. I lives are lived by grace and not works. There is nothing wrong with boundaries but let us not judege the servant of another but judge ourselves and our hearts alone.
-DWF
Truth is a cave: to him who only stands outside all is dark, but
to him who boldly enters in and looks out into the sunlight, all
is clear.
-Duncan Macgregor.
Lord, may we love all your creation, all the earth and every grain
of sand in it. May we love every leaf, every ray of light.
May we love the animals: you have given them rudiments of thought and joy untroubled. Let us not trouble it; let us not harass them, let us not deprive them of their happiness, let us not work againts your intent.
For we all acknowledge unto you that all is like an ocean, all its flowing and blending, and that to withhold any measure of love from anything i n your universe is withhold that same measure from you. Amen.
-Fyodor Dostoevsky
[Although Luther was writing on pride in being a Christian, the same arguments and truth hold true in Gay Pride, in loving being the child of God, as created...]
When we boast in this way, we are not looking for prestige in the world or praise from [people] or money, or for pleasure of the good will of the world..... This then, is not vain pride: it is a most holy pride against the devil and the world. And it is true humilty in the sight of God.
-Martin Luther, Lectures on Galatians, 1535
THE EXAMPLE OF THE SAINTS is proposed to every one, so that the
great actions shown us may encourage us to undertake smaller things.
-VEN. LOUIS DE GRANADA
People who have lots of money and no time, we call rich. People
who have time but no money, we call poor. Yet the most precious
giftslove, friendship, time with loved ones-grow only in
the sweet soil of "unproductive" time.
----Wayne Muller, Forbes
Of two imperfect things holy rusticity is better than sinful eloquence.
--St. Jerome
Monastico lectio is the practice of reading small passages daiya
page, a paragraph, a sentenceand then miking for meaning
any word or phrase or situation that interests or provokes me.
·Why does the word or passage mean something to me?
·Why is this word or situation bothering me?
·What does it mean to me, say to me?
·What feeling does it bring out in me?
-Joan Crittister (adapted)
"Pray for an end to homophobia. Praise God for diversity
including the gifts that gays and lesbians bring to the church.
Proclaim justice for gay and lesbian people!"
-Lutherans Concerned Slogan from late 80's
Wonderful therefore is the blindness of the intellect, which does
not consider that which it sees first and without which it can
become acquainted with nothing. But as eye intent upon various
differences of colors does not see the light, through which it
sees other things, and if it sees it, it does not advert to it;
so the eye of our mind, intent upon particular and universal beings,
though being itself, outside of every genus, first occurs to the
mind and through it other things, it does not however advert to
it. Whence it most truly appears, that "as the eye of the
evening holds itself towards the light, so the eye of our mind
holds itself towards the most manifest things of nature";
because accustomed [assuefactus] to the shadows of beings and
to the phantasms of sensibles, when it surveys the light itself
of Most High Being, it seems to it that it sees nothing; not understanding,
that that darkness is the Most High Illumination of our mind,
as, when the eye sees pure light, it seems to it that is sees
nothing.
-ST. BONAVENTURE OF BAGNOREGIO, THE JOURNEY OF THE MIND INTO GOD
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(Note 3.1-5.1 are former Integrity/Calgary newsletters)