Exhaling

Comment by Carol

April 22, 2007 @ 2:38 am

Beautiful.

First, it’s nice that some pray directly to the Father. I’m still down here talking to Holy Shins, and shall let their Owner plead for me –quite possibly all my life. It’s alright; they are very nice Shins.

And indeed, it would be the greatest work of mercy for someone to bear Christ into darkened places.. beginning with cyberchurch here and there, for even the women glory in their guns. (I absolutely marvel at armed Christians, and only less so at Catholic apologist cruisers, for their peripheral blindness in seeing the trees but not His forest.)

Last, sometimes choosing love means choosing quiet.

That doesn’t mean I won’t be reading everything good.

Comment by Carol

April 24, 2007 @ 1:59 pm

As I laid down with a smile of peace one day for a moment, I thought of how weird I am, overall.. and realized/marveled that the Lord loves us as is, in all this seeming complexity.. He sees the core, and honors it, for our sake. He knows all of what isn’t His, yet, and what is.. and He will wait.. and transform.. and it will be alright. It will be alright.

Comment by kathryntherese

April 24, 2007 @ 2:08 pm

Are you weird, Carol? I hadn’t noticed that part. Passionate, yes. Humorous, definitely (I’m still laughing at “holy Shins”). A joy.

As usual, your comment is so deeply true - He DOES love us as we are, and sees what we will become, which is often still short of what He created us to be, and yet, He loves us. Comes down to our level, even, and waits with infinite patience for our slow turning. And all will be well. We will at last be all His and all will glorify the Love which made us, saved us, drew us back to Itself.

Love it when you think out loud, Carol.

Comment by Carol

April 24, 2007 @ 4:03 pm

Weird, yes, unless you know other folks who’ve Singer-sewn a finger.. twice? And truly, it’s safer down here with The Shins; whenever I rise to explore a mysterious-to-me flower, I clock myself on an overhanging pot of pansies.. again. (I find there’s no believable way to pretend it didn’t happen.)

But thank you so much.. and yes– he comes down to our level.. so incredibly so, when one realizes this is God of Whom we speak.. whew! We can be meandering for days, weeks, years.. but if we’ll just run to the corner of WantYou Ave. and Transforming Blvd., we’ll find Him patiently smiling at us, as is: hole-y fingernailed, lumpy-headed and all. And He never runs out of linens with which to bind our wounds. (I suppose I should tell that to other beings who trip over patterns in the linoleum.. maybe I just did.)

You brought great peace today, Lady K.

Comment by Carol

April 26, 2007 @ 12:00 am

In my all but purloined (verrrrrrry late library book), “The New Man,” Merton says much about contemplation as surrender, surrender as contemplation, or so it seems to me:

Contemplation is a mark of a fully mature Christian life. It makes the believer no longer a slave or a servant of a Divine Master, no longer the fearful keeper of a difficult law, no longer even an obedient and submissive son who is still too young to participate in his Father’s counsels. Contemplation is that wisdom which makes man the friend of God.. Contemplation is a foretaste of the definitive victory of life over death in our souls. Without contemplation we indeed believe in the possibility of this victory, and we hope for it. But when our love for God bursts out into the dark yet luminous flame of interior vision, we are enabled, at least for an instant, to experience something of the victory. For at such moments “life” and “reality” and “God” cease to be concepts which we think about and become realities in which we consciously participate. … Contemplation is the highest and most paradoxical form of self-realization, attained by apparent self-annihilation. … It is a communion with Christ, the incarnate Word. Not only a personal union of souls with Him, but a communion in the one great act by which He conquered death once and for all in His Death and Resurrection.