For I, the Lord your God, hold your right hand; it is I who say to you, “Do not fear, I will help you.” – Isaiah 41:13
Hope
lost sheep
Jesus said to his disciples:
“What is your opinion?
If a man has a hundred sheep and one of them goes astray,
will he not leave the ninety-nine in the hills
and go in search of the stray?”
Matthew 18:12
(Photo: Greene, Maine – January 2019)
a new history
When world religions become mature, we will have a new history, no longer based on competition, rivalry, cultures or warfare, but on people who are actually transformed. These people will change the world, as Mary did, almost precisely because they know it is not they who are doing the changing. They will know they do not need to change other people, just themselves, God takes it from there.
– Richard Rohr
(photo: Fiesole, Italy – July 2002)
Moving Forward – Rainer Maria Rilke (translated by Robert Bly)
The deep parts of my life pour onward,
as if the river shores were opening out.
It seems that things are more like me now,
that I can see farther into paintings.
I feel closer to what language can’t reach.
With my senses, as with birds, I climb
into the windy heaven, out of the oak,
and in the ponds broken off from the sky
my feeling sinks, as if standing on fishes.
(photo: Chama River, NM – September 2018)
Pushing a wheelbarrow
There’s a wonderful story set in medieval times in which a man sees a laborer walking by with a wheelbarrow and asks what he is doing. “Can’t you see I’m pushing a wheelbarrow,” the labor replies. Another man comes by doing the same thing and he, too, is asked, “What are you doing?” He replies, “Can’t you see? i’m perform the work of God. I’m building Chartres Cathedral.”
– Robert A. Johnson, from Living Your Unlived Life
The Lord is close to the broken-hearted.
– Psalm 34:18
see to it that the light within is not darkness
Your eye is the lamp of your body. When your eyes are healthy, your whole body also is full of light. But when they are unhealthy, your body also is full of darkness. See to it, then, that the light within you is not darkness. Therefore, if your whole body is full of light, and no part of it dark, it will be just as full of light as when a lamp shines its light on you. – Luke 11:34-36
that wasn’t me
did I go on tangent?
did I lie through my teeth?
did I cause you to stumble on your feet?
did I bring shame on my family?
did it show when I was weak?
whatever you see
that wasn’t me.
A prayer of thanksgiving – Kathleen Norris
We praise and thank you, Lord, for the uncertain, in-between times in our lives when we can be still and know that you are God. We praise and thank you for the hidden wonders of each day. We praise and thank you for acts of kindness, great and small, that serve to bring about your kingdom. We praise and thank you for the courage to place ourselves under your protection, not allowing fear to have the upper hand. We praise and thank you for your patience with our weakness, for being willing to work in and through us in ways we do not understand. We praise and thank you for our emptiness, which will one day be filled with your love. We praise and thank you for the silent wonders you work in us, preparing us for a life that will find its completion in you. Amen.
Around Us – Marvin Bell
We need some pines to assuage the darkness
when it blankets the mind,
we need a silvery stream that banks as smoothly
as a plane’s wing, and a worn bed of
needles to pad the rumble that fills the mind,
and a blur or two of a wild thing
that sees and is not seen. We need these things
between appointments, after work,
and, if we keep them, then someone someday,
lying down after a walk
and supper, with the fire hole wet down,
the whole night sky set at a particular
time, without numbers or hours, will cause
a little sound of thanks–a zipper or a snap–
to close round the moment and the thought
of whatever good we did.
Edge of Atlantic 