Everyone has clay feet. It does not matter how far up the ladder of supposed holiness they might be, the clay feet that belong to the human condition are still there. We have to depend on God to keep them from cracking or breaking into pieces.
– Fr. Thomas Keating – from Divine Therapy and Addiction
“We cannot avoid using power, cannot escape the compulsion to afflict the world, so let us, cautious in diction and mighty in contradiction, love powerfully.”
―
(Photo: Grindstone, Maine – September 2019)
Some days when you look out, the land
is heavy, following its hills, dim
where the road bends. There are days when
having the world is a mistake.
But then you think, “Well, anyway, it wasn’t
my idea,” and it’s OK again.
Suppose that a person who knows you happens
to see you going by, and it’s one of those days –
for a minute you have to carry the load
for them, you’ve got to lift the whole
heavy world, even without knowing it,
being a hero, stumbling along.
Some days it’s like that. And maybe
today. And maybe all the time.
(photo: Abiquiu, NM – September 2017)
O Lord, you search me and you know me.
You yourself know my resting and my rising; you discern my thoughts from afar.
You mark when I walk or lie down; you know all my ways through and through.
For it was you who formed my inmost being, knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I thank you who wonderfully made me; how wonderful are your works, which my soul knows well.
O search me, God, and know my heart. O test me and know my thoughts.
See that my path is not wicked, and lead me in the way everlasting.
From Psalm 139
(photo: Grindstone, Maine – September 2019)
Take courage, my children, and cry to God,
for you will be remembered by him who brought this upon you.
For just as you purposed to go astray from God, return with tenfold zeal to seek him.
For he who brought these calamities upon you will bring you everlasting joy with your salvation.” – Bar 4:27-29
From “The Life of St. Francis:”
At the hour of the passing of the holy man, the larks – birds that love the light, and dread the shades of twilight – flocked in great numbers unto the roof of the house, albeit the shades of night were then falling, and wheeling around it for a long while with songs even gladder than their wont, offered their witness, alike gracious and manifest, unto the glory of the Saint, who had been wont to call them unto the divine praises.
Pace e bene to us all.
(Photo: Berkeley, CA – April 2006)
Until we walk with despair, and still have hope, we will not know that our hope was not just hope in ourselves, in our own successes, in our power to make a difference, in our image of what perfection should be. We need hope from a much deeper Source. We need a hope larger than ourselves.
Until we walk with personal issues of despair, we will never uncover the Real Hope on the other side of that despair. Until we allow the crash and crush of our images, we will never discover the Real Life beyond what only seems like death. Remember, death is an imaginary loss of an imaginary self, that is going to pass anyway.
This very journey is probably the heart of what Jesus came to reveal.
– Richard Rohr
“And acceptance is the answer to all my problems today. When I am disturbed, it is because I find some person, place, thing, or situation – some fact of my life – unacceptable to me, and I can find no serenity until I accept that person, place, thing, or situation as being exactly the way it is supposed to be at this moment. Nothing, absolutely nothing, happens in God’s world by mistake.” – AA Big Book
stop searching
stop thinking
stop trying
the way out
is there
hours after
winter solstice
the day I wanted to die,
tried, and failed
I had failed at success
and succeeded in failure
today and every day
I am grateful for life
(… Some speak of the future
My love she speaks softly
She knows there’s no success like failure
And that failure’s no success at all…)
– Bob Dylan, Love Minus Zero/No Limit
Edge of Atlantic 