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the real self

The Soul of Freedom

If I did not believe in God I think I would be bound in conscience to become an anarchist. Yet, if I did not believe in God, I wonder if I could have the consolation of being bound in conscience to do anything.

Conscience is the soul of freedom, it eyes, its energy, its life. Without conscience, freedom never knows what to do with itself. And a rational being who does not know what to do with [their self] finds the tedium of life unbearable. [They are] literally bored to death.

Thomas Merton, No Man is an Island, “Conscience, Freedom, and Prayer”

I’ve been stuck
Trying to find my voice
To hear it in the clamor of the others
Droning on about scandalous politics
Whining about the downfall of society
What people stoop to to pick up a buck
A pile of which will make them free
Free from something
I don’t know what
Not free from puzzling out
How to spend the next minute

I’ve been stuck
not wanting to say all that
Or just that
Because there is more to say
I know there is
If I can just listen for that voice
Still and small
Telling me to speak and act
Freely and truly

There it is

Could that be Conscience?

Grace and peace to you…
dw

Photo by dw

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Uncategorized

A new page of pages

I recently added a new page to becomingflame.com – Pages on Love – a listing of all posts where love is a significant theme. You’ll see a variety of perspectives coming from all sorts of angles. I hope you enjoy the new page and find some measure of encouragement from the posts listed there.

Don’t forget the similar pages on hope and prayer:

Pages on Hope
Pages on Prayer

Grace and peace to you…

dw

Categories
hope the real self

That One Voice

Faith is a way of waiting – never quite knowing, never quite hearing or seeing, because in the darkness we are all but a little lost.

There is doubt hard on the heels of every belief, fear hard on the heels of every hope, and many holy things lie in ruins because the world has ruined them and we have ruined them.

But faith waits even so, delivered at least from that final despair which gives up waiting altogether because it sees nothing left worth waiting for.

Faith waits – for the opening of a door, the sound of footsteps in the hall, that beloved voice delayed, delayed so long that there are times when you all but give up hope of ever hearing it.

And when at moments you think you do hear it (if only faintly, from far away) the question is:

Can it possibly be, impossibly be, that one voice of all voices?

Frederick Buechner, Secrets in the Dark: A Life in Sermons, “Delay”

False choices
The next following hard on the heels of the last
Made by a desperate imposter self
Desperate for anything to distract
From its emptiness, its nakedness

False choices
Exchanging dopamine poofs
For the overwhelming reality
There is a real soul in there
Dying to be known and loved

Dying to hear the One Voice
Calling softly, tenderly
Come home, come home
I’m waiting for you
I will wait

Grace and peace to you…

dw

Photo by dw