Categories
Current Events Poetry the real self

Here and Now

When your habit 
your normal course of action
doesn't hear me out
doesn't let me finish my sentence...

When I am shushed
if the question that matters to me
doesn't matter to you...

When I seek a better solution
for all of us
and my words
expressing ideas important to me
in language important to me
are shifted
to your words and language
or struck from the final deal
altogether...

When I strive to paint
together with you
a world with more variety
of color and line
and my colors and lines
are painted over
or are imperceptible
except to one who knows
just where to look for them...

When everything I offer is met with
Not here
Not now:

What do I do
with a lifetime
of the ends of sentences
jammed in my throat
and the wildly alive
Image of God
burning
here and now
in my chest?

dw

Copyright © 2020 becomingflame.com

Categories
Current Events Other Writings

Disorganized souls

…our need for truth is inescapable.

Instead of conforming ourselves to what is, we twist everything around, in our words and thoughts, to fit our own deformity.

The seat of this deformity is in the will. Although we still may speak the truth, we are more and more losing our desire to live according to the truth. Our wills are not true, because they refuse to accept the laws of our own being: they fail to work along the lines demanded by our own reality. Our wills are plunged in false values, and they have dragged our minds along with them, and our restless tongues bear constant witness to the disorganization inside our souls.

— Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island, Sincerity

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I’m not sure I can imagine a better description of where we are, as a culture, right now.

Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner.

May God help us. Amen.

dw

Copyright © 2020, becomingflame.com

Categories
Current Events love Scripture

The truth we tell

If love is not in the truth we tell,
are we telling the whole truth?

dw

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I read this from the apostle Paul today – he is coaching Timothy on how to be a good pastor.

The whole point of what we’re urging is simply love—love uncontaminated by self-interest and counterfeit faith, a life open to God. Those who fail to keep to this point soon wander off into dead ends of gossip. They set themselves up as experts on religious issues, but haven’t the remotest idea of what they’re holding forth with such imposing eloquence.

Peterson, Eugene H.. The Message: The Bible in Contemporary Language . The Navigators. Kindle Edition.

Grace and peace to you…

dw

Copyright © 2020, becomingflame.com

Categories
Current Events prayer Prayers

when I feel awash

When I feel awash, untethered, I often look to my ‘go-to’ prayers to anchor myself again.

I find this prayer especially helpful when lies and truth are mixed together so thoroughly…so thoroughly…I start to wonder how our society can ever find a truthful footing for an honest discussion.

Grace and peace to you…

dw

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Holy God, who entered our world as the Word,
the Word of truth, of love, of light, and of life,

When we speak words of error, hatred, darkness and death, have mercy:

May those listening see our lies for what they are,

And may you awaken our conscience and grant us repentance;

May you change our very hearts to make them clean, wholly loving you and our neighbor, whoever that neighbor may be.

When we speak words of truth, love, light and life, have mercy:

May those listening take heart and have hope,

And may you grant us the joy and gladness you have always purposed for us,

to be your people with your Word living with us and in us.

Holy God, may your Word be spoken and cherished in all places and by all people.

Through your Son, Word of God, Jesus,

Amen.

originally posted here pray for truth

Categories
Current Events the real self

Resetting our real selves

Maybe this time when God has the attention of the whole world…this time of forced rethinking and resetting…maybe it’s a good time to go back for a moment to the early days of becoming flame and the very basic questions many of us are asking ourselves now – what really matters? who are we as a people? who are we individually?

Grace and peace to you in this time of trial…

dw

Thomas Merton on the ‘real self’

I consider that the spiritual life is the life of [one’s] real self, the life of that interior self whose flame is so often allowed to be smothered under the ashes of anxiety and futile concern.

— Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island

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