Category: Current Events

Love included

Post author By dw
Post date July 1, 2020
No Comments on Love included

The “truth” that makes another man seem cheap hides another truth that we should never forget, and which would make him remain always worthy of honor in our sight. To destroy truth with truth under the pretext of being sincere is a very insincere way of telling a lie.
— Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island, Sincerity

If love is not in the truth I tell, then I’m not telling the whole truth.

Not telling the whole truth reveals the truth that I am not whole.

That I am not whole means I am part of the problem.

When Jesus says Repent, he asks me to own up to that.

Then he says, Follow me and I will make you whole, part of the solution, able to tell the whole truth, love included.

Tags love and truth, No Man is an Island, repentance, sincerity, Thomas Merton, truth telling, whole truth

Current Events Poetry Uncategorized

Up to its knees in the past

Post author By dw
Post date June 14, 2020
No Comments on Up to its knees in the past

Reflecting again on the nature of hope brings me back to a quote from Frederick Buechner I posted last year.

Click through to see where I think hope ends.

Then at last we see what hope is and where it comes from, hope as the driving power and outermost edge of faith. Hope stands up to its knees in the past and keeps its eyes on the future…shall is the verb of hope.
Frederick Buechner, Secrets in the Dark: A Life in Sermons, “A Room Called Remember”
Up to its knees in the past – becoming flame

Grace and peace to you…

Tags a room called remember, choice, despair, Frederick Buechner, future, hope, past, Secrets in the Dark

Current Events Poetry the real self

Here and Now

Post author By dw
Post date June 7, 2020
1 Comment on 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?

Tags habits, image of God, racism, relationships

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

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.

Tags conformity, deformity, disorganized, false values, No Man is an Island, sincerity, Thomas Merton, truth, truth telling

Current Events love Scripture

The truth we tell

Young man wearing hat that says Love Your Neighbor.

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

dw

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…