Category: the real self

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prayer Scripture the real self

Losing so we can find

Person holding lantern in dark desert

Then Jesus went to work on his disciples. “Anyone who intends to come with me has to let me lead. You’re not in the driver’s seat; I am. Don’t run from suffering; embrace it. Follow me and I’ll show you how. Self-help is no help at all. Self-sacrifice is the way, my way, to finding yourself, your true self. What kind of deal is it to get everything you want but lose yourself? What could you ever trade your soul for?

Peterson, Eugene H.. The Message: The Bible in Contemporary Language . The Navigators. Kindle Edition.
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May my plans defer to his plans,
  my ways to his ways,
  my words to his words,
  my life to his life,
  who is Life itself,
  who is the Word itself,
  who is the Way,
  who has plans for me,
  for you,
  for the world.

Amen.
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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

Full original post here:  Thomas Merton on the ‘real self’ | becoming flame

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Poetry the real self

This cup

Shall I not drink the cup the Father has given me?
This cup, just for me, appointed for me.
Chosen for me.

I could say No, not this cup.
Father, give me another;
I don’t want the one you chose for me.

I could say No cups for me,
thank you very much.
But one day I would wake up:
There, at my lips, sour, bitter,
would be the cup of my own making.

Every moment is another cup,
A cup I will drink to get to the following moment.

Shall I not drink the cup the Father has given me?
This cup, just for me, appointed for me?
Chosen for me?

dw

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Poetry the real self

Escape artists

partly open brown wooden gate

 

We are all such escape artists, you and I. We don’t like to get too serious about things, especially about ourselves. When we are with other people, we are apt to talk about almost anything under the sun except for what really matters to us, except for our own lives, except for what is going on inside our own skins. We pass the time of day. We chatter. We hold each other at bay, keep our distance from each other even when God knows it is precisely each other that we desperately need.

Frederick Buechner, Secrets in the Dark: A Life in Sermons, “A Room Called Remember”

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Escape artist maybe,
But a skill learned reluctantly and painfully
To recover from discovering – too many times –
What mattered to me was no matter at all,
Or an annoyance, or an affront.

Ok, well then, nice weather – right, moving on.

We escape to avoid the shame of experiencing that we aren’t worth attending to.
You know it; I know it; we’ve lived it, too often with each other.

Yes, we desperately need each other,
but in practice I make due with keeping what’s most important between myself and God.

And sometimes this blog.

dw

Categories
freedom the real self

Is our happiness too small?

 

A happiness that is sought for ourselves alone can never be found: for a happiness that is diminished by being shared is not big enough to make us happy.

— Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island

Continue reading “Is our happiness too small?”