Categories
hope love

Loving God

 

If I believe that He can love me, I must also believe that I can love Him. If I do not believe I can love Him, then I do not believe Him Who gave us the first commandment: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart and thy whole mind and all thy strength, and thy neighbor as thyself.”

— Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island, Sentences on Hope

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The system of church doctrine I learned and lived under for too long told me I was incapable of loving God.  I’m beginning to believe, instead, that those who preach such doctrines are the ones incapable of loving God or of admitting that many people, in fact, do.  Their own systematic theology keeps them from the experience they need and long for.  My prayer: Lord, give us all the simple love and courage of Mary, sister of Martha, who chose “the good portion” – sitting at your feet, loving you with all her heart.

dw

Copyright © 2019, becomingflame.com

Categories
Other Writings

Is it a kind heart?

homeless man with sign saying "seeking human kindness"

 

So Oz brought a pair of tinner’s shears and cut a small, square hole in the left side of the Tin Woodman’s breast. Then, going to a chest of drawers, he took out a pretty heart, made entirely of silk and stuffed with sawdust.

“Isn’t it a beauty?” he asked.

“It is, indeed!” replied the Woodman, who was greatly pleased. “But is it a kind heart?”

Baum, L. Frank. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (AmazonClassics Edition) (pp. 108-109). Amazon Classics. Kindle Edition.

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“The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness…”

Am I, a living, feeling human being, as concerned about the kindness of my heart as the Tin Woodman, hollow, feeling nothing, is about the kindness of his?

“Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his loving kindness endures forever.”

Lord, let us not forget your kindness to us or the kindness you ask us to show each other.

dw

Categories
Other Writings

Jean Vanier – rest in peace

dozens of luminary candles in what looks like a stream, some near, some farther away
candles in dark room

Update on 31 May 2020: Since I wrote this post last year, serious allegations have been raised and confirmed by L’Arche that Jean Vanier had coercive sexual relations with six women. Here is an article from the Washington Post that goes into depth about the allegations: https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2020/02/23/jean-vanier-once-talked-about-nobel-or-sainthood-candidate-is-accused-abusive-sexual-relationships-with-six-women/

I feel betrayed by yet another spiritual leader. I, who am full of faults, do not condemn him…but I do feel duped and betrayed.

To love someone is not first of all to do things for them, but to reveal to them their beauty and value, to say to them through our attitude: “You are beautiful. You are important. I trust you. You can trust yourself.” We all know well that we can do things for others and in the process crush them, making them feel that they are incapable of doing things by themselves. To love someone is to reveal to them their capacities for life, the light that is shining in them.

Vanier, Jean. From Brokenness to Community (p. 16). PAULIST PRESS New York and Mahwah, N.J.. Kindle Edition.

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I’m speechless
because I’m guilty,
swallowing hard at the extent of my collusion
with the deceiver within me,
the extent of my obstruction of the justice due you
to be the one who sees my desperate need,
who rescues me from my delusion
that you are the one who needs rescuing,
not me.

dw

 

I’m deeply challenged by Vanier’s perspective, both in the quote above and in this video.

Categories
Poetry

Over my shoulder

Over my shoulder, a glance of the eye
Catches Cancer crabbing across the sky
Devouring time and a fetus named John;

Time two brothers might have played, gone to school,
Become men, raised families, and grown old,
Always together, apart sixteen months,
James, now asleep, and his hoped for brother;

A fetus once kicking, its fingers formed,
Its days twelve times seven, all dark,
Etched only in memory, a father’s worn face,
A doctor’s log, a mother’s heaving grief.

Summer, 1985
dw

Copyright © 2019, becomingflame.com

Thinking of E and J…peace and healing to you…

Categories
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