In his award-winning book, Exclusion & Embrace, Bosnian-born theologian Miroslav Volf says, "It may not be too much to claim that the future of our world will depend on how we deal with identity and difference."...Where articles of belief threaten to set people in opposition to one another, we may embody articles of peace. Where difference is demonized, we may host suppers with surprising guest lists...We may test the premise that God uses the weak to confound the strong as well as the promise that the God who made others different from us is revealed in them as well as us.
~ from AN ALTAR IN THE WORLD by Barbara Brown Taylor
When you let go of trying to get more
of what you don’t really need, it frees
up oceans of energy to make a
difference with what you have. When
you make a difference with what you
have, it expands.
...I have another choice—to accept
what I didn’t get to choose...what I
finally get to choose is that tiny space
between all the givens. In that tiny
space is freedom...
Having limits, subtracting distractions,
making a commitment to do what you
do well, brings a new kind of
intensity...
Before I went to the Amish, I thought
that the more choices I had, the luckier
I’d be. But there is a big difference
between having many choices and
making a choice. Making a choice—
declaring what is essential—creates a
framework for a life that eliminates
many choices but gives meaning to the
things that remain. Satisfaction comes
from giving up wishing I was
somewhere else or doing something
else.
Thou hast given so much to me,
Give me one thing more – a grateful heart;
Not thankful when it pleaseth me,
As if Thy blessings had spare days;
But such a heart whose pulse may be
Thy praise.
We were born with silence, and as we grew up we lost the silence and we were filled with words. We lived in our hearts, and as time passed we moved into our heads. Now the reverse of this journey is enlightenment. It is the journey from the head back to the heart, from words back to silence; getting back to our innocence in spite of our intelligence.
The Comforter came to me:
"With joy are you ever at home
in my Heart,
as I have lived in yours.
You are mine; I belong to You...
Who will enter the Heart of Love?"
~from Psalm 90 in Psalms for Praying by Nan Merrill
Silence is the beautiful fruit of prayer. We must learn not only the silence of the mouth, but also the silence of the heart, of the eyes, of the ears and of the mind, which I call the five silences. Say it and memorize it on your five fingers.
In the contemplative journey, as we swim down into those deeper waters toward the wellsprings of hope...the hidden spring of mercy deep within us is released in that touch and flows out from the center...In plumbing deeply the hidden rootedness of the whole where all things are held together in the Mercy, we are released from the grip of personal fear and set free to minister with skillful means and true compassion to a world desperately in need of reconnection.
~ from MYSTICAL HOPE: TRUSTING IN THE MERCY OF GOD by Cynthia Bourgeault
