life: acoustic & amplified
poetry, quotes & thoughts about life
Archive for the month “March, 2013”
winter. spring. winter
Tomorrow is the first day of Spring, but there’s six inches of snow in the yard and it’s still coming down. In the woods where days ago there were pools there are now piles of snow. We are ready for spring to come, but it comes in fits and starts. As a little girl once said, “I’ve figured out the seasons. It goes summer, autumn, winter, spring, winter, spring, winter, spring.” Of course all the seasons do that. This is just the Vernal version of Indian Winter. We notice it most in spring because we long so deeply for renewal.
Sunday is Palm Sunday, and as Jesus enters Jerusalem we’ll celebrate him as a king, shouting praise. But before the service is over we’ll be shouting, “Crucify him!” Winter, spring, winter…. We are saved, but we are still working out our salvation. We are one with God and with all Creation, but we trust our oneness only in fits and starts. We who are made new still long for renewal. We believe; God help our unbelief.
Neither we nor the Church nor society are “getting better every day.” Some days we get worse. But Jesus understands. He knows his disciples will deny him, but says, “Listen! Satan has demanded to sift all of you like wheat, but I have prayed for you that your own faith may not fail; and you, when once you have turned back, strengthen your sisters and brothers” (Lk. 22.31-32).
Neither our inner nor our outer lives are one smooth, simple arc like a hit baseball. The path is rough and winding. We rise and fall, dip and swing, lurch and stop and lurch again. Stuff happens. But through it all, Jesus walks with us and prays for us. The Spirit bears us on. Spring is in us still, working its life-giving magic, producing renewal. It just doesn’t come all at once, forever. The Beloved breathes in us, and even in our failures and desolations we are becoming more fully the beloved people God creates us to be. Under the snow the crocuses keep pushing up; the buds still swell on the trees.
Even when spring reverts to winter in your soul, shovel the snow, but keep the faith. We are being transformed, from one degree of glory to another. We are being re-created. The world is turning, and our inconsistencies can’t stop it. The Spirit is living and growing in you. Wait for the Lord.
__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
http://www.unfoldinglight.net
it’s about BEING, not doing
Many of us go through getting what we “think” we want, only to see that it wasn’t what we were really asking for. I wanted to get Love from significance; it was a long and painful road that taught me that we get significance from being Loving.
This is why, “Thy will, not my will, be done” is such a powerful and potentially scary prayer to say. We have to let go of the ideas of how we will get the things we think we really want.
– Mastin Kipp
The Daily Love
thedailylove.com
we are all wounded people
Some of us tend to do away with things that are slightly damaged. Instead of repairing them we say: “Well, I don’t have time to fix it, I might as well throw it in the garbage can and buy a new one.” Often we also treat people this way. We say: “Well, he has a problem with drinking; well, she is quite depressed; well, they have mismanaged their business…we’d better not take the risk of working with them.” When we dismiss people out of hand because of their apparent woundedness, we stunt their lives by ignoring their gifts, which are often buried in their wounds.
We all are bruised reeds, whether our bruises are visible or not. The compassionate life is the life in which we believe that strength is hidden in weakness and that true community is a fellowship of the weak.
– Henri Nouwen
She knows the Jesus is comfortable with broken people who remember how to love. – Brennan Manning
Ruthless trust is the way for this ragamuffin.
If it be your way, the sign you can trust will be the slow, steady, and miraculous transformation from self-rejection to self-acceptance rooted in the acceptance of Jesus Christ.
– Brennan Manning
this I have learned
Christianity is not a message which has to be believed, but an experience of faith that becomes a message. – Edward Schillebeecks
words that capture the feeling of spring
Goods
It’s the immemorial feelings
I like the best: hunger, thirst,
their satisfaction; work-weariness,
earned rest; the falling again
from loneliness to love;
the green growth the mind takes
from the pastures in March;
The gayety in the stride
of a good team of Belgian mares
that seems to shudder from me
through all my ancestry.
by Wendell Berry
http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/
called beyond the tracks
![photo[1]](https://lifeacousticandamplified.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/photo1.jpg)
You imagine you’re a train
making your way along your tracks
and maybe you want to plunge faster,
get farther, extend those narrowing tracks
into the vanishing point—
or maybe jump that track for another,
maybe somehow lay a track of genius
in a new direction—
but
what if you’re not a train?
What if you’re a sound,
as a song or of a bell,
or a voice saying “I love you,”
and your journey is to expand
in every direction
into this strange, waiting world?
______________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
http://www.unfoldinglight.net
life: acoustic & amplified 