Blue Eyed Ennis: Belonging, Blessing and God's Extravagance

Belonging, Blessing and God's Extravagance

When Jesus speaks about the world, he is very realistic. He speaks about wars and revolutions, earthquakes, plagues and famines, persecution and imprisonment, betrayal, hatred and assassinations.

There is no suggestion at all that these signs of the world's darkness will ever be absent. But still, God's joy can be ours in the midst of it all. It is the joy of belonging to the household of God whose love is stronger than death and who empowers us to be in the world while already belonging to the kingdom of joy.

Henri Nouwen - From Return of the Prodigal Son

Eric Bibb
I Want Jesus To Walk With Me
He also speaks about his faith.

The Place of Blessing

Where you are (however unchosen) is the place of blessing.
How you are (however broken) is the place of grace.
Who you are, in your becoming, is your place in the Kingdom.

Margaret Silf

Eric Bibb In My Father's House

A Purification

At the start of Spring
I open a trench in the ground.
I put into it
the winter’s accumulation of paper,
pages I do not want to read again,
useless words, fragments, errors.
And I put into it
the contents of the outhouse:
light of the sun,
growth of the ground,
finished with one of their journeys.

To the sky, to the wind, then,
and to the faithful trees,
I confess my sins:
that I have not been happy enough,
considering my good luck;
have listened to too much noise;
have been inattentive to wonders;
have lusted after praise.

And then upon the gathered refuse
of mind and body,
I close the trench,
folding shut again the dark,
the deathless earth.
Beneath that seal
the old escapes into the new.

(From Wendell Berry, Collected Poems: 1957-1982)

Accepting This

Yes, it is true. I confess,
I have thought great thoughts,
and sung great songs—all of it
rehearsal for the majesty
of being held.

The dream is awakened
when thinking I love you
and life begins
when saying I love you
and joy moves like blood
when embracing others with love.

My efforts now turn
from trying to outrun suffering
to accepting love wherever
I can find it.

Stripped of causes and plans
and things to strive for,
I have discovered everything
I could need or ask for
is right here—
in flawed abundance.

We cannot eliminate hunger,
but we can feed each other.
We cannot eliminate loneliness,
but we can hold each other.
We cannot eliminate pain,
but we can live a life
of compassion.

Ultimately,
we are small living things
awakened in the stream,
not gods who carve out rivers.

Like human fish,
we are asked to experience
meaning in the life that moves
through the gill of our heart.

There is nothing to do
and nowhere to go.
Accepting this,
we can do everything
and go anywhere.

Mark Nepo

Image from from the Revised Common Lectionary page of Vanderbilt Library. Inspired by the Gospel text for the Fifth Sunday in Lent (Year C) – John 12:1-8.

Extravagant God

Excessive
generous
lavish God …
why do you waste so much time on us?

You create rainbows that no one sees;
shower down intricate
separate,
unique,
stunning autumn leaves by the billions
and one at a time
that we greet not with applause
but with complaints of inconvenience.

You place whales beneath fathoms of ocean
singing their plaintive, haunting songs
too deep for our ears to hear.
You create fantastic jungles
within a square foot of grass
a universe in an atom
breathtaking places that have never been seen
or appreciated by a single human being.

Why are we so bored and dull?
Why do we appreciate water most in the desert
health only during sickness
our friend when he leaves
our love when she dies?

Should we pray for less
for you to ration Your grace
to waste no rainbow?

Forgive us.
You don’t paint rainbows
just for us to see
nor make birdsong
just for us to hear.

Rebuke our terrible pride
and chastise our deism
that imagines You created only once long ago
and can’t perceive Genesis now
or Eden here
or what a new day means.

Help us to do two impossible things:
to take it ALL in (every miraculous atom of it)
and to waste our time on a rose
a place
a time
a person.

Perhaps one will bring us all full time to eternity
one blackbird to You.

Prodigal God,
may we find a millionth of the joy
that clearly is yours

Amen

Frank Ohler, Better than Nice and Other Unconventional Prayers, Westminster John Knox Press, 1989

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More from Seamus Heaney

“History says, Don't hope
On this side of the grave,
But then, once in a lifetime,
The longest-for tidal wave of justice can rise up
And hope and history rhyme.
So hope for a great sea change
On the far side of revenge
Believe in miracles....”

“The aim of poetry and the poet is finally to be of service, to ply the effort of the individual into the larger work of the community as a whole.” ―

“I can't think of a case where poems changed the world, but what they do is they change people's understanding of what's going on in the world.”

and five more......

On his inspiration: 'The completely solitary self: that's where poetry comes from, and it gets isolated by crisis”

On which animal he'd prefer to be: "I might enjoy being an albatross, being able to glide for days and daydream for hundreds of miles along the thermals. And then being able to hang like an affliction round some people's necks."

On fame: "The gift of writing is to be self-forgetful, to get a surge of inner life or inner supply or unexpected sense of empowerment, to be afloat, to be out of yourself. The prizes can’t help you at all.”

On becoming a poet: "My quest for precision and definition, while it may lead backward, is conducted in the living speech of a landscape and a language that I was born with. If you like, I began as a poet when my roots were crossed with my reading."

On authority "At home in Ireland, there's a habit of avoidance, an ironical attitude towards the authority figure. "

Easter Hope All Year Round

Celestial spirit that doth roll
The heart's sepulchral stone away,
Be this our resurrection day,
The singing Easter of the soul -
O gentle Master of the Wise,
Teach us to say: "I will arise." ~
Richard Le Gallienne

"The great gift of Easter is hope - Christian hope which makes us have that confidence in God, in his ultimate triumph, and in his goodness and love, which nothing can shake."
-- Basil C. Hume

Celtic Christianity may offer us a lifeline in the form of an approach to faith which is rooted in the imagination...[Celts] excelled at expressing their faith in symbols, metaphors and images, both visual and poetic.
They had the ability to invest the ordinary and commonplace with sacramental significance, to find glimpses of God’s glory throughout creation and to paint pictures in words, signs and music that acted as icons opening windows on heaven and pathways to eternity
Ian Bradley The Celtic Way

Favourite Quotes from Pope Francis

“Thanks to magnanimity, we can always look at the horizon from the position where we are. That means being able to do the little things of every day with a big heart open to God and to others. That means being able to appreciate the small things inside large horizons, those of the kingdom of God.

This offers parameters to assume a correct position for discernment, in order to hear the things of God from God’s ‘point of view.’ … However the risk in seeking and finding God in all things, then, is the willingness to explain too much, to say with human certainty and arrogance: ‘God is here.’ We will find only a god that fits our measure. The correct attitude is that of St. Augustine: seek God to find him, and find God to keep searching for God forever.”

-- Pope Francis

Carlo Caretto's Love Letter to His Church

How much I much criticise you my church and yet how much I love you !

You have made me suffer more than anyone and yet I owe you more than I owe anyone. I should like to see you destroyed and yet I need your presence.

You have given me much scandal and yet you alone have made me understand holiness. Never in the world have I seen anything more obscurantist, more compromised, more false, yet never have I touched anything more pure, more generous or more beautiful.

Countless times I have felt like slamming the door of my soul in your face – and yet, every night, I have prayed that I might die in your arms!

No, I cannot be free of you, for I am one with you, even if not completely you.
Then too – where should I go? To build another church?

But I cannot build another church without the same defects, for they are my own defects. And again, if I were to build another church, it would be my church, not Christ’s church. No, I am old enough. I know better!"

Did the Woman Say ?

Great Quotes

A blank piece of paper is God's way of telling us how hard it is to be God.

Sidney Sheldon

There are things you can’t reach. But
you can reach out to them, and all day long.
The wind, the bird flying away. The idea of God.
And it can keep you as busy as anything else, and happier.

Mary Oliver

“A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.”

– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"There is an Indian proverb or axiom that says that everyone is a house with four rooms, a physical, a mental, an emotional, and a spiritual. Most of us tend to live in one room most of the time but, unless we go into every room every day, even if only to keep it aired, we are not a complete person."

~Rumer Godden, A House with Four Rooms, 1989

“And

"
"You can get all A's and still flunk life."

"Lost in the mystery of finding myself alive."

Walker Percy

"The day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom”

A tough life needs a tough language-and that's what poetry is. That's what literature offers- a language powerful enough to say how it is. It isn't a hiding place. It is a finding place.
Jeanette Winterson

There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, “Thy will be done,” and those to whom God says, “All right, then, have it your way.”

- C.S. Lewis

The independent hearts of Celtic descendents everywhere still yearn for the solitary place, still rejoice in the goodness of creation, still see the Lord beside them as they walk, still see Him in the face of friend and stranger. The gospel light with its eastern fire still gleams. The truth still lingers in the heart.
Pat Robson – The Celtic Heart

People are itchy and lost and bored and quick to jump at any fix. Why is there such a vast self-help industry in this country? Why do all these selves need help?

They have been deprived of something by our psychological culture. They have been deprived of the sense that there is something else in life, some purpose that has come with them into the world."

-- James Hillman

Loyalty to the country always. Loyalty to the government only when it deserves it.
--Mark Twain

During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.
--George Orwell

We are not to simply bandage the wounds of victims beneath the wheels of injustice: - we are to drive a spoke into the wheel itself.

― Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.
-- George Orwell

Never for the sake of peace and quiet deny your own experience or convictions.
--Dag Hammarskjöld

If you want to build a ship don't herd people together to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.
— Antoine de Saint-Exupery

For what are we, without hope in our hearts, that someday we'll drink from God's blessed waters?"
-Bruce Springsteen

"Sometimes grace works like waterwings when you feel you are sinking."
-Anne Lamott

"A prayer may be a wordless inner longing, a sudden outpouring of love, a yearning within the soul to be for a moment united within the infinite and the good, a humbleness that needs no abasement or speech to express it, a cry in the darkness for help when all seems lost, a song, a poem, a kind deed, a reaching for beauty, or the strong, quiet inner reaffirmation of faith. A prayer in fact can be anything that is created by God that turns to God."

Paul Gallico

"God does not die when we cease to believe in a personal deity, but we die on the day when our lives cease to be illuminated by the steady radiance, renewed daily, of a wonder, the source of which is beyond all reason."

Dag Hammarskjold

When asked if I am pessimistic or optimistic about the future, my answer is always the same: If you look at the science about what is happening on earth and aren’t pessimistic, you don’t understand the data. But if you meet the people who are working to restore this earth and the lives of the poor, and you aren’t optimistic, you haven’t got a pulse. What I see everywhere in the world are ordinary people willing to confront despair, power, and incalculable odds in order to restore some semblance of grace, justice, and beauty to this world.”

― Paul Hawken

The greatest religious challenge of our age is to hold together social action and spiritual disciplines. This is not just a theological necessity, dictated by the need to integrate all of life around the reality of the living God. It is a matter of sheer survival. The evils we confront are so massive, so inhuman, so impervious to appeals and dead to compassion, that those who struggle against them face the real possibility of being overwhelmed by them.”

~ Theologian Walter Wink

One day you will ask me which is more important? My life or yours?
I will say mine and you will walk away not knowing that you are my life.

~ Khalil Gibran

Blue Eyed Ennis

Belonging, Blessing and God's Extravagance

When Jesus speaks about the world, he is very realistic. He speaks about wars and revolutions, earthquakes, plagues and famines, persecution and imprisonment, betrayal, hatred and assassinations.

The Place of Blessing

Where you are (however unchosen) is the place of blessing.
How you are (however broken) is the place of grace.
Who you are, in your becoming, is your place in the Kingdom.

Margaret Silf

Eric Bibb In My Father's House

A Purification

Accepting This

Mark Nepo

No comments:

Disclaimer for Links

Disclaimer

Belonging, Blessing and God's Extravagance

When Jesus speaks about the world, he is very realistic. He speaks about wars and revolutions, earthquakes, plagues and famines, persecution and imprisonment, betrayal, hatred and assassinations.

The Place of Blessing

Where you are (however unchosen) is the place of blessing. How you are (however broken) is the place of grace. Who you are, in your becoming, is your place in the Kingdom.

Margaret Silf

Eric Bibb In My Father's House

A Purification

Accepting This

Mark Nepo

No comments:

Disclaimer for Links

Disclaimer

Where you are (however unchosen) is the place of blessing.
How you are (however broken) is the place of grace.
Who you are, in your becoming, is your place in the Kingdom.