WHAT’S COMMON INTO SOMETHING HOLY
Like the sacramental use of water and bread and wine, friendship takes what's common in human experience and turns it into something holy.
Eugene Peterson
BEAUTY, FRIENDSHIP, & LOSS
The whole world is either symbolic (images & ideas that are throwing life together) or diabolic (pulling life apart).
It is the color of what we trust most, love most, focus our gaze on most that dyes our soul. The dye of our soul colors our world.
If you could be one of the two, what would you rather be at the end of your life: proud of what you've done or grateful for what you have been given?
Reality is a cosmic drama of divine revelation and human response.
We need to accept ourselves as revelations of God to us.
All of reality is either a temple or a tomb.
I know the music I like.
You like the music you know.
The enjoyment of every created good is an enjoyment of heaven.
God is always speaking to us.
Reality is sacred, always speaking to us.
If you receive something as a gift, you trust and hope and live in the one who gave it to you.
Joy is the response to the possession of the good.
The Bible gives us a reason to do things with a creative endeavor because all these things are sacred.
Comments from Fr. Vince, S.J. at a retreat at Sacred Heart Jesuit Retreat Home.
DO NOT ASK YOUR CHILDREN TO STRIVE
Do not ask your children
to strive for extraordinary lives.
Such striving may seem admirable,
but it is the way of foolishness.
Help them instead to find the wonder
and the marvel of an ordinary life.
Show them the joy of tasting
tomatoes, apples and pears.
Show them how to cry
when pets and people die.
Show them the infinite pleasure
in the touch of a hand.
And make the ordinary come alive for them.
The extraordinary will take care of itself.
William Martin
The Parent's Tao Te Ching: Ancient Advice for Modern Parents
CLEARING
Do not try to save
the whole world
or do anything grandiose.
Instead, create
a clearing
in the dense forest
of your life
and wait there
patiently,
until the song
that is your life
falls into your own cupped hands
and you recognize and greet it.
Only then will you know
how to give yourself
to this world
so worth of rescue.
Martha Postlewaite
WHAT’S LOST IS NOTHING
The secret that we share I cannot tell in full. But this much I will tell. What's lost is nothing to what's found, and all the death that ever was, set next to life, would scarcely fill a cup.
Frederick Buechner
Godric
LIFE ITSELF IS GRACE
Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery it is. In the boredom and pain of it, no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it, because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace.
Frederick Buechner
Now and Then: A Memoir of Vocation