Thomas A. Kempis

From Imitation of Christ, III.34.3:

"Ah, when will it come, that blissful and longed-for hour, when the joy of your presence shall brim to overflowing the depths of my desire, and you be my all in all? "

Matthew 25:6

“At midnight the cry rang out: ‘Here’s the bridegroom! Come out to meet him.’”

Pete Townshend on Love

In a comment to another post in this blog, Blogger Pranayama mama offered the following...

"Love is like longing, and energy. It's like magnetism, it's like gravity. And at its highest it's about spiritual salvation."

~~ Pete Townshend

Psalm 63:1-8

O God, You are my God;
I shall seek You earnestly;
My soul thirsts for You,
my flesh yearns for You,
In a dry and weary land where there is no water.

Thus I have seen You in the sanctuary,
To see Your power and Your glory.
Because Your lovingkindness is better than life,
My lips will praise You.
So I will bless You as long as I live;
I will lift up my hands in Your name.

My soul is satisfied as with marrow and fatness,
And my mouth offers praises with joyful lips.

When I remember You on my bed,
I meditate on You in the night watches,
For You have been my help,
And in the shadow of Your wings I sing for joy.
My soul clings to You;
Your right hand upholds me.

On Absence and Dread

I don't know which is worse; the dread of the leave taking or the actual absence.

A God of Relationship

God was generous to me in prayer yesterday. He sprinkled tidbits of revelation throughout our time together. I will never understand His generousity to me, undeserving and ingrateful as I am.

I was thinking of all the roles God plays for us. All the relationships He offers. He is our king, our Father, our brother, our counselor, our judge, and our spouse.

He is MY king, my brother, my counselor, my judge, and most of all, my spouse.

In being all these things, we can look to Him for help in all our relationships. With our boss, with our siblings, with our mentors, with our priests, and with our husbands or wives. He knows each relationship and we can go to Him in and for each one of them.

The more you ponder the way He unfolds His plan, the more you rest in wonder.

MacDonald on Books as Sacraments

From Lady of the Mansion:

"I never had been by any means a book-worm; but the very outside of a book had a charm to me. It was a kind of sacrament--an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace; as, indeed, what on God's earth is not?""

Native American Wisdom

"You will need to be strong, for you will be called cowards and traitors. But it is an act of courage to
choose sanity and peace when others are choosing hate and war."

San Ildefonso, Pueblo elder

Crucify Me

I was thinking about crucifixion this morning while praying.

I could picture the nails in my hands, binding me to the cross. The image was comforting; if I allow myself to be crucified with Christ, I cannot commit the sins I long to commit. Even if I pull and strain, I am connected to the cross, connected to Christ, and in so binding myself, am protected.

St. Faustina on Yearning (1)

From The Diary (841):

"O my Creator, I long for You! You understand me, O Lord of mine! All that is on earth seems to me like a pale shadow. It is You I long for and desire. Although You do so inconceivably much for me, for You yourself visit me in a special way, yet those visits do not soothe the wound of my heart, but make me long all the more for You, O Lord. Oh, take me to Yourself, Lord, if such is Your will! You know I am dying, and I am dying of longing for You; and yet, I cannot die. Death, where are you?"

MacDonald on Dreaming

From Lady of the Mansion:

"What a wonderful thing waking is! The time of the ghostly moonshine passes by, and the great positive sunlight comes. A man who dreams, and knows that he is dreaming, thinks he knows what waking is; but knows it so little that he mistakes, one after another, many a vague and dim change in his dream for an awaking. When the true waking comes at last, he is filled and overflowed with the power of its reality. So, likewise, one who, in the darkness, lies waiting for the light about to be struck, and trying to conceive, with all the force of his imagination, what the light will be like, is yet, when the reality flames up before him, seized as by a new and unexpected thing, different from and beyond all his imagining. He feels as if the darkness were cast to an infinite distance behind him. So shall it be with us when we wake from this dream of life into the truer life beyond, and find all our present notions of being thrown back as into a dim vapoury region of dreamland, where yet we thought we knew, and whence we looked forward into the present. This must be what Novalis means when he says: “Our life is not a dream; but it may become a dream, and perhaps ought to become one.”"

St. Bernard of Clairvaux on Song of Songs (Sermon 85:13)

13. ...The soul is affected in one way when it is made fruitful by the Word, in another when it enjoys the Word: in the one it is considering the needs of its neighbor; in the other it is allured by the sweetness of the Word. A mother is happy in her child; a bride is even happier in her bridegroom's embrace. The children are dear, they are the pledge of his love, but his kisses give her greater pleasure. It is good to save many souls, but there is far more pleasure in going aside to be with the Word. But when does this happen and for how long? It is sweet intercourse, but lasts a short time and is experienced rarely! This is what I spoke of before, when I said that the final reason for the soul to seek the Word was to enjoy him in bliss.

C.S. Lewis on First Love

"God will look to every soul like its first love because He is its first love."

I'm a Carb Lover

I wonder if our desire for God manifests itself as a deep hunger because He is in fact real food; the Bread of Life?

Having and Wanting

During my devotional time this morning, I was again given the gift of an intense longing and hunger for God. When this happens my heart feels like a burning brand, and my chest aches with an emptiness yearning to be filled. It is a great gift, this love and longing. I think it is actually an experience of God, a realization of Him. Perhaps even a manifestation of Him.

As Lewis said: "The very nature of Joy makes nonsense of our common distinction between having and wanting."

I think that in the wanting I am in fact having.

C.S. Lewis on Worship

From Reflections on the Psalms:

"It is in the process of being worshipped that God communicates His presence to men."

G.K. Chesterton on Orthodoxy

"This is the thrilling romance of Orthodoxy. People have fallen into a foolish habit of speaking of orthodoxy as something heavy, humdrum, and safe. There never was anything so perilous or so exciting as orthodoxy."
...
"To have fallen into any one of the fads from Gnosticism to Christian Science would indeed have been obvious and tame. But to have avoided them all has been one whirling adventure; and in my vision the heavenly chariot flies thundering through the ages, the dull heresies sprawling and prostrate, the wild truth reeling but erect."

Aquinas Responds: Is Ecstasy an Effect of Love?

To suffer ecstasy means to be placed outside oneself. This happens as to the apprehensive power and as to the appetitive power. As to the apprehensive power, a man is said to be placed outside himself, when he is placed outside the knowledge proper to him. This may be due to his being raised to a higher knowledge; thus, a man is said to suffer ecstasy, inasmuch as he is placed outside the connatural apprehension of his sense and reason, when he is raised up so as to comprehend things that surpass sense and reason: or it may be due to his being cast down into a state of debasement; thus a man may be said to suffer ecstasy, when he is overcome by violent passion or madness. As to the appetitive power, a man is said to suffer ecstasy, when that power is borne towards something else, so that it goes forth out from itself, as it were.

The first of these ecstasies is caused by love dispositively in so far, namely, as love makes the lover dwell on the beloved, ... and to dwell intently on one thing draws the mind from other things. The second ecstasy is caused by love directly; by love of friendship, simply; by love of concupiscence not simply but in a restricted sense. Because in love of concupiscence, the lover is carried out of himself, in a certain sense; in so far, namely, as not being satisfied with enjoying the good that he has, he seeks to enjoy something outside himself. But since he seeks to have this extrinsic good for himself, he does not go out from himself simply, and this movement remains finally within him. On the other hand, in the love of friendship, a man's affection goes out from itself simply; because he wishes and does good to his friend, by caring and providing for him, for his sake.

Read More...

C.S. Lewis on Being Overcome

From The Great Divorce, chapter 11:

Overcome us that, so overcome, we may be ourselves: we desire the beginning of your reign as we desire dawn and dew, wetness at the birth of light.

St. Bernard of Clairvaux on Song of Songs (Sermon 83:5-6)

5. ...Pure love has no self-interest. Pure love does not gain strength through expectation, nor is it weakened by distrust. This is the love of the bride, for this is the bride-with all that means. Love is the being and the hope of a bride. She is full of it, and the bridegroom is contented with it. He asks nothing else, and she has nothing else to give. That is why he is the bridegroom and she the bride; this love is the property only of the couple. No one else can share it, not even a son.

... but the love of a bridegroom-or rather of the Bridegroom who is love-asks only the exchange of love and trust. Let the Beloved love in return. How can the bride-and the bride of love--do other than love? How can Love not be loved?

6. Rightly, then, does she renounce all other affections and devote herself to love alone, for it is in returning love that she has the power to respond to love. Although she may pour out her whole self in love, what is that compared to the inexhaustible fountain of his love? The stream of love does not flow equally from her who loves and from him who is love, the soul and the Word, the Bride and the Bridegroom, the Creator and the creature-any more than a thirsty man can be compared to a fountain. Will the Bride's vow perish, then, because of this? Will the desire of her heart, her burning love, her affirmation of confidence, fail in their purpose because she has not the strength to keep pace with a giant, or rival honey in sweetness, the lamb in gentleness, or the lily in whiteness? Because she cannot equal the brightness of the sun, and the charity of him who is Charity? No. Although the creature loves less, being a lesser being, yet if it loves with its whole heart nothing is lacking, for it has given all. Such love, as I have said, is marriage, for a soul cannot love like this and not be beloved; complete and perfect marriage consists in the exchange of love. No one can doubt that the soul is first loved, and loved more intensely, by the Word; for it is anticipated and surpassed in its love. Happy the soul who is permitted to be anticipated in blessedness so sweet. Happy the soul who has been allowed to experience the embrace of such bliss! For it is nothing other than love, holy and chaste, full of sweetness and delight, love utterly serene and true, mutual and deep, which joins two beings, not in one flesh, but in one spirit, making them no longer two but one. As Paul says: 'He who is united to God is one spirit with him.'

C.S. Lewis on Praise

From Reflections on the Psalms:

"I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation."

Julian of Norwich: Revelations of Divine Love, Ch. 6

"Our soul is so specially loved of Him that is highest, that it overpasseth the knowing of all creatures: that is to say, there is no creature that is made that may know how much and how sweetly and how tenderly our Maker loveth us. And therefore we may with grace and His help stand in spiritual beholding, with everlasting marvel of this high, overpassing, inestimable Love that Almighty God hath to us of His Goodness. And therefore we may ask of our Lover with reverence all that we will.

For our natural Will is to have God, and the Good Will of God is to have us; and we may never cease from willing nor from longing till we have Him in fullness of joy: and then may we no more desire."

Paul's Conversion

Isn't it interesting that Paul's conversion involved a removal of his eyesight temporarily, when Jesus was usually about the business of healing?

PS A recent gospel reading had Jesus calling the Pharisees the blind leading the blind. I guess in Paul's case, He decided to show him just how much leading you can do without sight.

C.S. Lewis on Love and Heartbreak

From The Four Loves:

"To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken."

St. Bernard of Clairvaux on Song of Songs (Sermon 83:3)

3. Such conformity weds the soul to the Word, for one Who is the Word by nature shows himself like him too in the exercise will, loving as she is loved. When she loves perfectly, the soul wedded to the Word. What is lovelier than this conformity? What more desirable than charity, by whose operation, 0 soul, not content with a human master, you approach the Word with confidence, cling to him with constancy, speak to him as to a familiar friend, and refer to him in every matter with an intellectual grasp proportionate to the boldness of your desire'? Truly this is a spiritual contract, a holy marriage. It is more than a contract, it is an embrace: an embrace where identity of will makes of two one spirit. There need be no fear that inequality of persons should impair the conformity of will, because love is no respecter of persons. It is from loving, not revering, that love receives its name. Let someone filled with horror or stupor or fear or wonder be content with reverence; where there is love all these are unimportant. Love is sufficient for itself; when love is present it absorbs and conquers all other affections. Therefore it loves what it loves, and it knows nothing else. He who is justly honored, held in awe, and admired, prefers to be loved. He and the soul are Bridegroom and Bride. What other bond or compulsion do you look for between those who are betrothed, except to love and be loved?

Aquinas Responds: Is Mutual Indwelling an Effect of Love?

This effect of mutual indwelling may be understood as referring both to the apprehensive and to the appetitive power. Because, as to the apprehensive power, the beloved is said to be in the lover, inasmuch as the beloved abides in the apprehension of the lover, according to Philippians 1:7, "For that I have you in my heart": while the lover is said to be in the beloved, according to apprehension, inasmuch as the lover is not satisfied with a superficial apprehension of the beloved, but strives to gain an intimate knowledge of everything pertaining to the beloved, so as to penetrate into his very soul. Thus it is written concerning the Holy Ghost, Who is God's Love, that He "searcheth all things, yea the deep things of God" (1 Corinthians 2:10).

As the appetitive power, the object loved is said to be in the lover, inasmuch as it is in his affections, by a kind of complacency: causing him either to take pleasure in it, or in its good, when present; or, in the absence of the object loved, by his longing, to tend towards it with the love of concupiscence, or towards the good that he wills to the beloved, with the love of friendship: not indeed from any extrinsic cause (as when we desire one thing on account of another, or wish good to another on account of something else), but because the complacency in the beloved is rooted in the lover's heart. For this reason we speak of love as being "intimate"; and "of the bowels of charity." On the other hand, the lover is in the beloved, by the love of concupiscence and by the love of friendship, but not in the same way. For the love of concupiscence is not satisfied with any external or superficial possession or enjoyment of the beloved; but seeks to possess the beloved perfectly, by penetrating into his heart, as it were. Whereas, in the love of friendship, the lover is in the beloved, inasmuch as he reckons what is good or evil to his friend, as being so to himself; and his friend's will as his own, so that it seems as though he felt the good or suffered the evil in the person of his friend. Hence it is proper to friends "to desire the same things, and to grieve and rejoice at the same," as the Philosopher says (Ethic. ix, 3 and Rhet. ii, 4). Consequently in so far as he reckons what affects his friend as affecting himself, the lover seems to be in the beloved, as though he were become one with him: but in so far as, on the other hand, he wills and acts for his friend's sake as for his own sake, looking on his friend as identified with himself, thus the beloved is in the lover.

In yet a third way, mutual indwelling in the love of friendship can be understood in regard to reciprocal love: inasmuch as friends return love for love, and both desire and do good things for one another.

Read more...

St. Bernard of Clairvaux on Song of Songs (Sermon 74)

7. But when the Word has left me, all these spiritual powers become weak and faint and begin to grow cold, as though you had removed the fire under the boiling pot, and this is a sign of his going. Then my soul must needs be sorrowful until he returns, and my heart again kindles within me-the sign of his returning. When I have had such experience of the Word, is it any wonder that I take to myself the words of the Bride, calling him back when he has withdrawn? For although my fervor is not as strong as hers, yet I am transported by a desire like hers. As long as I live the word 'return', the word of recall for the recall of the word, will be on my lips.

As often as he slips away from me, so often shall I call him back From the burning desire of my heart I will not cease to call him begging him to return, as if after someone who is departing, and I implore him to give back to me the joy of his salvation, and restore himself to me.

Aquinas Responds: Does Passion Wound the Lover?

In reply to the objections, it is to be observed that four proximate effects may be ascribed to love: viz. melting, enjoyment, languor, and fervor. Of these the first is "melting," which is opposed to freezing. For things that are frozen, are closely bound together, so as to be hard to pierce. But it belongs to love that the appetite is fitted to receive the good which is loved, inasmuch as the object loved is in the lover, as stated above (Article 2). Consequently the freezing or hardening of the heart is a disposition incompatible with love: while melting denotes a softening of the heart, whereby the heart shows itself to be ready for the entrance of the beloved. If, then, the beloved is present and possessed, pleasure or enjoyment ensues. But if the beloved be absent, two passions arise; viz. sadness at its absence, which is denoted by "languor" (hence Cicero in De Tusc. Quaest. iii, 11 applies the term "ailment" chiefly to sadness); and an intense desire to possess the beloved, which is signified by "fervor." And these are the effects of love considered formally, according to the relation of the appetitive power to its object. But in the passion of love, other effects ensue, proportionate to the above, in respect of a change in the organ.

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C.S. Lewis on Rewards

From The Weight of Glory:

"The proper rewards are not simply tacked on to the activity for which they are given, but are the activity itself in consummation."

Msgr. Krieg on the Beatitudes

Monsignor sayed that he likes to ponder God's delight in us; imagining God saying "Oh, aren't you great..." and reaching out His hand toward us.

He said that when you read the beatitudes you can hear God replacing "Blessed art thou" in each line with "Aren't you wonderful!"

Isn't that lovely?

Wisdom from Msgr. Gerry Krieg

On Wednesday night of this week my congregation was treated to the mind and heart of my priest's friend and mentor, Msgr. Gerry Krieg. I hope to become like him some day; that my whole being will be transformed by and into the love of Christ.

Here are some nuggets of his wisdom:

• Jesus didn't come to be a healer, to start a religion. He came to be a human.
• The Father's "let it be" results in creation. Jesus' "let it be" results in the cross.
• The Father creates out of nothing. The Son creates out of messes.
• The unity of Christians should be like the unity of the trinity; "may they be one as you and I are one."
• If we strive to see Jesus in one another, our creative power will be that much greater. (I need to ask him to speak more about this...)
• Msgr. once told my priest to stop referring to the Roman Catholic church as "Rome". He said, "It's Peter."

The good father prompts so many lines of thought...

Pascal on Happiness

From Pensees, #425:

"What is it, then, that this desire and this inability proclaim to us, but that there was once in man a true happiness of which there now remain to him only the mark and empty trace, which he in vain tries to fill from all his surroundings, seeking from things absent the help he does not obtain in things present? But these are all inadequate, because the infinite abyss can only be filled by an infinite and immutable object, that is to say, only by God Himself."

Aquinas Responds: Is Union an Effect of Love?

The union of lover and beloved is twofold. The first is real union; for instance, when the beloved is present with the lover. The second is union of affection: and this union must be considered in relation to the preceding apprehension; since movement of the appetite follows apprehension. Now love being twofold, viz. love of concupiscence and love of friendship; each of these arises from a kind of apprehension of the oneness of the thing loved with the lover. For when we love a thing, by desiring it, we apprehend it as belonging to our well-being. In like manner when a man loves another with the love of friendship, he wills good to him, just as he wills good to himself: wherefore he apprehends him as his other self, in so far, to wit, as he wills good to him as to himself. Hence a friend is called a man's "other self" (Ethic. ix, 4), and Augustine says (Confess. iv, 6), "Well did one say to his friend: Thou half of my soul."

The first of these unions is caused "effectively" by love; because love moves man to desire and seek the presence of the beloved, as of something suitable and belonging to him. The second union is caused "formally" by love; because love itself is this union or bond. In this sense Augustine says (De Trin. viii, 10) that "love is a vital principle uniting, or seeking to unite two together, the lover, to wit, and the beloved." For in describing it as "uniting" he refers to the union of affection, without which there is nolove: and in saying that "it seeks to unite," he refers to real union.

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C.S. Lewis on Joy

From Surprized by Joy

"The very nature of Joy makes nonsense of our common distinction between having and wanting. There, to have is to want and to want is to have. Thus, the very moment when I longed to be so stabbed again [with Joy], was itself again such a stabbing."

St. Thomas Aquinas on Love

Amor Facit Ecstasans: Love produces ecstasy

Especially Beloved?

A friend recently talked about having an experience in which she realized that she was especially loved by God.

Particularly loved.

Very specially loved.

She followed this by saying, "As are we all."

I believe this to be true, and yet I also believe that some may be especially specially loved.

It's a bit of a paradox, like predestination. And I think that in both cases the answer lies in our response.

I thought about the parable of the wedding feast, when the invited guests would not come. But there are those who did come, those who do come, and those perhaps are the ones who enjoy more fully the banquet He has in store.

Perhaps some simply say yes more readily, more eagerly, to the proffered feast.

Like Mary.

I wonder if such a response opens a door to Him in a special way, allowing access to and experience of His love more intensely.

I pray to be like her. I want to experience all of you Lord.

Sarah Mclachlan (and Donovan): Wear your Love Like Heaven (song lyrics)

Color in sky prussian blue
scarlet fleece changes hue
crimson ball sinks from view

Wear your love like heaven
Wear your love like heaven
Wear your love like heaven

Lord kiss me once more
fill me with song
Allah
kiss me once more
that I may,
that I may
wear my love like heaven
wear my love like heaven

Color sky havana lake
Color sky rose carmethene
Alizarian crimson

Wear your love like heaven
Wear your love like heaven
Wear your love like heaven

Lord kiss me once more
fill me with song
Allah
kiss me once more
that I may
that I may
wear my love like heaven
wear my love like heaven

Cannot believe what I see
all I have wished for will be
all of our race proud and free

Wear your love like heaven
Wear your love like heaven
Wear your love like heaven

Lord kiss me once more
fill me with song
Allah
kiss me once more
that I may,
that I may
wear my love like heaven
wear my love like heaven
wear my love like heaven

Job 11:15-17

For then shall you lift up your face without spot; yes, you shall be steadfast, and shall not fear: Because you shall forget your misery, and remember it as waters that pass away. Then your life shall be brighter than the noonday; its gloom shall become as the morning...

Pope Benedict from God is Love

"In the gradual unfolding of this encounter, it is clearly revealed that love is not merely a sentiment. Sentiments come and go. A sentiment can be a marvelous first spark, but it is not the fullness of love. Earlier we spoke of the process of purification and maturation by which eros comes fully into its own, becomes love in the full meaning of the word. It is characteristic of mature love that it calls into play all man's potentialities; it engages the whole man, so to speak. The love-story between God and man consists in the very fact that this communion of will increases in a communion of thought and sentiment, and thus our will and God's will increasingly coincide: God's will is no longer for me an alien will, something imposed on me from without by the commandments, but it is now my own will, based on the realization that God is in fact more deeply present to me than I am to myself. Then self- abandonment to God increases and God becomes our joy."

Luke 1:53

He has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent empty away.

St. Augustine Commentary on Psalm 42

5. My soul is thirsty for the living God Psalm 41:2. What I am saying, that as the hart pants after the water-brooks, so longs my soul after You, O God, means this, My soul is thirsty for the living God. For what is it thirsty? When shall I come and appear before God? This it is for which I am thirsty, to come and to appear before Him. I am thirsty in my pilgrimage, in my running; I shall be filled on my arrival. But When shall I come? And this, which is soon in the sight of God, is late to our longing. When shall I come and appear before God? This too proceeds from that longing, of which in another place comes that cry, One thing have I desired of the Lord; that will I seek after; that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life. Wherefore so? That I may behold (he says) the beauty of the Lord. When shall I come and appear before the Lord?

Origen on the Wounding of Love (Song 2:5)

From Origen's Commentary on the Song of Songs:

"If there is ever anyone who at any time has burned with this faithful love for the Word of God; if there is anyone who, as the Prophet says, has received the sweet wound of him who is the "chosen dart"; if there is anyone who has been pierced with the lovable spear of his knowledge, so that he sighs and longs for him day and night, is able to speak of nothing else, wishes to hear of nothing else, can think of nothing else, and is not disposed to desire, seek, or hope for anything other than him; then such a soul truly says, "I have been wounded by love.""

Chesterton on Mythology

"In a word, mythology is a search; it is something that combines a recurrent desire with a recurrent doubt, mixing a most hungry sincerity in the idea of seeking for a place with a most dark and deep and mysterious levity about all the places found."

Sarah McLachlan: Fumbling toward Ecstasy (song lyrics)

All the fear has left me now
I'm not frightened anymore
It's my heart that pounds beneath my flesh
It's my mouth that pushes out this breath

And if I shed a tear I won't cage it
I won't fear love
and if I feel a rage I won't deny it
I won't fear love

Companion to our demons
they will dance
and we will play
with chairs
candles
and cloth
making darkness
in the day

It'll be easy
to look in or out
upstream or down
without a thought

And if I shed a tear I won't cage it
I won't fear love
and if I feel a rage I won't deny it
I won't fear love

Peace
in the struggle
to find peace

Comfort
on the way
to comfort

And if I shed a tear I won't cage it
I won't fear love
and if I feel a rage I won't deny it
I won't fear love

I won't fear love

I won't fear love

St. Augustine on Containers of Desire for God

NOTE: These passages follow on to the May 8, 2008 quote, from the Tractates on the first letter of John by Saint Augustine.

So, my brethern, let us continue to desire, for we shall be filled. Take note of Saint Paul stretching as it were his ability to receive what is to come: Not that I have already obtained this, he said, or am made perfect. Brethern, I do not consider that I have already obtained it. We might ask him, “If you have not yet obtained it, what are you doing in this life?” This one thing I do, answers Paul, forgetting what lies behind, and stretching forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the prize to which I am called in the life above. Not only did Paul say he stretched forward, but he also declared that he pressed on toward a chosen goal. He realized in fact that he was still short of receiving what no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived.

Such is our Christian life. By desiring heaven we exercise the powers of our soul. Now this exercise will be effective only to the extent that we free ourselves from desires leading to infatuation with this world. Let me return to the example I have already used, of filling an empty container. God means to fill each of you with what is good; so cast out what is bad! If He wishes to fill you with honey and you are full of sour wine, where is the honey to go? The vessel must be emptied of its contents and then be cleansed. Yes, it must be cleansed even if you have to work hard and scour it. It must be made fit for the new thing, whatever it may be.

We may go on speaking figuratively of honey, gold or wine - but whatever we say we cannot express the reality we are to receive. The name of that reality is God. But who will claim that in that one syllable we utter the full expanse of our heart’s desire? Therefore, whatever we say is necessarily less than the full truth. We must extend ourselves toward the measure of Christ so that when He comes He may fill us with His presence. Then we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.

Rumi: One Whisper of the Beloved

Lovers share a sacred decree –
to seek the Beloved.
They roll head over heels,
rushing toward the Beautiful One
like a torrent of water.

In truth, everyone is a shadow of the Beloved –
Our seeking is His seeking,
Our words are His words.

At times we flow toward the Beloved
like a dancing stream.
At times we are still water
held in His pitcher.
At times we boil in a pot
turning to vapor –
that is the job of the Beloved.

He breathes into my ear
until my soul
takes on His fragrance.
He is the soul of my soul –
How can I escape?
But why would any soul in this world
want to escape from the Beloved?

He will melt your pride
making you thin as a strand of hair,
Yet do not trade, even for both worlds,
One strand of His hair.

We search for Him here and there
while looking right at Him.
Sitting by His side we ask,
"O Beloved, where is the Beloved?"

Enough with such questions! –
Let silence take you to the core of life.

All your talk is worthless
When compared to one whisper
of the Beloved.

C.S. Lewis on the Whisper of God

Lewis is an endless treasure trove.

He says that the pleasures of this world are the whisper of God.

Song of Songs 3:1-3

On my bed at night I sought him
whom my heart loves.
I sought him but I did not find him.
I will rise then and go about the city;
in the streets and crossings I will seek
Him whom my heart loves.
I sought him but I did not find him.

Bernard of Clairvaux: Sermon 1 on Song of Songs

Sermon 1
VI. II. But there is that other song, which, by its unique dignity and sweetness, excels all those I have mentioned and any others there might be; hence by every right do I acclaim it as the Song of Songs. It stands at a point where all the others culminate. Only the touch of the Spirit can inspire a song like this, and only personal experience can unfold its meaning. Let those who are versed in the mystery revel in it; let all others burn with desire rather to attain to this experience than merely to learn about it. For it is a melody that resound abroad by the very music of the heart, not a trilling on the lips but an inward pulsing of delight, a harmony not of voices but of wills. it is a tune you will not hear in the streets, these notes do not sound where crowds assemble; only the singer hears it and the one to whom he sings-the lover and the beloved. It is preeminently a marriage song telling of chaste souls in loving embrace, of their wills in sweet accord, of the mutual exchange of the heart's affection

Psalm 8:3-9

When I consider your heavens,
the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars,
which you have set in place,
what is man that you are mindful of him,
the son of man that you care for him?
You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings
and crowned him with glory and honor.
You made him ruler over the works of your hands;
you put everything under his feet:
all flocks and herds,
and the beasts of the field,
the birds of the air,
and the fish of the sea,
all that swim the paths of the seas.
O LORD, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!

St. Augustine on Thirst (or was it St. Gregory?)

“God thirsts to be thirsted after.”

(I've found this attributed to both St. Augustine and St. Gregory. Perhaps great minds think alike?)

Song of Songs 5:2-6

I was sleeping, but my heart kept vigil;
I heard my lover knocking:
"Open to me, my sister, my beloved,
my dove, my perfect one!
For my head is wet with dew,
my locks with the moisture of the night."

I have taken off my robe,
am I then to put it on?
I have bathed my feet,
am I then to soil them?

My lover put his hand through the opening;
my heart trembled within me,
and I grew faint when he spoke.

I rose to open to my lover,
with my hands dripping myrrh:
With my fingers dripping choice myrrh
upon the fittings of the lock.

I opened to my lover
-but my lover had departed, gone.
I sought him but I did not find him;
I called to him but he did not answer me.

George MacDonald on Love

"Nothing is inexorable but love. Love which will yield to prayer is imperfect and poor. Nor is it then the love that yields, but its alloy... For love loves unto purity. Love has ever in view the absolute loveliness of that which it beholds. Where loveliness is incomplete, and love cannot love its fill of loving, it spends itself to make more lovely, that it may love more; it strives for perfection, even that itself may be perfected--not in itself, but in the object... Therefore all that is not beautiful in the beloved, all that comes between and is not of love's kind, must be destroyed. And our God is a consuming fire."

Ecclesiastes 3:10-11

I have seen the burden God has laid on men. He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end.

Blessed are they

The beatitudes are endlessly comforting.

Blessed are they...

The path of life is suffering, for one and all. For the secular, suffering is seemingly meaningless, often leading to despair. For the Christian, suffering is the promise of the cross.

For Christ tells us that we are blessed through it.

Particularly blessed.
Specifically blessed.
Magnificently blessed.

Christ has a magnificent story mapped out for each of us, and he watches to see how we choose to respond to and participate in it. Will we rise to the challenge? Will we fight and resist? Will we be beaten down by a reality we would prefer to reject?

Or will we turn toward it, bare our breast to the sword, and embrace the little deaths that are the price of everlasting life?

Blessed are they...

I find comfort in the certainty that while Christ readily accepted the cross that was His to carry, He most certainly did not enjoy it. And I am not called to enjoy mine. I am called to accept it, and I am called to see the stark beauty of it. I am called to hunger and thirst and to recognize that in that hunger I can find God.

Epic stories require battle and suffering and sorrow, rarely concluding with a simple "they lived happily ever after". The beauty, the glory, the magnificence is in the love and loss.

Our God is a God of the beatitudes.

Blessed are they who suffer.

I am endlessly comforted in knowing this.

Song of Songs 5:10-16

My lover is radiant and ruddy;
he stands out among thousands.

His head is pure gold;
his locks are palm fronds,
black as the raven.

His eyes are like doves
beside running waters,
his teeth would seem bathed in milk,
and are set like jewels.

His cheeks are like beds of spice
with ripening aromatic herbs.
His lips are red blossoms;
they drip choice myrrh.

His arms are rods of gold
adorned with chrysolites.
His body is a work of ivory
covered with sapphires.

His legs are columns of marble
resting on golden bases.
His stature is like the trees on Lebanon,
imposing as the cedars.

His mouth is sweetness itself;
he is all delight.
Such is my lover, and such my friend,
O daughters of Jerusalem.

C.S. Lewis on Knowledge of Another Country

On yearning:

"If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only... to suggest the real thing. If that is so, I must take care, on the one hand, never to despise, or be unthankful for, these earthly blessings, and on the other, never to mistake them for the something else of which they are only a kind of copy, echo, or mirage."

"I must keep alive in myself the desire for my true country, which I shall not find till after death; I must never let it get snowed under or turned aside; I must make it the main object of life to press on to the other country and to help others do the same."

C.S. Lewis on Glory

"At present we are on the outside... the wrong side of the door. We discern the freshness and purity of morning, but they do not make us fresh and pure. We cannot mingle with the pleasures we see. But all the pages of the New Testament are rustling with the rumor that it will not always be so. Someday, God willing, we shall get "in"... We will put on glory... that greater glory of which Nature is only the first sketch. "

C.S. Lewis on Union with Beauty

"Most people, if they had really learned to look into their own hearts, would know that they do want, and want acutely, something that cannot be had in this world. There are all sorts of things in this world that offer to give it to you, but they never quite keep their promise. "We do not want to merely "see" beauty--though, God knows, even that is bounty enough. We want something else which can hardly be put into words--to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it. "

Stephen King on Beauty

From Lisey's Story

"'It's beautiful here...' She looks around. And she shivers. 'It's too beautiful. If I spent too much time here--or even too much time thinking about it--I think the beauty would drive me insane.'"

Stephen King on Bravery

Ok, Ok, I admit that I just read a recent Stephen King book. Guilty, guilty pleasure. (What can I say? I'm on vacation.) It is a book of surprizing beauty.

As God would have it, it connects to many of the things I've been contemplating lately.

Here's a quote in example.

From Lisey's Story

"Isn't bravery always sort of beautiful?"

D.H. Lawrence 2: Mary's Yes

I imagine this to be Mary's response to the coming of the Holy Spirit after the annunciation.

From The Rainbow

"She turned, and saw a great white moon looking at her over the hill. And her breast opened to it, she was cleaved like a transparent jewel to its light. She stood filled with the full moon, offering herself. Her two breasts opened to make way for it, her body opened wide like a quivering anemone, a soft, dilated invitation touched by the moon."

D.H. Lawrence on the Call

From Bei Hennef

You are the call and I am the answer,
You are the wish, and I the fulfillment,
You are the night, and I the day
What else? It is perfect enough.
It is perfectly complete,
You and I,
What more---?
Strange, how we suffer in spite of this!

Frederick Buechner on Breathtaking Truth

From Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy, and Fairy Tale.

"Let the preacher tell the truth. Let him make audible the silence of the news of the world with the sound turned off so that in that silence we can hear the tragic truth of the Gospel, which is that the world where God is absent is a dark and echoing emptiness; and the comic truth of the Gospel, which is that it is into the depths of his absence that God makes himself present in such unlikely ways and to such unlikely people that old Sarah and Abraham and maybe when the time comes even Pilate and Job and Lear and Henry Ward Beecher and you and I laugh till the tears run down our cheeks. And finally let him preach this overwhelming tragedy by comedy, of darkness by light, of the ordinary by the extraordinary, as the tale that is too good not to be true because to dismiss it as untrue is to dismiss along with it that catch of the breath, that beat and lifting of the heart near to or even accompanied by tears, which I believe is the deepest intuition of truth that we have."

On Soul Ties

My priest is exploring the idea of soul ties, particularly those that create bondage. I am vaguely familiar with the charismatic view of this, which seems to simplify such connections down to some sort of spiritual strand that can be snipped, thereby spiritually freeing both individuals. This viewpoint focuses especially on ties between sexual partners which makes sense, given that "the two shall become one body."

I'd guess in most cases our spiritual connection with others is not quite so clear cut. I think about Lewis' description of holy things in Till We Have Faces, which says that they are not thin and clear like water, but thick and dark like blood.

Our God is a God of relationship. In His trinitarian form He exists as a relationship between three. As spiritual beings made in that image, we are eternal creatures which must also exist in relationship.

Some soul connections may indeed be clear and thin like water, needing only a quick spiritual snipping to enable freedom. Other connections are thick and rich, multi-stranded, multi-dimensional. More web than thread, more blood than water.

And eternal.

The role of priest with his parishioners is one of these complex connections. Your priest baptizes you, confirms you, marries you, and absolves you of sin. He opens the gates for God's revelation to flow in through His holy word. If you are lucky, he annoints you as you are dying, and gives you food for the journey. He does all these things while acting in persona Christi; he -is- Christ for you in this time and place.

Most soul-connecting of all, the priest becomes Christ to present His body and blood in consummation of His covenant with you.

If he is also your friend, bonds of shared experience, struggle, intellectual exploration, laughter, tears, and all the rest are added.

I once had a vision of God binding my arms together in front of me by winding a thin gold cord around and around from elbows to wrists. The strands that weave us together with our priests are like that; golden and abundant, shining and decorative, connecting but not enslaving.

Do soul ties exist? I would argue that they do indeed, in many shapes and sizes. We are relational, and relationships are connections. We are both physical and spiritual, both of time and outside of time. Our spiritual connections will endure beyond this sojourn within time. The challenge in most cases is not to sever them, but to ensure that these ties are properly ordered, balanced, and healthy.

PS: As if to confirm my thoughts, the following quote just came through my email:

"Behind every saint stands another saint. -- Friedrich von Hügel"

C.S. Lewis on the Particularity of the Desired

"You have stood before some landscape, which seems to embody what you have been looking for all your life; and then turned to the friend at your side who appears to be seeing what you saw—but at the first words a gulf yawns between you, and you realise that this landscape means something totally different to him, that he is pursuing an alien vision and cares nothing for the ineffable suggestion by which you are transported . . . All the things that have deeply possessed your soul have been but hints of it—tantalising glimpses, promises never quite fulfilled, echoes that died away just as they caught your ear. But if it should really become manifest—if there ever came an echo that did not die away but swelled into the sound itself—you would know it. Beyond all possibility of doubt you would say 'Here at last is the thing I was made for.' We cannot tell each other about it. It is the secret signature of each soul, the incommunicable and unappeasable want . . . which we shall still desire on our deathbeds . . . Your place in heaven will seem to be made for you and you alone, because you were made for it—made for it stitch by stitch as a glove is made for a hand. "

Longing for Narnia

Great article on why we respond to the Narnia stories. Click here to read the blog entry.

Psalm 42

1 As the deer pants for streams of water,
so my soul pants for you, O God.
2 My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.
When can I go and meet with God?

St. Therese of Lisieux on the Promised Country

From The Story of a Soul

"Let me suppose that I had been born in a land of thick fogs, and had never seen the beauties of nature, or a single ray of sunshine, although I had heard of these wonders from my early youth, and knew that the country wherein I dwelt was not my real home—there was another land, unto which I should always look forward. ... From the time of my childhood I felt that one day I should be set free from this land of darkness. I believed it, not only because I had been told so by others, but my heart’s most secret and deepest longings assured me that there was in store for me another and more beautiful country—an abiding dwelling place. I was like Christopher Columbus, whose genius anticipated the discovery of the New World. And suddenly the mists about me have penetrated my very soul and have enveloped me so completely that I cannot even picture to myself this promised country … all has faded away."

C.S. Lewis on the Desire for a Far Off Country

From "The Weight of Glory"

"In speaking of this desire for our own faroff country, which we find in ourselves even now, I feel a certain shyness. I am almost committing an indecency. I am trying to rip open the inconsolable secret in each one of you—the secret which hurts so much that you take your revenge on it by calling it names like Nostalgia and Romanticism and Adolescence; the secret also which pierces with such sweetness that when, in very intimate conversation, the mention of it becomes imminent, we grow awkward and affect to laugh at ourselves; the secret we cannot hide and cannot tell, though we desire to do both. We cannot tell it because it is a desire for something that has never actually appeared in our experience. We cannot hide it because our experience is constantly suggesting it, and we betray ourselves like lovers at the mention of a name. "

Sex, Sushi, and Salvation

Two quotes from a book review of Sex, Sushi, and Salvation:

"Since humans are made in the image of God, we have three basic passions–intimacy, community, and eternity. We burn for them, save for them, pay for them, and pray for them. But only the God who fulfills these desires within Himself can perfectly fulfill them in us. "

"Why do we want community–whether at a sushi bar or a ’50s malt shop? Because we burn for belonging. (Just look at a middle school cafeteria when everyone’s finding a seat.) God gave us the desire for community so He alone could satisfy it."

2 Corinthians 11

2 For I am jealous of you with the jealousy of God, since I betrothed you to one husband to present you as a chaste virgin to Christ.
3 But I am afraid that, as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your thoughts may be corrupted from a sincere (and pure) commitment to Christ.

Psalm 143

4 My spirit is faint within me; my heart is dismayed.
5 I remember the days of old; I ponder all your deeds; the works of your hands I recall.
6 I stretch out my hands to you; I thirst for you like a parched land.

Song of Songs 8

1 Oh, that you were my brother, nursed at my mother's breasts! If I met you out of doors, I would kiss you and none would taunt me.
2 I would lead you, bring you into the home of my mother. There you would teach me to give you spiced wine to drink and pomegranate juice.
3 His left hand is under my head and his right arm embraces me.
4 I adjure you, daughters of Jerusalem, by the gazelles and hinds of the field, Do not arouse, do not stir up love, before its own time.

Isaiah 26

9 My soul yearns for you in the night, yes, my spirit within me keeps vigil for you;

Sirach 24

14 Like a palm tree in En-gedi, like a rosebush in Jericho, Like a fair olive tree in the field, like a plane tree growing beside the water.
15 Like cinnamon, or fragrant balm, or precious myrrh, I give forth perfume; Like galbanum and onycha and sweet spices, like the odor of incense in the holy place.
16 I spread out my branches like a terebinth, my branches so bright and so graceful.
17 I bud forth delights like the vine, my blossoms become fruit fair and rich.
18 Come to me, all you that yearn for me, and be filled with my fruits;
19 You will remember me as sweeter than honey, better to have than the honeycomb.
20 He who eats of me will hunger still, he who drinks of me will thirst for more

Sirach 51

13 When I was young and innocent, I sought wisdom.
14 She came to me in her beauty, and until the end I will cultivate her.
15 As the blossoms yielded to ripening grapes, the heart's joy, My feet kept to the level path because from earliest youth I was familiar with her.
16 In the short time I paid heed, I met with great instruction.
17 Since in this way I have profited, I will give my teacher grateful praise.
18 I became resolutely devoted to her-- the good I persistently strove for.
19 I burned with desire for her, never turning back. I became preoccupied with her, never weary of extolling her. My hand opened her gate and I came to know her secrets.
20 For her I purified my hands; in cleanness I attained to her. At first acquaintance with her, I gained understanding such that I will never forsake her.
21 My whole being was stirred as I learned about her; therefore I have made her my prize possession.

Psalm 84

2 How lovely your dwelling, O LORD of hosts!

3 My soul yearns and pines for the courts of the LORD. My heart and flesh cry out for the living God.

St. Augustine on Restless Hearts

From The Confessions of St. Augustine

"You awaken us to delight in your praise; for you made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you."

Psalm 130

6 My soul waits for the Lord
more than watchmen wait for the morning,
more than watchmen wait for the morning.

C.S. Lewis: Made for Another World

"If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world." --C.S. Lewis

Aldous Huxley on Desire as Potential Obstacle

"Uncontrolled, the hunger and thirst after God may become an obstacle, cutting off the soul from what it desires. If a man would travel far along the mystic road, he must learn to desire God intensely but in stillness, passively and yet with all his heart and mind and strength."

--Aldous Huxley

Chesterton on Brothel Doors

“Every man who knocks on the door of a brothel is looking for God”. G.K. Chesterton

Old Poetry Surfaces

I'll be adding some poetry written in the 1980s to the blog over the next few weeks and applying approximate dates. They therefore won't show up as new entries. To check them out, go to the Poetry label, or look in the archive for previous years.

Chesterton on Valleys

One sees great things from the valley; only small things from the peak.-- G. K. Chesterton

Tolstoy Defines Boredom

Boredom: the desire for desires.--Leo Tolstoy

C.S. Lewis on Longing

“The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust in them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things—the beauty, the memory of our own past—are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself, they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshippers.” C.S. Lewis

Samuel Smiles on Anticipation

An intense anticipation itself transforms possibility into reality; our desires being often but precursors of the things which we are capable of performing.--Samuel Smiles

Nelson Mandela on the Journey

"There is no easy walk to freedom anywhere, and many of us will have to pass through the valley of the shadow of death again and again before we reach the mountaintop of our desires."--Nelson Mandela

Kahlil Gibran on Vision and Desire

I prefer to be a dreamer among the humblest, with visions to be realized, than lord among those without dreams and desires.--Kahlil Gibran

William Blake on Desire

Those who restrain their desires, do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained.--William Blake

St. Augustine Commentary on 1John

From the Tractates on the first letter of John by Saint Augustine:

“The entire life of a good Christian is in fact an exercise of holy desire. You do not yet see what you long for, but the very act of desiring prepares you, so that when he comes you may see and be utterly satisfied. Suppose you are going to fill some holder or container, and you know you will be given a large amount. Then you set about stretching your sack or wineskin or whatever it is. Why? Because you know the quantity you will have to put in it and your eyes tell you there is not enough room. By stretching it, therefore, you increase the capacity of the sack, and this is how God deals with us. Simply by making us wait he increases our desire, which in turn enlarges the capacity of our soul, making it able to receive what is to be given to us.”

May 30 Note: I just saw this quote cited as being from St. Augustine as well. Guess I'd better do more digging!

Augustine to Proba on Prayer and Desire

From a letter to Proba by Saint Augustine, bishop (Ep. 130, 8. 15. 17—9, 18: CSEL 44, 56–57. 59–60)
Office of Readings for Sunday in the Twentyninth Week of the Year.

So that we might obtain this life of happiness, he who is true life itself taught us to pray, not in many words as though speaking longer could gain us a hearing. After all, we pray to one who, as the Lord himself tells us, knows what we need before we ask for it.

Why he should ask us to pray, when he knows what we need before we ask him, may perplex us if we do not realize that our Lord and God does not want to know what we want (for he cannot fail to know it) but wants us rather to exercise our desire through our prayers, so that we may be able to receive what he is preparing to give us. His gift is very great indeed, but our capacity is too small and limited to receive it. That is why we are told: Enlarge your desires, do not bear the yoke with unbelievers.

The deeper our faith, the stronger our hope, the greater our desire, the larger will be our capacity to receive that gift, which is very great indeed. No eye has seen it; it has no color. No ear
has heard it; it has no sound. It has not entered man’s heart; man’s heart must enter into it.
In this faith, hope and love we pray always with unwearied desire. However, at set times and seasons we also pray to God in words, so that by these signs we may instruct ourselves and
mark the progress we have made in our desire, and spur ourselves on to deepen it. The more fervent the desire, the more worthy will be its fruit. When the Apostle tells us: Pray without
ceasing, he means this: Desire unceasingly that life of happiness which is nothing if not eternal, and ask it of him who alone is able to give it.

CS Lewis on Desire

From "The Weight of Glory"

...Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.

Lack of Holy Desire

I want deliberately to encourage this mighty longing after God. The lack of it has brought us to our present low estate. The stiff and wooden quality about our religious lives is a result of our lack of holy desire.

-- A. W. Tozer

St. Anselm Proslogion, Chapter 1

Encouraging the Mind to Contemplate God

Come on now little man, get away from your worldly occupations for a while, escape from your tumultuous thoughts. Lay aside your burdensome cares and put off your laborious exertions. Give yourself over to God for a little while, and rest for a while in Him. Enter into the cell of your mind, shut out everything except God and whatever helps you to seek Him once the door is shut. Speak now, my heart, and say to God, "I seek your face; your face, Lord, I seek."

Come on then, my Lord God, teach my heart where and how to seek you, where and how to find you. Lord, if you are not here, where shall I find you? If, however, you are everywhere, why do I not see you here? But certainly you dwell in inaccessible light. And where is that inaccessible light? Or how do I reach it? Or who will lead me to it and into it, so that I can see you in it? And then by what signs, under what face shall I seek you? I have never seen you, my Lord God, or known your face. What shall I do, Highest Lord, what shall this exile do, banished far from you as he is? What should your servant do, desperate as he is for your love yet cast away from your face? He longs to see you, and yet your face is too far away from him. He wants to come to you, and yet your dwelling place is unreachable. He yearns to discover you, and he does not know where you are. He craves to seek you, and does not know how to recognize you. Lord, you are my Lord and my God, and I have never seen you. You have made me and nurtured me, given me every good thing I have ever received, and I still do not know you. I was created for the purpose of seeing you, and I still have not done the thing I was made to do.

Oh, how miserable man's lot is when he has lost what he was made for! Oh how hard and dire was that downfall! Alas, what did he lose and what did he find? What was taken away and what remains? He has lost beatitude for which he was made, and he has found misery for which he was not made. That without which he cannot be happy has been taken away, and that remains which in itself can only make him miserable. Back then man ate the bread of angels for which he now hungers, and now he eats the bread of griefs which he did not even know back then. Alas for the common grief of man, the universal lamentation of Adam's sons! He belched in his satiety, while we sigh in our want. He was rich, we are beggars. He happily possessed and miserably abandoned, we unhappily lack and miserably desire, yet alas, we remain empty. Why, since it would have been easy for him, did he not keep what we so disastrously lack? Why did he deprive us of light, and cover us with darkness instead? Why did he take life away from us and inflict death instead? From what have we poor wretches been expelled, and toward what are we being driven? From what have we been cast down, in what buried? From our fatherland into exile, from the vision of God into blindness. From the happiness of immortality into the bitterness and horror of death. What a miserable transformation! From so much good into so much evil! A heavy injury, a heavy, heavy grief.

I have come to you as a poor man to a rich one, as a poor rich to a merciful giver. May I not return empty and rejected! And if "I sigh before I eat" (Job 3:4), once I have sighed give me something to eat. Lord, turned in (incurvatus) as I am I can only look down, so raise me up so that I can look up. "My iniquities heaped on my head" cover me over and weigh me down "like a heavy load" (Ps. 37:5). Dig me out and set me free before "the pit" created by them "shuts its jaws over me" (Ps. 67:16).Let me see your light, even if I see it from afar or from the depths. Teach me to seek you, and reveal yourself to this seeker. For I cannot seek you unless you teach me how, nor can I find you unless you show yourself to me. Let me seek you in desiring you, and desire you in seeking you. Let me find you in loving you and love you in finding you.

I acknowledge, Lord, and I give thanks that you have created in me this your image, so that I can remember you, think about you and love you. But it is so worn away by sins, so smudged over by the smoke of sins, that it cannot do what it was created to do unless you renew and reform it. I do not even try, Lord, to rise up to your heights, because my intellect does not measure up to that task; but I do want to understand in some small measure your truth, which my heart believes in and loved. Nor do I seek to understand so that I can believe, but rather I believe so that I can understand. For I believe this too, that "unless I believe I shall not understand" (Isa. 7:9).

Poetry: Scent of a Shepherd

Scent of a Shepherd

From the nightmare I wake
in pain and motion.

The world passes by upside down
an undulating sea of blue sky.

My contorted body screams
unused to the position
and broken bones.

My hair swings low
swaying with every step
blocking the sight of his sandaled feet.

His stride is long and even
shoulders miraculously broad;
my weight unequal to the cross.

My arms hang loose as I wonder;
should I hang on?

Does it hurt?

Do his stretching arms
remind him of the wood?

Does he thirst?

Wrapped as a collar round his muscled neck
borne like a yoke neither easy nor light.

Bitter streams of tears flow over my brow.
I should be in the dust before him
wiping his feet with my grief-soaked hair.

Instead, he carries me.

From the precipice he rescues me.
As I lunge for the edge
he draws me back.

To stop my fighting
he breaks my legs.

Despite my cries he lifts me
drapes me
carries me.

.

.

.

I breathe the scent of him
of sheep and wood
of blood and wine
of bread and man
of sun and moon and stars
of eternity
of home.

His cadence soothes.
The sweat of his exertion sweet
as opium; intoxicating.

My sobs relent.

I turn my ear to his chest
full of his scent
and listen to the drumbeat of dawn’s creation
the thrumming of the universe;
God’s heart beating against my cheek.

And I rest.

May 2008

The Problem of Cake

The problem with cake
is
that you can either have it
or eat it
but not both.

You can dream about it
but not touch it
smell it
but not taste it
see a sign reading “eat me”
but not dare

for Alice was left
with a handful of crumbs
in a shrinking world.

If you do take a bite
plates shift
eternity rumbles
Eve shrieks
and the cake is no more.

The problem with cake
is
that you can either have it
or eat it
but not both.

Kithara's Lament

I wait with my sister
my twin
for him to come.

He walks through the door
and moves toward us.

I wonder;
will it be me?

He picks her up
pulls her into his lap
caressing her curves
cradling her neck
and begins to play.

His hands move across her strings
pressing, plucking, strumming
as music fills the air.

My strings respond to each chord
vibrating, resonating
humming subtly
hollowness yearning to be filled
to be played
to sing along
to feel the wonder of the music-maker’s touch.

Instead, I hum
and wait in hope
for the someday that will come
when he who plays
will fill me with song.

And I will sing.

--Chantelle Franc

Lenten Reflections

In the past few years as my faith has strengthened, God has made Lent increasingly jarring. This year it started early; Advent was a precursor of penitential days to come. At the women’s retreat in December, God sent me an intense realization of my distance from Him, and a longing so strong it was like mourning. In Weight of Glory, CS Lewis describes this experience: “The sense that in this universe we are treated as strangers, the longing to be acknowledged, to meet with some response, to bridge some chasm that yawns between us and reality, is part of our inconsolable secret.”

One tool of God’s furious love (as Fr. Lucas called it) was to have me give my testimony during Lent. Remembering all the damage I have done throughout the years and then admitting it out loud to a room full of people woke me to how grateful I should be for God’s rescue, and how very far I still need to go. The contrast between my works of devastation and his works of restoration and healing was laid bare.

During this time God also blessed me with glimpses of his divine love and the beauty and mystery and power of his creation. He awakened the stirrings of spring in my heart. Lewis says “We want something else which can hardly be put into words—to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it.”

He gave me visions of his love, and then showed me how very little I deserve such a gift. I have had to face my selfishness, my disobedience, and my lack of charity and prudence.

Bishop Fulton Sheen said that God looks at us the way a mother looks upon the dirty face of her child, and sees the divine image shining from it. What a lovely, lovely contemplation. And while I believe that I have been made in the image and likeness of God as Fr. Robert reminds us, it seems my face will never be clean enough to gaze upon the glory of Christ.

Peter Kreeft says that we are like the crippled man by the pool of Siloam. We want to get into the water to be healed, but we can’t get into the water because we are not healed. We need to be holy, we can’t be holy. We need to be just, we can’t be just. We need to be like Christ, we can’t be like Christ.

As sojourners in this time and place, we are caught between the promise of his love, mercy, and forgiveness, and the reality of our unworthiness. We can’t see how the two can ever be reconciled. (Or at least I can’t. I pray that you can.)

And now Holy Week is here. The week in which God himself will wash my feet (my feet!), will sweat blood alone in the garden while I sleep, will be scourged while I huddle near the warmth of a fire, will be nailed to a cross while I hide from the realization of how it feels to betray, and finally, will die in agony while I whine about my puny crosses. I enter Holy Week feeling a worm and not a woman, unworthy of his slightest thought let alone the bountiful blessing and trust he has poured out.

The burden of my ingratitude is heavy.

But even as I write during these dark final days when we move from “Hosanna!” to “Crucify him!”, a glimmer of light shines. For on Sunday, despite having turned away from him over and over again, despite leaving him to suffer and die alone, on Sunday he renews our baptismal covenant with him. On Sunday our wedding vows are renewed and we become once again his bride, and he our spouse. And despite our many failings, our repeated betrayals, he comes to us in the eternal wedding feast; we receive him, and are received.

The Lenten journey is not just Christ’s, it is ours as well. And eventually our Easter will come.

The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!