Things you forget about yourself.
No daylight to separate us.
Only kinship. Inching ourselves closer to creating a community of kinship such that God might recognize it. Soon we imagine, with God, this circle of compassion. Then we imagine no one standing outside of that circle, moving ourselves closer to the margins so that the margins themselves will be erased. We stand there with those whose dignity has been denied. We locate ourselves with the poor and the powerless and the voiceless. At the edges, we join the easily despised and the readily left out. We stand with the demonized so that the demonizing will stop. We situate ourselves right next to the disposable so that the day will come when we stop throwing people away. The prophet Habakkuk writes, “The vision still has its time, presses on to fulfillment and it will not disappoint … and if it delays, wait for it.”
Kinship is what God presses us on to, always hopeful that its time has come.
” Tattoos on the Heart, by Gregory Boyle“It is not the critic who counts,
Not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles,
Or where the doer of deeds could actually have done them better.
The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena,
Whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood,
Who strives valiantly,
Who errs and comes short again and again -
Because there is no effort without error and shortcomings -
But who does actually strive to do the deed,
Who knows great enthusiasm, great devotion,
Who spends himself in a worthy cause,
Who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement
And who, at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly -
So that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls
Who know neither victory nor defeat.”
- Theodore Roosevelt
“I’ve learned that loving someone is one of the most difficult things to do. I’ve learned that life doesn’t need a future to live. I’ve learned that hope can lie in the beauty of the present, not just in the future. I’ve learned that life doesn’t always have time. I’ve learned that life doesn’t always need time.” - Jay Lee
I often see flowers from a passing car
That are gone before I can tell what they are.
I want to get out of the train and go back
To see what they were beside the track.
I name all the flowers I am sure they weren’t:
Not fireweed loving where woods have burnt -
Not bluebells gracing a tunnel mouth -
Not lupine living on sand and drouth.
Was something brushed across my mind
That no one on earth with ever find?
Heaven gives its glimpses only to those
Not in position to look too close.
Nap Line
People’s cell phone alarms say a lot about them. How you choose to be woken up from a nap is a very serious decision.
current weather forecast for St. Petersburg … :)
Strengthen the feeble hands, stead the knees that give way; say to those with fearful hearts, ‘Be strong, do not fear …’
One down, four to go! :D
” Isaiah 35