Category: Uncategorized

 

Don’t surrender your loneliness
So quickly.
Let it cut more deep.

Let it ferment and season you
As few human
Or even divine ingredients can.

Something missing in my heart tonight
Has made my eyes so soft,
My voice
So tender,

My need of God
Absolutely
Clear.
~Hafez, Persian poet

When my heart clenches with sadness, when my thinking is muddled with stress and doubting, when I can’t focus on what is right before me because tears cloud my vision, I remember one thing remains clear in the mist and midst of the fog.

I have need for God and I am softened in my neediness.

A repost:

Today we celebrate the birth of Mary.  I have to say that this morning when I woke up, I felt like breaking into a little song to her, at least “Happy birthday to you . . .”–which sounds so trite–but I knew in my heart that that would be dear to her . . . because she is that kind of Mother.

I want to share the first verse of a poem by Rilke because I think it conveys the sense of joy in the heavens at the birth of this great gift of God to us.

Birth of Mary

O what must it have cost the angels
not suddenly to burst into song, as one bursts into tears,
since indeed they knew: on this night the mother is being
born to the boy, the One, who shall soon appear.

(Rainer Maria Rilke, translated from the German by…

Here are sweet-peas, on tip-toe for a flight:
With wings of gentle flush o’er delicate white,
And taper fingers catching at all things,
To bind them all about with tiny rings.
~John Keats

I grew up watching sweet peas climb a trellis in our family garden. Their delicate tendrils did wrap clinging fingers around anything they could reach and grasp. The blossoms were too ephemeral to bring indoors for a vase on the table — the petals would droop and then drop within a day or so. They were meant to be appreciated right where they grew, so I would visit them regularly, breathe deeply with my nose in their midst to capture and keep their lovely scent with me as I went on about my day, leaving them waving their vines in my wake.

Some things are better left undisturbed, to flourish right where they have taken hold. In…

More from Richard Wurmbrand:

In Florence, Italy, the Red Brigade leader Furbelone planned a bank robbery–what the Brigade (a Marxist-Leninist group) terms an “expropriation.”  Two revolutionaries disguised as policemen stood at the entrance to the building, while two others entered to force the teller to give up the money.  A car with a false license number waited in front of the bank to ensure the escape.  Disguised as a beggar, Furbelone sat on the steps of the Santa Maria Church opposite the bank where he was to give the signals controlling the operation.

Just as he was about to signal the start of the robbery, a little girl who was on her way to school with her mother ascended the steps for a short prayer.  Seeing the beggar, she took her lunch out of her bag, broke off a part for herself, and gave him the remainder.

Irritated by this…

Continuing from Richard Wurmbrand.  (This kind of beauty makes me weep.)

In Romania’s Jilava prison, several prisoners were placed in a cell naked without beds, without blankets and without a barrel to serve as a lavatory.  They were never allowed to leave their cell to fulfill their bodily needs.  Imagine passing the night, completely naked, in such a stinking cell.

One of the prisoners was sick with pulmonary tuberculosis.  Late one night, he could not bear to stand on his feet any longer.  He fell and would have frozen to death on the cold concrete had not the Christian Mircea Vulcanescu stretched himself out on the concrete so the sick man could seat himself on his body and have the protection of his body’s warmth.

Vulcanescu remained stretched out naked on the concrete while the sick man slept for a few hours.  He too fell asleep.  When they awoke, Vulcanescu…