Longing for God

Sr. Dorcee, beloved2 Comments

For the past few Advents, I have pulled the same book off the shelf to read: The Coming of God by Maria Boulding.  It is, by far, the meatiest book I have ever read for Advent.  She goes right to the heart of the reason for this season: longing for God–and that longing being indisputable evidence of the prior longing of God for us.

Here are the opening paragraphs of the book:

If you want God, and long for union with him,  yet sometimes wonder what that means or whether it can mean anything at all, you are already walking with the God who comes.  If you are at times so weary and involved with the struggle of living that yo have no strength even to want him, yet are still dissatisfied that you don’t, you are already keeping Advent in your life.  If you have ever had an obscure intuition that the truth of things is somehow better, greater, more wonderful than you deserve or desire, that the touch of God in your life stills you by its gentleness, that there is a mercy beyond anything you could ever suspect, you are already drawn into the central mystery of salvation.

Your hope is not a mocking dream: God creates in human hearts a huge desire and a sense of need, because he wants to fill them with the gift of himself.  It is because his self-sharing love is there first, forestalling any response or prayer from our side, that such hope can be in us.  WE cannot hope until we know, however obscurely, that there is something to hope for; if we have had no glimpse of a vision, we cannot conduct our lives with vision.  And yet we do: there is hope in us, and longing, because grace was there first.  God’s longing for us is the spring of ours for him.

So take a moment, look for that desire in your heart however buried it might seem, and simply say, “Come.”

Friday: from the archives

Sr. Dorcee, beloved1 Comment

Good Samaritan

This picture can be found on the cover of Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis’ commentary on St. Matthew’s Gospel.  (See Books tab above.)  This is how the back of the book describes this picture:

The book’s cover portrays Christ as the Good Samaritan in an illumination taken from the mid sixth-century Syrian Codex Rossanensis. The fire of God’s mercy, poured out without reserve by the Father into the Heart of his incarnate Word, impels the Son’s eager gaze earthwards.  Christ Jesus, Son of God and Son of Mary, the living ‘image of the invisible God’ in whom ‘the whole fullness of divinity dwells bodily’ (Colossians 1:15, 2:9), bends down his sun-like nimbus—the very splendor of his glory, inscribed with the cross of his suffering—in a full ninety-degree angle, to show the perfection of His descent among us.  The eternal Lord of the ages thus moves into position to nurse with divine tenderness the green body of decaying humanity, prostrate with festering wounds: ‘Through the tender mercy of our God, the Dawn from on high has visited us, to give knowledge of salvation to those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death’ (Luke 2:78f).  For his part, the dazzling angel has found a new mode of praise: to stand by his Master, marveling and ministering as he holds the gold bowl of grace and compassion, awestruck at the depth of the Word’s condescension.  What even angelic hands cannot touch unveiled, that Christ lavishes with open gesture upon the flesh and soul of his beloved brother, sin-wounded man.

Sometimes I just sit and meditate on how I am that green man lying in the road and try to imagine Christ standing over me pouring out His mercy–that even the angels cannot touch–upon me.  Peguy says: “It was because a man lay on the road that  a Samaritan picked him up.  It is because we lay on the road that Christ picks us up . . .

Only a few more days

Sr. Dorcee, beloved3 Comments

Only a few more days until Advent, that space of time before Christmas that seems to have disappeared in so many circles.  Our custom has always been to protect this time vigorously, to do our best to keep the celebration of Christmas from intruding so soon, to let Advent be Advent, a preparation time for the great Feast of Christmas–and then we celebrate for 40 (yes, 40!) days after Christmas.  So, starting on Sunday, on this blog you will find posts about Advent for the next few weeks.  I pray that they be a source of inspiration to you, that they be a space in the midst of the secular “Christmas” bustle,  a reminder that we are still in a time or preparation and waiting.

 

You have taken me captive with longing for You, O Christ,
And have transformed me with Your divine love.
Burn up my sins with the fire of Your Spirit
And count me worthy to take my fill of delight in You
That dancing with joy, I may magnify Your two comings.

~St. John of Damascus

Longing for Longing

Sr. Dorcee, beloved1 Comment

May our hearts long “for the place where all the beauty came from” not only in Advent but every day.

barnstormingblog's avatarBarnstorming

“It was when I was happiest that I longed most…
The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing…
to find the place where all the beauty came from.”
~C.S. Lewis

Like children who long for Christmas,
anticipating for weeks
what that moment will be like
when they see gifts piled high under the tree–

we revel in our longing.

It is the sweetness
of “already but not yet”,
knowing with eager expectancy
there is more to come,
just a bit out of reach
but still intensely seen and felt,
something more wonderful,
a place more beautiful than we can ever imagine…

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A good story

Sr. Dorcee, beloved3 Comments

Yesterday, I had one of those days that did not go according to “my” plans.  It did make for a good story later, but at the moment I found myself quite frustrated and irritated that I had to drop everything for someone else and that I didn’t get to eat lunch until mid-afternoon.  I had to do something on the computer that I really didn’t know how to do.  I had someone on the phone walking me through it, but the phone cord was too short to reach to the computer so I had to keep dropping the receiver, go work on the computer, and then back to pick up the phone. (I hope you’re laughing at this point–but let me assure you, I wasn’t.) I did have the brilliant idea at one point to switch a cord and handset from another phone–but when I went to hang it up so that I could call the person back later, the handset did not fit the cradle!  Then the online account that was needed to pay for the services I was trying to secure ran out of money.  That would have been easy if the account had been in my name, but it wasn’t.  Something else to figure out.  And so on and so on. (And there was a “so on and so on”, let me tell you.) Like I said, it made for a good story later–but not at the time.  It was humbling to see my weakness and selfishness cry out so strongly at such a simple interruption.

I pray that you respond more quickly to the grace of God than I did yesterday.  Let us pray for each other–that at least we will have the humility to cry out to God in our weakness . . . and hopefully have a  good story to tell when it is all over.  I love this prayer from Amy Carmichael:

A day or two ago one who was with me prayed like this, “Lord, help me to welcome interruptions, especially when the interruption seems less important than the work I am trying to do.”  That prayer has often been mine.  I expect many of you have felt the need of the loving grace of the Lord to help you to welcome interruptions, especially when they do not seem to matter nearly so much as what we are doing at the moment.  Thinking of this, I found myself this early morning in Lk. 9.11.  The people followed our Lord Jesus (He had wanted to be alone with His disciples just then), and He welcomed them.

“The Holiday that could become All of our Days”

Sr. Dorcee, beloved1 Comment

I am going to be out of town for Thanksgiving, but wanted to share this beautiful reflection for these days from Ann Voskamp:

The woman I meet up on the concourse, she tells me she was done.

Done with the man and the ring and the vows, done with the kids, done with her life.

Her eyes are so large and fragile, hands trembling, the way your world can quake and break and the aftershocks rattle you and the stunned retelling. I touch her shoulder.

And she crumbles in and heaves, and heaves that counting blessings made her see blessings and she’s staying and staying alive and barren places can break with bloom.

I memorize her face and glory.

We are the broken and the bruised and the messed up and the unmasked, women meeting at a conference, women of faith, and turning quiet to pull up sleeves and show scars.

A woman murmurs at my ear over the din that her brother in law ran over his 13 month old daughter, and we don’t have to say anything, and hands find each other and lace and this world is right busted and tied up with the strings of His broken and offered heart.

And a gravelly voice speaks of cancer and a grave and a child whose name she wears around her neck, and we finger that name together and fiercely believe in a Father who knows and holds and cups like relief, like a lung, when we can’t breathe.

And the story of a stroke and a mother and depression that pinned to a bed and the dark that suffocated for decades and the pen that wrote His gifts, that opened the veil to His light.

And I tuck a lock of hair behind the ear, and listen to unlockings and how women are finding keys.

And then she stepped close, a woman who couldn’t lift her head, who hid her eyes, and she says it timid near my shoulder.

“I had six children when I sinned.” And I turn, wrap an arm around her shoulder, draw her in.

“I had an affair…” Her words snag and tear and I hold on to her as she starts to give way. “I got pregnant. And I couldn’t handle what I had done.”

I try to swallow, all my sins stuck and lodged and burning there in my throat. Oh, sister. The sobs wrack and we are two women caught in the act of living and sinning.

“And the day I was going for the abortion, a friend gave me this.” She nods her head towards that book with the nest on the cover.

“She gave it to me — and said what I couldn’t handle was actually a gift.” And I can hardly take this, have to look away, take my shoes off, tear my coat, beat my chest.

“And I read and I agreed with God and he is.”

And there on the screen of her phone –  she offers this picture of a smiling baby boy.

And I reach out and hold his smile and it is holy and it is epiphany and it is hard –

What you think you can’t handle — might actually be God handing you a gift.

You can read the rest here.

May you have a blessed Thanksgiving, full of true gratefulness for all the gifts in your life.