before I go (2)

Sr. Dorcee, beloved1 Comment

More from Peter Kreeft:

69. Therapy for Fear

When you feel afraid, look at the very first thing you see, right there in front of you: some small thing like stone or a finger or a bug.  Look at it, don’t just think about looking at it. Really look.  Take time.  Take a whole minute.
And listen.  You might hear something in it or behind it whispering some big secret to your big secret mind, some secret of which it is one of the billions of messengers, the secret of a beauty bigger than the universe, of which everything is a tiny part, including this little thing right in front of you.
Now this thing you are afraid of, this, too, is a little thing.  And so are you.
God loves little things and takes care of them.  Sparrows, hairs from your head.
He is bigger.  He is stronger.

I love this one!

#81. Last Resort

Sometime the only possible solution to a problem that has you ont he verge of self-inflicted baldness or holes in teh wall is the following prescription:

1. ten deep breaths
2. a hot bath
3. one large glass of good wine
4. and a good night’s sleep

After patience, philosophy, and prayer all seem to fail, try listening to your body.

before I go (1)

Sr. Dorcee, belovedLeave a comment

Peter Kreeft wrote a book called Before I Go, Letters to Our Children About What Really Matters.  Any of you who have read him are probably as impressed as I am with the scope of his topic matter as well as the excellence of his writing.  This book was written specifically for his own children.  I would love to share some of his shorter entries with you over the next couple of days.  I’ll start with #140 and #141:

140. Pages Stuck Together

These two pages of my little notebook stuck together, so I can’t write on them.  Everything happens for a reason.  Sometimes the reason is to remind us that we don’t know the reason.

141. How Communion Works

In it God says to you: Put the lips of your faith to my heart and drink my blood.  It alone will save your life.  I give my life for yours in this holy exchange, this holy communion.  I suck the sin, the poison, out of your heart, if you let me.  Open your heart to my lips and I will do it.  And open your lips to my heart and I will give you a blood transfusion.

Okay, just one more:

124. Surfing Wisdom

Life is made of waves.  (Everything is.)  It comes in crests and troughs.  It’s easy to ride the crests; the real test is the troughs.  Expect them.  Ride them out.  That’s part of our job description.  Imagine a fire fighter who was surprised, angry, and resentful every time the fire alarm bell rings.

To be continued . . .

Look straight up and praise

Sr. Dorcee, beloved1 Comment

I’m still delving deep into Amy Carmichael’s commentaries on the psalms.  I can’t help but share the precious tidbits I keep finding.  Here are her comments on that transition we find in the psalms from weeping to praise, that encouragement to look straight up and praise God with a song (when we least feel like it . . .):

“I have been noticing how in the Psalms every experience of distress turns to a straight look-up, and praise.  I had not noticed till recently that the Psalm of the weaned child (Ps 131) ends like that: ‘O Israel, hope in the Lord from this time forth and for evermore.’ And today I read Ps 69, and there again I found the look-up that ends in praise.  Kay translates v. 10, ‘I wept soul-tears’, and that is just what it is like at times, when all we have done to help another soul seems to end in failure.  Even so, ‘I will praise the name of God with a song, and will magnify Him with thanksgiving’ (v. 30).

 “Surely this emphasis on praise in the Psalms is because to turn from discouraging things and look up with a song in one’s heart is the only sure way of continuance.  We sink down into what David calls mire, slime, deep waters, if we do not quickly look up, and turning our back on the discouraging, set our faces again toward the sunrising.

“Perhaps that is what v. 32 of that Psalm means, ‘You who seek God, let your hearts revive.’

“I found all this very reviving.  It led straight to ‘They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength’ [Is 40.31], and ‘Let them that love Him be as the sun when he rises in his might’[Jgs 5.31].” (Edges, p.159)

“Birds deserve one whole psalm of thanksgiving”

Sr. Dorcee, belovedLeave a comment

Birds

That God made birds is surely in His favor.
I write them as His courtesies of love.
Hidden in leaves, they offer me sweet savor
of lightsome music; when they streak above

my garden wall they brush my scene with color.
They are embroideries upon the grass.
I write the gayest stitched-in blossoms duller
than birds which change their patterns as I pass.

I nurse a holy envy of St. Francis
who lured the birds to nestle at his breast.
Yet I am grateful for this one which dances
across my lawn, a reckless anapest.

Subjects for gratitude push up my living
praise to a sum that tempts the infinite;
but birds deserve one whole psalm of thanksgiving
and these words are my antiphon for it.

Jessica Powers (1956)

When we can’t understand

Sr. Dorcee, belovedLeave a comment

Often we find ourselves in situations where it is so difficult to understand what God is doing, why He is allowing some particular thing to happen, why it appears that Satan has the upper hand.  Her is a bit of sage wisdom from Amy Carmichael which I trust will provide encouragement for any of you in those types of situations:

Some find it hard to believe that Satan (a conquered foe) can interfere in the affairs of a child of God.  Yet we read of St. Paul earnestly endeavoring to do something and Satan hindering him [1 Thess 2.18].  The reason for Satan’s power was not prayerlessness.  ‘Night and day am I praying with passionate earnestness that I may see your faces’ [1 Thess 3.10 Way].  Satan could not touch his spirit, his heart’s affections, or any other vital thing in him, but he could so order events that the apostle could not do for these children of his love all that he longed to do.  He could only write letters.  He could not be with them

And in the familiar 2 Cor 12.7, we have a still stranger thing, a messenger from Satan allowed to do bodily hurt, and allowed to continue to hurt, we are not told for how long.

So it is clear that there are activities in the Unseen which are not explained to us.  Every now and then the curtain between is drawn aside for a moment, and we see.  But it is soon drawn back again.

Only this we know: ‘On the day I called, thou didst answer me, my strength of soul thou didst increase’ [v. 3].  If that be so what does anything matter? Oh, to use all disappointments, delays and trials of faith and patience as St. Paul used his.  What golden gain came to our glorious Lord because of these experiences.  And see how he closes this letter to the Thessalonians which is so full of human longing: ‘The very God of peace sanctify you wholly: and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.  Faithful is He that calls you, Who also shall do it’ [1 Thess 5.23,24].  Faithful is He: He will do it.” (AC, Edges, pp. 141-142)

I will be able

Sr. Dorcee, belovedLeave a comment

“Purgatory: perhaps the deepest but also the most blissful kind of suffering.  The terrible torture of having to settle now all the things we have dreaded a whole life long.  The doors we have frantically held shut are now torn open.  But all the while this knowledge: now for the first time I will be able to do it–that ultimate thing in me, that total thing.  Now I can feel my wings growing; now I am fully becoming myself.” (Hans Urs von Balthasar)

May all the souls of our beloved dead quickly come to the place of becoming fully themselves in God . . .

No obstacles for the Beloved

Sr. Dorcee, beloved1 Comment

The love of our Beloved for us:

One morning during the daily Bible reading on our mission compound in Palestine, our little Arab nurse read from Daily Light a quotation from the Song of Songs, “The voice of my Beloved! behold, he cometh leaping upon the mountains, skipping upon the hills” (Song of Songs 2.8).  When asked what the verse meant, she looked up with a happy smile of understanding and said, “It means there are no obstacles which our Savior’s love cannot overcome, and that to him, mountains of difficulty are as easy as an asphalt road!” (from the preface to Hinds feet on High Places, Hannah Hurnard)