“Do Thou For Me”

Sr. Dorcee, beloved2 Comments

Amy Carmichael’s note on this poem of hers: “Ps 109.21.  A prayer that may be unfathomable comfort to the ill and tired: ‘Do Thou for them, for him, for her, O God the Lord.’  When one cannot pray minutely or powerfully, this prayer suffices.  We need not tell Love what to do; Love knows.”  God knows better than we what is best for those we love.  Here Amy is simply encouraging us to trust Him who knows how to love best.

Do Thou For Me

Do Thou for me, O God the Lord,
Do Thou for me.
I need not toil to find the word
That carefully
Unfolds my prayer and offers it,
My God, to Thee.

It is enough that Thou wilt do,
And wilt not tire,
Wilt lead by cloud, all the night through
By light of fire,
Till Thou has perfected in me
Thy heart’s desire.

For my beloved I will not fear,
Love knows to do
For him, for her, from year to year,
As hitherto.
Whom my heart cherishes are dear
To Thy heart too.

O blessèd be the love that bears
The burden now,
The love that frames our very prayers,
Well knowing how
To coin our gold.  O God the Lord,
Do Thou, Do Thou.

Am I grumbling?

Sr. Dorcee, beloved3 Comments

I know I said I was “out of town”. . . but I just had to share this excerpt following up on my post from yesterday.  It’s from Never Give Up by John Janaro:

Am I grumbling?

I think it is important to distinguish between the grumble and the lament.  Both can express themselves as “God, why are you doing this to me?”  But they mean two different things.  The lament is a prayer; read the Psalms.  It is a cry of pain–the pain that a creature feels under the weight of the transforming pressure of the divine Creator and Lover, who carries out his mysterious plan in my life via an incomprehensible suffering.  The grumble, on the other hand, is a loss of trust in God motivated by my own misery.  It gets me forty more years in the desert–read the book of Exodus. (p.70)

I have both written about and spoken about lament.  It really is important to know the difference between a grumble and a lament.  If not, we run the risk of either not speaking to God of our troubles, of deciding to just bottle them up deep inside or of running on and on complaining to Him but not really expressing our trust in Him.  God wants to be with us in our suffering.

Suffering must be endured not because life is less important than we had hoped but because it is more important than we can imagine. It is the place where God is with us. (p. 52)

We are called to endure suffering not with stoic resignation but with abandonment to his loving presence.  We endure in the conviction that God offers us his love–the only fulfillment of the human heart–here and now, in the midst of our sufferings and the plodding of our daily lives.  We are called to put our hearts on the line, to allow ourselves to be wounded by the hope that even in this darkness it is possible to love and to be loved, because he is with us and he loves us now.  And we know that love–in the end–is always worth the risk. (p. 53)

The abyss is the hollow of the hands of God. (p. 53)

To one in trouble

Sr. Dorcee, beloved1 Comment

Life is busy; it’s still too hot for me; I’m not sleeping well; my internet connection is spotty; I’m “leaving town” for a week and a half and have a lot to do before and afterwards; and I have no inspiration. I don’t mean to complain, just to explain. This meditation from Amy Carmichael is for me–but you can read it as well.

I want to give you a word that helped me all yesterday and will help me today.  It is the ‘through’ of Psalm 84.6 [“Passing through the valley of Weeping they make it a place of springs”] and of Isaiah 43.2 [“When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overcome you”] taken with Song of Songs 8.5 [“Who is this coming up from the wilderness, leaning upon her beloved?”].

We are never staying in the valley or the rough waters; we are always only passing through them, just as the bride in the Song of Songs is seen coming up from the wilderness leaning upon her Beloved.

So whatever the valley is, or however rough the waters are, we won’t fear.  Leaning upon our Beloved we shall come up from the wilderness and, as Psalm 84.6 says, even use the valley as a well, make it a well.  We shall find the living waters there and drink of them. (Candles in the Dark, p. 78)

As I said, I’m “out of town” for the next while. Dip into some old posts. There is still some good stuff there! (Just click on “Amy Carmichael” under “Categories”–that will keep you going for awhile!)

God will make the space

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So . . . back to Fr. Matthew’s book, Impact of God.   (Sorry about the delay . . . lots going on the past few days.)  So how do we make the space for God to come fully into us.  We all know how we are attached to so many things, and we also know all too well how often our efforts to detach ourselves fail miserably.  Fr. Matthew shares with us the good news that John of the Cross makes so clear in his writings: God will make the space in us if we will let Him.  (You all know little words can be big words . . .)  If we will just keep saying yes to what He is doing–and many times that may manifest itself as dry, distracted prayer, untoward events in our lives, etc.–things we naturally shrink from, but ways God uses to clear out those detachments in our lives.  Our part is “simply” to keep saying yes, and God who is continually pursuing us will indeed bring us into full union with Him.

If God is a self-bestowing God, then his gift is liable to engage us.  If he is active, then, in prayer, provided we stay around, he is liable to act.

Night: if God is beyond us, his approach is also liable to leave us feeling out of our depth.  When the divine engages us more deeply, our minds and feelings will have less to take hold of, accustomed as they are to controlling the agenda, to meeting God on their terms and in portions they can handle.  A deeper gifts will feel like no gift at all.  His ‘loving inflow’ is ‘hidden’; it is night.

If anything is felt it will probably be our own selfishness and narrowness (wood crackling and twisting as the fire makes progress).  When God approaches as who he is, I am liable to feel myself for what I am.  As a physical sign of growth is growing pains, so a sign of God gift is the pain of being widened.  This is the blessedness of night, that God, who wants to give, undertakes to make space in us for his gift. (Fr. Iain Matthew, emphasis added)

Wherever He finds space

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Continuing on from yesterday: Fr. Matthew emphasizes over and over how much initiative God takes in His relationship with us.  God pours out His love like the sunlight, “wherever he finds space, like a ray of sunlight, and joyfully disclos[ing] himself to people on the footpaths and the highways.”  Our response is to be not so much “forging a way, but on our getting out of the way.  Progress will be measured, less by ground covered, more by the amount of room God is given to manoeuvre.”  That is where He will give Himself–where He finds space. So how do we make that space for Him?

To be continued.

God is all for you alone

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Earlier this week, a good friend of mine read out loud to me excerpts from one of my favorite books (and now hers), Impact of God, by Fr. Iain Matthew.  I don’t think I’ve ever shared anything from that book with all of you.  The book’s purpose is to introduce the reader to St. John of the Cross, but even more importantly, I think, to gain a deeper understanding of God’s desire for relationship with us, especially when prayer is dark and dry.  Here’s a little taste from one of the first chapters of the book:

[God] does not give in a general way only, like rays of sunlight shining above a mountain, but leaving me-in-particular shadowed in the valley.  John’s God enters to confront the other person as if there were no other.  It seems to her that God has no other concern, ‘but that he is all for her alone.’  God comes in strength, capable of reconciling opposites, ‘giving life for death’s distress.’  His embrace is as wide as Good Friday to Sunday, and nothing in the person is too much for him.  He finds in the soul, not a burden, or a disappointment, but a cause for ‘glad celebration.’  John dares to place on the lips of his God the words:

‘I am yours, and for you, and I am pleased to be as I am that I may be yours and give myself to you.’

Ponder that.

More to come . . .

Laying bricks

Sr. Dorcee, beloved3 Comments

We run two small homes for older adults who are no longer capable of living alone and who have limited support and no resources.  We are only able to house 6-7 residents at one time.  There are many more elderly who could use our help.  We also do foster care for children in need.  We have cared for 26 children since we began this endeavor in 1992.  But there are millions of children around the world who are in great need.

“People say, ‘What is the sense of our small effort?’  They cannot see that we must lay one brick at a time, take one step at a time.'” (Servant of God Dorothy Day)

“The whole work is only a drop in the ocean.  But if we don’t put the drop in, the ocean would be one drop less.” (Bl Teresa of Calcutta)

So we just lay our bricks, take our steps, and put in our drops one at a time day by day . . .

Gold is gold

Sr. Dorcee, belovedLeave a comment

I have a good friend who said to me years ago when I was going through a rough time: “Gold is gold before it goes into the fire.”  That gave me a lot of hope, because I sure didn’t feel like gold at the moment!

This selection from Amy Carmichael’s Thou Givest . . . They Gather makes a similar point:

Num 31.23 Everything that can stand the fire, you shall pass through the fire, and it shall be clean.

Is it not a tremendous comfort that a test of any sort proves that our God knows the soul can stand the test?  Things that could not stand the fire were to be put into water–a much less fierce test of the stuff of which the thing was made.  Our God is as tender with souls as with things.  He will not put us through the fire unless He knows that we can “stand the fire.”