Armando

Sr. Dorcee, beloved1 Comment

This is a story of hope for each one of us.

Armando is an amazing eight-year-old boy . . . .

Armando cannot walk or talk and is very small for his age.  He came to us from an orphanage where he had been abandoned.  He no longer wanted to eat because he no longer wanted to live cast off from his mother.  He was desperately thin and was dying of lack of food.  After a while in our community where he found people who held him, loved him, and wanted him to live, he gradually began to eat again and to develop in a remarkable way.  He still cannot walk or talk or eat by himself, his body is twisted and broken, and he has a severe mental disability, but when you pick him up, his eyes and his whole body quiver with joy and excitement and say: “I love you.”  He has a deep therapeutic influence on people. . . .

What [many people] do not always know is that they have a well deep inside of them.  If that well is tapped, springs of life and of tenderness flow forth.  It has to be revealed to each person that these waters are there and that they can rise up from each one of us and flow over people, giving them life and a new hope.

That is the power of Armando.  In some mysterious way, in all his brokenness, he reveals to us our own brokenness, our difficulties in loving, our barriers and hardness of heart.  If he is so broken and so hurt and yet is still such a source of life, then I too am allowed to look at my own brokenness, and to trust that I too can give life to others.  I do not have to pretend that I am better than others and that I have to win in all the competitions.  It’s O.K. to be myself, just as I am, in my uniqueness.  That, of course, is a very healing and liberating experience.  I am allowed to be myself, with all my psychological and physical wounds, with all my limitations but with all my gifts too.  And I can trust that I am loved just as I am, and that I too can love and grow.

(Jean Vanier)

Shatter Me

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barnstormingblog's avatarBarnstorming

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As through a long-abandoned half-standing house
only someone lost could find,

which, with its paneless windows and sagging crossbeams,
its hundred crevices in which a hundred creatures hoard and nest,

seems both ghost of the life that happened there
and living spirit of this wasted place,

wind seeks and sings every wound in the wood
that is open enough to receive it,

shatter me God into my thousand sounds.

~Christian Wiman “Small Prayer in a Hard Wind”

May I,
though sagging and graying,
leaning perilously,
be porous enough
to allow life’s gusts
through me
without being pushed over
in a heap.

So the wind
makes me sing
filling my every crack
and defect,
shattered into pieces,
a mosaic of praises.
~E Gibson

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Whatever attracts you

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We all have times when we struggle about what we’re supposed to be doing at any given moment.

A brother asked a hermit to tell him the proper thing to do with his life.  The hermit replied that only God knows what is good, but that the great Nesteros, a friend of Antony, made a strong point when he said, “God is equally pleased by all good works.  Scripture tells us that Abraham was hospitable and God was with him.  Elijah sought quiet and God was with him.  David had humility and God was with him.  Therefore, whatever attracts you in the service of God is good.  Do it, and let your heart be at peace.”

And God is with you.

The marvel of snowflakes

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We got 14 inches of this beauty last night.

Sr. Dorcee, beloved's avatarWonder and Beauty

(The wonderful photographic work of Andrew Osokin, a Moscow-based photographer. You can see more of his photos here.)

Cold

This is the season of snows,
when the sky, all in pieces, is falling,
and bells from invisible towers
are soundlessly tolling.

Over the carpeted earth,
footsteps are coming and going,
leaving no tracks on a land
where winter is snowing.

Where are they hanging, the bells?
Whose are the feel that come walking?
And voices gone speechless with cold–
to whom are they talking?

Sound is an alien here,
and vision the child of a stranger.
Nothing is feeding the heart,
nothing but hunger.

Feed then my eyes and my ears.
God, feed my hunger with hunger,
my longing with snow-falling snow,
my heart with your winter.

Mother Mary Frances

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John must have wondered . . .

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From the archives.

Sr. Dorcee, beloved's avatarWitnesses to Hope

I have a number of “lighted coals” in my life.  One of them is Amy Carmichael whom I have quoted quite often in this blog.  She never fails to “rekindle” me.   And one of my favorite things is to introduce my good friends to one another.  Here is another gem from her:

I have been reading Luke 1.  “With God nothing shall be impossible” [Luke 1.37].   Then I read Acts 12.  James was killed in prison; Peter was set free.  God, with whom nothing is impossible, did not answer the prayers of those who loved James in the same way as He answered prayers of those who loved Peter.  He could have done so, but He did not.  “And blessed is he who takes no offense at Me” [Luke 7.43].  The words seem to me to be written across Acts 12.  John must have wondered why the angel was not sent to James, or…

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Look at yourself through His eyes

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This is for all of you who struggle with a positive image of yourselves, finding it hard to believe that God could love you.

When you have an inferiority complex–and who of us hasn’t–you say things like, “I just don’t believe that what God made is good.  Look at me.  I’m a louse.”  Don’t dare to challenge God like this.  Everything he made is good, including yourself.  Don’t listen to that serpent who is giving you apples that look red on the outside and are full of inferiority complexes on the inside.  Don’t eat that apple, or else you are going to go down into a pit prepared by Satan for you for your whole life.

How can you have a wrong image of something or someone that God touched?  God touched you and he created you.  You passed through his mind and you were begotten.  Anyone of us that passes through God’s mind, anyone of us that God touched, cannot be this horrible person we think we are.  No!  Each one of us is beautiful–we’re beautiful because he touched us.

Sometimes this is very difficult for us to accept.  We look at ourselves and say, “He made us in his image, equal to himself in a manner of speaking, heir to his Son?  This just can’t be.  He hasn’t looked into my heart.  he doesn’t know what I’m made of!”  We say those silly things because our evaluation of ourselves is very poor.  We haven’t looked at ourselves with the merciful, tender, compassionate eyes of God.  So we walk in despair half the time.  As a result, the ability to realize that God is both in our midst and in us–a realization that is the fruit of faith–fades and disappears.

This is the main reason, it seems to me, why the Father sent his Son to us, why the Word was made flesh and dwelt amongst us as one of us.  The Father, having given us the fantastic gift of faith, wanted to help us accept this awesome gift.  He sent his Son Jesus Christ so that we, unbelieving, might believe.  We are like children; we need to touch.

Every human being is a mystery.  The mystery of man enters into the mystery of God, and bursting forth with great joy, comes faith and understanding.  When faith is there, all is clear, and a love relation with God enters into your heart.  When you have faith, it is such a simple thing to accept his love, even if you do not understand why he loves you.  (Catherine de Hueck Doherty)

Praying for you that you have faith in His love for you.