Sunday, June 26, 2011

speak.

Are humans inherently selfish or relational? By looking at the way people live and at the way we create and compose, it seems your answer to this question defines your understanding of what absolutely everything is. Regardless of all the other questions we might have, if we could answer this one our cultures and lives would be utterly different.

I want to learn to love well in every relationship- even every acquaintance. I'm convinced that love is valuable; that people are genuinely valuable on so many levels at once. There's something in friendship beyond any reason that makes sense, yet it's the opposite of reasonless. It's hard to look into all that's behind that, but if it were a gift that's real and possible... It would be worth understanding, embracing.

Friday, June 17, 2011

Chesterton.

How much larger your life would be if your self could become smaller in it;

Sunday, June 12, 2011

ever, only, all for thee.

...and in other news, today I read a well-written thought from Oliver O'Donovan.
"We discover we are free when we are commanded by that authority which commands us according to the law of our being, disclosing the secrets of the heart. There is no freedom except when what we are, and do, corresponds to what has been given to us to be and to do. ‘Given to us’, because the law of our being does not assert itself spontaneously merely by virtue of our existing. We must receive ourselves from outside ourselves, addressed by a summons which evokes that correspondence of existence to being."

Friday, June 10, 2011

closer.

I was gently reminded that knowledge is worthless if it's not part of love. That understanding God is only possible through relationship with Him; that He has given us so many ways to actually know Him, and that these are perfect. In seeking wisdom or knowledge, we should also seek out which parts of those things God is leading us to value and follow- in light of the freedom He longs to bring, and the glory He is revealing to us, in us. Rather than knowing Him systematically (as our basis, I mean), we should seek His face- the Living God who's so thoroughly in touch with all the parts of our world- like in a conversation. Like many, many years of conversations, often and real.

Friday, June 3, 2011

day or night.

That moment when I closed my eyes
and was hidden,
when I stopped speaking
despite poetry,
despite friendship
and welcomed every breath as a stranger.

The breath when I yearned
and vowed to have no rest,
no rest
until the fire returned
(with little hope)
but hoped,

perhaps, not to be neglected
or like one desolate.

If the sky would wake and stir
and see the raging water,
there might be footsteps then.
Stirring of shoots
and the dry earth melting
with a shout
just beyond reach.