Thursday, January 26, 2012

How does a seed give thanks?

To give thanks is to recognize what has come to you.... How does the seed give thanks? It flowers. You take what you have, who you are, and you respond to the gift of that beingness with a course of action that aligns with it. You do what is in your nature.


Source: Patrice Vecchione, Writing and the Spiritual Life


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Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Purity

"I did a study recently of how Jesus understood the ideas of purity or cleanliness. He never applies it to the body or the physical world, but only to motivations (Matthew 23:26) and to the heart (Matthew 5:8). In fact, he declares “all foods clean” (Matthew 7:19) in strong disagreement with his own Jewish tradition. Purity seems to be singleness of heart for Jesus, when I am not split, when I am “all here”. Impurity is mixed motivation, denial of parts of the picture, and self delusion. How different from most religion which has been preoccupied with purity codes, based in physical touching, eating wrong foods, seeing bad things, sexuality, and avoiding of “UnChristian” people and places. Again, Christian tradition has not followed its own teacher, and he was indeed a master teacher here." - Richard Rohr - Unpacking Paradoxes - Purity