A profound mystery

The leavening of yeast must have seemed to ancient men a profound mystery, and yet something on which they could always depend. Just so does the supernatural enter our natural life, working in the hiddenness, forcing the new life into every corner and making the dough expand.

If the dough were endowed with consciousness, it would not feel very comfortable while the yeast was working. Nor, as a rule, does our human nature feel very comfortable under the transforming action of God, steadily turning one kind of love into another kind of love--desire into charity, clutch into generosity, Eros into Agape.

Creation is change, and change is often painful and mysterious to us. Spiritual creation means a series of changes, which at last produce a Holiness, God's aim for us.

Source: Evelyn Underhill, The School of Charity

Read more and add your thoughts at inward/outward

Michael Leunig pt. 2

Had not heard of Michael Leunig before I posted yesterday, found out that he's an Australian artist/poet/cartoonist - and another poem of his showed up on my facebook page today - enjoy!

Love and fear / Michael Leunig

There are only two feelings, Love and fear:
There are only two languages, Love and fear:
There are only two activities, Love and fear:
There are only two motives, two procedures,
two frameworks, two results, Love and fear,
Love and fear.

If you're enjoying these you will LOVE his art - his cartoons are wonderful:

Michael Leunig

Step 1

FFFOUND!

First love

If you come in touch with that first love you will discover not only that you are loved unconditionally, but that the One who loves you unconditionally loves all of humanity unconditionally, with that same all-embracing love. And the fact that God loves you so intimately and personally does not mean that God loves anyone else less or differently. Uniquely, yes. But whether they are Nicaraguans or Russians, people from Afghanistan or Iran or South Africa, they all belong to the house of God.

And therefore, when you enter into intimate communion with the God of the first love, you will find yourself in intimate communion with all the people of God, because the heart of God is the heart that embraces the whole of humanity. That's why intimacy with God always means solidarity with the people of God. To put it more precisely: God pitched a tent among us and took on our flesh so that there is no human flesh that has not been accepted by God.

Source: The Road to Peace, Henri J. M. Nouwen

via

Truly, madly, deeply do

Red Energy

“Someday, after we have mastered the wind, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness the energies of love. And then, for the second time in the history of the human race, we will have discovered fire.”

Pierre Teilhard Chardin

via Divine Nobodies

To my daughter at 15

I am so relieved not to be at this place in parenting Alinea just yet, so I am saving this here until then. I have read Gordon's blog for years and his writing touches me deeply. I can't imagine having a father pour words like these into a daughters soul.

My favorite part is:

Now, my young woman. Now have come the days of your choosing. You are both discovering and deciding what kind of woman you will be. You are deciding what of your life will be hidden and what you will show. Choose carefully, for what shames you now may serve you one day. And what serves you now may one day make you ashamed. Many girls will lose themselves in this time. They may find themselves again someday, but many years will be lost.

Read the whole piece here: Real Live Preacher - To My daughter at 15

The Obamas' Tender Moments

I read a great article the other day about how the Obamas' marriage is a great example to us all. Keith and I just celebrated our 21st anniversary and I must admit - the Obamas' marriage is a true encouragement to me.

"For Americans, one of the most important aspects of an Obama presidency is being overlooked: the model of a healthy relationship....For example, Michelle and Barack do something we've never seen before in a presidential couple: they actually look directly at each other when they're speaking to each other. They also laugh at each other's humor, and they allow their sexual attraction for each other to be visible. Contrast that with other presidential marriages, in which the sexual attraction to each other was not visible but their sexual attraction to others became highly visible. Michelle and Barack talk openly about their feelings for each other. They're real."

Today there is a wonderful slide-show of some of their most tender moments on the trail - I highly encourage you to see the real affection this family has for each other, it's truly inspirational.

The Obamas' Greatest PDA Moments - Slideshow

The Obama Relationship: A Major Benefit Nobody's Talking About

Happy Anniversary Michelle & Barack!

Healing but never whole

It always gives me peace to find out that maybe I'm not the only person who struggles. My friend highlighted this poem on her blog today and wrote so honestly about her own struggles in marriage. She remembered reading this poem way back before she was married and how it returned to her at just the right time.

It's timing for me is perfect too:

Marriage

It is to be broken.
It is to be torn open.
It is not to be reached and come to rest in ever.
I turn against you, I break from you, I turn to you.
We hurt, and are hurt, and have each other for healing.
It is healing.
It is never whole.

by Wendell Berry

You can read what my dear, deep friend Claudia Mair wrote about Wendell and marriage here: Wendell had it right

Disturbed

I needed this today:

It was Argentinian doctor and pop-revolution icon Che Guevara who said, as he was leaving Cuba for Africa, "Let me say, at the risk of seeming ridiculous, that the true revolutionary is guided by great feelings of love."

But lovers are hard to come by. And I think that's what our world is desperately in need of - lovers, people who are building deep, genuine relationships with fellow strugglers along the way, and who actually know the faces of the people behind the issues they are concerned about. We are trying to raise up an army not simply of street activists but of lovers - a community of people who have fallen desperately in love with God and with suffering people, and who allow those relationships to disturb and transform them.

Source: The Irresistible Revolution - Shane Claiborne

via - Inward/Outward