Questions

God, Life, Love 0

My faith in God, who is eternally loving and constant even as my understanding grows and changes, makes life not only worth living, but gives me the courage to dare to disturb the universe when that is what el calls me to do.  Sometimes simply being open, refusing to settle for finite answers, disturbs the universe.  Questions are disturbing, especially those which may threaten our traditions, our institutions, our security.  But questions never threaten the living God, who is constantly calling us, and who affirms for us that love is stronger than hate, blessing stronger than cursing.

— Madeleine L’Engle, Stone for a Pillow, p. 140, quoted in Glimpses of Grace, compiled by Carole F. Chase

The Great Joke

Letting Go, Life, Truth 0

“But of course!” said the Spirit, shining with love and mirth so that my eyes were dazzled.  “That’s what we all find when we reach this country.  We’ve all been wrong!  That’s the great joke.  There’s no need to go on pretending one was right!  After that we begin living.”

— from The Great Divorce, by C. S. Lewis

God’s Choice

God, Gratitude, Joy, Life, Marriage, Trust 0

For the Christian who has embraced God’s sovereignty, the choice is God’s; and the result, whatever that choice may be, is rejoicing.  In Him is our joy and peace.  If He gives marriage, then in marriage we rejoice.  If He gives singleness, we rejoice in singleness.  In whatever state we are, we know contentment.

— Margaret Clarkson, So You’re Single, p. 117

Finding Thrills

Letting Go, Life 0

What is more (and I can hardly find words to tell you how important I think this), it is just the people who are ready to submit to the loss of the thrill and settle down to sober interest, who are then most likely to meet new thrills in some quite different direction.  The man who has learned to fly and become a good pilot will suddenly discover music; the man who has settled down to live in the beauty spot will discover gardening.

This is, I think, one little part of what Christ meant by saying that a thing will not really live unless it first dies.  It is simply no good trying to keep any thrill: that is the very worst thing you can do.  Let the thrill go — let it die away — go on through that period of death into the quieter interest and happiness that follow — and you will find you are living in a world of new thrills all the time.  But if you decide to make thrills your regular diet and try to prolong them artificially, they will all get weaker and weaker, and fewer and fewer, and you will be a bored, disillusioned old man for the rest of your life.  It is because so few people understand this that you find many middle-aged men and women maundering about their lost youth, at the very age when new horizons ought to be appearing and new doors opening all round them.  It is much better fun to learn to swim than to go on endlessly (and hopelessly) trying to get back the feeling you had when you first went paddling as a small boy.

— C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

Believe in Recovery

Healing, Life 0

Some days, we may do particularly well.  We may assertively refuse someone’s invitation to be codependent.  We may deal well with a particular conflict or feeling.  We may have a few moments of intimacy or closeness.  We may buy ourselves something special, then not wreck it by telling ourselves we don’t deserve it.

Some days, we may have to look more closely to notice what we did.  Maybe we took time out to rest when we were tired.  We said The Serenity Prayer during a trying moment.  Things got crazy and we detached when we noticed ourselves getting hooked in.

On our worst days, we still look for something we’ve done toward recovery.  Sometimes the best we can do is feel good about what we did not do.  We pat ourselves on the back because we didn’t run to the nearest bar, drag home an alcoholic, and fall in love with him or her.  For some of us, that’s real progress and not to be overlooked on the gray days.

All the days count.  Believe in recovery.  Our lives and experiences can be different and better.  The process of getting better is happening right now, this moment, in our lives.

— Melody Beattie, Beyond Codependency, p. 236-237

Americans and Failure

Life 0

“Here in America, on the other hand,” he went on, “people don’t fear uncertainty so much, and they fear failure even less.  You change from one job to the next like you’re changing channels on the television.  If you get tired of working for other people, you can try to start your own business, with hardly a moment’s thought about the risk.  Look at how many businesses fail after only one year, and almost none make it past three.  America is a land full of failures, and I say that only because that is what makes it great.  In this country, when your dreams crash and burn all around you, you’re expected to simply learn from your mistakes, pick up the pieces from the wreckage, and start all over again.  There’s no shame in it.  And if you’re tired of your job or of running your own business, well, then you can go back to school at night and learn how to become a lawyer or a doctor or an architect or whatever you like.  If you’re willing to work, there are no preconceived notions about what you can become or how far you can go.  Trust me, it’s not like this in other parts of the world.  It’s the main reason so many people come to this country — to be free of the old ways of thinking about themselves.”

— Peter Pezzelli, Italian Lessons, p. 70

Too Easily Pleased

God, Joy, Life 0

The negative idea of Unselfishness carries with it the suggestion not primarily of securing good things for others, but of going without them ourselves, as if our abstinence and not their happiness was the important point.  I do not think this is the Christian virtue of Love.  The New Testament has lots to say about self-denial, but not about self-denial as an end in itself.  We are told to deny ourselves and to take up our crosses in order that we may follow Christ; and nearly every description of what we shall ultimately find if we do so contains an appeal to desire.  If there lurks in most modern minds the notion that to desire our own good and earnestly to hope for the enjoyment of it is a bad thing, I submit that this notion has crept in from Kant and the Stoics and is no part of the Christian faith.  Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak.  We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea.  We are far too easily pleased.

— C. S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

Living in Eternity

Letting Go, Life 0

Living in eternity is, in fact, the way we are supposed to live all the time, right now, in the immediate moment, not hanging onto the past, not projecting into the future.  The past is the rock that is under our feet, that enables us to push off from it and move into the future.

— Madeleine L’Engle, Sold Into Egypt, quoted in Glimpses of Grace, compiled by Carole F. Chase

Universalist Theology from Colossians

God, Life 0

Paul knows nothing of a theology in which God does not ultimately achieve his purposes….

It is God’s covenant purpose that his world will one day be reconciled in Christ.  For now, only the Church shares in that privilege, but this is not a position God has granted his people so they can gloat over the world.  On the contrary, the Church must live by gospel standards and proclaim its gospel message so that the world will come to share in the saving work of Christ.

— Gregory MacDonald, The Evangelical Universalist, p. 47, 53

The Gratitude Channel

Forgiveness, Gratitude, Healing, Life 0

I often ask people to pay attention to natural beauty instead of watching reruns of their old grudges….  The world is full of things to appreciate and find beautiful once you teach yourself to look.  The forgiveness and gratitude channels remind us that even though we have been hurt, we do not have to dwell on the hurt.  The one thing no one can take from us is what we pay attention to and focus on.  We may have a habit of watching the grievance channel or the bitterness channel, but we still control the remote.  The good news is that, with practice, any habit can be broken or changed.  The world is full of heroes who have overcome difficulty by tuning in to channels of courage or bravery.  Each of us can become a hero in our own life, to the benefit of our friends and family.

— Dr. Fred Luskin, Forgive for Love, p. 142