Prayer

world on fire
Prayer is not a device to arouse God, to make Him aware of us and our needs. God is always aware of us and our needs. God is always aware. The true purpose of prayer is to arouse us, to keep us aware of our obligations - toward our community, our people, our God, and even toward ourselves. Prayer is a means of keeping us spiritually alert and morally awake.
These words of the Dubner Maggi hold a deep truth that I would do well to heed. Too often I try to shape my words to God in order to try and shape God Himself. I talk, but little I listen. Many people believe prayer is merely talking to oneself.  How tragic that while I believe that prayer is one of the few things actually capable of taking one beyond oneself, all too often I am indeed holding a conversation for one, not worshiping the One. Not because He is not listening, but because I am not. The cacophony of noise I create leaves little room for the still small voice. I know so well what I want.  But filled with distractions I cannot be empty enough to be filled with Him. I yearn for more but focus on the yearning not on the One I yearn for. I know, but knowledge without action is merely whispers in the void.
May I learn to pray in silence. May I learn to focus on my obligations and not solely on my desires. May I stop praying with empty words and start praying with meaningful action. May I be more in the ways I need to be more and less in the ways I need to be less.
Lord, hear my prayer, may I hear your Voice.

Peace. 

Auld Lang Syne (Part 2)

Dogwood.
Ok....a couple more books....
Collected Poems: Gerard Manley Hopkins: I've always considered Spring and Fall one of my favourite poems, but didn't delve too deeply into the Hopkins repertoire....my mistake. Beauty, grandeur, profoundness, all to be found in these lines. The world is charged with the grandeur of God....just one of the poems I memorized this year and my favourite one to contemplate when I go for longish nature rambles. I find myself praying many of these poems....

Now...on a much more frivolous note...
Generica: (Novel) Will Ferguson: Sharp like a knife humour to be found here. The premise of the book is that a self help book that promises to show its' readers how to; quite smoking, loose weight, find love, advance in career goals, and find inner peace actually works. Once published the results of its' nefarious influence an apocalypse is unleashed upon America. Very witty off-skew humour. If you enjoy weird and funny and black you'll enjoy this book.

Orientalism: Edward W. Said: Not really fair to include this yet, as it's more a potential than a sure entry....I've just started it. But from a few Said articles I've read recently, and the strong opening I have a feeling that it will make the list. I can always edit it out later if I change my mind (: I enjoy a good critique and am interested in intellectual tradition and communication, therefore a good critique of intellectual tradition and communication seems right up my alley.

Ok....I think that does it for books. I read many others of course and many of the many were also wonderful....but these are the ones I've chosen to write on. Stay tuned for Music, Movies and Photos......

Auld Lang Syne (Part 1)

Favourite coffee shop to read at.....Pane E Formage

I've always been a bit of an aficionado of the year end "best of lists". Through them I've found some great movies, books, music, art, etc that I never would have otherwise. Also there's the pleasure of shared agreement with the choices or the pleasure of knowing how much better you could do at this list thing, the superior feeling of knowing that you would never put Mortal Kombat II on your list....so it's time to put my money where my mouth is and present my humble list of the years' best finds. In keeping with my love of randomness my lists won't presented in a neatly binary or metric based "10 of" format.
The number of items on each list is completely arbitrary as is the order in which they are presented....it's enough to make the list - I don't think I could fairly categorize the items on in it in a sequential manner.
So today's' list is
Great Books I Read This Year:

Blue Like Jazz: Donald Miller: This is a beautifully written book that shows you can be passionate about your Christian faith without being a cookie-cutter/pew-warmer/ignore the rest of the world/churchy person. Miller has a knack for being irreverently reverent. One of my favourite scenes in the book is where Miller and friends set up a Confession Booth on an university campus. A Confession Booth with a difference; rather than take confession from visitors to the booth, it is the Christian (pseudo-priest) inside the booth who confesses their own ineptness in following Jesus in such a way as to make His love clear.
The Swallows of Kabul (Novel): Yasmina Khadra: A haunting fable like tale that exposes the horrors of the fascist theocracy of the Taliban. Through the tale of Moshen, his former-lawyer wife Zunaira, the jailer Atiq and his wife Musserrat the author shows the difference between the strength of faith and the danger of religious extremism. Sparse prose that is all the more impactful for its' minimalist style.
Christ and the Media: Malcolm Muggeridge: I cannot believe that I've never come across this book before. The interaction of cultural forces and spirituality has long been a fascination of mine and the presentation of this subject here is top notch. This little book is amazingly witty while still remaining a trenchant critique of media culture and its' power over culture at large. It reminds the reader of the constant need to be aware of the influences we subject ourselves to. Very powerful, very well written, very needed.
The Dogs of Babel: (Novel) Carolyn Parkhurst: Another fable like novel, this one exploring the realms of grief and loss. Paul Iverson becomes convinced that as a linguist he can teach his dog, the only witness to his wife's death, how to talk. His hope is to find answers to unanswerable questions. A meditation on life, love, coming together and falling apart. Bittersweet and strange and all the more beautiful for it.
Selected Readings from Soren Kierkegaard: What more to say? Challenging, thought provoking, stimulating. The basis for many a great conversation can be started with a Kierkegaardian quote.

More great books to come tomorrow.....

"And homeless near a thousand homes I stood"

square drop
Originally uploaded by wabi6.

The Roman Historian Publius Cornelius Tacitus once observed; "They made a wasteland and called it peace.” These words can apply to souls as well as to countries.
My struggle lately could be called a literal jihad; a holy struggle within ones’ self. And the price for a wasteland peace is too great a one to pay. Nor is it a real peace, peace that deeply abidith….wasteland peace is more like the stillness of the void....

Questions:
I wrote about physical homelessness a couple of days ago, but what of spiritual homelessness? Why do I feel as one adrift on empty waters when I long to be one sailing unknown seas but to a sure destination?
I yearn for a spiritual community in which I will rise to the deepest depth of true serventhood. But why not here? Why not now? I search for God where others have found Him; is it that I do not have eyes to see, nor ears to hear? Why can’t I just be content with what is offered before me? Is it because I don’t want to settle or is it because pride hardens my heart? Do I long for more because I want to honour God, or myself?


How are these lines of T.S. Eliot to be interpreted, concerning my life?

Where is the Life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
T. S. Eliot

Are they a call to continue the path that seems to lead onward through the dark night of the soul? Or are they an admonishment for me to get over myself? To start living what is here and now? I know that, in part, the answer lies in inteniality...I am not being intentional with my life and that must change. But the cycle of questioning continues...how to move into intentional spirituality, relationship, growth, outreach. And whose intentions? mine or His? How to make those one and the same......

Somehow I know there is more, and still I will search for it. May I be open to finding it wherever it lies….whether it be in front of me all this time or whether I must leave the known and traverse a new path. My heart longs to beat in it's true spiritual home and my soul to sing in the shadow of His wings….

to be continued.....

P.S. The title is a quote from William Wordsworth.

the fox has his lair and the lion his den......

homeless
Originally uploaded by wabi6.

Homelessness. When I pass the sidewalks of the downtown East Side my heart breaks.
I look at the wreckage of one lost soul after another and wonder how did it come to be this way? How did yesterdays' child become todays' junkie? What does it do to the spirit to be without a home or even hovel to call your own? What does it do to the soul to see people pass you by with no more thought than they give the refuge lying about their feet. What does it do to the identity to know that when you die you may not even have a tombstone bearing your name? A name you might not have heard in years.
Last month I had lunch with a homeless man and he just kept repeating: "I'm Russ. My name is Russ. People won't even look at me, but I have a name. You can't pray for me without knowing my name, please remember it's Russ." I remember Russ. I see you. Or I try to. Because sometimes, many times, I'm one of the multitude passing on by. My hands more like those that drove in the nails than like Christs' own. How can this be? How can I allow myself to be indifferent. I know I care. I know I burn with passion, but now it is a cold blue fire. I search for the tools that will make me burn white hot. For Russ. And for all those whose names and faces I don't know, whose faces I've not looked into, whose names I didn't take the time to wonder about.
God forgive me.
For I know what I do not do.

more later.....

Thesis blog photo

thesis blog photo
Originally uploaded by wabi6.

Well. Here she is. My albatross. My weight of the world. My Sisyphean task. My Thesis. All the cards are comments and quotes....and the layout is my attempt to organize into thematic categories....
So it goes....had coffee with a friend and was secretly relieved to hear that she's even further behind in this dissertation endeavor than I am....oh the guilty pleasures of schadenfreude....(I'm not the only one behind! YaY!)
Of course as penance for my gloating, I'll sort an extra 20 cards tonight (: It's worth it.

that's all folks......

sun

0002
Originally uploaded by wabi6.

Just a little poetry today....one of my favourite Hopkins pieces.

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;

And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;

And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.