If only more people could hear this analogy.

One thing about giving away possessions is that it makes you more dependent on other people.

Yesterday day, our car key broke in the car boot. An inconvenience at best, but Geoff was out a fair way from home, the RACV would’ve taken 3 hours. Back to one car (after a year of borrowing my in-laws spare while they were overseas) we had to call friends. I felt bad calling friends, for interrupting their Sunday afternoon. These friends didn’t bat an eyelid, they just came.

It is interesting, dependance, because it asks something really quite small of our pride but gives so much back. It is hard though, to see or be confident in the much.

“It is almost impossible to overestimate the value of true humility and its power in the spiritual life. For the beginning of humility is the beginning of blessedness and the consummation of humility is the perfection of all joy. Humility contains in itself the answer to all the great problems of the life of the soul. It is the only key to faith, with which the spiritual life begins: for faith and humility are inseparable. In perfect humility all selfishness disappears and your soul no longer lives for itself or in itself for God: and it is lost and submerged in Him and transformed into Him.” – from “New Seeds of Contemplation”  Thomas Merton

Heaven wheels above you, displaying to you her eternal glories, and still your eyes are on the ground – Dante Alighieri

It’s totally naff that the ‘heaven’ theme is number 7. I hate cliches.

We do walk around with our eyes on the ground. Sometimes I think that my eyes aren’t anywhere at all, so easy to get lost inside your own brain and wrapped in your own internal world.

The Word became flesh, and here then is some kind of heaven mashed with earth. It’s beautiful. It’s here yet not. My awareness is poorer than I might yearn for. Daily I hope to ask to be woken up. Daily I hope to ask. Over and over and over.

Hold on, hold on to your old ways
Or put off, put off every old face.
And I know, I know you are changed out.
And I hope, I hope you’re arranged out.
But I’m still asleep
And you woke me up again.

- Sufjan Stevens

This post is part of the 100 Theme Challenge

I am disgustingly addicted to Pintrest. It’s so damn fun.

You can find mine here: pinterest.com/becmatheson

But the rest of the time it just makes you want Spring. Spring I am ready for you.

Grace Be With You All

Remember to love one another
And do what is pleasing to Him
Be strengthened by grace
And worship in reverence and awe
The God of peace

And grace be with you all
And may the Great Shepherd of the sheep
Equip you with all things
For doing His will
And grace be with you all

Forget not the sufferings of Jesus
And bear the disgrace that He bore
Confessing His name, for Christ is the same
Yesterday, today and forever

And grace be with you all
And may the Great Shepherd of the sheep
Equip you with all things
For doing His will
And grace be with you all

And grace be with you all
And may the Great Shepherd of the sheep
Equip you with good things
For doing His will
And grace be with you all
And grace be with you all

I have to confess that I did take this photo for the purposes of pinning it to Pinterest (of which I am heartly obsessed with) but isn’t it such a brilliant idea. Tea in a scientific beaker. Photo taken at the Firehouse, Ringwood. Sadly I had a weird reaction to the avocado (I think) in my breakfast and spent the rest of the day not feeling so dandy. But today is a new Saturday and this is a still a damn fine idea.

I did need the space. Lent. However the time was so full of other ‘must dos’ and now that is over and finally I can shuffle things around things to where they can be re-evaluated.
So I am shuffling. Somewhat slowly. Shuffling and re-evalutating.

Perhaps words will resurface to the top again?

Did I mention I got an iPad (1) for my birthday, it’s uber fun. Perhaps it is not helping me find space directly, but it is new and fun. Did I mention that it is fun? It’s really the most fun present I’ve ever received.

And the Enneagram email was a beast the other day:

As a One, you are part of the Frustration-Based Group. Ones are frustrated that the world is not more sensible and orderly. The antidote for your frustration is acceptance of reality. (Understanding the Enneagram, 318)

Act 1

And whomph, the tiredness monster fly past and knocks me over and I can only sit.

I hate performance poetry – it is obnoxious and turns lovely words into melodramatic harpies. Cruel perhaps, but this – thine – then is how I feel. Point in case? (art is subjective, yes? this is art that I don’t – although not exclusively dislike)

I dislike disconnect – although there is some kind of false safety in staying busy.

Service I understand somewhat better. Although understanding is not tangible without doing – perhaps service can only ever be understood at the present moment of the act?

Hype gives me hives.

Tea, words, solace is peace and there I find God. It is not as if loud, dancing joy is hype (not in the slightest), but to me it is foreign and that swell of soul makes itself known better through moment and surprise-in-quiet.

I fill my life with too much noise. I must relearn being still.

(I’m sorry if you like performance poetry)

…

Act 2

Perhaps life flickers as performance poetry? Expanding our experiences into deep-hollow words of longing. Expression that is not met. False conclusions that wrap things up neat and tidy like. Conclusions that are conclusions.

Where is our conclusion?

Our conclusion is still longing and interacting with those moments of awareness that God drops into our lives via somewhat delightful and sometimes disturbing means.

We are disrupted. Words stop following so nicely. We step out of time and lose pace.
It is in this mess of boring prose that we find truth.
And it’s conclusion is both in this prose and beyond it.

and the finish is