Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself

Other people's words, from Uncle Fred again. Read this last night. Can I believe both last night's post and this one? I believe I can...Æ

After centuries of handling and mishandling, most religious words have become so shopworn nobody's much interested any more. Not so with grace, for some reason. Mysteriously, even derivatives like gracious and graceful still have some of the bloom left.

Grace is something you can never get but only be given. There's no way to earn it or deserve it or bring it about any more than you can deserve the taste of raspberries and cream or earn good looks or bring about your own birth.

A good sleep is grace and so are good dreams. Most tears are grace. The smell of rain is grace. Somebody loving you is grace. Loving somebody is grace. Have you ever tried to love somebody?

A crucial eccentricity of the Christian faith is the assertion that people are saved by grace There's nothing you have to do. There's nothing you have to do. There's nothing you have to do.

The grace of God means something like: Here is your life. You might never have been, but you are because the party wouldn't have been complete without you. Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid. I am with you. Nothing can ever separate us. It's for you I created the universe. I love you.

There's only one catch. Like any other gift, the gift of grace can be yours only if you'll reach out and take it.

Maybe being able to reach out and take it is a gift too.

Wishful Thinking

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do not read this

More words from other people, this time from Doug. It's how I'm feeling tonight. Tomorrow, probably not so much.

"Loneliness is my curse - our species' curse - it's the gun that shoots the bullets that make us dance on a saloon floor and humiliate ourselves in front of strangers.
"Where does loneliness come from?...Maybe you think fate is only for others. Maybe you're ashamed to be reading about loneliness - maybe someone will catch you and then they'll know your secret stain. And then maybe you're not even very sure what loneliness is - that's common. We cripple our children for life by not telling them what loneliness is, all of its shades and tones and implications. When it clubs us on the head, usually just after we leave home, we're blindsided. We have no idea what hit us. We think we're diseased, schizoid, bipolar, monstrous and lacking in dietary chromium. It takes us until thirty to figure out what it was that sucked the joy from our youth, that made our brains shriek and burn on the inside, even while our exteriors made us seem as confident and bronzed as Qantas pilots. Loneliness."

Eleanor Rigby

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loss for words

Been silent here a while. My usual blather/banter hasn't seemed particularly relevant or important or significant to share with the world at large. And I find myself inundated with opinions and arguments and accusations and rationalizations, a swirling maelstrom of mangled language meant to convince me of one side's superiority over the other's, but succeeds only in convincing me to stop listening at all.

And maybe that's a good thing. I wonder sometimes if our need to fill up the silence with whatever pops into our heads keeps us from truly communicating. I don't speak or write to connect with anyone else, but only so I don't have to deal with the uncomfortableness silence brings. Or listen to what the silence says.

Maybe it's time to listen more to the silence than to the noise.

Yet here I am, filling up cyber-silence with my own blog noise. I am nothing without my contradictions.

Been reading Peterson's The Contemplative Pastor and this morning read his chapter on Annie Dillard and realized I'd been missing her and her ability to, as Peterson puts it, exegete the world around her with eyes wide open. I've found my eyes squinted shut too much lately. I should pry them open by revisiting some of Dillard's thoughts. Need something deeper to challenge me. Been skimming the surface for too long.

Methinks illness is wreaking havoc on my brain. Too tired to think anything or write anything coherent. Silence sounds like a good option (or listening to my new emusic downloads - ah, contradictions).
Æ

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