i write at 5 am believing night
must give way
to morning....
5 May 2007
lady chapel
newman jesuit college, off campus, a ride away. i cycle there, daily for mass. a community of not more than 12, most times. an enclosed intimate space, worlds slightly apart from the seemingly impersonal city parishes i've been. the pews, altar and pulpit are made from disused railway tracks, lodged metaphors of something larger than life. why we kneel, why we pray. journeys without end. dependence & humility. from unfreedom to freedom. from self-love to greater love for jesus and the conflicted redeeming world he asks us to live. within, not without. loss transformed. faith challenged. a wandering road, to the still points of silence. bread broken. shared among. many i've left behind. many i've met. i gather you, on the altar of this prayer. our common sacrifice.
meaning, on the other side
This terror of looking directly into the void and finding only experiences that seem meaningless and devouring is worse than any sickness. Yet the darkness is there. The need is not to escape it but to go through it and find meaning on the other side. There is still no better description of the darkness than the words of St John of the Cross, spanish mystic in Dark Night of the Soul.
The idea sometimes heard today that darkness can be avoided and we should find God only in joy and celebration, in peace and comfort, is a grave delusion that perhaps reveals our present lack of experience. We are apt either to begin this way in some darkness and depression or else be caught up by it somewhere along the way.
Celebration is fine and comes after deliverance. Beforehand, celebration is often shallow, false and naive."
morton kelsey: transcend- a guide to the spiritual quest (1981)
The idea sometimes heard today that darkness can be avoided and we should find God only in joy and celebration, in peace and comfort, is a grave delusion that perhaps reveals our present lack of experience. We are apt either to begin this way in some darkness and depression or else be caught up by it somewhere along the way.
Celebration is fine and comes after deliverance. Beforehand, celebration is often shallow, false and naive."
morton kelsey: transcend- a guide to the spiritual quest (1981)
daybreak / I
At times, we experience a blockade in and to, a more satisfying and fulfilling life...it concerns not only those among us who wish to push beyond a vocational void or persons recovering from a loss of self-worth, confidence or despair. It also touches those who walk in search of a deepening spiritual quest.
By impasse I mean that there is no way out, no way around, no rational escape from, what imprisons one, no possibilities in the situation. In a true impasse, every normal of acting is forced to a standstill, and ironically, impasse is experienced not only in the problem itself but also in any solution rationally attempted. Every logical solution remains unsatisfying, at the very least...Any movement out, any next step, is cancelled, and the most dangerous temptation is to give up, to quit, to surrender to cynicism and despair, in the face of disappointment, disenchantment, hopelessness and loss of meaning that encompasses one.
David Tracy: Blessed Rage for Order (1975)
By impasse I mean that there is no way out, no way around, no rational escape from, what imprisons one, no possibilities in the situation. In a true impasse, every normal of acting is forced to a standstill, and ironically, impasse is experienced not only in the problem itself but also in any solution rationally attempted. Every logical solution remains unsatisfying, at the very least...Any movement out, any next step, is cancelled, and the most dangerous temptation is to give up, to quit, to surrender to cynicism and despair, in the face of disappointment, disenchantment, hopelessness and loss of meaning that encompasses one.
David Tracy: Blessed Rage for Order (1975)
daybreak / II
Those who believe they believe in God, but without passion in the heart, without anguish of mind, without uncertainty, without doubt, and even at times without despair, believe only in the idea of God.
Miguel de Unamuno y Jugo
Miguel de Unamuno y Jugo
on vulnerability...
john 13: 1-15Carl Jung once said how much he admired christians because they saw Christ in the poor, in those who are hungry, naked, in hospitals and in prisons, and in those who are strangers. But what he could not understand was that they could not see Christ in their own poverty.
Jean Vanier
daybreak / III
The swiftest things are the softest things. A bird is active because a bird is soft. A stone is helpless, because a stone is hard. The stone must by its own nature go downwards, because hardness is weakness. A bird can of its nature go upwards, because fragility is force.
g. k. chesterton
2 May 2007
something comes falling
and then, u hear a campus morning song.
there are brows of excitement everywhere; the leaf-strewn pavements lining the cool box of bluewater pools lodged beside the training track. you can swim or run in mild autumn air.
easy too, to discard your studies for a moment and find again, the residues of trees that resemble the ones you love to gaze from home. casurina and birch, angsana tints and maple-hues patching sunsprays on earthgrounds. syrup-brown reds hiding the drench of greencool rain. a scent of the coming afternoon.
you hold then, the lyrics of one fine day
enclosed in petals of art and life
on hand.
there are brows of excitement everywhere; the leaf-strewn pavements lining the cool box of bluewater pools lodged beside the training track. you can swim or run in mild autumn air.easy too, to discard your studies for a moment and find again, the residues of trees that resemble the ones you love to gaze from home. casurina and birch, angsana tints and maple-hues patching sunsprays on earthgrounds. syrup-brown reds hiding the drench of greencool rain. a scent of the coming afternoon.you hold then, the lyrics of one fine day
enclosed in petals of art and life
on hand.
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