NPR, Rilke, and World View

I believe in coming full circle and ending up in an entirely different place that feels just as comfortable as the first place.

In the first place, I was driving to church on a Sunday morning while NPR read Rilke poems and suggested we all take a look at the world through a poetic lens instead of a fact and figures lens. (re: oil spills and other environmental disasters)

In the second place, I was sitting on the couch with C. discussing when homeschooling is appropriate and more desirable than public schooling and how the government offers public schooling at home now, suggesting the homeschool-er needs the same curriculum as the public school-er.

In the third place, I was roused out of my comfortable non-confrontational self to say that sometimes we need public school at home and sometimes we don’t.  There is a line in each of our lives that we best watch for, adhere to, etc.  Ideal is not ideal if it doesn’t deal with the current I.

In the last place, I do value facts and figures, but I do so much more easily view the world poetic line by poetic line.  Well, it looks like I’ve come full circle, but I don’t think I arrived in a new place this time.  I guess I will just keep circling.

“I live my life in growing rings
which move out over the things around me.
Perhaps I’ll never complete the last,
but that’s what I mean to try.
I’m circling around God, around the ancient tower,
and I’ve been circling thousands years;
and I still don’t know: am I a falcon, a storm
or a great song.”

Rilke

If Jesus is about anything…

“If Jesus is about anything, it’s the inconvenient truth that a spiritual life is a physical life.”

–Sara Miles
“jesus freak”
Jossey-Bass Publishing, (c) 2010

Sara Miles is the founder and director of The Food Pantry, and serves as Director of Ministry at St. Gregory of Nyssa Episcopal Church in San Francisco, USA.

Running To Yourself

“…So it isn’t a matter of trying to run away from yourself, but running away to yourself, to the identity you are not allowed to recognize or nurture or grow so long as you are stuck in the habits of anxious comparison, status seeking, and chatter.”

–Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury
Where God Happens: Discovering Christ in One Another
New Seeds Books, Shambhala Publications, Inc.
(c) 2005 for A World Community of Christian Meditation

It is recommended to read this statement, at minimum, twice to self and twice out loud.

Present Peace

I read today, “If you are depressed, you are living in the past.  If you are anxious, you are living in the future.  If you are at peace, you are living in the present.” (Lao Tzu) If then I am at peace when I am talking to you, it seems doubly true that you are my present.

Heaven

“To me, the notion that life is a dream compared to the reality of heaven has always seemed better suited to the fiction of Borges than to living one’s every day life.”

–Kathleen Norris

I can’t live for today when tomorrow is always on my mind.  I must learn to live fully in this only moment that I have because tomorrow slides right into it anyway.  Yes, without my even knowing heaven comes quicker than I think.

-Naphtalia

F.W. and the message of Persuasion

“Miss A. E–

I can listen no longer in silence.  I must speak to you by such means as are within my reach.  You pierce my soul.  I am half agony, half hope.  Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone forever.  I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it eight years and a half ago.  Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death.  I have loved none but you.  Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant.  You alone brought me to Bath.  For you alone I think and plan.  –Have you not seen this?  Can you fail to have understood my wishes?  –I had not waited even these ten days, could I have read your feelings, as I think you must have penetrated mine.  I can hardly write.  I am every instant hearing something which overpowers me.  You sink your voice, but I can distinguish the tones of that voice, when they would be lost on others.  –Too good, too excellent creature!  You do us justice indeed.  You do believe that there is true attachment and constancy among men.  Believe it to be most fervent, most undeviating in

F.W.

I must go, uncertain of my fate, but I shall return hither, or follow your party, as soon as possible.  A word, a look will be enough to decide whether I enter your father’s house this evening, or never.

Such a letter was not to be soon recovered from.  Half an hour’s solitude and reflection might have tranquillised her; but the ten minutes only, which now passed before she was interrupted, with all the restraints of her situation, could do nothing towards tranquillity.  Every moment rather brought fresh agitation.  It was an overpowering happiness.”

–Persuasion (Jane Austen and some other lady), page 184

To Anne Elliot: I know the feeling.
To you:
I read this whole book just to read this passage.  It was worth it.  Every story has its own beginning, unassuming and natural, but the ending is up to the writer in whose hand the story is tossed.

Speech

“We are looking or listening here for speech that will affirm and open the way to life, for a speech that can be playful and not just useful, for words that disturb and change us not because they threaten but because they ‘fit’ a reality we are just beginning to discern.  If communities of faith took language this seriously, they would be extraordinary signs of transformation.”

–Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury
Where God Happens: Discovering Christ in One Another
New Seeds Books, Shambhala Publications, Inc.
(c) 2005 for A World Community of Christian Meditation

Williams writes this in the middle of a section on fleeing from the tongue, from one’s own mouth and words.  He equates silence with those moments when the sun is rising and we don’t want to say anything for fear of ruining the beauty.  He also relates fleeing and silence to the process of writing poetry.  Truly, I have seen poets wait in long bouts of silence for the most direct, most penetrating words in order to miss triteness and hit truth.  This is a stark reminder to me to be ever thoughtful of my speech so that I can indeed be blessed with new reality for myself and my neighbors as my days proceed.

Hiding Faults

“At the moment when we hide a brother’s fault, God hides our own.  At the moment when we reveal a brother’s fault, God reveals our own.”

–Abba Poemen

The reality is when I say, “This is how you hurt me” she replies, “That is how you hurt me, too.”

Holiness

“Holiness–or wholeness as people prefer to say today–requires a degree of inner and outer peace that respects the at times conflicting, though not contradictory, demands of body, mind, and spirit.  The first requirement for this peace or harmony is order in human living and a right use of time.”

Laurence Freeman

Note to self: The little things make a difference in the big picture.

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