givenness.com

a givenness to not have been baptized in lemon juice

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 19:32:11 -0700

What do I have a GIVENNESS NOW to?

Not have been baptized in lemon juice.

“And whenever you are fasting, do not look gloomy and sour and dreary like the hypocrites, for they put on a dismal countenance, that their fasting may be apparent to and seen by men. Truly I say to you, they have their reward in full already.

But when you fast, perfume your head and wash your face, so that your fasting may not be noticed by men but by your Father, who sees in secret; and your Father, who sees in secret, will reward you in the open.”

Matthew 6:16-18 (Amplified Bible)

…what does Lent “look” like?

I have a GIVENNESS NOW to not have been baptized in lemon juice.

a givenness to where the wash was

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 21:18:00 -0700

What do I have a GIVENNESS NOW to?

Where the wash was.

“See I am doing something new!

Now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? In the desert I make away, in the wasteland, rivers.

It is I, I, who wipe out, for your own sake, your offenses; your sins I remember no more.” Isaiah 43:19-20, 25

Lent.

…remind me that the rains which once ran, will run again, in this desert.

I have a GIVENNESS NOW to where the wash was.

a givenness to play this game of risk

Mon, 20 Feb 2012 20:41:00 -0700

What do I have a GIVENNESS NOW to?

Play this game of risk.

“We too often forget that Christian faith is a principle of questioning and struggle before it becomes a principle of certitude and of peace.

One has to doubt and reject everything else in order to believe firmly in Christ, and after one has begun to believe, one’s faith itself must be tested and purified.

Christianity is not merely a set of foregone conclusions.

The Christian mind is a mind that risks intolerable purifications, and sometimes, indeed very often, the risk turns out to be too great to be tolerated.

Faith tends to be defeated by the burning presence of God in mystery, and seeks refuge from him, flying to comfortable social forms and safe conventions in which purification is no longer an inner battle but a matter of outward gesture.” Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander

…never to weary of the query.

I have a GIVENNESS NOW to playing this game of risk.

a givenness to the spell and dispel

Sun, 19 Feb 2012 18:00:00 -0700

What do I have a GIVENNESS NOW to?

The spell and dispel.

“All things have an element of enchantment but also an element of disenchantment and disappointment.

The enchantment derives from the fact that all things are reflections and images of God, and the disenchantment is due to the fact that they are only magic and not the real reality.

They are not God.” Ernesto Cardenal

…of God and not God.

I have a GIVENNESS NOW to the spell and dispel.

a givenness not to chew things and spit them out

Sat, 18 Feb 2012 23:42:24 -0700

What do I have a GIVENNESS NOW to?

Not just chewing things and spitting them out.

“The Christian idea of marriage is based on Christ’s words that a man and wife are to be regarded as a single organism - for that is what the words ‘one flesh’ would be in modern English.

And the Christians believe that when He said this He was not expressing a sentiment but stating a fact - just as one is stating a fact when one says that a lock and its key are one mechanism, or that a violin and a bow are one musical instrument.

The inventor of the human machine was telling us that its two halves, the male and the female, were made to be combined together in pairs, not simply on the sexual level, but totally combined.

The monstrosity of sexual intercourse outside marriage is that those who indulge in it are trying to isolate one kind of union (the sexual) from all the other kinds of union which were intended to go alone with it and make up the total union.

The Christian attitude does not mean that there is anything wrong about sexual pleasure, any more than about the pleasure of eating.

It means that you must not isolate that pleasure and try to get it by itself, any more than you ought to try to get the pleasure of taste without swallowing and digesting, by chewing things and spitting them out again.”

C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

…intimacy cannot be isolated.

I have a GIVENNESS NOW not to chew things and spit them out.

a givenness to a roofless church

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 17:43:00 -0700

What do I have a GIVENNESS NOW to?

A roofless church.

“The greatest error of which historical Christianity is guilty is due to the circumcising and deadening notion that revelation is finished and that there is nothing more to be expected, that the structure of the church has been completely build and that the roof had been put on it.”

Nicholas Berdyaev

…the new “porciúncula.”

A GIVENNESS NOW to a roofless church.

a givenness to resist the phantom of omnipresence

Thu, 16 Feb 2012 22:10:00 -0700

What do I have a GIVENNESS NOW to?

Resist the phantom of omnipresence.

“I must think about H. and less about myself.

Yes that sounds very well. But there’s a snag. I am thinking about her nearly always. Thinking of the H. facts - real words, looks, laughs, and actions of hers. But it is my own mind that selects and groups them.

Already, less than a month after her death, I can feel the slow, insidious beginning of a process that will make the H. I think of into a more and more imaginary woman.

Founded on fact, no doubt. I shall put in nothing fictitious (or I hope I shan’t).

But won’t the composition inevitably become more and more my own?

The reality is no longer there to check me, to pull me up short, as the real H. so often did, so unexpectedly, by being so thoroughly herself and not me.

The most precious gift that marriage gave me was this constant impact of something very close and intimate, yet all the time unmistakably other, resistant - in a word, real.

Is all that work to be undone?

Is what I shall still call H. to sink back horribly into being not much more than one of my old bachelor-pipe dreams?

Oh my dear, my dear, come back for one moment and drive that miserable phantom away.

Oh God, God, why did you take such trouble to force this creature out of its shell if it is now doomed to crawl back - to be sucked back - into it?”

C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

Insidious and imaginary.

…when the composition inevitably of Genine and God become more and more my own.

I have a GIVENNESS NOW to resist the phantom of omnipresence.

a givenness to an expandable suitcase

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 08:45:00 -0700

What do I have a GIVENNESS NOW to?

An expandable suitcase.

“‘Second half of life’ wisdom requires prayer and discernment more than knee-jerk responses toward either conservative or liberal ends of the spectrum.

You have a spectrum of responses now, and they are not all predictable, as is too often the case with most knee-jerk responses.

Law is still necessary, of course, but it is not your guiding star, or even close. It has been wrong and cruel too many times.

The Eight Beatitudes speak to you much more than the Ten Commandments as you grow older.

Life is much more spacious now.

The boundaries of the container have been enlarged.

You are like an expandable suitcase, and you became so almost without your noticing.

Now you are just here, and here holds more than enough.” Richard Rohr, Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life

“And what happened then? Well, in Whoville they say that the Grinch’s small heart grew three sizes that day.”

…and here holds more than enough.

I have a GIVENNESS NOW to an expandable suitcase.

a givenness not to diffusion confusion

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 19:06:00 -0700

What do I have a GIVENNESS NOW to?

Not to diffusion confusion.

“Nothing in the universe is ugly.

There is only beauty or a relative lack of beauty, or relative lack of the divine sheen in certain particular things.

Beauty, joy, and pleasure appear in beings in a diluted form, but all things are nonetheless bathed in and ultimately by beauty in varying degrees, as though overhead with a diffused light.

God alone is light in its purity; He is the focus of all that is lighted.

Things bear in themselves an element of beauty, beauty in greater or lesser degree, but they are not beauty as such.

God is light that bathes all beautiful bodies, and there is nothing in Him that is not pure beauty.” Ernesto Cardenal

…as though overhead with a diffused light.

I have a GIVENNESS NOW not to diffusion confusion.

a givenness to the sheen of genine

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 01:01:53 -0700

What do I have a GIVENNESS NOW to?

The sheen of Genine.

“God puts into creatures, along with a kind of “sheen,” a reflection of God’s own luminous “ray” which is the fountain of all light.

Shining reflections of the divine radiance must be understood as the sharing of God’s likeness and constitutes those “beautifying” reflections that make beauty in things.” Thomas Aquinas

…twenty-four years of “beautifying” reflections.

I have a GIVENNESS NOW to the sheen of genine.

a givenness to the only human emotions that we can attribute to God

Sun, 12 Feb 2012 22:33:00 -0700

What do I have a GIVENNESS NOW to?

The only human emotions that we can attribute to God.

“God delights.

God is always rejoicing and doing so with a single and simple delight.

In fact, it is appropriate to say that love and joy are the only human emotions that we can attribute literally to God.” Thomas Aquinas

…so much more than Turkish delight.

I have a GIVENNESS NOW to the only human emotions that we can attribute to God.

a givenness to never a skinny love

Sat, 11 Feb 2012 19:19:00 -0700

What do I have a GIVENNESS NOW to?

Never a skinny love.

Come on skinny love just last the year
Pour a little salt we were never here
My, my, my, my, my, my, my, my
Staring at the sink of blood and crushed veneer

I tell my love to wreck it all
Cut out all the ropes and let me fall
My, my, my, my, my, my, my, my
Right in the moment this order’s tall

I told you to be patient
I told you to be fine
I told you to be balanced
I told you to be kind
In the morning I’ll be with you
But it will be a different “kind”
I’ll be holding all the tickets
And you’ll be owning all the fines

Come on skinny love what happened here
Suckle on the hope in lite brassiere
My, my, my, my, my, my, my, my
Sullen load is full; so slow on the split

I told you to be patient
I told you to be fine
I told you to be balanced
I told you to be kind
Now all your love is wasted?
Then who the hell was I?
Now I’m breaking at the britches
And at the end of all your lines

Who will love you?
Who will fight?
Who will fall far behind? (Lyrics by Justin Vernon, performed by Bon Iver)

…cut the ropes and let me fall, whenever there’s a “thinness” to it all.

I have a GIVENNESS NOW to never a skinny love.

a givenness to the boy who prefers joy

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 22:28:00 -0700

What do I have a GIVENNESS NOW to?

The boy who prefers joy.

“What do they choose, these souls who go back (I have yet seen no others)? And how can they choose it?”

‘Milton was right,’ said my teacher. ’The choice of every lost soul can be expressed in the words “Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven.”

There is always something they prefer to joy - that is, to reality.

Ye see it easily enough in a spoiled child that would sooner miss its play and its supper than say it was sorry and be friends.

Ye call it “the Sulks.”

But in adult life it has a hundred fine names - Achilles’ wrath and Coriolanus’ grandeur, revenge and injured merit and self-respect and tragic greatness and proper pride.

‘Then is no one lost through the undignified vices, Sir? Through mere sensuality?’

‘Some are, no doubt. The sensualist, I’ll allow ye, begins by pursuing a real pleasure, though a small one.

His sin is the less.

But the time comes on when, though the pleasure becomes less and less and the craving fiercer and fiercer, and though he knows that joy can never come that way, yet he prefers to joy the mere fondling of unappeasable lust and would not have it taken from him.

He’d fight to the death to keep it.

He’d like well to be able to scratch; but even when he can scratch no more he’d rather itch than not.’” C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce

Unappeasable.

…the seduction and separation of “the Sulks.”

I have a GIVENNESS NOW to the boy who prefers joy.

a givenness not to pout when put out

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 19:05:00 -0700

What do I have a GIVENNESS NOW to?

Not to pout when put out.

“But, however you approach it, the great thing is to bring him into the state in which the denial of any one indulgence - it matters not which, champagne or tea, sole colbert or cigarettes - ‘puts him out’, for then his charity, justice, and obedience are all at your mercy.” C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

…the insidiousness of any one indulgence.

I have a GIVENNESS NOW not to pout when put out.

a givenness to not knowing the only restaurant with the best steak in town

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 19:17:00 -0700

What do I have a GIVENNESS NOW to?

Not knowing the only restaurant with the best steak in town.

“Now your patient is his mother’s son.

While working your hardest, quite rightly, on other fronts, you must not neglect a little quiet infiltration in respect of gluttony.

Being a male, he is not so likely to be caught by the ‘All I want’ camouflage.

Males are best turned into gluttony with the help of their vanity.

They ought to be made to think themselves very knowing about food, to pique themselves on having found the only restaurant in the town where steaks are really ‘properly cooked.

What begins as vanity can then be gradually turned into habit.” C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

…the calamity of vanity.

I have a GIVENNESS NOW to not knowing the only restaurant with the best steak in town.

a givenness to extract the exact

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 21:12:00 -0700

What do I have a GIVENNESS NOW to?

Extract the exact.

“The real value of the quiet, unobtrusive work which Glubose has been doing for years on this old woman can be gauged by the way in which her belly now dominates her whole life.

The woman is in what may be called the ‘All-I-want’ state of mind.

All she wants is a cup of tea properly made, or an egg properly boiled, or a slice of bread properly toasted.

But she never finds any servant or any friend who can do these simple things ‘properly’ - because her ‘properly’ conceals an insatiable demand for the exact, and almost impossible, palatal pleasures which she imagines she remembers from the past; a past described by her ‘as the days when you could get good servants’ but known to us as the days when her senses were more easily pleased and she had pleasures of other kinds which made her less dependent on those of the table.

Meanwhile, the daily disappointments produces daily ill temper: cooks give notice and friendships are cooled.

If ever the Enemy introduces into her mind a faint suspicion that she is too interested in food, Glubose counters it by suggesting to her that she doesn’t mind what she eats herself but ‘does like to have things nice for her boy.’

In fact, of course, her greed has been one of the chief sources of his domestic discomfort for many years.” C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

“I will not eat green eggs and ham, I will not eat them, Sam, I am!”

…what may be called the ‘All-I-want’ state of mind.

I have a GIVENNESS NOW to extract the exact.

a givenness to fast from the gluttony of delicacy

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 17:52:59 -0700

What do I have a GIVENNESS NOW to?

Fast from the gluttony of delicacy.

“The contemptuous way in which you spoke of gluttony as a means of catching souls, in your last letter, only shows your ignorance.

One of the great achievements of the last hundred years has been to deaden the human conscience on that subject, so that by now you will hardly find a sermon preached or a conscious troubled about it in the whole length and breadth of Europe.

This has largely been effected by concentrating all our efforts on gluttony of delicacy, not gluttony of excess.

Your patient’s mother; as I learn from the dossier and you might have learned from Glubose, is a good example.

She would be astonished - one day, I hope, will be - to learn that her whole life is enslaved to this kind of sensuality, which is quite concealed from her by the fact that the quantities involved are small.

But what do quantities matter, provided we can use a human belly and palate to produce querulousness, impatience, uncharitableness, and self-concern?

Glubose has this old woman well in hand.

She is a positive terror to hostess and servants.

She is always turning from what has been offered to her to say with a demure little sigh and a smile, ‘Oh please, please…all I want is a cup of teas, weak but not too weak, and the teeniest weeniest bit of really crisp toast.’

You see?

Because what she wants is smaller and less costly than what has been set before her, she never recognizes as gluttony her determination to get what she wants, however troublesome it may be to others.

At the very moment of indulging her appetite she believes that she is practicing temperance.

In a crowded restaurant she gives a little scream at the plate which some overworked waitress has set before her and says, ‘Oh that’s far, far too much! Take it away and bring me about a quarter of it.’

If challenged, she would say she was doing this to avoid waste; in reality she does it because the particular shade of delicacy to which we have enslaved her is offended by the sight of more food than she happens to want.”

C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

…how far we fall from all we consider to be “small.”

I have a GIVENNESS NOW to fast from the gluttony of delicacy.

a givenness to saturday night fever

Sun, 05 Feb 2012 23:28:00 -0700

What do I have a GIVENNESS NOW to?

Saturday night fever.

“…here sick in bed, burning up with fever.

He touched her hand and the fever was gone.” Matthew 8:15

…can I ever proclaim “I’m a Believer” without “Saturday Night Fever?”

I have a GIVENNESS NOW to saturday night fever.

a givenness not to fear beauty

Sat, 04 Feb 2012 18:11:00 -0700

What do I have a GIVENNESS NOW to?

Not to fear beauty.

“A woodpecker with a cry as sharp as a dagger terrifies the lesser birds, while he is himself benevolent and harmless.

The beautiful kingfisher in dazzling flight rattles like a bird of ill omen.

So we fear beauty.” Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander

…will I behold what I cannot hold?

I have a GIVENNESS NOW not to fear beauty.

a givenness to an incurable wound

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 19:41:10 -0700

What do I have a GIVENNESS NOW to?

An incurable wound.

“In order to arrive at the second half of life, one has to realize there is an incurable wound at the heart of everything.

Much of the conflict from the age of twenty-five to sixty-five is just trying to figure this out and then to truly accept it.

A Swiss theologian, Hans Urs Von Balthasar (1905-1988), said toward the end of his life: “All great thought springs from a conflict between two eventual insights: 1) The wound which we find at the heart of everything is finally incurable. 2) Yet we are necessarily and still driven to try.” (Think about that for an hour or so!)

Our largely unsuccessful efforts of the first half of life are themselves the training ground for all virtue and growth in holiness.

This “wound at the heart of life” shows itself in many ways, but your holding and “suffering” of this tragic wound, your persistent but failed attempts to heal it, your final surrender to it, will ironically make you into a wise and holy person.

It will make you patient, loving, hopeful, expansive, faithful, and compassionate — which is precisely the second half of life wisdom.”

Richard Rohr, Loving the Two Halves of Life: The Further Journey

…removing the band-aid.

I have a GIVENNESS NOW to an incurable wound.