Posts tagged October 2011
what is the "givenness" of your life?
a givenness to the girth of mirth
What do I have a GIVENNESS NOW to?
The girth of mirth.
Melancholy should be an innocent interlude, a tender and fugitive frame of mind; praise should be the permanent pulsation of the soul. Pessimism is at best an emotional half-holiday; joy is the uproarious labour by which all things live.
Joy ought to be expansive; but for the agnostic it must be contracted, it must cling to one corner of the world. Grief ought to be a concentration; but for the agnostic its desolation is spread through an unthinkable eternity.
We are perhaps permitted tragedy as a sort of merciful comedy: because the frantic energy of divine things would knock us down like a drunken farce. We can take our own tears more lightly than we could take the tremendous levities of the angels. So we sit perhaps in a starry chamber of silence, while the laughter of the heavens is too loud for us to hear.
Joy, which was the small publicity of the pagan, is the gigantic secret of the Christian.
And as I close this chaotic volume I open again the strange small book from which all Christianity came; and I am again haunted by a kind of confirmation. The tremendous figure which fills the Gospels towers in this respect, as in every other, above all the thinkers who ever thought themselves tall.
His pathos was natural, almost casual.
The stoics, ancient and modern, were proud of concealing their tears. He never concealed His tears; He showed them plainly on His open face at any daily sight, such as the far sight of His native city.
Yet He concealed something.
Solemn supermen and imperial diplomatists are proud of restraining their anger.
He never restrained His anger.
He flung furniture down the front steps of the temple, and asked men how they expected to escape the damnation of Hell.
Yet He restrained something.
I say it with reverence; there was in that shattering personality a thread that must be called shyness.
There was something that He hid from all men when He went up a mountain to pray. There was something that He covered constantly by abrupt silence or impetuous isolation.
There was some one thing that was too great for God to show us when He walked upon our earth; and I have sometimes fancied that it was His mirth.” G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
…the laughter of heaven is too loud for us to hear.
I have a GIVENNESS NOW to the girth of mirth.
a givenness to wear a crisp white shirt
What do I have a GIVENNESS NOW to?
Wear a crisp white shirt.
“…given fine, pure white linen to wear.” Revelation 19:8
Revealing ‘Revelation’?
…this fresh feeling.
I have a GIVENNESS NOW to wear a crisp white shirt.
a givenness to sitting here in the straw
What do I have a GIVENNESS NOW to?
Sitting here in the straw.
“The grip the present has on me.
That is the one things that has grown most noticeably in the spiritual life - nothing much else has.
The rest dims as it should.
I am getting older.
The reality of now - the unreality of the rest.
The unreality of ideas and explanations and formulas.
I am.
The unreality of all the rest.
The pigs shriek. Butterflies dance together against the blue sky at the end of the woodshed. The buzz saw stands outside there, half covered with dirty and tattered canvas. The trees are fresh and green in the sun (more rain yesterday). Small clouds, inexpressibly beautiful and silent and eloquent, over the silent woodlands.
What a celebration of light, quietness, and glory!
This is my feast sitting here in the straw!” Thomas Merton, August 25, 1958, Journal III, 214-15
…the unreality of all the rest.
I have a GIVENNESS NOW to sitting here in the straw.
a givenness to constellations within
What do I have a GIVENNESS NOW to?
Constellations within.
“The human being down here in the darkness of his fleshly state is as mysterious as the saints in heaven in the light of their glory.
There are in him inexhaustible treasures, constellations without end of sweetness and beauty which ask to be recognized and which usually escape completely the futility of our regard.
Love brings a remedy for that.
One must vanquish this futility and undertake seriously to recognize the innumerable universes that one’s fellow being carries within him.
This is the business of contemplative love and the sweetness of its regard.” Jaques Maritain, December, 1964
“Star light, star bright, the first star I see tonight…”
I have a GIVENNESS NOW to constellations within.
a givenness to a second self
What do I have a GIVENNESS NOW to?
A second self.
“So every sister will have a ‘second self’, marked by the emblem S.S.M.C., who prays and suffers for her; and each one will derive new strength from this support, and their lives will be like a burning light which will consume itself for souls.
Any suffering being who wishes to be a co-worker of the Missionaries of Charity is welcome; these are true bearers of God’s love.”
Letter from Mother Theresa of Calcutta, 13th January, 1953
…any suffering being.
I have a GIVENNESS NOW to a second self.
a givenness to the occupied
What do I have a GIVENNESS NOW to?
The occupied.
“Occupy your minds with good thoughts, or the enemy will fill them with bad ones.
Unoccupied, they cannot be.” St. Thomas More
Francis Johnston, Voice of the Saints
…minding my mind.
I have a GIVENNESS NOW to the occupied.
a givenness to the pain and not the prune
What do I have a GIVENNESS NOW to?
The pain and not the prune.
“The worst harm you do yourself is if you cease to love, because you might be hurt or you have been hurt.
You shrivel up like an old prune.
Don’t do that.
Be willing to hurt.
The pain of trying to keep yourself from being vulnerable is much greater than the pain of loving and losing.
Remember that.” Mother Angelica Live, EWTN - November 9, 1993
…much greater than the pain of loving and losing.
I have a GIVENNESS NOW to the pain and not the prune.
a givenness to this complete cleansing
What do I have a GIVENNESS NOW to?
This complete cleansing.
“By hell, it is misery enough to see them in their mortal days taking off dirtied and uncomfortable clothes and splashing in hot water and giving little grunts of pleasure - stretching their eased limbs.
What then of this final stripping, this complete cleansing?”
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
What then of this?
…splash.
I have a GIVENNESS NOW to this complete cleansing.
a givenness to the tug of femininity
What do I have a GIVENNESS NOW to?
The tug of femininity.
“You see girls doing a lot of tugging.
They want to be covered, but they are not having the clothes cooperate.
The girls want to look feminine and they want to look pretty, but the only look the stores offer is sexy.” Dawn Eden, The Thrill of the Chaste
…are you a “cover” girl?
I have a GIVENNESS NOW to the tug of femininity.
a givenness to continue to play billiards
What do I have a GIVENNESS NOW to?
Continue to play billiards.
“Remember St. Aloysius who said he would continue to play billiards even if he knew he was going to die?
Do you play well? Sleep well? Eat well?
These are duties.
Nothing is small for God.” Mother Theresa of Calcutta, The Love of Christ
…even if he knew.
I have a GIVENNESS NOW to continue to play billiards.
