Posts tagged what

What do I have a GIVENNESS NOW to?

To mind what I say is mine.

“Even in the nursery a child can be taught to mean by ‘my teddy bear’ not the old imagined recipient of affection to whom it stands in a special relation (for that is what the Enemy will teach them to mean if we are not careful) but ‘the bear I can pull to pieces if I like.’

And at the other end of the scale, we have taught men to say ‘my God’ in a sense not really different from ‘my boots’, meaning ‘the God on whom I have a claim for my distinguished services and whom I exploit from the pulpit - the God I have done a corner in’.

And all the time the joke is that the word ‘Mine’ in its fully possessive sense cannot be uttered by a human being about anything.

In the long run either Our Father or the Enemy will say ‘Mine’ of each thing that exists, and specially of each man.

They will find out in the end, never fear, to whom their time, their souls, and their bodies really belong - certainly not to them, whatever happens.

At the present the Enemy says ‘Mine’ of everything on the pedantic, legalistic groung that he made it:  Our Father hopes in the end to say ‘Mine’ of all things on the more realistic and dynamic ground of conquest.”  C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

…’my’ boots and ‘my’ bear?

I have a GIVENNESS NOW to mind what I say is mine.

What do I have a GIVENNESS NOW to?

What shepherds found.

“The shepherds had found their shepherd.

And the thing they found was of a kind with the things they sought. 

The populace had been wrong in many things; but they had not been wrong in believing that holy things could have a habitation and that divinity need not disdain the limits of time and space.”  G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man

Of a kind with the things they sought?  Believing that holy things could have a habitation here?  Divinity need not disdain the limits of time and space?


…they had not been wrong.

I have a GIVENNESS NOW to what shepherds found.

What do I have a GIVENNESS NOW to?

Realizing what we are.


“As if the sorrows and stupidities of the world could overwhelm me now that I realize what we all are. 

I wish everyone could realize this.


But there is no way of telling people they are all walking around shining like the sun.”  Thomas Merton, March 19, 1958, Journal III, 181-183

…as if the sorrows and stupidities of the world could overwhelm me now.

I have a GIVENNESS NOW to realizing what we are.

What do I have a GIVENNESS NOW to?

Words the birds heard.


“Merton, a man of title, addressed a sermon to the birds saying, 

“Esteemed friends, birds of noble lineage, I have no message to you except this, “Be what you are: be birds!”  Thus you will be your own sermon to yourselves!”

But it is Merton the stranger who knew very well the full import of the birds’ gentle reprimand: 

“Even this is one sermon too many.”  


Or, perhaps more to the point, the validity of Mertons’ message rests in the hope that the words will point to that self that speaks in silence and hears only in silence its own secret name.”  James Finley, Merton’s Palace of Nowhere

My own sermon to myself?







…be what I am.

I have a GIVENNESS NOW to words the birds heard.

What do I have a GIVENNESS NOW to?

Receive what I am.

“Occasionally when Saint Augustine handed the Eucharist to a communicant, instead of saying, “the body of Christ,” he would say:

“Receive what you are.”


Augustine had perceived, for whatever reasons, that the words of consecration, “this is my body, this is my blood” are intended more to change the people present than to change the bread and wine.

For him it was more important that the people became the real presence of God, that they became food and drink for the world, than the bread and wine did.

That is, in fact, the real task of the Eucharist: to change people, to create out of us the real presence.”  Ronald Rolheiser, Forgotten Among the Lilies






…what “I am.”

I have a GIVENNESS NOW to receive what I am.