Christmas - Enriched by His Poverty

You know the grace of our Lord Jesus, how that though He was rich,
yet for our sakes He became poor - that we through His poverty
might become rich. -- St. Paul

The poet, Gerard Manley Hopkins puts it like this -
     Across my foundering deck shone
     A beacon, an eternal beam . . .

     In a flash, at a trumpet crash,
     I am all at once what Christ is,
    Since He was what I am . . .

The Paradox of Guidance

From an interview with Dallas Willard -

Comment: In your book (Hearing God) you talk about the paradox of guidance. What are the elements of that paradox?

Willard: Well, the paradox has to do with the fact that on the one hand we talk so much about God's guidance, and we especially want our leaders to be guided by God. Yet, when it comes down to us, we do the humble-mumble and say, "Well, you know, not me. I'm not big enough, or important enough for God to bother with."

It's that combination: on the one hand we expect guidance, and we desperately need it, but on the other hand we're not prepared to receive it and we think it wouldn't really be appropriate. You have to be "kicked upstairs" to become a so-called "full-time Christian worker" for it to be appropriate.

Generally people can't deal with this at all. Christians can't. There's that little joke about: "When we speak to God we call it prayer, and when he speaks to us we call it schizophrenia." It's a curious ambivalence that's driven by our deep need as finite human beings.

Comment: It's almost like that story about Joan of Arc. When her accusers said, "Those voices you hear, they're just your imagination," she answered, "Yes. I know. That's how God speaks to me."

Willard:That's a very good line. It's by using our natural faculties in a certain way that God speaks to us. In a way, the paradox is the same as in the Incarnation - it's the union of God with human beings in a relationship. The Incarnation (God taking on full humanity in Jesus Christ) is much more than that, but it is that.
 

Hymns in the Dark

When the darkness closes in, Lord
Still I will say...
Blessed be the name of the Lord
Blessed be your name
Blessed be the name of the Lord
Blessed be your glorious name

Blessed be your name
When the sun's shining down on me
When the world's all as it should be
Blessed be your name

Blessed be your name
On the road marked with suffering
Though there's pain in the offering
Blessed be your name

Every blessing you pour out,
I turn back to praise
When the darkness closes in, Lord
Still I will say...
Blessed be the name of the Lord
Blessed be your name
Blessed be the name of the Lord
Blessed be your glorious name

You give and take away
You give and take away
My heart will choose to stay
Well, blessed be your name
 

Winter Solstice - Hope in the Darkest Day

Tomorrow is the shortest day of the year. It's not snowy yet, but it's coming . . .

In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow,
In the bleak midwinter, long ago.

Our God, Heaven cannot hold Him, nor earth sustain;
Heaven and earth shall flee away when He comes to reign.
In the bleak midwinter a stable place sufficed
The Lord God Almighty, Jesus Christ.

Enough for Him, Whom cherubim, worship night and day,
Breastful of milk, and a mangerful of hay;
Enough for Him, Whom angels fall before,
The ox and ass and camel which adore.

What can I give Him, poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb;
If I were a Wise Man, I would do my part;
Yet what I can I give Him: give my heart.

  Christina Rossetti, 1872

Stuck

Stuck In a Moment You Can't Get Out Of

Bono's songs sometimes resonate and hurt, teach and heal - like a Psalm - 
so I meditate . . .

From the album: All That You Can't Leave Behind

I'm not afraid of anything in this world
There's nothing you can throw at me that I haven't already heard
I'm just trying to find a decent melody
A song that I can sing in my own company

I never thought you were a fool
But darling, look at you
You gotta stand up straight, carry your own weight
These tears are going nowhere, baby

You've got to get yourself together
You've got stuck in a moment and now you can't get out of it
Don't say that later will be better now you're stuck in a moment
And you can't get out of it

I will not forsake, the colors that you bring
But the nights you filled with fireworks
They left you with nothing
I am still enchanted by the light you brought to me
I listen through your ears, and through your eyes I can see

And you are such a fool
To worry like you do
I know it's tough, and you can never get enough
Of what you don't really need now ... my oh my

You've got to get yourself together
You've got stuck in a moment and you can't get out of it
Oh love look at you now
You've got yourself stuck in a moment and you can't get out of it

I was unconscious, half asleep
The water is warm till you discover how deep
It wasn't jumping for me it was a fall
It's a long way down to nothing at all

You've got to get yourself together
You've got stuck in a moment and you can't get out of it
Don't say that later will be better now
You're stuck in a moment and you can't get out of it

And if the night runs over
And if the day won't last
And if our way should falter
Along the stony pass

And if the night runs over
And if the day won't last
And if your way should falter
Along the stony pass

It's just a moment
This time will pass



 

Ah, nuts !

So I listen to the helpful Toshiba tech person online who
suggests he's going to help me significantly with my
problem (like, my Qosmio laptop won't turn on). And so
a Purolator box appears the next day, which I dutifully
fill with said laptop and send away.
 
Two weeks later, today, my computer returns. The CPU 
has been replaced and everything's been updated. Unfortunately
that includes my hard-drive and everything on it. 

Lost. Gone, c'est tout. No warning, no attempt to backup my
drive so as to retrieve now irretrievable files, trip to Iona, to
Turkey, to weddings, and musings, office work, website data
genealogical research information - gone.

Sure, I've got backups, in parts - bits and pieces - in varying
locales, but right now I don't even know what I don't have
anymore.

I'm finding it really difficult this evening to be merely civil.
Perhaps I'll feel better in the morning? . . . . or maybe not.