Archive for the ‘Christian’ Category
Hope Is The Cousin To Grief
“Hope is not logical. It always comes as a surprise, just when you think all hope is lost. Hope is the cousin to grief, and both take time: you can’t short-circuit grief, or emptiness, and you can’t patch it up with your bicycle tire tube kit. You have to take the next right action. Jesus would pray on the mountain, or hang out with the poor or imprisoned, or – as I’ll get to in a moment – start doodling in the sand.”
Anne Lamott in “Plan B: More Thoughts On Faith”
Resentment
“I’ve known for years that resentments don’t hurt the person we resent, but they do hurt and even sometimes kill us… unfortunately, change and forgiveness don’t come easily for me, but any willingness to let go inevitably comes from pain; and the desire to change changes you, and jiggles the spirit, gets to it somehow, to the deepest, hardest, most ruined parts. And then Spirit expands, because that is true in nature, and it drags along the body, and finally, the mind.”
Anne Lamott in “Plan B: Further Thougths On Faith”
Rubble and Friendships
“Rubble is the ground upon which our deepest friendships are built.”
Anne Lamott in “Plan B: Further Thoughts On Faith”
What A Mess We Are
“What a mess we are, I thought. But this is usually where any hope of improvement begins, acknowledging the mess. When I am well, I know not to mess with mess right away; I try to let silence and time work their magic. You don’t get far without grinding your teeth and heavy breathing. You noodle around, to warm up, and you meander, to find out if there are any improvisations that call to you.”
Anne Lamott in “Plan B: More Thoughts On Faith”
Stumbling Into God
How can we sum this up? All those people who didn’t seem interested in what God was doing actually embraced what God was doing as he straightened out their lives. And Israel, who seemed so interested in reading and talking about what God was doing, missed it. How could they miss it? Because instead of trusting God, they took over. They were absorbed in what they themselves were doing. They were so absorbed in their “God projects” that they didn’t notice God right in front of them, like a huge rock in the middle of the road. And so they stumbled into him and went sprawling.
Romans 9:30-33 in The Message
Faith, Doubt and Certainty
“I have a lot of faith. But I am also afraid a lot, and have no real certrainty about anything. I remembered something Father Tom had told me – that the opposite of faith is doubt, but certainty. Certainty is missing the point entirely. Faith includes noticing the mess, the emptiness and discomfort, and letting it be there until some light returns. Faith also means reaching deeply within, for the sense one was born with, the sense, for example, to go for a walk.”
Anne Lamott in “Plan B: Further Thoughts On Faith”
