Reinstitution

What, really, is upward mobility? What is progress?

Asking a third time whether Peter loved him truly, Jesus commissions his wayward lamb to be a shepherd. Truly, truly, he emphasized. I say to you, when you were young, you used to dress yourself and walk wherever you wanted, but when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and another will dress you and carry you where you do not want to go.

Who was i listening to, then, when i believed that when i was young, I was completely dependent and inhibited, but with maturity would come independence, freedom and power of choice, and thus the right to forge my way...? That to the extent my leadership coerced complex casts and smoothed their settings, the confused and anxious would flock to me and there find transformation?

My desire to grow, serve, lead, was still a desire to control and influence.

Christ's vision of maturity, in contrast: The willing fortitude to be led to difficult, undesirable unknowns.

I write not of the psychologically impotent leadership that approves passive victimization, but of the great strength and rich poverty required to pick up the cross and follow him who emptied himself, who did not consider power the most essential tool in communicating the truth.

Naperville from Maundy Thursday to the first Wednesday of Eastertide was not an easy place. I did not run there by the strength of my heart's own two legs. My heart toward my own home is Jonah's toward the outsider. O, LORD, I do not want to know my poverty.

ἀγαπᾷς με πλέον τούτων;
ἀγαπᾷς με;
φιλεῖς με;

Follow Me.

Hosea 2.14-15

I will allure her and bring her into the wilderness
there I will give her her vineyards
and make the valley of trouble a door of hope.
and there she shall answer as in the days of her youth,
as at the time when she came out of the land of mitzrayim.

Forget you.

When anger rises, in my protection, tempting me to cut my losses over what was too good to be true... and say forget you to anybody whose love I trusted vainly,

Cee Lo Green / UCLA Awaken via Bommy Kim

Let me instead seek safety in Your wings, find shelter beneath unchanging eternal Love that is both too good and too true.

Let me weep with hope under the shadow of Your cross and there find
the freedom to forgive 70x7, strength to love long,
the willingness to give/receive man's imperfect love with
the grace to trust Your perfect love.

I am not forgotten, I'm always on Your mind.

Thank You for seeing me.

All-good gifts.

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? (CSL, A Grief Observed)

Teach me, Father

to accept all from your hand as good.

Perfect, even.

Teach me to give it all,

and re-receive Your gifts again

 from the nail-scarred hands of Christ.

For everything, and everyone

that You give and take away,

blessed be the name of the LORD.

Thank You, for I am not abandoned.

There in the wreckage.

how long you have traveled, in darkness weeping

no rest in language, no words to speak

from The Big Picture. Kensennuma, 2011 March.

but there in the wreckage, beneath bricks and bindings

Love has come, Love has come for you
// "10000 Angels," Sandra McCracken

The light of day does not discriminate.

Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,
so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven.
For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good,
and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.

For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have?

// Mt 5

Mt. Bethel, PA. 2011 April.

So let your light shine before all men.

O LORD,

be gracious to us; we wait for you.

Be our arm every morning,

our salvation in the time of trouble.

// Is 33

Fully known, fully loved.

For now we see dimly
but then face to face.
Now I know in part;
then I shall know fully,
even as I have been fully known.

// 1 Cor 13


hey little apple blossom
what seems to be the problem?