Dare To Embrace Wonder (Lenten post #3)

[izhilzha]

“Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language. Do not now look for the answers. They cannot now be given to you because you could not live them. It is a question of experiencing everything. At present you need to live the

Comments

[izhilzha]

You're welcome--it's not inadequate, it's a perfectly valid response. ;)

[rebelespresso]

Wow. This is the first time I think I've really understood why we are so similar in our spirits (if not always in our perspectives and walking things out). I too am a wrestling type. I need to push and pull and tug and explore and ask and seek and wonder... no wonder our spirits and journeys keep strangely intersecting and being parallel to each other even from across the world. Crazy. You're a wonderful friend, Sarah. And a wonderful person.

[izhilzha]

Yeah, it's kind of obvious once you see it, isn't it? :)

And maybe even our differences are as simple as you're right-brained (leaning strongly towards experience and creative colors and the messy glory of everything) and I'm left-brained (details, patterns, hows and whys and wherefores). We both wrestle, but we do it from different angles.

[scionofgrace]

Yes.

You've got a couple ideas in here that I must ruminate on further. Particularly the illusion that dark, twisted things are more "real" than good, right things. It's a very common illusion. I would love to come up with something that in some way properly expresses the fact that it is the good, right things that are more "real". Tragedy is horrible and painful and heartbreaking, but it is temporary. Joy is eternal.

[izhilzha]

Feel free to write more about that.

Although it isn't strictly tragedy, etc, that bothers me. It's the things that are twisted beyond even our understanding. Sorrow I get, and weariness, and pain. It's the selfish or deluded perversions of good things that I find it hard to get around. Because if those things can happen through other people and their actions, how can I ever trust that I won't accidentally cause something that horrible?

...I'm getting there. But it's taking longer than I wish it would. The world is very beautiful; I'm tired of not simply being able to shout for joy and go dancing into it every day. Although I do that far more often now than I did a year ago, so...

[scionofgrace]

Yeah, I see what you mean. (Sorry, I was running on about half a brain yesterday.)

Be patient with yourself! *g* Changing thoughts and perspectives takes time. As I am learning myself right now.

[izhilzha]

"Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart..."

[travels_in_time]

Write that book! Please? I need to read more stuff like this!

[izhilzha]

Well, maybe someday soon. I honestly don't know what I'd write about--I mean, I sort of have a vague idea where the next couple of posts may be going, but it's coming out of my own discoveries, finally able to put words to things I've been thinking about or learned over the past couple of years.

I'll take thematic/topical ideas though. :)

[travels_in_time]

Well, I'm fresh out of ideas. :) It's just that whenever you write something like this, it seems to be exactly what I need to read at the moment. And then I always want more!

[izhilzha]

That's really, really awesome to know! Pray for me? If I'm supposed to write a book, God will have to help me out with the focus, because I have to have that. :)

[knight_random]

What a beautiful, thoughtful post. I identify with a lot of what you've written. I haven't been able to properly fall in love yet--something I get angry at God for sometimes-- and I'm not sure I'm out of the darkness. But I try to maintain a spirit of hope at all times. One of the things that I've come to realize this Lent is how little I actually put God first. That almost all of the things I worry about wouldn't matter to someone who actually loved God above all things. I can't be in that state at all times yet, but I can sort of imagine what it's like to

[izhilzha]

I don't think you have to fall in love--that's just one of the ways God can work some of this in a person. :) I hope you get to, though, because I wasn't expecting it, and it's kind of amazing.

One of the things that I've come to realize this Lent is how little I actually put God first. That almost all of the things I worry about wouldn't matter to someone who actually loved God above all things.The flip side of that is that He actually cares about those things because they matter to you. Perhaps when you put Him first more, His ridiculous care will become something more tangible in your life! (For me, it was when I stopped trying that He told me how proud He was of me--that I didn't have to work at it to be His or make Him happy

[knight_random]

Speaking of Julian of Norwich, this quote of hers really struck me, and seemed to have a certain amount of relevance to the transition from Ten to Eleven:

"It is know that afor miracles comen sorrow and anguish and tribulation. And that is that we showld know our own febilnes and our myschevis that we arn fallen in by synne to meken us and maken us to dreden God, cryen for helpe and grace. Myracles commen after that, and that of hey might, wisdam, and goodness of God shewand His vertue and the joyes of Hevyn so as it may be in this passand life; and that for to strength our feith and encrysen our hope in charite; wherefor it pleaseth him to be knowen and worshippid in miracles. Than menyth He thus: He wil that we be not born overlow for sorrow and tempests that fallen to us, for it hath ever so been aforn myracle comyng."