paravanes:meditations

Joan Chittister;s book, Scarred by Struggle, Transformed by Hope is one of those books at the top of my "reading this changed me forever" list. Also on the list is Pilgrim's Progress , The Screwtape Letters , Hind's Feet on High Places , and In Search of Our Mother's Gardens . Chittister's book is on my list because she gives the best explanation I have read of why and how we should sometimes embrace powerlessness. Her discussion reminds me of St. Paul's assertion that "when I am weak, then I am strong." I appreciate how Chittister unpacks this by explaining how we can be freed when we submit to our powerlessness in certain situations and circumstances. She assumes we have done our spiritual "due diligence": prayed, listened, waited, self-examined, etc. At the end of this process, she confirms the wisdom of sometimes confessing we are powerless and that we must embrace that powerlessness to free ourselves to see things as they tru...

I'm still in a bit of a "post 9/11 10th anniversary remembrance funk", so I watched a DVD that came with a recently arrived book, What We Saw . In this film from a book that includes text and images from CBS News' coverage of the events of that day, I watched the managing partner of a financial firm tell how he survived losing over a third of his staff that day. He said was was determined to have "a high threshold for the small stuff." That's what enabled him to begin the process of healing and rebuilding his firm. I was a part of a conversation about what many "traditional, mainline denominational churches" are going to do in the next five to ten years regarding their declining (and aging) memberships. As a famed Russian revolutionary once wrote: " What is to be done? " One thing that must be done is for those who want to attract new members to lose their sense of neediness, the sense that "bodies at all cost" will sol...

A Prayer for Spiritual Surrender: If I am struggling to hold onto control of something apart from God's direction, what I am struggling to hold onto is exactly nothing . The world tells me that I should try to be "master of my fate and captain of my soul." I no longer want that responsibility. Jesus takes care of the mastering and captaining of my fate and my soul. There is no safer place. His word establishes and sustains everything . Thank you, Jesus. Amen.

Are you dealing with a difficult child? I'm not referring here to an adult child, but a minor, one for whom you are responsible. How does one make sense of what seems (at times) unreasoning, unpredictable, and unrelenting?  During a conversation with a parent struggling with a difficult teenage child, someone said the following: "We did everything they told us to do. From the time he was a baby, we took him to church and Sunday School, prayed with and for him, read the Bible to him, loved him, spent time with him, listened to him, lived faithfully and honestly before him, taught him right from wrong, tried to keep him away from negative influences among friends and in the media---yet he seems to have rejected everything we taught him and he seems determined to go in the other direction.  He's disobedient and disrespectful. We've tried counseling, family conferences, house rules, you name it. None of it works. We are at our wit's end!!! Now what do we do?...

This showed up in my Google Reader this morning, and I am grateful for it. These are the thoughts I wish to carry with me any time I am facing something which seems too large, too unjust, too unconquerable. Please read this wonderful sermon on how we should view 9/11 and "9/11 type" events in life. The sermon is (rightfully) under copyright, so here is the link to Bryan Burton's blog, Christ is Victorious .. Or, if you prefer Latin: Christus Victor.

9/11 Remebrance: Falling & Flying  Buildings falling,  people falling  planes falling.  What turns metal into fluid plasma?  What makes people jump from one hundred story high buildings?  What makes planes crash headfirst into a field and a Pentagon?  Metal flying,  arms and legs and heads and feet flying,  airplanes flying on missions of death.  When I watched "The Bodyguard",  Kevin Costner told Whitney Houston: If someone wants to trade their life for a kill,  you can't stop them.  Where were Kevin and Whitney when we needed them?  Lots of trades happened on 9/11.  A gang of killers un-stop-able.  Falling and flying and dying and crying.  Without warning and without reason,  people died, people cried.  People falling into grief,  into sadness, into madness.  Falling into war and more dying and more crying.  Falling i...