Bellflower
“When you cannot pray as you would, pray as you can.”
Edward Meyrick Goulburn, 1818-1897
Dean of Norwich
Monthly Archives: September 2007
Presence
“Vocatus atque non vocatus, Deus aderit.”
(Bidden or unbidden, God is here.)
Carl Jung, 1875-1961
Swiss psychiatrist
Key Moments
“Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery that it is.
In the boredom and pain of it no less than in the excitement and gladness:
touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it because
in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace.”
Frederick Buechner, 1926-
Presbyterian minister and American author
Sown Into Time
“It is the best joke there is, that we are here, and fools — that we are sown into time
like so much corn, that we are souls sprinkled at random like salt into time
and dissolved here, spread into matter, connected by cells right down to our feet,
and those feet likely to fell us over a tree root or jam us on a stone.
The joke part is that we forget it.
Give the mind two seconds alone and it thinks it’s Pythagoras.
We wake up a hundred times a day and laugh.”
Annie Dillard, 1945-
“Holy the Firm”
Pulitzer Prize winning American author
Something to Say
Looking towards Johnson City from Horseback Ridge
“I write because I want to tell something that makes me glad and strong.
I want to say it. Things come to me in gleams and flashes, sometimes in
words themselves, and I want to weave them into a melodious, harmonious whole.”
Andrew to Alexa in “The Elect Lady” (1888)
George MacDonald, 1824-1905
Keep Learning
Bass Lake, Blowing Rock, NC
“Ancora imparo”
(I am still learning)
Michelangelo (at age 87), 1475-1564
Italian Renaissance painter, sculptor, architect, poet, and engineer
Reserve
Bachelor Button
“One of the most attractive things about flowers
is their beautiful reserve.”
Henry David Thoreau, 1817-1862
American author, naturalist, philosopher
Best known for “Walden” and “Civil Disobedience”
Be Fruitful
Highbush Blueberry
“Every branch that does bear fruit,
He prunes so that it will be even more fruitful.”
Father Tim, Mitford Series
Failure
Spiderwort
“I haven’t failed, I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”
Thomas Edison, 1847-1931
American inventor and businessman
Thick of Life
Blue Hole, Carter County, TN
”Plunge boldly into the thick of life.”
Goethe, 1749-1832
One of the key figures of German literature
Thanks
Sunflower
“I can no answer make but thanks, and thanks, and ever thanks.”
Shakespeare, 1564-1616
English poet and playwright
Patience
Doe River near Roan Mountain State Park, TN
“Our real blessings often appear to us in the shape of pains,
losses and disappointments; but let us have patience and
we shall soon see them in their proper figures.”
Joseph Addison, 1672-1719
English poet and dramatist
Nuts & Bolts
“I am a Christian, not because someone explained the
nuts and bolts of Christianity to me, but because there were people
who were willing to be nuts and bolts.”
Rich Mullins, 1955-1997
Christian singer and songwriter
Empty or Full
“The Lord sends no one away empty except those who are full of themselves.”
Dwight L. Moody, 1837-1899
American evangelist and publisher
Evening Prayer
“Watch, O Lord, with those who wake, or watch, or weep tonight,
and give your angels and saints charge over those who sleep.
Tend your sick ones, O Lord Christ. Rest your weary ones,
Bless your dying ones. Soothe your suffering ones.
Pity your afflicted ones, shield your joyous ones.
And all for your love’s sake.”
St. Augustine, 354-430
Theologian and important figure in the development of Western Christianity
Watch
“You can observe a lot just by watching.”
Yogi Berra, 1925-
Former Major League Baseball Player & Manager
Sacrifice
“He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep
to gain what he cannot lose.”
Jim Elliot, 1927-1956
Christian missionary to Ecuador who, along with four others,
was killed while attempting to reach the Huaorani people
Sacred Idleness
Dennis Cove Falls, Carter County, TN
“Work is not always required…there is such a thing as sacred idleness,
the cultivation of which is now fearfully neglected.”
George MacDonald, 1824-1905
Scottish author, poet, minister
What if?
Beauty Spot sunset, Unicoi Co., TN
“Look at the many ‘if’ questions we raise:
What am I going to do if I do not find a spouse, a house, a job,
a friend, a benefactor? What am I going to do if they fire me,
if I get sick, if an accident happens, if I lose my friends,
if my marriage does not work out, if a war breaks out?
What if tomorrow the weather is bad, the buses are on strike,
or an earthquake happens? What if someone steals my money,
breaks into my house, rapes my daughter, or kills me?”
……
Jesus says simply, “Make your home in me, as I make mine in you.”
Henri Nouwen, 1932-1996
Dutch Catholic priest and writer
(as quoted by Brennan Manning)
Desire
“I never had any other desire so strong, and so like covetousness,
as that…I might be master at last of a small house and a large garden,
with very moderate conveniences joined to them,
and there dedicate the remainder of my life
to the culture of them and the study of nature.”
Abraham Cowley, 1618-1667
English poet
The Danger of Love
“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly
be wrung and possibly be broken…The only place outside of heaven where
you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.”
C. S. Lewis, 1898-1963
“The Four Loves”
Irish author and scholar
Perception
“Never confuse your perception of yourself
with the mystery that you really are accepted.”
Brennan Manning, Ragamuffin Gospel
author, priest, speaker
God’s Museum
“Art gallery? Who needs it? Look up at the swirling silver-lined clouds
in the magnificent blue sky or at the silently blazing stars at midnight.
How could indoor art be any more masterfully created
than God’s museum of nature?”
Grey Livingston
Weaknesses
“The love we are longing for is a love that loves
not in spite of but in light of our weaknesses and failures.”
James Bryan Smith
“Rich Mullins: An Arrow Pointing to Heaven”
All You Can
Bays Mountain, Kingsport, TN
“Do all the good you can
By all the means you can
In all the ways you can
In all the places you can
To all the people you can
As long as ever you can.”
John Wesley, 1703-1791
Anglican minister and Christian theologian
