May this year bring you the great discomfort expressed in this prayer:
May God bless you with discomfortAt easy answers, half-truths, and superficial relationshipsSo that you may live deep within your heart.
May God bless you with angerAt injustice, oppression and exploitation of peopleSo that you may work for justice, freedom and peace.
May God bless you with tearsTo shed for those who suffer pain, rejection, hunger, and warSo that you may reach out your hand to comfort themAnd turn their pain into joy.
And may God bless you with enough foolishnessTo believe that you can make a difference in the world,So that you can do what others claim cannot be doneTo bring justice and kindness to all our children and the poor.
**
I had something more to say; something about our apetites for the new, the shiny, the conspicuous. Something about those apetites preventing us within the Church from lives of self-denial and sacrifice, about our apetites being the very thing that gives life to the evil we all so bemoan, how I wonder if Jesus was saying something deeply profound when He taught about the love of money. But I'm so weary of the preaching, of calling people to embrace something whole-heartedly and without compromise when I grasp the same thing haltingly and with failing trepidation. I'm running out of words and inclined within my spirit to beleive that it's time to shut up and show up.
May God bless you with discomfortAt easy answers, half-truths, and superficial relationshipsSo that you may live deep within your heart.
May God bless you with angerAt injustice, oppression and exploitation of peopleSo that you may work for justice, freedom and peace.
May God bless you with tearsTo shed for those who suffer pain, rejection, hunger, and warSo that you may reach out your hand to comfort themAnd turn their pain into joy.
And may God bless you with enough foolishnessTo believe that you can make a difference in the world,So that you can do what others claim cannot be doneTo bring justice and kindness to all our children and the poor.
**
I had something more to say; something about our apetites for the new, the shiny, the conspicuous. Something about those apetites preventing us within the Church from lives of self-denial and sacrifice, about our apetites being the very thing that gives life to the evil we all so bemoan, how I wonder if Jesus was saying something deeply profound when He taught about the love of money. But I'm so weary of the preaching, of calling people to embrace something whole-heartedly and without compromise when I grasp the same thing haltingly and with failing trepidation. I'm running out of words and inclined within my spirit to beleive that it's time to shut up and show up.
I want 2007 to be a year of much less so it can be a year of much more; a year letting the "good" pass me by so I'll have ready hands and hearts to grab hold of the "better" when it comes. A year of internal over external, kingdom values over the crappy substitutes and shoddy knock-offs. Because, simply, there must be more.
**Go to www.pixelatedimage.com
if you'd like to check out his photography blog..
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