Quotes | most hopeful

Feb 26 2012

with your interfering and your promises

Unlike the other gods
you are not satisfied with holocausts
and the sweet smell of smoke.
Unlike the other gods
you do not let us be
but come and pitch your tent
with ours and sniff out
all we do. You are not satisfied
to have us satisfied,
to leave well enough alone.

No, you sent me out,
an old man, with your interfering
and your promises, and all your countings
of the stars and my son’s son’s sons.
You might have picked a better man
to fall before the terror of great darkness.
Twice, fear for my life
passed my wife off as sister.
Why not, with her barren womb?

And then a son. In my old age a son.
You do nothing like the other gods
and so I know you are my God
and my son’s God and my son’s sons’.
I do not understand the stars
uncountable in number;
nor do I understand you.

I wept. And when,
after all, you did not accept my sacrifice,
the ram brought laughter home.

+ “Abraham: With Laughter” from Madeleine L’Engle’s The Ordering of Love

djordan
Pine Tree

Tagged abraham, count the stars, cry like a bell, laughing, laughter, Madeleine L'Engle, other gods, quote, stars, the ordering of love, uniqueness, unlike

Feb 13 2012

7 Comments

from the archives, learning to live, Prayers, Quotes

catch us up into reality

I was cleaning up around the house and found journal pages from Cape Town this past summer. Here is an entry from June 10, 2011, written while sitting in a restaurant at the V&A Waterfront. The picture is from the same restaurant, different trip. Thanks again to the friends who welcome me at the table.

***

Catch us up this day into the reality
of your good purpose, that by the time we leave
each other we will know – yet again – that your
mercy and justice and love outrun all the needs of the world …

… keep us simple and on task, and we will
praise you by our glad obedience.

+ Brueggeman, from “Prayer of the Church”

We fear that we’ve lost our minds, and perhaps we have.

Perhaps we’ve lost our minds and our life.

Life with.
Life by community.
Life plural.

Broken by the reality of our own struggle against status, power, privilege.

Broken by the reality of our own struggle against dulling.

Broken by the reality of what we see for only a moment when we dare open our eyes
Those things we see in others and then become terrified to see in ourselves

Greed. Pride. Injustice. Dishonesty. Piety. Blindness. Insecurity.
Relentless protection of the status quo under the guise of protecting the church, the faith.
Our arrogance.

And with
by community
plural
in the harsh reality of the present, you call us to join one another

At the table.

And slowly, as our broken pieces sit together
around warm food made by broken hands
around dim candlelight that already threatens darkness
around the giggles of children, around their questions

we begin to become whole.
Only in the context of others.

Truthfully
Honestly
Humbly

Broken hands. Threatening Darkness. Giggles and Questions.

Together.

At the table.
And for the first time in a long time
Something tells the truth, and we are made new.

djordan
V&A Waterfront
Cape Town, SA

Tagged all things new, at the table, be made new, brueggeman, cape town, communitas, community, quote, table, together, v&A waterfront

Jan 18 2012

2 Comments

Quotes

when you remember

Tagged donald jordan, frederick buechner, grief, leaving a mark, loss, make a mark, prayer, remember, remembering

Jan 14 2012

6 Comments

learning to live, Quotes

no time to grab a camera

There’s this clunky urge in me to always take a picture.

To try to capture a moment so that I can remember the smells and the moods and the words and the looks tied to it.

I’ve done it before in all kinds of places and at all kinds of times. The moment seems so absolutely perfect that I start fumbling through pockets or bags to find the right camera with the right setting at the right time in the right light to get it captured––stored––for later use.

It feels clunky. Like I’m crashing through the moment with some back-to-the-future kind of gear in an effort to trap its perfect mystery.

So that I can pull some more of the energy from it later on. Or the smell. Or the mood. Or the words and the looks.

But they were tied to the moment. And as the moment goes, so they go.

Quickly.

And then I find myself, after the moment…maybe days or weeks or years…wishing I had stopped my clunky fumble for a camera to capture something fleeting, but rather sat and enjoyed its fleeting nature when I realized the kind of moment I was in.

There’s a danger to trusting this kind of thin space, the moments when time and heaven and earth not so much collide together, but rather when our eyes suddenly notice that they’ve always been dancing together. In trusting the thin space, we have to only take from it what it offers us.

We have to trust what it will leave in us.

What it will do to us.

What it speaks to of a kingdom future for us.

There’s no trapping it for more of anything.

It comes.

And it goes.

A tide.

I had one of those moments last night: Sitting in the back yard eating a community-made meal, catching up over good wine with stellar people. I fought the grab-my-camera urge for about thirty minutes, and then the freedom of trusting the thin space found me.

I had one of those moments a week ago: Sitting on the stairs in a home eating a community-made meal, catching up over good wine with stellar people.

There are no pictures to take me back to either.

But both moments are faithful in what they have graciously offered to leave behind for me.

And I will trust that it was worth not grabbing the camera.

djordan
Cape Town