There was a time where the Arts were an integral part of a church's life, serving as an evangelical window to the Scriptures for those who could not read. For centuries, paintings and sculptures depicting biblical historical scenes have served to convey biblical truth in a way that could grab and inspire the soul more than words could.
The Arts also served to immortalize power and legacy for kings and nobles, recording, or more often than not, interpreting history in their favor. For a period of time in Church history, incredible fortunes were spent commissioning works that would bring glory and honor to God, and the Church. But the vanity reached church leaders as well, and it was not uncommon to see kings and nobles placed within the frame of biblical paintings, frescoes or sculpture, as a testimony to their own piety and dedication to the Church. Truth didn't matter so much as message anymore, and the artists became commodities used to create tools of propaganda for reputations.
True, many of them were well paid. But is this the bottom-line for an artist? Is not freedom to explore and render truth much more precious? And since when do revenues and originality have to be mutually exclusive?
An amazing flood turned the tide of the Arts around the time of the Italian Renaissance in the 14th Century. Not only were the scenarios of themes much more developed, but style also mattered greatly, and a rediscovery and introduction of the Ancient Greece and Rome's styles brought amazing richness, beauty and attention to details.
Not only have various artistic prodigies of that era given the world unique masterpieces, combining innovative techniques and divinely inspired themes, this fire of creative genius ignited beyond the Arts. "The Renaissance was a social, cultural and economic revolution, which began a period of scientific revolution, religious reform, artistic and architectural development, and philosophical openness, and marks the beginning of modern European history. It occurred at the end of the Middle Ages and the start of the Modern Age." (Source: http://www.wikipedia.com).
The Arts marked the end of an era, and the beginning of a new order of things. It brought with it the miracle of the printing press, the construction of architectural behemoths borrowing from the Greeks and the Romans, revolutionary declarations concerning astronomy and the placement of the planet earth in the universe, daring explorations toward new continent that had remained isolated from the European world. The world had become smaller, bigger and transformed all at once.
In the movement that followed the Italian Renaissance, many smaller renaissances occurred over the next few centuries, deconstructing the accepted worldviews and reconstructing new ones, developing societies where those new ways of seeing and being would fuse to create a most vibrant thrust forward into modernity.
I find fascinating how creativity seems to have been a birthing catalyst in so many other fields of life to start chipping away at their limitations. Walking with faith on the waters of the unknown, multitudes of students and teachers were sustained on their quest by the kno wledge that there existed unfathomable properties in Creation that could contribute to our lives as individuals and communities. Our social life and our worldviews would be forever altered. Not only altered, but the very process that leads us to embrace those worldviews would now be an empirical process helping us to make defining choices based on personal experience, restoring to us the power of free-will.
The implications of this reached the very core of God's relationship with each human being, as individuals would bear responsibility to choose their own destinies, and could not simply rely on monarchs or clergy for interpretation of eternal truths. With knowledge came freedom. With freedom came a new era of discovery. And the invention of the printing press during that time contributed to unleash a tsunami of reforms the likes of which the world had never known. Truth was accessible to anyone who could read.
This is now the 21st century. The world has shru nk again, grown larger and been transformed. Once again there is an old order that is pressing against our world's future, and in our exponentially fast-paced era, the future is now. The saying goes: "Success can take you where character cannot sustain you." Meaning: people can elevate you to a place of authority you have not earned by character or rightful promotion. And so when the true pressures and obligations of that position finally overcrowd the privileges that came with it, stealing your time and the energy it takes to continue to play the part, one has to rely solely on the true backbone of his or her genuine character. The real acid test of character is public power.
And so it is with our now post-modern world. For decades we have been groomed to think of the planet as a village, to care about others, to share in the protection, the development, the profits. And so it has been. Great minds migrated from the four corners of the world, and cross-pollinated the boo ming industrial landscape of the richest and most aggressively progressive countries. The opportunities and resources devoted to research and development would be rivaled only by the insatiable hunger for financial success and historical breakthroughs.
Miraculous advances have occurred, often challenging established social beliefs because of the need to redefine parameters allowing this new growth of human over nature and societies. Our Judeo-Christian beliefs in God and the value of human life has also been taken by storm as we strove to establish acceptability of the consequences our genius and successes have brought to us. The sharing of work and profits has not been righteously divided. The sanctity of life has remained a modern issue constantly redefined in light of discrimination and racial profiling, being constantly expanded to include genders and social groups.
The women's liberation movement, in the public arena, has been bringing things to the light as far as the treatment of women is concerned, both socially and privately. Yes, sexual exploitation of women has exploded to include children and teenagers, as well as the use of women's body to promote commercial products. Pornography is a multi-billion industry, crossing the line between humans and animals, and all sorts of perversions. International celebrity Ricky Martin in an interview about his involvement to help Tsunami victims of 2004, that an American man had been arrested for paying $25,000 to have sex with a 6 months old baby.
The more able we are to modify nature, and display ingenuity and creativity, the less we seem to be able to retain any moral compass to anchor our societies so that things don't get out of hand.
I am appalled and shocked at how many times a woman's behind or breast, alluring look or lewd pose are shown on TV, the newspapers an the internet. It is as if women were sending the message that they gave up the fight for decency. Is it all about running the chance of becoming rich by acting that way? Or is it because basic self-respect has been replaced by a message drilled for decades in the psyche of our societies, so much so that we have forgotten how to be free?
Throw-away generation. Children are groomed to become part of a world of consumption, where even our own bodies and sexuality is only but a product on the market. What does that make them? Usable and disposable. Who decided? We all contribute to the disease, as long as we keep silent, afraid to comment or have our own ideas, as long as we conveniently drift on the streams of western culture, leaving moral decision to politics.
Make no mistake: the power to socially enlist us into this kind of morass comes from artists. People in power simply hire them to create those tools they need to maintain and further a global sense of individualistic entitlement, which drains from us any vibrant sense of working today for our children 's legacy, beyond helping them become functional in this world, being conformed to any set model that would ensure their ability to pay the rent.
And so we find ourselves at the door of a new Renaissance. All the sociological elements are presents to unite us in clamoring for change, for integrity and clean environments, be they natural, social, familial, cultural, moral, sexual, or spiritual. The known world has been explored and vandalized. Art brings little novelty beside more visual effects-based commercials and movies, more sensual lines in vehicles and armaments, more deceiving beauty vying for our dollars, forcing us to accept violence and depravity as normal social landscape.
Sexual exploitation, blanket abortion, racism, religious degradation, poverty, cloning, euthanasia, political power, all these need artists to work for their cause. But there is another side, which also brings the power of the Arts in play to "do good." The Live 8 concert held sim ultaneously around the nations of the G8, during July 2005 is a good example of this. It could have worked to bring sensitivity to the political world. Bands played for free, people gathered, sang, danced and chanted so that our collective voices would be heard loud and clear, that extreme poverty is the crime of the century, that we don't need the money from the poor countries who have been stripped from colossal fortunes because of an exploitative industrialization on the part of the west, not caring for their population, using natural resources to build fortunes anywhere BUT in those countries and for those people. We never left the colonial era. Today's extreme poverty is a screaming proof of this.
During that Live 8 concert, promises were made, cameras flashed, headlines poured… Result?
Quote from the Make Poverty History website:
"The World Trade Organisation (WTO) Ministerial meeting in Hong Kong (13-18 December) could have been a turning point in making poverty history. Rich countries had the capability to correct some of the gross imbalances in world trade at a strategically important moment in the so-called Doha 'development round' of trade talks. But the potential for justice for the world's poorest people was squandered.
The WTO meeting failed to deliver the trade justice deal needed in 2005 to make poverty history. The intransigence of rich countries means the agreement reached is far from just for the poor of the world.
The positions taken by the major developed countries in Hong Kong favoured the rich over the interests of the world's poor.
Outrageously, the developed countries, particularly the European Union (EU) and the United States (US), tried to use the WTO meeting to aggressively push forward their agenda to open the markets in developing countries for the interests of their corporations. This shameful abuse of power showed no respect for poor countries' right to decid e their own trade policies to help lift millions of people out of poverty and stop environmental damage."
I believe that by enlisting artists to devote their gift to serving "corporate agendas", the powers of the world and the powers of the Church have endangered the "artistic species" which could bring power for change in our world. Alas, it seems we are satisfied with letting occult societies rule our lives and enslave us, as if humans were cattle sacrificed to the dark gods of annihilation.
I believe the only door left is the one that leads us to our knees, where we call on God to have mercy and bring freedom to our children, freedom from the existential egocentric selfishness that causes us to sleepwalk our way to being dominated, handing over our souls in exchange of a lie.
Pressing against our most optimistic hopes, a gloomy future is being revealed to us through the media: pandemics, terrorism, political corruption at every level of our s ociety, including our Justice departments and law enforcement, sexual grooming of our children turning them into sexual partners at an early age, compliant or not, spiritual abuse that also turns our children into literal bombs, etc.
I am not saying that our only hope lies with artists. But what I am saying is that artists have the power to inspire change in this world, from the inside out.
Our world is in the throws of birth pains. Governments are revealed to be as much dedicated to the quality of human life as corporations are dedicated to the well-being of the people they employ. Without Unions in many cases, low wages and poor working conditions wouldn't bother most of them. It is a world that is ruling the planet. It will not change simply because another political power, run like a corporation, takes over.
But artists, and even more so Christian artists, need to awake from the oppression of conformity that has stifled many a powerful voice. W e need to find our own voices alone with God, let His Spirit carry us alternatively into deserts and public places, to see and hear the human essence of being, with its raw emotions and conflicts, confusions and desires, baseness and grandeur. Record it, and present it, so that we can collectively start hearing again the true voice of God, recognize it, and walk in life according to His promptings.
We have climbed our own pedestals and lived as gods in our own images. But soon discovered that people wouldn't bring the sacrifices we required. While we throned, the world around us collapsed, and now we have to climb down or be thrown down, walk again or be dragged, awaken or be shaken, release our prisoners or be stripped down. In that place of involuntary humility, our hearts and minds will reconnect with the human family, and we will desire to be welcomed again at their table, speak on equal terms, telling the story of our own redemption, articulating the tragedy of unrep entant pride, of that unforgettable moment where our lives are slammed on the anvil of destiny.
Christian artists hold a key, a very precious one, a sacred one. As the Levites of old had bells around the hem of their robe to alert people that they were still alive in the Holy of Holies, so we need our lives to ring out the message that we are still alive as we minister before the Lord in the calling of our giftings, that we are not simply ministering for the sake of traffic at the books and CDs tables. But that as priests and intercessors in the holy place of His eternal love, the human family be represented by us faithfully, and that we will go back and share His holiness and presence with all.
Only by grace are we saved. Only by grace do we stand. Only by grace are we gifted. Only by grace can we be freed to turn from ourselves toward the Source of our talents and become, in an act of loving abandonment, a lump of living clay He can shape to His liking, in s incere communion and obedience, our free will brilliantly redeemed through this act of surrendering embrace. After all, He is God, the Creator, the Divine Artist, Redeemer, and to Him is Authority, Power and Dominion.
A true Renaissance will transform this generation, and Christian artists will once again be at the center of it, not as hirelings for mere human agendas, but as piercing prophetic voices resounding in the desert of this hour, cutting through the chaotic cacophony of this world's agony as it is being slaughtered on the altars of the devil's slaves.
Let there be light!
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Soli Deo Gloria...
Andre Lefebvre
=-------=-------=0=-------=-------=
www.soulcanvas.com
www.soaking.net
www.propheticunderground.com
=-------=-------=0=-------=-------=
Tuesday, February 28, 2006
Saturday, February 25, 2006
Embracing The Desert's Aftermath
February 25th, 2006
You know how it can be for some of us, when we go through our old boxes or back-up CDs and discover stuff written some time ago... Tonight it happened to me, and I wanted to share this, written 5 years ago. How clearly we see the truth at the time, but how hard it is to bask in its revelatory essence, to be completely present in the present moment (eternity), because the incarnational experience of prophetic sight requires the journey to be somewhat complete or well underway, otherwise we don't really have the language to decode what we're seeing so clearly...
Thought it might be an encouragement for someone else... our prayers can be so revelatory.
Here goes:
Embracing The Desert Again
Oct 28, 2001
Never really wanted to think about it this way. I had had my share of struggles and loss in life. Wasn’t it time to bear some “destiny” fruit? To prove to myself and others close to me that I was not a failure? To display something of the grace of God at work in my life through daily engaging in works of Art that would touch others and allow me to earn a living?
So I thought. The result, after years of fighting against shadows in and out of myself, was seemingly disastrous. I was soon to turn forty-five years old, and still needed to walk through yet another season of brokenness. Well, I should say “embrace” the journey I had gone through instead of calling it failure. To see all of these years come to nothing of what I expected my life to be, when comparing to others, was quite a mountain before me. And I suspected it was a judgment against who I was, in fact, against my very existence.
I have not embraced the heart of it all: the motives of the heart. What the spirit within reaches for, out of an certain appetite, speaks of the affections of the heart. And the lies it believes. Thus, in all the gruesomeness of the desert season, still one thing remains: God rules. And the motivations of His heart are pure love. Hard to fathom and eagerly accept…
Hence, the desert. My thirst is not satisfied, and everything around amounts to temporary sustenance, crumbling like sand castles in the wind. Nothing I build succeeds to create a source of provision. I cannot prove I am someone because of what I have to “show for it”. Somehow I think I should be thankful to God for the pruning, revealing the misplaced affections and pointing me to Him as my source of identity. At times, I touch that place and bask in a peace beyond what I’ve ever known… Then it is challenged again by thoughts or events, and I tumble down into despair and rage, downplaying the importance and genuineness of my first experience of peace, doubting my very ability to truly walk in that everlasting grace.
But the desert… it is here, it feels like a life-size rugged cross slapped on my whole being. It also felt like the sum of my emotional turmoil, although real and painful, was based on something that carried a faulty portraying of truth. What I would call destiny, identity, my place in this world, and the agony of running out of time and energy to embrace the road again, all ganged up to become a burden I could not carry anymore, sinking in the sand, orphaned from my human dream of proving I had value through my giftings, talents, creativity, and my hopes and visions for a better world.
But I am not what I can do. I am what I am. It’s as if God chased my identity into the desert where it could hide no more its complex web of lies pulling me in constant vanity and pursuit of the wind disguised as “becoming who God intended me to be.” The desert: only two things can happen there: life or death. Survival based on surrendering, contentment and long-suffering, or survival based on scheming to never be caught there again in a state of helplessness and dependence.
I tried both ways. Today, I have to look and see where this has taken me. Letting go of the need to prove I was not a failure, that I am leaving something behind that’s of worth, eating of the fruit of my labor and blessing others through it. Not easy to read about other artists and their body of work. Comparison, Jealously, Bitterness, Anger, Rage, Despair, Isolation. I cannot continue this way. I want to see pass that, walk into the place where God is found to embrace those who embrace the cross of the desert.
There is nothing else left. I am thankful I can at least know there is hope now. I can choose to embrace the desert God is keeping me in till I can see my heart and His as well. I also choose to embrace the cross where the sum of all my dreams and pretenses are hung to die. Those dreams of riches and fame that seem to promise stability and the freedom to indulge in costly experiences of travel, extravagances and off-the-wall artistic explorations.
I am Andre, broke and broken in this desert of mine, and I call to my Creator to sustain and guide me, so that the chisel of His love remove the vanity born of my quest to sedate and remedy the hurt of my own incompleteness.
Lord, I embrace the desert, with the faith I have in your sanity and utterly extravagant love for me. Let me know that I am known, and reveal to me that one that I am, in You, and let peace flow like a river and my sonship become the strength of my life, the cornerstone of my identity. Amen.
-------
Five Years Later
Now, there is a time where the Lord leads us out of the desert, back into community in a new way, and that is now the season we are entering. Five years ago, I could not have imagine how things would turn out, but it's all good. We've are stepping through a new portal this year, crossing a threshold, and if what we know of the Lord is any indication, we know for sure that He is also releasing others from their own deserts, and connecting us all together one way or another.
And this present journey entails crossing a zone standing between the desert and the promise land. In that place, we receive new orders, new elements of vision, new companions, and we are putting into practice the lessons learned at such a high price... God sends us in His vineyard to tend it, not get drunk from it. It is a trek that requires consecration and dedication, in a very simple and truthful way. No hype here, only reality. Purpose. Co-labouring with God. Maybe publicly crucified. But through it all, as a friend of mine says: "keep your heart sweet."
And so here it is: 2006, the year of fulfillment of many visions that have been, for many, in gestation for about 20 years... what an exciting time to be alive, as we see the world around us shifting in its allegeances, we are still of a celestial kingdom, infusing God's message in the flesh of society through incarnated love. Out from the desert, into the Jordan, from the river into the desert, from the desert into newness of life, from newness of life to sacrifice, from sacrifice into obedience, from obedience to joy... in short, from the cross to the throne, but not as the world would define 'throne,' rather, as God sees it: Christ's eternal joy in fellowship.
See you soon! May you find your way to the starting blocks of the desert's edge, and be catapulted from there into a whole new race. It may be closer than you think...
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Soli Deo Gloria...
Andre Lefebvre
=-------=-------=0=-------=-------=
www.soulcanvas.com
www.soaking.net
www.propheticunderground.com
=-------=-------=0=-------=-------=
You know how it can be for some of us, when we go through our old boxes or back-up CDs and discover stuff written some time ago... Tonight it happened to me, and I wanted to share this, written 5 years ago. How clearly we see the truth at the time, but how hard it is to bask in its revelatory essence, to be completely present in the present moment (eternity), because the incarnational experience of prophetic sight requires the journey to be somewhat complete or well underway, otherwise we don't really have the language to decode what we're seeing so clearly...
Thought it might be an encouragement for someone else... our prayers can be so revelatory.
Here goes:
Embracing The Desert Again
Oct 28, 2001
Never really wanted to think about it this way. I had had my share of struggles and loss in life. Wasn’t it time to bear some “destiny” fruit? To prove to myself and others close to me that I was not a failure? To display something of the grace of God at work in my life through daily engaging in works of Art that would touch others and allow me to earn a living?
So I thought. The result, after years of fighting against shadows in and out of myself, was seemingly disastrous. I was soon to turn forty-five years old, and still needed to walk through yet another season of brokenness. Well, I should say “embrace” the journey I had gone through instead of calling it failure. To see all of these years come to nothing of what I expected my life to be, when comparing to others, was quite a mountain before me. And I suspected it was a judgment against who I was, in fact, against my very existence.
I have not embraced the heart of it all: the motives of the heart. What the spirit within reaches for, out of an certain appetite, speaks of the affections of the heart. And the lies it believes. Thus, in all the gruesomeness of the desert season, still one thing remains: God rules. And the motivations of His heart are pure love. Hard to fathom and eagerly accept…
Hence, the desert. My thirst is not satisfied, and everything around amounts to temporary sustenance, crumbling like sand castles in the wind. Nothing I build succeeds to create a source of provision. I cannot prove I am someone because of what I have to “show for it”. Somehow I think I should be thankful to God for the pruning, revealing the misplaced affections and pointing me to Him as my source of identity. At times, I touch that place and bask in a peace beyond what I’ve ever known… Then it is challenged again by thoughts or events, and I tumble down into despair and rage, downplaying the importance and genuineness of my first experience of peace, doubting my very ability to truly walk in that everlasting grace.
But the desert… it is here, it feels like a life-size rugged cross slapped on my whole being. It also felt like the sum of my emotional turmoil, although real and painful, was based on something that carried a faulty portraying of truth. What I would call destiny, identity, my place in this world, and the agony of running out of time and energy to embrace the road again, all ganged up to become a burden I could not carry anymore, sinking in the sand, orphaned from my human dream of proving I had value through my giftings, talents, creativity, and my hopes and visions for a better world.
But I am not what I can do. I am what I am. It’s as if God chased my identity into the desert where it could hide no more its complex web of lies pulling me in constant vanity and pursuit of the wind disguised as “becoming who God intended me to be.” The desert: only two things can happen there: life or death. Survival based on surrendering, contentment and long-suffering, or survival based on scheming to never be caught there again in a state of helplessness and dependence.
I tried both ways. Today, I have to look and see where this has taken me. Letting go of the need to prove I was not a failure, that I am leaving something behind that’s of worth, eating of the fruit of my labor and blessing others through it. Not easy to read about other artists and their body of work. Comparison, Jealously, Bitterness, Anger, Rage, Despair, Isolation. I cannot continue this way. I want to see pass that, walk into the place where God is found to embrace those who embrace the cross of the desert.
There is nothing else left. I am thankful I can at least know there is hope now. I can choose to embrace the desert God is keeping me in till I can see my heart and His as well. I also choose to embrace the cross where the sum of all my dreams and pretenses are hung to die. Those dreams of riches and fame that seem to promise stability and the freedom to indulge in costly experiences of travel, extravagances and off-the-wall artistic explorations.
I am Andre, broke and broken in this desert of mine, and I call to my Creator to sustain and guide me, so that the chisel of His love remove the vanity born of my quest to sedate and remedy the hurt of my own incompleteness.
Lord, I embrace the desert, with the faith I have in your sanity and utterly extravagant love for me. Let me know that I am known, and reveal to me that one that I am, in You, and let peace flow like a river and my sonship become the strength of my life, the cornerstone of my identity. Amen.
-------
Five Years Later
Now, there is a time where the Lord leads us out of the desert, back into community in a new way, and that is now the season we are entering. Five years ago, I could not have imagine how things would turn out, but it's all good. We've are stepping through a new portal this year, crossing a threshold, and if what we know of the Lord is any indication, we know for sure that He is also releasing others from their own deserts, and connecting us all together one way or another.
And this present journey entails crossing a zone standing between the desert and the promise land. In that place, we receive new orders, new elements of vision, new companions, and we are putting into practice the lessons learned at such a high price... God sends us in His vineyard to tend it, not get drunk from it. It is a trek that requires consecration and dedication, in a very simple and truthful way. No hype here, only reality. Purpose. Co-labouring with God. Maybe publicly crucified. But through it all, as a friend of mine says: "keep your heart sweet."
And so here it is: 2006, the year of fulfillment of many visions that have been, for many, in gestation for about 20 years... what an exciting time to be alive, as we see the world around us shifting in its allegeances, we are still of a celestial kingdom, infusing God's message in the flesh of society through incarnated love. Out from the desert, into the Jordan, from the river into the desert, from the desert into newness of life, from newness of life to sacrifice, from sacrifice into obedience, from obedience to joy... in short, from the cross to the throne, but not as the world would define 'throne,' rather, as God sees it: Christ's eternal joy in fellowship.
See you soon! May you find your way to the starting blocks of the desert's edge, and be catapulted from there into a whole new race. It may be closer than you think...
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Soli Deo Gloria...
Andre Lefebvre
=-------=-------=0=-------=-------=
www.soulcanvas.com
www.soaking.net
www.propheticunderground.com
=-------=-------=0=-------=-------=
Thursday, February 09, 2006
The Sacrament of the Present Moment
Len Hjalmarson was musing about "attention:"
According to Simone Weil, culture is that which forms attention. Originally a word relating to agrarian pursuits and husbandry, it has come to embrace the physical and technological aspects of a peoples’ living, as well as the non-physical aspects such as language and worldview -- the lens through which reality is construed and constructed.
Culture.. worldview.. lens.. these are different ways of talking about our situatedness.. embeddedness... our means of knowing. This morning I am struck by the relationship of these terms to the word that has been rattling in my head since Friday.. sacrament. [more...]
The virtue of attention is a core component of union with God in the world. In his book "The Sacrament of the Present Moment" Jean-Pierre de Caussade writes:
"A living faith is nothing else than a steadfast pursuit of God through all that disguises, disfigures, demolishes and seeks, so to speak, to abolish Him."
I was immediately looking for quotes from this book when reading this post today. And discovered this twin book review by Nathan Vonnahme about "The practice of the Presence of God" and "The Sacrament of the Present Moment."
He writes: " Many Christians are tempted to tout one aspect of the Christian life as the center, the Main Thing–whether it be social justice, evangelism, prayer, exegesis or community. Brother Laurence and Jean-Pierre de Caussade necessarily gloss over many things in their concentration on one subject, but I think their fundamental concern of bending our will in obedience to God each moment may very well be the right Main Thing, the root out of which all other actions proceed. It is frightening to commit our lives to God in this way–we worry, "if I concentrate on submitting to God each minute, I may miss the other important things" and we show our lack of trust in his guidance. We are not confident that he will correct our mistakes. Instead, we try to be on the lookout for him. But if we, in faith, commit to this simple task of abandoning ourselves and spending each moment in his presence, we can be sure he will guide us into proper action, whatever it might be."
"One thing I ask of the LORD, this is what I seek..."
"...but only one thing is needed. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her."
"But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead..."
My wife and I have been living in a hotle room for about 2 months now, without a home since October 29th. We have found purpose in traveling around, to the USA and here in Ontario, but we do not find where to empty our suitcases. And lately, I am wrestling with much confusion as to my ability to hear God in "little things" like these...
So we are here, and that is all we know. And God is here, and that is all we need. Holding back runaway thoughts, wild horses stampeding through the living room of my prayer times, I attempt to discern the design of this season of our lives, hoping I will be able to interpret it. I see something, but it does not translate inot guidance. I hear something, but it is not a command. I touch something but to my shame I grasp for something else, because the hem of His garment was not the main focus of my desperate scramblings...
Blaise Pascal said that all humanity's woes stem from our inability to remain sitting quietly in a chair in a room. Mary chose what was better. In Israel's history, before entering into promises or battles, the Lord often decreed a fast, a sanctification, a setting apart. And here I am today, facing the same choice, being given another day, invited to focus on what is attainable in order to gain what can only be given to me.
I will, by God's grace, find Him in this present moment, and embrace His vastness in this eye-of-the-needle season. Because God loves to be sought and He will let Himself be found. What a lover, what a childlike friend, how unfathomable the character of this Divine Being who is moving with such purity and innocence, yet not careless with anyone.
Blessings to all,
andre
=0= Link to Nathan's books reviews: Books Reviews .
According to Simone Weil, culture is that which forms attention. Originally a word relating to agrarian pursuits and husbandry, it has come to embrace the physical and technological aspects of a peoples’ living, as well as the non-physical aspects such as language and worldview -- the lens through which reality is construed and constructed.
Culture.. worldview.. lens.. these are different ways of talking about our situatedness.. embeddedness... our means of knowing. This morning I am struck by the relationship of these terms to the word that has been rattling in my head since Friday.. sacrament. [more...]
The virtue of attention is a core component of union with God in the world. In his book "The Sacrament of the Present Moment" Jean-Pierre de Caussade writes:
"A living faith is nothing else than a steadfast pursuit of God through all that disguises, disfigures, demolishes and seeks, so to speak, to abolish Him."
I was immediately looking for quotes from this book when reading this post today. And discovered this twin book review by Nathan Vonnahme about "The practice of the Presence of God" and "The Sacrament of the Present Moment."
He writes: " Many Christians are tempted to tout one aspect of the Christian life as the center, the Main Thing–whether it be social justice, evangelism, prayer, exegesis or community. Brother Laurence and Jean-Pierre de Caussade necessarily gloss over many things in their concentration on one subject, but I think their fundamental concern of bending our will in obedience to God each moment may very well be the right Main Thing, the root out of which all other actions proceed. It is frightening to commit our lives to God in this way–we worry, "if I concentrate on submitting to God each minute, I may miss the other important things" and we show our lack of trust in his guidance. We are not confident that he will correct our mistakes. Instead, we try to be on the lookout for him. But if we, in faith, commit to this simple task of abandoning ourselves and spending each moment in his presence, we can be sure he will guide us into proper action, whatever it might be."
"One thing I ask of the LORD, this is what I seek..."
"...but only one thing is needed. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her."
"But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead..."
My wife and I have been living in a hotle room for about 2 months now, without a home since October 29th. We have found purpose in traveling around, to the USA and here in Ontario, but we do not find where to empty our suitcases. And lately, I am wrestling with much confusion as to my ability to hear God in "little things" like these...
So we are here, and that is all we know. And God is here, and that is all we need. Holding back runaway thoughts, wild horses stampeding through the living room of my prayer times, I attempt to discern the design of this season of our lives, hoping I will be able to interpret it. I see something, but it does not translate inot guidance. I hear something, but it is not a command. I touch something but to my shame I grasp for something else, because the hem of His garment was not the main focus of my desperate scramblings...
Blaise Pascal said that all humanity's woes stem from our inability to remain sitting quietly in a chair in a room. Mary chose what was better. In Israel's history, before entering into promises or battles, the Lord often decreed a fast, a sanctification, a setting apart. And here I am today, facing the same choice, being given another day, invited to focus on what is attainable in order to gain what can only be given to me.
I will, by God's grace, find Him in this present moment, and embrace His vastness in this eye-of-the-needle season. Because God loves to be sought and He will let Himself be found. What a lover, what a childlike friend, how unfathomable the character of this Divine Being who is moving with such purity and innocence, yet not careless with anyone.
Blessings to all,
andre
=0= Link to Nathan's books reviews: Books Reviews .
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