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Holiness is a way of life

My blog thoughts have been more art and less musing since my favorite daily thoughts from minEmergent slowed, and I’ve had to replace my morning musing with other sources. I’ve enjoyed the blogs of both Kathy Escobar and Rachel Held Evans, and the phrase that caught my attention this morning was

“wisdom isn’t a single decision; it’s a path, a road, a way. 
Holiness, too, isn’t a single decision, moment, position or thought; it’s a way of life. “

Read more here. This dovetails in less-than-obvious ways my recent thoughts on grace – how creating a Sabbath day helps us soak in how much we are loved even if we are not “working” to “do” something, how radical grace is in our world today, how grace starts within myself towards myself, and how living in grace means following a daily path of life with God, journey of wisdom, way of holiness.

Grace,
Jen

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Art

“Art has no right answer. The best we can hope for is an interesting answer.”

writes Seth Godin in The Icarus Deception, a book I’m currently reading. This phrase is one I want to remember and ponder…..
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Open Mind

Another thought from MinEmergent this week of giving thanks that I want to ponder…  

 I’m offering a deeper sense of what it means to be alert. There is a telling difference between the sharp line of a laser ray and the wash of sunlight over a field, between the sharpness of a mind in crisis and the wash and warmth of an open heart. When we need it most, it is nearly impossible to see ourselves with compassion from the slit of a narrowed mind all tensed for battle. 

Mark Nepo
The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have 

 

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Zimsum

I like poems that make me think, explicate my beliefs, challenge the rote answers, and wonder. This post from MinEmergent (I get their daily thought emails) is one that I want to come back to this week…..more than once.  The thought that “there is the opportunity for real hope to break in” is one I have been pondering. How does it happen? How am I a part? Where should my strength come from? Where do I find my balance in the duality that I am enough and yet can lean into God?

ZIMSUM
Terry L. Chapman 
God Is In Control
Really?
No matter how many times
I hear these words 
there is a voice,
that with convincing whisper,
insists this is faux hope.
Some, in order to live
as if this is the rock on
which the castle of their faith is built 
remain vigilantly poised on the parapet 
summoning the hope they learned in Sunday School
 that the siege of life’s demons
might be held back
by making the confession over and over- 
God is in control
God is in control
God is in control
as if by its very repetition it 
might become true
and at last the weapons of 
this spiritual warfare can be 
but back in the armory-

God is in control
God is in control
God is in control!
Hoping against all hope
that it is true-the unimaginable 
betrayal that it isn’t.
To say so is to turn your back on all
that is right, and true and american-
sinking into the abyss unbelief. 

God is not in control.
There, I said it.
Now in the letting go of these
shackles that, unimaginably,
restrict God’s freedom,
God’s wild, beautiful, terrible
intention to create a free world,
there is an opening created
for real hope to break in-
real hope
that all that is is in God
in whom we live and move and have being.
And not just us but the other too.
And not just the other but the whole cosmos
in God has being.

Real hope is
that God bears all-
that all is in the womb of God-
that out of this space-in-God
the new is being born
and in the fullness of time
God will be all in all 
and there will no longer
be any need to believe
God is in control.

 http://www.facebook.com/EmergentVillage

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God’s goodness seeping in

I’ve been reading Kathy Escobar’s blog, and she makes me think in good ways. Here is a snippet I want to ponder more……..

to me, the kingdom is God’s goodness seeping in, here, now, in little and big ways. it’s love piercing through the darkness. grace breathing new life into us despite our circumstances. it’s being healed in some areas and still sick in others. it’s miracles that don’t look like miracles but really are. it’s the weird paradox of dark & light mixed together in the same space.

http://kathyescobar.com/2012/07/02/a-more-honest-theology/

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More on wisdom

From MinEmergent – thoughts on wisdom and a book to read? I’m thinking it takes courage to dive in and practice what is right and being self-aware enough to see when it works and when it doesn’t……
Wisdom is not gained by knowing what is right. Wisdom is gained by practicing what is right and noticing what happens when that practice succeeds and when it fails. Wise people do not have to be certain what they believe before they act. They are free to act, trusting that the practice itself will teach them what they need to know.
  
Barbara Brown Taylor
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Intimidating vision

A recent MinEmergent musing that I want to remember and ponder – how backwards this seems, and yet so true.
If the size of your vision for your life isn’t intimidating to you, there’s a good chance it’s insulting to God.

Steven Furtick

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Vulnerability

This winter I read a book by Brene Brown about the gifts of imperfection. Gave me lots to think about, how God views me and how twisted my view of myself can become when the world’s influence is strong. MinEmergent’s message for today was this poem, that I think it deserves remembering and coming back to (and finding where it is from so that I can read it.)
The Power of Vulnerability
by Brene Brown 
To be vulnerable is to see all of me 
And to be open to 
The possibility of 
Authenticity 
The courage to love me 
And ask for what I need 
With no certainty 
And holding my own 
Hand with accountability 
Of boundaries that 
I Set to let go of 
Who I think you need me to be 
And the ingredients include 
Courage, compassion, connection 
And the nest is acceptance 
Of all of me Shame and guilt 
Must be looked at 
With severe honesty in 
Owning my story 
Trusting my spirit solely 
Letting go of shoulds and pushing 
Practicing gratitude into a 
Shifting of joy that 
Doesn’t exclude fear or sadness 
But delivers the need for 
Certainty turned into faith 
And in the calm and still place 
Don’t forget to play 
God brought us each here 
With a gift to create today