It is the eve of a lovely Sunday, Christmas lights are sparkling and in the quiet before bed, I have sat down to read my daily Advent email. I signed up to receive a daily reading all throughout Advent from the Bruderhof communities, and I have been absolutely loving it. This particular reading struck me [...]
Postcards From the Land of Contemplation
by Vermeer
Reading:
Lilith by George MacDonald
Standing by Words by Wendell Berry
Sacred Legacy by Myrna Grant
In my ears:
North and South Soundtrack by Martin Phipps
Night as Bright as Day Joel Clarkson (yep, my brother!)
Rich Mullins
There's a wideness in God's mercy,
I cannot find in my own
And he keeps his fire burning
To melt this heart of stone,
Keeps me aching, with a yearning,
Keeps me glad to have been caught,
In the reckless, raging fury,
That they call the love of God.C.S. Lewis
There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations--these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit - immortal horrors or everlasting splendours.Madeleine L’Engle
A great painting, or symphony, or play, doesn't diminish us, but enlarges us, and we, too, want to make our own cry of affirmation to the power of creation behind the universe.Charles Van Sandwyk
Each time pen goes to paper, the general idea is to try to make the most beautiful book in the world. I’ve failed every time, but it’s still the impetus.Wendell Berry
Imagine the dead waking, dazed, into a shadowless light in which they know themselves all together for the first time. It is a light that is merciless until they can accept its mercy... In it, they are loved completely, even as they have been, and so are changed into what they could not have been, but what, if they could have imagined it, they would have wished to be.Loreena McKennit
I heard an old voice say,
Don't go far from the land,
The seasons have their way,
No mortal can understand...J.R.R. Tolkien
Eucatastrophe is a sudden and miraculous grace: never to be counted on to recur. It does not deny the existence of catastrophe, of sorrow and failure: the possibility of these is necessary to the joy of deliverance; it denies (in the face of much evidence, if you will) universal final defeat and in so far is evangelium, giving a fleeting glimpse of Joy, Joy beyond the walls of the world poignant as grief.George MacDonald
Be sure that if you go on inquiring, you will find the truth- enough of it to keep you alive and wishing for more, and that is enough for us at a time.Leif Enger
I breathe deeply and certainty enters into me like light, like a piece of science, and curious music seems to hum inside my fingers. Is there a single person on whom I can press my belief? No sir. All I can do is say, here's how it went. Here's what I saw. I've been there and I'm going back. Make of it what you will.Elizabeth Goudge
Faithful... supposed that the harder one's life is the more desperate must be the struggle to find out how to be happy, and the more likely to be successful.G.K. Chesterton
He is a sane man who can have tragedy in his heart and comedy in his head.George Eliot
We are all imaginative in some form or other, for images are the brood of desire.o world i cannot get thee close enough
