God must be mercy

201) the reading of psalms from the book of common prayer and the reading of prayers in the Orthodox tradition, based on the liturgy of the hours

202) Gymnopedie #1 by Satie

203) The Swan by Saint-Saens

204) Jane Austen's canon resting right in front of my eyes on the bookshelf, visually (and audibly!) calling my name!

205) singing a hymn with the words by George Herbert and the melody by Ralph Vaughan Williams

206) a friend studying theatre in London for the semester, and for a friend who flew to Kiev via London being thus reminded of me

207) leaves buried in puddles of water, in parking lots, and on the way to library

208) tango melodies and rhythms

209) tea and prayer on Java's couch

210) the poetry of George Cowper

211) thoughtful, rich discussion on religious language and devotional reading

212) the progressive learning of multiple wonderful, yet often times very silly sounding indeed, sounds in phonetics

213) 'love and freindship'

214) my sizable collection of Brennan Manning books

215) leaves wet and afire

216) shared bags of popcorn over grey's anatomy

217) a particular painting of a table set for tea in an apartment building overlooking Manhattan in the library

218) 'love's purest joys restored'

219) walking alone through a gallery full of abstract prints

220) a student-composed organ piece played at the end of chapel today

221) Dean Brittain's self-effacing, matter of fact humor

222) compositions with marked dissonances

223) 'We are marching in the light of God'

224) three crinkling and crumpling orchid flowers in my dorm window

225) the rushing dance of the wind with the trees, flowers, and scattered leaves

a continual reminder

Right now someone exists who has disappointed and offended us, someone with whom we are continually displeased and with whom we are more impatient, irritated, unforgiving, and spiteful then we would dare be with anyone else. That person is ourselves. We are so often fed up with ourselves. We're sick of our own mediocrity, revolted by our own inconsistency, bored by our own monotony. We would never judge any other of God's children with the savage self-condemnation with which we crush ourselves. Jesus said we are to love our neighbor as ourselves. We must be patient, gentle, and compassionate with ourselves in the same way we try to love our neighbor.
--Brennan Manning

fixing my heart on the good

176) a card with my two very favorite flavors of tea shoved into my oft-empty college mailbox

177) affectionate hugs, inbetween classes, at meals, in the sheer joy of seeing the other..."Such was our love to each other that even the sight of each other filled our hearts with divine consolation"

178) Wilberforce's joy in God, far from erecting a granite wall to prevent incursions by the sea, appointed its bounds by mere grains of sand!

179) resonating oil-well deep with Orthodox ways of 'being'

180) appreciating ever-more Jane Austen's insights into propriety in relationships

181) the burning red-yellow leaves

182) casual chats involving literature and broad philosophical concepts (and possibly many blanket statements--not so good, i think)

183) feeling ever more comfortable in conversing with professors

184) desperately attempting to retrain my mouth muscles to form vowels unused in American English; this typically involves holding my lips down/apart so as not to round the sound

185) the temperature controlled room on the second floor of the library, with its myriad paintings by the Ortlip family

186) learning of the richness of Trinitarian language and prayer

187) being stretched, once again, to the limits of my understanding (both in the mind and the heart), and knowing, somehow, that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, will prove Himself as Truth

188) being taught some basic Welsh word fragments by Dr. Pearse

189) the incredible capacities and potential we possess for communication!

190) my London group, and connections with years past and years present and years future

191) the juxtaposed 'sense' of Elinor and 'sensibility' of Marianne; and the hilarity of the extremes of both

192) the rhythms of life, including breath, stillness, words up, down, scrambled, flat, then gratitude, then doubt, and so on

193) the mystics of the Church through the ages, including today

194) the joys of the body; the senses

195) God is closer and at the same time further away than we can imagine

196) the engagement of the body (and reason, and imagination) in worship. not merely our emotional faculties

197) curmudgeonly old men

198) light satire, its object being Scripture

199) the imagery of humanity, or rather, individual human beings being restored to the image, to the Icon of God, to the colors, and form

200) desire for a heart grown calm in the peace of God

Is God Good?

Some comments from C.S. Lewis on the delight the early Hebrews had in the law of God:

There were in the eighteenth century terrible theologians who held that 'God did not command certain things because they are right, but certain things are right because God commanded them'. To make the position perfectly clear, one of them even said that though God has, as it happens, commanded us to love Him and one another, He might equally well have commanded us to hate Him and one another, and hatred would then have been right. It was apparently a mere toss-up which He decided on. Such a view of course makes God a mere arbitrary tyrant. It would be better and less irreligious to believe in no God and to have no ethics than to have such an ethics and such a theology as this. The Jews of course never discuss this in abstract and philosophical terms. But at once, and completely, they assume the right view, knowing better than they know. They know that the Lord (not merely obedience to the Lord) is 'righteous' and commands 'righteousness' because He loves it. He enjoins what is good because it is good, because He is good. Hence His laws have emeth 'truth', intrinsic validity, rock-bottom reality, being rooted in His own nature, and are therefore as solid as that Nature what He has created.

From Adventures in New Testament Greek: Nous

Dormant in its roaring cave,
the heart’s intellective aptitude grows dim,
unless you find a way to wake it. So,
let’s try something, even now. Even as
you tend these lines, attend for a moment
to your breath as you draw it in: regard
the breath’s cool descent, a stream from mouth
to throat to the furnace of the heart.
Observe that queer, cool confluence of breath
and blood, and do your thinking there.
--Scott Cairns

There is a vast difference between simply being alone, and truly experiencing solitude, which, given most monastic definitions, involves communion with God. Tony Jones, in his book 'The Sacred Way' quotes a blogger describing his retreat to a monastery, and his experience of silence.

There is something about solitude and silence, something that makes them both desirable
and awe-ful. I fear the silence. I fear that God won't speak. I fear what I may hear, or that I
may not hear.

He also quotes Foster: 'Simply to refrain from talking, without a heart listening to God, is not silence'.

Batter my heart, three person'd God, for You as yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend...that I may rise and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
--John Donne

I think this is what Donne was driving at:

I have always been afraid of loving God because I feared His fearsome holiness might find me lacking. But for me, for all God-lovers, I know now that wildness comes to me as mercy. For me, His power is a fierce, earth-altering grace.

Neither can I expect Him to leave sin dormant in my heart. To love Him means the destruction of all that is wrong in me.
--the itinerant idealist

jealousy

You know the 'opposite' of the fruit of the spirit list? Or rather, those things which exist when our flesh rules, rather than the Spirit of Christ? Jealousy and envy are indeed among them.
I struggle constantly with the concept that we have NO merits of our own, none that have not been given to us by Christ. And of course, these merits need to be divided into separate categories: that of our God-given talent, of our being created in the image of God, and that of our sinfulness, and our inability to atone for it. Eldridge says that love is a passion entirely unrelated to our merits. I guess I would agree, in theory. What is this insidious idea that we are loved in proportion only to our level of talent, our abilities? If we are competent individuals, if we don't screw up too badly, if we project always an image of success and strength? If we're perfect?

There is a story, written by Max Lucado, (the title is escaping me at the moment), that I think can shed some light on this subject. The people are made of wood, and run away giving each other stars (for achievement of some venture) and dots, to indicate failures. The main character meets someone who has neither! himself being the recipient of many dots. This character begins to visit the Carpenter, and becames sure of His maker's affection for Him. So much so, that neither the stars or the dots can stick to him. He is neither inflated by his own success and goodness nor his lack thereof. And really, should not what the God who formed us in our mother's womb, and who, essentially, loved the entire human race into existence, has to say about us be of far more importance then the opinions of man (whether good or man)?
This is not to say that we should not encourage one another, which Scripture clearly commands us to do, but not to give undue importance to people simply because of some specific skill or ability that person has. Which is, essentially, what I've done. Yes, God can and does use those who have been given great and little talent. But, ultimately, that is not the issue. Believing that His love, Your love, is what makes a person valuable, and worthy of time and attention, is. Brennan Manning once wrote that the love of Jesus Christ alone confers dignity and status upon a person. Yes, that is it! Daring to trust that this is indeed the case!