Glory: God’s countenance revealed, the glory of earthly empires vs spiritual communities
Reflections on themes in Exodus 33:12-23 & Matthew 22: 15-22. “Glory” contrasted as the overwhelming presence of God into which Moses was invited in Hebrew scripture, and the glory of empires and governments vs spiritual movements: what do we offer to God and what do we give to other authorities in our lives?
It will be ours, it will be ours …
Formed against, yes glory is destined
Every day women and men become legends
Sins that go against our skin become blessings
The movement is a rhythm to us
Freedom is like religion to us
Justice is juxtapositionin’ us
Justice for all just ain’t specific enough
One son died, his spirit is revisitin’ us
Truant livin’ livin’ in us, resistance is us
That’s why Rosa sat on the bus
That’s why we walk through Ferguson with our hands up
When it go down we woman and man up
They say, “Stay down”, and we stand up
… King pointed to the mountain top and we ran up
It will be ours, it will be ours …
Even Jesus got his crown in front of a crowd
They marched with the torch, we gon’ run with it now
Never look back, we done gone hundreds of miles
From dark roads he rose, to become a hero
Facin’ the league of justice, his power was the people
Enemy is lethal, a king became regal
Saw the face of Jim Crow under a bald eagle
The biggest weapon is to stay peaceful
We sing, our music is the cuts that we bleed through
Somewhere in the dream we had an epiphany
Now we right the wrongs in history
No one can win the war individually
It takes the wisdom of the elders and young people’s energy
Welcome to the story we call victory
The comin’ of the Lord, my eyes have seen the glory
It will be ours, it will be ours
… when it’s all said and done
We’ll cry glory (Glory, glory)
Oh (Glory, glory)
True glory consists in doing what deserves to be written, in writing what deserves to be read, and in so living as to make the world happier and better for our living in it. ― Pliny the ElderAn awake heart is like a sky that pours light. — Hafiz
The real glory is being knocked to your knees and then coming back. That’s real glory. That’s the essence of it. ― Vince Lombardi Jr.
Never lose a holy curiosity. — Albert Einstein
“Reflecting his glory” means that God is taking the shards of the world and our broken lives and restoring his glory to them. We become a place of intersection where people can meet God as he makes us holy … We may be broken but we are recreatable. — Kevin Scott, Recreatable: How God Heals the Brokenness of Life
The thing about light is that it really isn’t yours; it’s what you gather and shine back. And it gets more power from reflectiveness; if you sit still and take it in, it fills your cup, and then you can give it off yourself. — Anne Lamott, Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith
Apprehend God in all things, for God is in all things. Every single creature is full of God and a book about God. Every creature is a word of God. — Meister Eckhart
Glory: Political & Economic via Empires & Governments (Caesar, Pharoah)
Abstract words such as glory, honor, courage, or hallow were obscene beside the concrete names of villages, the numbers of roads, the names of rivers, the numbers of regiments and the dates. ― Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms
… But in me she loves only a shadow and a thought: a hope of glory and great deeds, and lands far … ― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King
There is many a boy here today who looks on war as all glory, but boys, it is all hell. — William Tecumseh Sherman
I do not say that there is no glory to be gained [in war]; but it is not personal glory. In itself, no cause was ever more glorious than that of men who struggle, not to conquer territory, not to gather spoil, not to gratify ambition, but for freedom, for religion, for hearth and home, and to revenge the countless atrocities inflicted upon them by their oppressors. ― G.A. Henty
Soyons fermes, purs et fidèles; au bout de nos peines, il y a la plus grande gloire du monde, celle des hommes qui n’ont pas cédé. Let us be firm, pure and faithful; at the end of our sorrow, there is the greatest glory of the world, that of the men who did not give in. — Charles de Gaulle
But in its de facto alliance with Caesar, Christianity connives directly in the murder of Creation. For in these days, Caesar is no longer a mere destroyer of armies, cities, and nations. He is a contradicter of the fundamental miracle of life. — Wendell Berry
Reflections on awake, arise: scriptures that call us to engagement
Meditations inspired by scriptures that call us to wake up, be alert, pay attention, be present and engaged. What does that spiritual practice look like in your life?
Golden slumbers kiss your eyes
Smiles awake you when you arise. — Thomas Dekker
I cannot be awake for nothing looks to me as if did before.
Or else I am awake for the first time
and all before has been a mean sleep.
— Walt Whitman
There are many whose eyes are awake
and whose hearts are asleep;
Yet, what can be seen
By mere creatures of water and clay?
But he who keeps his heart awake
Will know and live this mystery;
While the eyes of his head may sleep
His heart will open hundreds of eyes.
If your heart isn’t yet illumined
Be awake always, be a seeker of the heart,
Be at war continually with your carnal soul.
But if your heart is already awakened,
Sleep peacefully, sleep in the arms of Love,
For your spiritual eye is not absent
From the seven heavens and seven directions
— Attributed to Rumi
Our species needs, and deserves, a citizenry with minds awake and a basic understanding of how the world works. — Carl Sagan
We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aid, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn. — Henry David Thoreau
Buddhist mindfulness is about being present but I also think its about being real. Being awake to everything. Feeling like nothing can hurt you if you can look it straight on. — Krista Tippett
Why does the eye see a thing more clearly in dreams than the imagination when awake? — Leonardo da Vinci
To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest. To live fully is to be always in no-man’s-land, to experience each moment as completely new and fresh. — Pema Chodron
In these times you have to an optimist to open your eyes when you awake in the morning. — Carl Sandburg
Today is life —the only life you are sure of. Make the most of today. Get interested in something. Shake yourself awake. Develop a hobby. Let the winds of enthusiasm sweep through you. Live today with gusto.— Dale Carnegie
I love sleep. My life has a tendency to fall apart when I’m awake, you know? — Ernest Hemingway
Sleeping is no mean art. For its sake one must stay awake all day. — Friedrich Nietzche
I am not concerned that you have fallen, I am concerned that you arise. — Abraham Lincoln
When you arise in the morning, think of what a privilege it is to be alive – to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love. — Marcus Aurelius
I arise in the morning town between the desire to improve the world and the desire to enjoy it. This makes it hard to plan the day. — E.B. White
There is a Japanese proverb that literally goes, ‘Raise the sail with your stronger hand’, meaning you must go after the opportunities in life that you are best equipped to do. — Soichiro Honda
Reflections on taking action, many members of one body at work in the world
translated by Thomas James Merton
Sometimes even to live is an act of courage. — Seneca
We cannot wish that human beings were not subject to the forces of nature, including the mortality… we cannot wish for the seas to dry up, that the waves grow still, that the tectonic plates cease to exist, that nature ceases to be beyond our abilities to predict and control… But the terms of that nature include such catastrophe and suffering, which leaves us with sorrow as not a problem to be solved but a fact. And it leaves us with compassion as the work we will never finish. — Rebecca Solnit, Storming the Gates of Paradise: Landscapes for Politics
When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’ To this day, especially in times of ‘disaster,’ I remember my mother’s words and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers–so many caring people in this world. — Fred Rogers
Never confuse movement with action. — Ernest Hemingway
The future depends on what you do today. — Mahatma Gandhi
You are what you do, not what you say you’ll do. — C.G. Jung
We don’t always feel God’s presence, just as we don’t feel the sun on a rainy day. But the presence never grows dim, and the confidence that it is there and will shine again keeps us hopeful. — Evan Drake Howard
Theologians talk about a prevenient grace that precedes grace itself and allows us to accept it. I think there must also be a prevenient courage that allows us to be brave–that is, to acknowledge that there is more beauty than our eyes can bear, that precious things have been put into our hands and to do nothing to honor them is to do great harm. And therefore, this courage allows us, as the old men said, to make ourselves useful. It allows us to be generous, which is another way of saying exactly the same thing. — Marilynne Robinson, Gilead
Bon Dieu! may I some day do something truly great. amen. — e.e. cummings
Be great in little things. — Francis Xavier
I am not a champion of lost causes, but of causes not yet won. — Norman Thomas
— Robert Browning
… Fool! All that is, at all,
… So, take and use Thy work:
Meditations on Kingdom of God: pearls, yeast, abundant nets, hidden treasure
Small and precious things found in sacred stories,
with the power to grow exponentially:
yeast, fish, pearls, seeds, and other treasures in the kingdom of God.
Meditations on Kingdom of God
God is the Possessor of the Kingdom: whoever lays his head before Him, to him he gives a hundred kingdoms without the terrestrial world; but the inward savour of a single prostration before God will be more sweet to you than a hundred empires: then you will cry in humble entreaty, “I desire not kingdoms: commit unto me the kingdom of that prostration.— Rumi
You’re just left with yourself all the time, whatever you do anyway. You’ve got to get down to your own God in your own temple. It’s all down to you, mate. — John Lennon
Meditations on Pearls
After all,” Anne had said to Marilla once, “I believe the nicest and sweetest days are not those on which anything very splendid or wonderful or exciting happens but just those that bring simple little pleasures, following one another softly, like pearls slipping off a string.” ― L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Avonlea
All art is autobiographical. The pearl is the oyster’s autobiography. — Federico Fellini
Full fathom five thy father lies; Of his bones are coral made; Those are pearls that were his eyes: Nothing of him that doth fade, But doth suffer a sea-change Into something rich and strange. — Shakespeare
At the edge of madness you howl diamonds and pearls. — Aberjhani, Journey through the Power of the Rainbow: Quotations from a Life Made Out of Poetry
Meditations on Fish
The act of fishing – for fish, dreams or whatever magic is available – is enough. ― Fennel Hudson, Traditional Angling – Fennel’s Journal – No. 6
Teach all men to fish, but first teach all men to be fair. Take less, give more. Give more of yourself, take less from the world. Nobody owes you anything, you owe the world everything. ― Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun
The trout is still with me, as are my memories. The future is somewhere between these two forces, but it lives in mystery. The river records to trail behind or before me, and covers everything as it flows. This mountain and this river are old … ― Daniel J. Rice, The Unpeopled Season
“He can’t have gone,” he said “Christ know he can’t have gone. He’s making a turn. Maybe he has been hooked before and he remembers something of it.” Then he felt the gentle touch on the line and he was happy.”
― Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea
Meditations on Yeast
All men cannot go to college, but some men must; every isolated group or nation must have its yeast, must have, for the talented few, centers of training where men are not so mystified and befuddled by the hard and necessary toil of earning a living as to have no aims higher than their bellies and no God greater than Gold. — W.E. B. DuBois
Enthusiasm is the yeast that makes your hopes shine to the stars. Enthusiasm is the sparkle in your eyes, the swing in your gait. The grip of your hand, the irresistible surge of will and energy to execute your ideas. — Henry Ford
You can’t just leave out one part; the bread won’t rise if the yeast isn’t there. — Holly Near
I Ask My Grandmother If We Can Make Lahmajoun
— Gregory Djanikian
Sure, she says, why not,
we buy the ground lamb from the market
we buy parsley, fresh tomatoes, garlic
we cut, press, dice, mix
make the yeasty dough
the night before, kneading it
until our knuckles feel the hardness
of river beds or rocks in the desert
we tell Tante Lola to come
with her rolling pins we tell
Zaven and Maroush, Hagop and Arpiné
to bring their baking sheets
we sprinkle the flour on the kitchen table
and it is snowing on Ararat
we sprinkle the flour and the memory
of winter is in our eyes
we roll the dough out
into small circles
pale moons over
every empty village
Kevork is standing on a chair
and singing
O my Armenian girl
my spirit longs to be nearer
Nevrig is warming the oven
and a dry desert breeze
is skimming over the rooftops
toward the sea
we are spreading the lahma
on the ajoun with our fingers
whispering into it the histories
of those who have none
we are baking them
under the heat of the sun
the dough crispening
so thin and delicate
you would swear
it is valuable parchment
we are taking out
and rolling up in our hands
and eating and tasting again
everything that has already
been written
into the body.