[via Slacktivist]

Disappointment, despair and Harold Camping

Still Earth-Shattering

Way back when, in 1994 when I was in Elementary school I remember hearing about the 7.0 magnitude earthquake that shook the Northridge area of California. I remember seeing the scenes of overpasses dropped onto traffic below, pavement cracked revelaing deep crevasses in the earth and buidlings turned to rubble. I remember thinking, this was devastation. {continue...}

[via withmyowntwohands, HT: IdeaJoy]

The Geometry of Love, If You Imagine...

And so there I was, awkwardly trying to convey why I find this reassuring, why I find "We can't know" so much more pregnant with hope than "We don't know," when I suddenly realized that I hadn't yet named the reason or the source for that hopefulness, and that trying to do so might sound like nothing more than one more hollow, funeral-week platitude.

Flatland is a fine little parable as far as it goes, an invaluable illustration of geometry and physics and of finite creatures' inability to grasp the infinities that surround them, but it has little to say about love. And while there is much that we do not and cannot know, if you want to know what I think or guess or believe or hope, it is this: The universe is governed by love.

"Love?" the tesseract says. "That's nonsense. There's no such thing as love, only ..." {full post}

[via slacktivist]

Suffer Well by Depeche Mode

Where were you when I fell from grace
Frozen heart, an empty space
Something's changing, it's in your eyes
Please don't speak, you'll only lie
I found treasure not where I thought
Peace of mind can't be bought
Still I believe

I just hang on
Suffer well
Sometimes it's hard
It's hard to tell

An angel led me when I was blind
I said take me back, I've changed my mind
Now I believe
From the blackest room, I was torn
You called my name, our love was born
So I believe

I just hang on
Suffer well
Sometimes it's hard
It's hard to tell

I just hang on
Suffer well
Sometimes it's hard
So hard to tell

Celebration For The 'Have-Nots'

As I chat with people, loneliness is named most often as the reason why people find Christmas difficult.

It’s easy to say lonely people have the wrong perspective. Let’s look deeper. Our letter-boxes contain sales catalogues with jewellery that lovers can exchange for Christmas, spa packages for couples, and menus for the family roast. We walk into shopping centres filled with people rushing, pushing, bumping, focused on making their Christmas perfect. Around the corner are pictures of starry-eyed children singing Christmas carols. The television airs movies about love, and families. Everything seems geared up to tell those feeling they have not, how much they are missing out on.

If we are using this time to celebrate Christ’s birth: let’s get with it! Christmas is not about the ‘haves’, it’s a celebration for the ‘have-nots’.....

If God had decided to hang out only with agreeable heavenly beings, where would we all be?

What do we really need to celebrate Christmas? {full post}

[via Musings of a Third Culture Kid]

For December 6th...

There are many reasons Amir and others are so harsh toward predators and abusers, especially toward children. One of those reasons is the long-term struggle of the victim/survivor to understand and identify and accept healthy love and affection throughout their lives. This is certainly true of me. I have prayed for many, many years that God would reveal His love to and toward and for me in tangible ways that would enable me to internalize real love.

I have mentioned before that my fiance is not what I was looking for but is everything I need and was afraid to need. What he is and has been is a man who loves me unconditionally and with extreme patience. When I share (appropriate) details about how he treats me with my close friends, their jaws drop in awe and shock. He is truly rare among men, and God is using him to express His love in real and tangible ways that I will eventually internalize over time.

I know this may seem simple to many, and I know it is difficult to explain to those who have never experienced abuse. My parents, grandparents, ex-husband, ex-in-laws have all abused me. So, for my whole life I have longed for this kind of love. How odd, then, it is that I have such a difficult time receiving this kind of love. I continue to be cautious, fearful. He continues to be firm, patient, solid.

These truths became poignant again this evening. {continue...}

[via Amir Larijani and the Order of Recon]

---

what is your pain
everyone

i will stop being woman and
become a human being

here i tip the contents out
that i hope others share
not some private event
not what has happened

but what is real to all of us
we suffer from being human

[from this poem via Suzanne's Bookshelf, also: A Sombre Trio]

“Heaven is where love is no longer linked to loss.”

[via VanderMeander]

Lost In Their Own Journeys

How about this. I’m on a journey around the world. I have all my tickets purchased and my agendas. Sometime into my journey the travel becomes rocky … then, suddenly, everything is ripped from me … my tickets, my agendas, everything … including my identity. I’m alone in a foreign land with nothing but the clothes on my back. Oh, and two young children in tow who have also been stripped of everything, including their identities, except for the clothes on their backs. I am forced to figure out who I am, where I am, how to care for my children and myself, how to help them figure out who and where they are, etc.

Yet during this time, everyone else we were travelling with has moved on in the journey. There are points along the way we still see each other, such as educational and religious meetings. But it’s odd … because all these people have all these experiences we don’t have. They are refreshed, full of life and energy … and hope … and continued goals … moving forward.

Occasionally these people ask about us, but for the most part, they’re all lost in their own journeys. Meanwhile, we’re still struggling … trying to recreate our identities … to discover who and what we are … to reconfigure our futures, our journeys.

These years … where the rest of the world has moved forward … and we’ve been trying to heal and reconstruct our lives … these are The Lost Years.

It’s getting easier to see these differences, smile, and move on. But other times it’s all I can do not to cry.

[via The Order of Recon]

Healing And No Ammunition

One thing I've learned in life is that you can't stop a bullet without something getting destroyed.

I'm talking about emotional hurt, the kind of things that are symptomatic, those moments that prove beyond doubt that human beings are flawed in how they relate. When someone takes something you value and treats it with contempt or apathy, the pain is like a bullet, a small thing, that with the speed of a moment penetrates and damages. Words, too are tools, for destruction or for building. Sometimes what is left unsaid is a weapon, too.

Some of the smallest moments become that bullet. You can tell someone outside the bubble about that moment that wounded you, and they may laugh at you and tell you it's only a small thing. And that it is. Bullets don't crush you, they riddle you with holes that drain life. In some relationships the wounds heal and the scar disappears, and in some one wound lays open for a long time, and in others you lie bleeding for what seems like years, and sometimes it is: decades....

You have the choice to know and be known. If you never let anyone past the wall, the medic won't get in either. Somebody out there has the power to fix you, or at least to try. All hands can be healing hands or weapons, and words can heal or hurt. We have choices. And the biggest choice is not to be the violent one who causes the pain. We fail so often at such a simple thing, but it's a choice we have to keep making over and over again: to be one who brings healing and not ammunition.

It's your choice. The only way to stop a bullet without sustaining damage is leaving it in the box. You can't stop someone else's bullets, but at least you can stop your own.

[via You saved my life from a colorless one]

Ache Beautiful
from the album "It's For You"

(Michael Roe)

you're so far away
and i won't see you any day soon
we came a long way
and now you want to fly to the moon
all alone going your own way
i thought i owned your love
and now you say

ache, ache beautiful for me
go along and ache
ache beauty babe

thought love was here to stay
for years, but now it's down to days
and it's one long long day
to Heathrow from Humboldt bay
love was a song we sang
so beautifully
and can it be gone permanently
and you say

ache, ache beautiful for me
come along and ache
ache beauty babe

yeah, ache, ache beautiful
but all this heart can do is break
so take a piece

you say you're young, too young
you want to just live for today
but true love don't come along every day
and you say

ache, ache beautiful for me
come along and ache
ache beauty baby

yeah, ache, ache beautiful for me
come along and ache
ache beautifully

yeah ache, ache beautiful for me
above me you can sail
duty free
and you say

ache, ache beautiful
but no heart ever breaks
beautifully

© 1994 7 & 7 Is Music (ASCAP)

Like A Flood

It's funny, life can't happen without water, it's one of the most basic things that we need. But when our lives our falling apart, the water can often be a sign of intense pain.

[via Of a Pastoral Wannabe]

Those Who Stay, Those Who Leave

Great natural disasters, such as hurricanes or tidal waves, strike our world. Where there is warning, a few brave souls usually choose to remain in their homes. The vast majority of the inhabitants flee the coming devastation. After the storm abates, those who are able to do so return home. And at times there is a pattern that emerges between the lines of the news reports that are written for the world to read. Often there is a striking contrast between those who stay and those who leave. The hearts of the survivors are often full of gratitude that they are still alive. The returnees at times see only devastation and feel only anguish. The one who is lashed by the storm is often the one who is grateful.

from Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes: Cultural Studies in the Gospels, by Kenneth E. Bailey, [HT: Radical Womanhood]

These Moments We Have

The hope is what gets me. The hope that there is something better. That our limited expressions of love — because of both time and our imperfect nature — can actually be enough. That’s what overwhelms me. These moments we have to love each other are always limited and restrained. And often only when we become devastatingly aware of their transient nature, do we fully experience them. There is such hurt and hope, loss and gain, joy and pain, and they all mix together in one big, overpowering mess that what can we do but cry?

Cry over brokenness. Cry over our fears. Our failings. Past failings and future failings. Cry over these indescribable feelings of love that we experience towards others. And from others — which make us feel unworthy....

And maybe when we have these moments of weeping from deep within ourselves, maybe it is more about the hope than the hopelessness. That despite all of the pain and loss that life ultimately makes sense and is good and is worth living. And that we’re worth it. And others are too. And all of this loving and the losing that goes along with it — well, that’s the best part. And sometimes a good cry and a few moments with someone you’re about to lose can mean more than a month of Sundays and a pat on the back.

[via VanderMeander]

Today an old soul, born a day late,
Will walk into tomorrow. {the rest}

[via Of a Pastoral Wannabe]

The Irony of Holy Saturday

[via IdeaJoy]

The Original Jesus Rocker Goes to Jesus

[via The Wittenburg Door]

Bringing Home

There are many reasons for grieving, not all of them related to physical death. Some grieve the death of hopes and plans, as the years of singleness, childlessness, or chronic illness accumulate. Others grieve the families they once had, now divided by divorce. Still others miss the ease of family celebrations before this new, blended family arrangement hit them.

Christmas often staggers under the weight of human emotion and expectation — just as it has from the very start.

From a human perspective, the first "Christmas," so to speak, was simultaneously crowded and lonely. Dispirited Jews shuffled around the region, required to be part of a new, universal Roman census for possibly the first time. (Previously Palestine had been excluded from the Roman census because Jews were exempt from serving in the Roman army.) Among those sojourners was a young couple with a whiff of scandal about them. {more...}

[via Boundless, HT: Solo Femininity]

Redemption Draweth Nigh

Blessed are the empty wombs

[via Randall Friesen]

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May Others Be With You

"It's the running, not the cutting, that demands a cry of lament." Whether struggling with inner demons or becoming a safe target, may others be with you.

[via The Gift of Singleness, in this post]



[via Think Virtue!, in this post]

Meager Mercy?

"I hope it was worth it."

[via Acre Fields, HT: The Science of Following God, Living Morally, and Making Awesome Movies]