Waiting For More and Nothing Else

During the Advent season, a lot of people try to relive or rediscover a sense of expectation and hope. They remember what it might be like to wait for the coming of God… the coming of healing, liberation, and salvation. For me, this whole year has been defined by waiting for God (it’s been a tough year, marked by many personal sorrows and losses which I have not written about here). Only, in my waiting for God, I’ve gradually learned to wait without much expectation or hope… I simply wait because there is nothing else that can be done by any of us. We’ve all tried our best and failed. Only God can save us, and even though God is nowhere to be found, we wait… because, at the end of the day, we are still in need of salvation.

[via On Journeying with those in Exile]

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]

Wonder and Space...

Hubble Space Telescope Advent Calendar 2008

[via The Big Picture, HT: Bene Diction Blogs On]

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

[via VanderMeander]

In The Course of Time (lyrics and music by Mike Schmitz)

Secrets born in unknown lands
Currents that struggle to get
From your mind to your hands
Crossings heaving into view
Nobody rides through
The raging waters but you
Harder rains are gonna fall
Fog stands before you solid as a wall
All these mountains left to climb
But it's all, all in the course of time

Yes, there's fire on the trail
Long weary days and bread
That has long gone stale
But gifts you forfeit in the night
Reappear, purified
In the gathering of the light
Lies have crept into your ears
Soon as you know (soon as you know)
Knowledge disappears
Pain and wounds to heal the crime
And it's all, all in the course of time

Lightening stabs into my sight
I'm lit like a wick
And ripped like a storm blown kite
Danger just heightens what I feel
I reach out with my Sistine finger
To touch the wheel
Clouds no longer on my eyes
Fear is no jury when the heart retries
Every point to be aligned
And it's all, all in the course of time

Without Change or Movement

This is a scary thought; it takes courage to step out into the unknown.

But here's the thing: contrary to what some might imply, if not say outright, waiting is also courageous. Waiting can be just as terrifying as stepping out, if not more. When stepping out at least you're going somewhere. Waiting is just waiting. It's uncertainty without change or movement.

[via The Eagle & Child]

Edging Ahead

It’s an agonizing time when you feel your peers edging ahead and the cool people aren’t seeking you out and almost every day somebody announces a cool new job, or a big romance, or the receipt of an awesome gift, some fresh kill from the jungle, and it depresses you. You don’t want to be a loser. And you sense the fact that, in life, so much — so very much — is pure luck, no matter what they want you to think, and an angel may knock at your door in the person of a beggar, and you say No, and that No will resound for the rest of your born days. It is agonizing to think about.

Garrison Keillor

[via Salon, HT: Randall Friesen]

The Key Moment Has Happened

He was opening up his calendar and putting a timeframe on redemption. He was assigning power and promise to weeks and months. Hoping that if he stacked up days up like bandages, his wife would forgive him.

But the past is seductive. When I look back in the rear view mirror, it’s constantly swelling its chest, appearing more important than it is, adding details to memories, hiding others in the shadows, recreating what really happened. I like to think that my memories are documentaries, full of fact and truth, but they’re more like summer blockbusters. Full of special effects and illusions....

For him it’s much simpler. There are only two conditions, dead or alive, lost or found. There is no need to wait for time to heal any wounds or to weigh out time gone versus time obedient. The rescued has occurred, the key moment has happened.

No calendar cannot change that.

Time cannot offer that kind of healing.

[via Stuff Christians Like]

Time travel, Providence, and Lost

[via ThinkChristian.NET]

Making Up Time

To Leap Or Not To Leap

[via The Raging Paradoxidation]

Balance, Gratitude and Truthfulness

[via Charming, But Single in this post]

Not to overdo this resolution thing or to put too fine a point on it, but I have narrowed my broad desires for self improvement in 2008 into three main goals. And not to become the Single Female Blogger version of “Chicken Soup for the Soul,” they are:

1. I resolve to pause before buying (or consuming) anything (yes, fatty foods included) and ask myself, “Am I buying this to fill some imaginary void in my life or satisfy some fleeting emotion?” If so, I will put it down.
2. I resolve to show gratitude for the kindness showered upon me each day by friends, colleagues, family members, adversaries (real or imagined) and strangers on the street.
3. I resolve to stop hiding behind humor, sarcasm, cynicism and electronic devices and to introduce myself to two new people each month.

...Hundreds of actions correspond with each of these goals and I know I will not succeed 100 percent of the time. But I will no longer let fear of failure and imperfection cause me to consciously (or subconsciously) ruin positive things in my life. As I told a friend who is making major life changes when we were talking the other day, “Sometimes it is easier to mess up the good things than to forgive yourself for your flaws and accept that you are deserving of contentment and happiness.”

Strange bedfellows: the Evangelicals and the Aquarians

[via Think Christian.NET]

With The Rest Of It...

This is magic. Work for what you want.

[via Hope Springs Intermittent]

Being positive is only meaningful in the context of being realistic.

[via satire and theology]

The ending of a story is inextricably tied up with the rest of it. It flows from what precedes it, but it also shapes and reshapes everything that precedes it. The ending of a story can tell us what the story means -- it can give meaning to all that precedes it.

[via slacktivist]

After A Universal Rapture

Imagine Earth without people

[via New Scientist, HT: Jordon Cooper]

Past Good. Present Bad. Simply Put.

Why did the shootings at VA Tech occur?

[via grrrl meets world]

Guess Who's Dead Now

[via D'Caffeinated Pickle]

Vernal EquiNOT

[via The Wittenburg Blog]

In an Orderly Fashion

[via Allan Tan's Blog]

[via indexed]

Rhythm Rather Than Pace

More often than not the problem is a matter of rhythm rather than pace. We have to manage the rate and sequence the beats of life come to us in a way that matches our internal ability to not only handle them, but harness them.

[via Peregrine Sojo]