That burns up in your bones
I want to know
I want to know more now (1)
Lord, obssess me with You.
“ ‘…Now Wilhelm, I’m trying to do you some good. I want to tell you, don’t marry suffering. Some people do. They get married to it, and sleep and eat together, just as husband and wife. If they go with joy they think it’s adultery.’
When Wilhelm heard this he had, in spite of himself, to admit that there was a great deal in Tamkin’s words. Yes, thought Wilhelm, suffering is the only kind of life they are sure they can have, and if they quit suffering they’re afraid they’ll have nothing. He knows it. This time the faker knows what he’s talking about. ” (2)
I was looking to myself
And I forgot the power of God
I was standing with a sparkler in my hand
While I stood so proud and profound You went and burned the whole place down
Now that’s a fire
...I was dwelling on my hopelessness and doubt
With the slightest invitation You came with total detonation
Now that’s a fire (1)
(3)“It is for us Christians, then…to do these two things: first, to learn to be receptive of life before plunging into activity, to learn to be possessed of life, of truth, of love, to be possessed by God; then secondly, to learn to face the squalors of life as they come to us—and we do not grow into the light by trying to escape the darkness but by meeting it—with courage and tranquility, as we shall then be enabled to do…” (4)
( "If we don't start in the face of impossibilities, when do we start?" (5) )
I was warming my hands by this little light of mine
but now I know it’s time
time to come in from the cold
Fight fire with fire, come fan the flame
come stir up these coals in my soul, in my soul (1)
'No amount of falls will really undo us if we keep on picking ourselves up each time. We shall of course be very muddy & tattered children by the time we reach home. But the baths are all ready, the towels put out, & the clean clothes in the airing cupboard. The only fatal thing is to lose one's temper & give it up. It is when we notice the dirt that God is most present in us: it is the very sign of his presence.' -C.S. Lewis
"YOU WERE TAUGHT TO PUT AWAY YOUR FORMER WAY OF LIFE, YOUR OLD SELF, CORRUPT AND DELUDED BY ITS LUSTS, AND TO BE RENEWED IN THE SPIRIT OF YOUR MINDS... LET NO ONE DECEIVE YOU WITH EMPTY WORDS..."
letter to the Ephesians, 4:22a, 5:6a
(1) 'Jeremiah' on the Sara Groves album The Other Side of Something.
(2) From Seize the Day, by Saul Bellow
(3) Andy Goldsworthy's work Rowan Leaves with Hole
(4) From an article by British Dominican priest Father Gerald Vann, written in the 1950s and printed in Image Magazine No. 52, Winter 2007 issue.
(5) from Ken Pike, pioneering linguist and Bible translator.
