This is the precipice between "already" and "not yet", between knowing and doing: the mountaintop where we confront the temptation to turn away from a difficult vocation to an easy death.
How's your personal relationship with Jesus?
The only thing we can be truly proud of is Love itself, beyond us and in us, the Love that surpasses our understanding and embraces all the weaknesses we cannot bear. To be proud of that love is to set it above all our gifts and strengths; to let it rule them and use them for its own purposes. ⚓
Cover of the book "Mystics and Zen Masters"
“So many Christians exalt the demands and rigors of law because, in reality, law is less demanding than pure charity. The law, after all, has reasonable safe limits!”
(Thomas Merton, Mystics and Zen Masters, p. 186-7)
Done!
Joy is an act of resistance against the world's darkness. Not an obligation, but a gift, one that we can give when we are strong and receive when we are weak. Joy does not trivialize evil - it is what enables us to stand against evil. ⚓
Working on a starter pack for vowed religious folks. Let me know if you have suggestions or would like to be added/removed (or if there is an existing such starter pack that I have managed to miss...). #NunsOfBluesky #BruvsOfBluesky ⚓
IO yes; written for E&A, not yet but hopefully someday 😁
This year in the US I'm thinking about the anti-monarchist implications - giving royal power to anyone but Christ is sacrilege, and he turns that power upside down. "The emperor's new clothes" is a great image. All the garments we clothe rulers with are false, but Jesus doesn't mind being naked.
The struggle with perfectionism is real! And that's holy work in and of itself.
Yes, 100%. "Dark night of the spirit" is a badass phrase for a very boring and discouraging reality. The only way I have found through it is patience, gentleness, and persistence; there is always something happening underneath, and the fog will lift eventually.
My guess is just-world fallacy...if They deserve bad things, then I can pretend there are Rules that keep me safe from disaster. Much easier than reckoning with the inherent fragility and contingency of our existential situation.
Yes - I tend to think of this side of the coin as "making room" for virtue, clearing out the weeds so that the garden can grow. Sin is a persistent weed, but God is a patient gardener.
"Asceticism" comes from a root meaning physical exercise or training - practice that makes us stronger.
Whatever strengthens our capacity for faith, compassion, and justice is good practice, and whatever harms it is not good practice. Results, not appearances, are the true measure. ⚓
For those of us who would rather stand still and stay silent, self-denial sometimes means becoming louder and more visible. He must increase; I must decrease.
(This is a liberating and life-giving truth, and also one that I struggle with daily.)
“Germans of the 1930s were not immoral or stupid. They were highly educated, creative, and diverse by the standards of the time. They went to church in greater numbers than Americans do today. And yet, they allowed the unthinkable to happen to their neighbors.” 2018 ⚓️
roodscreen.org/why-we-as-ch...
"So many Christians exalt the demands and rigors of law because, in reality, law is less demanding than pure charity."
- Thomas Merton 🕯️
let us pray together the prayer of three deep breaths:
amen. 🕯️
Alien biology could bring up interesting considerations - what might resurrection, incarnation, salvation mean to a species with some level of collective consciousness, or biological immortality, or symbiosis with another sapient species?
The early virgin martyrs get too much credit for "purity" and not enough for "resisting imperial heteropatriarchy with their lives".
Catherine, Barbara, Margaret, Lucy, Wilgefortis, and all martyrs of Christ, pray for us. 🕯️
Shepherd, because if I met him on the street surrounded by a murder of friendly crows I would question nothing
"God would have us engage with our Creator as we are, not as we think we ought to be."
- Sean Glenn
Hello! May I join?