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Preparing for Lent
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Faith is Trust that Gives Strength and Courage
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O shepherd of souls, O first voice by which all have been created, release us from our miseries and our frailties.
Hildegard Von Bingen (1098-1179)
Yes, Lent calls us to think great thoughts and to embrace great visions of faith, and we try to do that. But it's a season for remembering the small things, too. ...The law of God often comes down to small things, and the greatest in the kingdom of God are best at that.
Victor Hoagland, New Jersey priest
Romantic love is blind to everything except what is lovable and lovely, but Chrit's love sees us with terrible clarity and sees us whole. Christ's love so wishes our joy that it is ruthless against everything in us that diminishes our joy.
Frederick Buechner, American theologian
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A physician's physiology has much the same relation to the power of healing as a cleric's divinity has to his power to influence conduct.
-Samuel Butler (1835-1902)
Hold onto what is good, even if it's only a handful of earth.
-Hopi saying
We gain strength, and courage, and confidence in each experience in which we really stop to look fear in the face.
-Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962)
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Demons of Darkness
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The Community of Love
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As an actor, you want to keep your demons to some extent but you also have to exorcise them so you can use them instead of them using you.
-Skeet Ulrich, Actor
Evil is the shadow of angel. Just as there are angels of light, support, guidance, healing and defense, so we have experiences of shadow angels. And we have names for them: racism, sexism, homophobia are all demons – but they are not out there.
-Matthew Fox, Theologian
What if some day or night a demon were to steal into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: This life as you now live it and have lived it you must live once more. Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth?
-Fredrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)
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God’s love sets me free to enter into community with other people—even when the community is a very limited one and is not the total communion that my heart desires. Only when I live in communion with God can I live in a community that is not perfect. Only then can I love the other person and create a space in which we might be quite distant or very close, but we can still allow something new to be born—a child, friendship, joy, community, a space where strangers and guests can be received.
-Henri Nouwen (1932-1996)
My heart is moved by all I cannot save: so much has been destroyed. I have to cast my lot with those who age after age, perversely, with no extraordinary power, reconstitute power.
-Adrienne Rich, American poet
One is not absolutely alone; one cannot live and die for oneself alone. My life and my death are not purely and simply my own business. I live by and for others, and my life and death involves others.
-Thomas Merton (1915-1968)
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