Reflections for Week of Feb.4

Sunday- 2/4 Ps. 147 moves toward the conclusion of this composed prayer book as one of the praise prayers. I love how the care of v.2 moves into the vastness of creative planning. And goes back to it in v. 6.What catches your eye in vv.1-11?

Monday-Dietrich Bonhoeffer-Humanly speaking, we could understand and interpret the Sermon on the Mount in a thousand different ways. ..He does not mean that it is to be discussed as an ideal; he really means us to get on with it.

Tuesday-For John of the Cross the spiritual life is not about getting closer to God.  Instead it is a journey of consciousness.  We realize union with God, we don’t acquire it or receive it.  It is something we already possess but we need to let go of everything that keeps us from seeing this reality.  The dark night journey essentially is about stripping away all of our false idols and securities so that we might come to a more profound realization of the love that already dwells within us.

Wednesday-Teilhard de Chardin-Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love. And then, for the second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire.

Thursday-He that is proud eats up himself: pride is his own glass, his own trumpet, his own chronicle.” William Shakespeare

Friday- Robert Frost-Mending Wall":         Before I built a wall I'd ask to know/  What I was walling in or walling out,/And to whom I was like to give offence./ Something in me there is that doesn't love a wall That wants it down.../ He moves in darkness as it seems to me,/ Not of woods only and the shade of trees./ He will not go beyond his father's saying:/He says again, "Good fences make good neighbours."

Saturday-Martin Luther King Jr.-Time itself is neutral; it can be used either destructively or constructively. More and more I feel that the people of ill will have used time much more effectively than have the people of good will. We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence of the good people. Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be coworkers with God, and without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of stagnation.