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His grace is truly amazing isn't it!
Going through this maze of grace, there is this constant offer of His unconditional loving acceptance, without it (the oxygen of His Love) I would suffocate.
Through a series of twists and turns I was lead to read about Kathleen Norris and some of what she has written, the picture of the book I have here is the one I am just starting to read.
Funny how after looking and searching for this book along with others that caught my interest, it was at our local library I was able to obtain two of them~go figure.
This alone captured my attention: "Struggling with her return to the Christian church after many years away, Kathleen Norris found it was the language of Christianity that most distanced her from faith. Words like "judgment", "faith", "dogma", "salvation", "sinner" - become so codified or abstract that their meanings were all but impenetrable. She found she had to wrestle with them and make them her own before they could confer their blessings and their grace. Blending history, theology, story-telling, etymology, and memoir, Norris uses these words as a starting point for reflection, and offers a moving account of her own gradual conversion. She evokes a rich spirituality rooted firmly in the chaos of everyday life - and offers believers and doubters alike an illuminating perspective on how we can embrace ancient traditions and find faith in the contemporary world."
I'm sure you will be hearing more from me as I dive into these living streams.
Rich
4 comments:
Oh, boy - are you in for a treat. I LOVE that book! And everything else she's written, too. But I really, really like that book, because after my long wandering away it helped me deal with some of the same "problem words". It isn't that you have to agree with everything Kathleen says. It's just that she turns such a fine poet's ear to those words and dives into them in ways outside the ordinary that she makes you think, "Well, what DO I think about that?" Even if you come out disagreeing, she's made you at least think it through.
Love that book...Enjoy!
Jim,
Thanks for the heads up. I'm barely into it and already I'm fully engaged in the wonder of the journey it has me on.
This from the preface, 'The confidence that faith requires is notoriously easier for small children than for adults. No matter what the curcumstances of our upbringing, our capacity for trust, allegiance, and confidence is badly battered in the everyday process of growing up.'
If it were not for the transforming power of the Fathers love, (unless you become as a child) I know I would not miss heaven, but I would surly miss out in His present activity in wanting to make real in me/to me the miracle of being LOVED!
This inner miracle of His love begins the process imo of freeing the heart (blessed are the pure in heart)to see Him, and to see Him is love Him, and that spells such continual wonder for a 58 year old man becoming hopefully more child like :)
Here is something else that deeply touched me, its a partial quote from the Boston Globe re:her other book, The Cloister Walk, 'It works the earth of the heart'.
There was/is something in that short phrase that harpooned my heart. I so look forward to reading that book as well.
Some more from Amazing Grace, she is talking about salvation and its applications, she goes on to talk about the deliverance the Israelites experienced as Moses led them out of Egypt and how as soon as as they hit the desert, the complaining begins.
"What God had done, of course, was to set then free from what had long held them in bondage. But they, as any of us might, began longing for the devil they knew, rather than face the unknown road ahead."
Some more from Amazing Grace, she is talking about salvation and its applications, she goes on to talk about the deliverance the Israelites experienced as Moses led them out of Egypt and how as soon as as they hit the desert, the complaining begins.
"What God had done, of course, was to set then free from what had long held them in bondage. But they, as any of us might, began longing for the devil they knew, rather than face the unknown road ahead."
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