full of thanks.

• community meeting
• wes stafford's life
• the encouragement he brought to our crew
• nice time at twiga with our family (+1 friend per child)
• fun time on deck 8...skateboarding lessons, rollerblading, sunset

• straight cabin (for the moment)
• how God tells us what to say/share if we just ask Him
• hot water is working again! 
• walking around reading about an incredible man

• time to sit and be still
• the plan is that we're going back to guinea!
• everything was working properly in the cafe
• ships that remind me to pray for friends (this is the hawk family's)

• bag of goodies from the cheng family...what thoughtfulness!
• thank you notes written by the pool
• we DID end up getting something on the holland container - thanks to erin's thoughtfulness

• successful teeth cleaning for emma.  all smiles!!
• peaceful teeth filling for eli.  
• animals zip-lining through the cabin

• when the kids make really fun forts (and when they sing in them is even better!)
• knowing that toni and suzanne are resting in key west.  
• lovely little book (anything using the word "culled" on the title page has got to be special)(not quite sure of the title...it's not really about sympathy at all....)

• honest and forthright communication
• meaningful conversations  
• amusing turkeys.  this just makes me laugh. 

• the youth's responses to questions about furniture/ideas for the youth room 
• reading through our monthly donor report to find gifts that we weren't expecting and hadn't heard about yet.
• emma's contentment to peacefully "craft" for a long time (and the "crafts" she produced!)

ruthless trust, part 6

last post with ruthless trust quotes. (am i hearing sighs of relief or sighs of wishing for more?!) i can't recommend this book enough....here are the bits that stood out to me from chapters 11 and 12.  no more quote posts for a while after this one (unless i read another really great book worth sharing!).  

The music of what is happening can be heard only in the present moment, right now, right here.

Now/here spells nowhere.  To be fully present to whoever or whatever is immediately before us is to pitch a tent in the wilderness of Nowhere. 

Self-forgetfulness is a prerequisite for truly being in the now.

Presence to the present.

Stay right here, right now.

Being in the now removes us from the endless and fruitless self-analysis.  In the absence of self-observation, guilt and shame mysteriously disappear.

Calm foresight regarding future engagements and appointments is responsible behavior, so long as it is not a compulsive escape from Nowhere

…attach myself to nothing but the will of God alone.

The will of God is the love of God.

We simply ask for a the grace to set a time limit on our self-pity.

Routinely performing hidden, secret acts of kindness that no one will ever know about, confident that “your Father who sees all that is done in secret will reward you.”

Is it possible that each time we stumble, fall and rise again, God can barely bear the bliss of it all? – Jim Finley

The mysterious love of God is fierce enough to penetrate even those who think that they cannot receive it.

Ruthless trust is the courageous confidence that despite suffering and evil, terrorism and domestic conflict, God’s plan in Jesus Christ cannot fail.

You will trust him to the degree that you know you are loved by Him.

God is with us and loves us in our struggle to be faithful.

tell Papa God tenki

• crystal light lemonade.  i know it's made the list before...but i'm thankful - so it's on the list again.
• all 5 of us on deck 8
• delightful evening
• aletha's email.
• comfortably cute
• singing "tell Papa God tenki" -- and finding this fun gem of a blog post from my friend Ali when i googled it to make sure i was spelling it correctly: tell-am-tenki
• an impromptu picture on the beach that ended up being the avenue for tons of encouraging words

• caroline's idea/eagerness to rearrange.  it's good to mix it up a bit. 
• all that nick did to make rearranging possible (and complete)
• mumford and son's music
• emma's "performance" of jesus loves the little children
• chocolate and toffee covered almonds
• krissy's willingness to share previously mentioned goodness
• solid night of sleep
• people who like to ask random questions (i like the questions...and it helps me feel not so strange)
• lovely time at El Torino with the chaplaincy team

• the view from the windows of El Torino up the street (maybe i'll go back and take a picture someday)
• eli's kindness to emma on deck 8
• how polite emma is when she is sick
• PJ's willingness to "go to bat" on behalf of the back room of the library

ruthless trust quotes, part 5

this is the next to last post of manning quotes!  it's like the magical mr. jeremiah harvey says in workout class when we're close to being done -- "we're getting there." these are from chapters 9-10.  enjoy! 

Simply present yourself to God, clinging to nothing but your humanness. 

He (Jesus) was enthralled with his father.  In utter self-forgetfulness, was the growing intimacy with, trust in, and love of his Abba.  He lived securely in his father’s acceptance. 

His single minded orientation toward His father freed him from self-consciousness.  Lost in wonder and gratefulness, he taught us the true meaning of humility.

The humble man is surprised by all the good that he sees around him rather than scandalized by what he cannot judge away.

Based on the solid, irrefutable evidence of God’s relentless faithfulness, a certainty in the trustworthiness of the tremendous Lover evolves without the least sweat or strain on our part.

The humbly confident disciple, when asked to explain his surety in the love of God, scratches his head and says, “I can’t explain it because I really don’t know.”

The spiritual woman does not fret and flap over opportunities missed, does not hammer herself for not working hard enough, and does not have a panic attack wondering whether she has received grace in vain. She lives in quiet confidence that God is working in her day and night.

I have always known about your flaw and I have taken advantage of it.

We formulate plans to fulfill what we perceive to be the purpose of our lives (inevitably limited), and when the locomotive of our longings gets derailed we deem ourselves failures.

Our disappointments arise from presuming to know the outcome of a particular endeavor.

Without the comparison, it would have been happy, content in the knowledge that it was exactly the way it was supposed to be.

Trust yourself as one entrusted by God with everything you need to live life to the full.

We are providentially equipped to fulfill the unique purpose of our existence.

Our very existence is one of the never-to-be repeated ways God has chosen to express himself in space and time.  Because we are made in God’s image and likeness, you and I are yet another promise that he has made to the universe that he will continue to love it and care for it.

I shall be full of his actuality and find him everywhere in myself and fine myself nowhere.  I shall be lost in Him.  – Merton

How glorious the splendor of a human heart which trusts that it is loved!

ruthless trust, part 4 (of 6!)

quotes and lines from chapters 6-8.  it's a lot to soak in.  

Since the Holy One is ultimately unknowable, we can only stutter and stammer about an omnipotent deity who, with effortless ease, created a star 264 trillion miles away.

Personal responsibility replaces personal response to God, and we come engrossed in our efforts to grow in holiness.

Moralism and its stepchild, legalism, pervert the character of the Christian life.

God’s distance must be complemented by his nearness.

We can no more catch a hurricane in a shrimp net or Niagara Falls in a coffee cup than we can grasp the infinity of God’s reality.

Transcendence means that God cannot be confined to the world, that he is never this rather than that, here rather than there.  Immanence, on the other hand, means that God is wholly involved with us….he is here in his mysterious nearness. 

Faith + Hope = Trust

Trust means the willingness to become absolutely empty of all terrifying and comforting images of God that we have held, so that the gift of God in Jesus Christ may come to us on God’s terms.  

…to seek the experience simply for the sake of experience is to seek self, not God.

The quiet certitude of the believer translate simply as “I know that I know that I know,” however dimly and through a glass darkly.

Every  authentic spiritual experience is an experience of unrestricted, unconditional being in Love. –Bernard Lonergan

Our trust in Jesus grows as we shift from making self-conscious efforts to be good to allowing ourselves to be loved as we are (not as we should be). 

Self-absorption fades into self-forgetfulness, as we fix our gaze on the brightness of the Lord.

Trust does not demand explanations but turns to the One who promised, “I will not leave you orphans.”

Like faith and hope, trust cannot be self-generated.  I cannot simply will myself to trust.  What outrageous irony:  the one thing I am responsible for throughout my life I cannot generate.  The one thing I need to do I cannot do. 

What does lie within my power is paying attention to the faithfulness of Jesus….pay attention to Jesus throughout my journey, remembering his kindness.

We can endure the unwanted intrusion of evil when we have experienced a theophany – an insight into the reality of go. 

…I shake my head in grateful surprise at the miracle of his grace at work in me…

honesty with others and with self is a precious commodity seldom found in either world at large or the church.

Familiarity does not exclude respect

I want a relationship with the Abba of Jesus, who is infinitely compassionate with my brokenness and at the same time an awesome, incomprehensible, and unwieldy mystery.

We should sow compassion toward our neurotic selves and our neurotic neighbors.

Don’t ever be so foolish as to measure my Father’s compassion with your compassion.  Don’t ever be so silly as to compare your thing, pallid, wavering, capricious human compassion with mine, for I am God as well as man. 

Faith God without hope in his promises is tainted trust.

Clarity, reassurance, and proof cannot create trust, sustain it or guarantee any certainty of its presence.

The 3 greatest obstacles to trust are amnesia, inertia and manana.  We are all subject to forgetfulness of God’s faithfulness in the past, laziness to act on the divine promise, and postponing until tomorrow what Jesus is asking of us today: childlike abandonment in trust.  -Edward Farrell

The most common form of presumption is the expectation that God will directly and secretly intervene in human affairs.

Trust in God does not presume that God will intervene...

thursday came around rather quickly.

• the birthday video for yaya loaded
• celebrating such a special lady.  what a gift. 
• when i went to move the clothes from the washer to the dryer all of the washers had finished at the same time AND all of the dryers were empty
• spending time with 4 special fellas (1 Australian, 1 American, 1 South African & 1 Brit!) in Grade 1 last week

• DEAR (Drop Everything And Read) day in Grade 1 (it may need to be declared a universal holiday)
• Miss Shea (grade 1 teacher) is back!!
• caroline sharing my coffee
• time at the atlantic saturday...
• solitary walks
• making coffee in the cafe sunday morning
• battery operated pencil sharpener!

• lots of peaceful kids in the cabin (9 at most moments)
• nibbles (mrs. emma's word for "snacks")
• 1000 more gifts
• "rejoice in the relief of being fully understood." - jesus calling
• knowing there's a delightful coffee shop within walking distance of our old house (not that we get to enjoy it at this point....but i'm thankful to know it's there...and thankful to know that dear friends will enjoy it often!)
• Susie's South 40 gourmet pecans.  I don't know who Susie is or even where South 40 is (somewhere in Texas...) but that lady makes some great gourmet pecans!

• talking in kirstie's cabin
• reading the kids version of jesus calling
• watching eli put legos together
• christmas card from miss catharine's family.  so special.

• teriyaki sauce
• the youth leaders
• the movie i've been wanting to watch was loaded onto movie night!
• passed the fire panel training
• confidentiality addressed in a wonderful way
• rainy days

• crystal light lemonade
• adding good books to the library's collection
• fun little trip to the boutique with nick
• reading what eli wrote about how he's unique
• notes in the margin that help me remember wonderful moments
• beautiful, ordinary moments
  

Ruthless Trust Quotes, Part 3

moving right along...favorite quotes and snippets from Brennan Manning's "Ruthless Trust" Chapters 2-5.  (i think this may be part 3 of 5...maybe 6...we'll see).  enjoy! 

The person with an abiding spirit of gratitude is the one that trusts God. 

The foremost quality of a trusting disciple is gratefulness.  Gratitude arises from the lived perception, evaluation and acceptance of all of life as grace – as an undeserved and unearned gift from the Father’s hand.  Such recognition is itself the work of grace, and acceptance of the gift is implicitly an acknowledgement of the Giver.

 Underlying every cry of the grateful sinner is an unshaken trust in the person and promise of Jesus.

Uncontaminated trust in the revelation of Jesus allows us to breathe more freely, to dance more joyfully and to sing more gratefully about the gift of salvation.

Magnalia Dei, the marvels of God

It is simply not possible to be simultaneously grateful and resentful or full of self-pity.

…somehow a great enemy had been disarmed in her life.

Walk the way of gratefulness

He knew himself to be a man possessed totally by another, belonging totally to another, and dependent totally on another.

The grumblers live in a state of self-induced stress.

St. Benedict considered grumbling a serious offense against community life.

To be grateful for an unanswered prayer, to give thanks in a state of interior desolation, to trust in the love of God in the face of the marvels, cruel  circumstances, obscenities and commonplaces of life is to whisper a doxology in darkness.

The psalms are raw, disturbing, and brutally honest.  It is  to an angry and bewildered Job that God appears and speaks, and yet God later tells the theological sophisticate Eliphaz to ask for Job’s prayers, adding “for you have not spoken truthfully about me, as has my servant Job.”

We are, each and every one of us, insignificant people who God has called and graced to use in a significant way.  In his eyes, the high-profiles ministries are no more significant than those that draw little or no attention and publicity. 

The glory of God is the human being fully alive and the life of the human consists in beholding God.  – Iranaeus

The more we let go of our concepts and images which always limit God, the bigger God grows and the more we approach the mystery of his indefinability.

To avoid mystery is to avoid the only God worthy of worship, honor and praise.

…we become aware of innate poverty, our next-breath dependence, and a numbness that invades the roots of our littleness and realness….

The scandal of God’s silence in the most heartbreaking hours of our journey is perceived in retrospect as veiled, tender Presence and a passage into pure trust that is not at the mercy of the response it receives.

We are drawn into the ever-deepening and more direct awareness of the divine incomprehensibility.

To adore is to recognize the unfathomable greatness of God and the nothingness of the adorer.

We are not sufficient unto ourselves – we have received our life and being from another.

In the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, somewhere deep down a Voice whispers, “All is well, and all will be well..”

Many a  believer’s perception of God is radically wrong.

As we continue to confuse our perception of ourselves with the mystery that we really are, self-rejection is inevitable.

…lift our eyes to the extravagant beauty of God manifested in creation.

See the world as a metaphor for God