The trustful willingness to live without closure

“Come, Lord Jesus” is a leap into the kind of freedom and surrender that is rightly called the virtue of hope. The theological virtue of hope is the patient and trustful willingness to live without closure, without resolution, and still be content and even happy because our Satisfaction is now at another level, and our Source is beyond ourselves.

We are able to trust that the Lord will come again, just as Jesus has come into our past, into our private dilemmas and into our suffering world. Our Christian past then becomes our Christian prologue, and “Come, Lord Jesus” is not a cry of desperation but an assured shout of cosmic hope!

Adapted from Preparing for Christmas with Richard Rohr, p. 5

Love Revealed

This is what Trinity Wall Street says about their 2010 online advent calendar:

Trinity Wall Street’s 2010 Advent Calendar, Love Revealed, takes a look across America at young people who are growing into wisdom, advocating for change, and creating a better world, particularly through partnerships with churches and church programs. Stories this year are drawn from the Episcopal Service Corps, the All Our Children public-school advocacy program, and other innovative church initiatives involving youth and young adults.

I applaud their efforts and happily share their calendar here:

http://www.trinitywallstreet.org/news/features/2010-advent-calendar

Lego Nativity

This is for those who wait - Fireflight

I will wait.

Today is the first day of Advent.

Baggage

Hilarious!
found here

Goat Head Beach, Jenner, CA

Spent the weekend with friends in Jenner. Love the rhythm of the waves there.

Free Fall from Prolifik Films

Free Fall from ProlifikFilms on Vimeo.

Time - Og Mandingo

Never allow anyone to rain on your parade and thus cast a pall of gloom and defeat on the entire day. Remember that no talent, no self-denial, no brains, no character, are required to set up in the fault-finding business. Nothing external can have any power over you unless you permit it.

Your time is too precious to be sacrificed in wasted days combating the menial forces of hate, jealously, and envy. Guard your fragile life carefully. Only God can shape a flower, but any foolish child can pull it to pieces. - Og Mandingo

Quotable Quotes

” So much of what we deal with in day to day life is personal, subjective, emotional, reactionary, hurt, etc. None of this is dealt with in most Preaching, apologetics, exegesis or Eisegesis, eschatology, Soteriology ecclesiastical, etc. So the place where most of us spend our time, in the real world, has very little if anything to do where we are taught, exhorted, and even threatened to stay. We operate in the day to day world but are expected to think in the pseudo other world of the “apologetic” .

So what do we do, we spend much of our time, hand waving about how we dont hurt, we dont need, we understand, we accept, we have dealt with it, etc. When in reality we do hurt, we dont understand, we dont accept, we do need. Others do the same and thus we are accepted, Jesus stands at the door and knocks, wanting to explain, heal, accept, understand, deal with it, and just plain love us. Basically we are broken people who need a savior”

- brian at Phoenix Preacher