Images of Australia: Melbourne

                                                             
                                                                    
Scar Detail, July 2010 (Wounded Healer)

                                                                 
                                                                          
The sacrificial instinct is the deep recognition that something always has to die for something bigger to be born.  We started with human sacrifice (Abraham and Isaac), we moved to animal sacrifice (the ritual killing of the Passover lamb described in Exodus 12), and we gradually get closer to what really has to be sacrificed—our own beloved ego—as protected and beloved as a little household lamb!  We will all find endless disguises and excuses to avoid letting go of what really needs to die.  And it is not other humans (firstborn sons of Egyptians), animals (lambs or goats), or even “meat on Friday” that God wants or needs.  It is always our false self that has to be let go, which is going to die anyway.

--Richard Rohr, Wondrous Encounters, Scripture for Lent

                                                                  

    

iPhone Diary Series: Lent

iPhone Diary: 15 February 2010

                                                  

O my God, I cry in the daytime, but you do not answer;

     by night as well, but I find no rest.

I am poured out like water;

    all my bones are out of joint;

      my heart within my breast is melting wax.

My mouth is dried out like a pot-sherd;

    my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth,

      and you have laid me in the dust of the grave.

Be not far away, O God;

    you are my strength; hasten to help me.

To you alone all who sleep in the earth bow down in worship;

    all who go down to the dust fall before you.

My soul shall live for you;

    my descendants shall serve you;

      they shall be known as yours for ever.

They shall come and make known to a people yet unborn

    the saving deeds that you have done.

--Psalm 22: 2, 14-15, 18, 28-30

The Saint Helena Psalter

iPhone Diary Series: Lent

   

  iPhone Diary: 15 February 2010

O God of all creation,

hear our cries.

Chaos swirls about.

Doubt clouds our vision.

Rhetoric dulls our hearing.

How long must we wait?

When, when O Lord?

When will there be new ways of thinking, new wine?

When will compassion infuse the darkness of distrust and prejudice?

When will all God's children be honored as they are created?

O God... let it be soon.

--Lillian Smith Tharp, from her poem "Sing a New Song"

Gifts from Within, Morehouse Publishing, 2002

iPhone Diary Series: Lent

iPhone Diary: 15 February 2010

O God, you are my God; eagerly I seek you;

my soul thirsts for you, my flesh faints for you,

as in a barren and dry land where there is no water.

Therefore I have gazed upon you in your holy place,

that I might behold your power and your glory.

For your loving-kindness is better than life itself;

my lips shall give you praise.

-- Psalm 63: 1-3 (BCP p. 670)

iPhone Diary Series: Lent

iPhone Diary: 15 February 2010

The most simple spiritual discipline is some degree of solitude and silence. But it's the hardest because none of us wants to be with someone we don't love. To be with our own thoughts and feelings, to stop the addictive prayer wheels and just feel what we're feeling, think what we're really thinking, is probably the most courageous act most of us will ever do.

--Fr. Richard Rohr

Radical Grace, p. 106