Fully Alive

Antistrophes

Ah, women, that you are here on earth, that you

move here among us, grief-filled,

no more watched over than we and yet able

to bless like the blessed.

From what region,

when the loved one appears,

do you take the future?

More than will ever exist.

He who knows distances

up to the outermost fixed star

is amazed to find this,

your magnificent heartspace.

How, in the crush, do you keep it free?

--Rainer Maria Rilke

Jan Meyers says that if you've found someone who has lived fully and is still fully alive, you've found a treasure--learn from her.

Hope II

More from Allure of Hope:


Hope is saturated in desperation, not...proficiency.


Compassion is called out of us when we see situations where there is an obvious absence of something or someone life-giving. It calls us to ache, mostly because we are forced to long for the restoration of whatever or whoever is absent.


God seems to be more concerned with our trust that we're being led somewhere, that He is taking us somewhere because of His love for us, than He is concerned with a flawless record along the way.


Our desire in the long wait reminds us of who we're waiting fo. He is taking us somewhere, and along the way He is creating beauty. Our responsive, sensual, compassionate, forgiving, persevering hearts have the privilege of introducing others to the Glorious Intruder....this one who seeks us out amid our hovering and clamoring false pursuits.

Hope

A book I'm reading, The Allure of Hope by Jan Meyers, is meaningful to me as I look back at 2008 and into 2009. Some favorite quotes from it are posted below, though don't do the book justice:


regarding the Biblical metaphor of labor/birth for hope:

As our desire grows, as the anticipation of the birth deepens, we have to surrender to something much bigger than ourselves....we have to show up, but it is going to happen whether we agree to it or not...we give birth by giving ourselves over to His intentions for us....we start by living our own story....It takes courage to live the story we are given.

and about what we do with other stories when they crash or collide into ours:

Our stories are given to us by God; they are never meant to impact only us. Rodney Clapp says that the New Testament doesn't even imagine an autonomous person....Sue Monk Kidd says of this, 'As the True Self is born within us, the initial movement of soul is from the collective 'they' to the ground of an authentic I. That's holy ground, yet God calls us to a ground even holier; God calls us from the authentic I toward a compassionate 'we'. Relationship with God and people He brings into our lives becomes the door of hope.

Regarding the tension of living fully in the present and yearning for heaven, for what is out of reach, the far off country of CS Lewis and about the losses we experience as we want what is out of reach and surrender to the waiting:

Whether it's the loss of a child, parent, love, or friend, loss...can feel more like the loss of a vital organ: a heart, or a brain, or lungs. To live through such loss is to relearn to feel, to move, to think, and to breathe....Some wounds were not meant to be entirely healed here on earth. Sometimes the wounds are all we have to remind us of the one we love.

Like His story, ours when given over is one of betrayal, blood, asphyxiation, love, resurrection, forgiveness, and restoration.

...which gives me hope!