This is not a post about presents, but it is about being present. Today’s Commonplace Book quotes come from one of my very favorite contemporary books. Indeed, it spoke right into my heart at a time that i desperately needed the message.
My absolute favorite modern non-Orthodox book is One Thousand Gifts, by Ann Voskamp. You have probably read the book yourself. If you have not i cannot recommend it higher.
For this recovering perfectionist, she told me precisely what i needed to know. The heartfelt truth is that she told me what i already suspected, and was not ready to put into practice until i read the book.
“All my eyes can seem to fixate on are the splatters of disappointment across here and me.”
Without recognizing what i was doing, i was living the life God gave me inside-out.
God gives us everything we need. He blesses us beyond our ability to measure or comprehend, yet for too many of us, it becomes a life of scarcity.
We fear and fear gives birth to a lack of gratitude.
Humanity’s discontent is the genesis of the fall in Genesis. Voskamp quotes Alexander Schmemann’s For the Life of the Word, C.S. Lewis, Julian of Norwich, and other great thinkers of the ages to guide the reader to a recognition that everything that happens is a gift from God.
After listing thousands of gifts myself, i can attest to the difference that an intentional attitude of gratitude can make.
Watching an art show reminded me today, that shadow creates form. My problem is that i am leaving the light out of my thinking some days.
God allows only enough dark for us to see the form. i forget to notice the light. The sun is always shining.
To quote another of my very favorite bloggers, Father Steven Freeman,
“Glory to God.”
“Put yourself in God’s hands and pray that He will put you in the place that He considers best.”
"I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them. on the sand,
Half-sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And Wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that it's sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, snapped on lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal these words appear;
"my name is Oxymandias, king of kings;
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away."
In an age of vicious political discourse, i am reminded that all worldly power is fleeting.
i encountered Orthodoxy through my husband. Our first real date began with the Divine Liturgy. i was a life-long Lutheran and my faith was always the central focus of my life.
The Orthodox Church has provided a place where my faith is nurtured, challenged and allowed to expand and grow.
pilgrim journey through life 