The gender imagery that God has given us - C.S. Lewis

https://www.marykassian.com/re-imagining-god-in-the-shack/
quote:
The gender imagery that God has given us is highly important. It reflects critical truths about the nature of the Trinity. Calling him “she” violates his character and important imagery about the nature of our relationship to him. As C.S. Lewis observes,

Common sense, disregarding the discomfort, or even the horror, which the idea of turning all our theological language into the feminine gender arouses in most Christians, will ask “Why not? Since God is in fact not a biological being and has no sex, what can it matter whether we say He or She, Father or Mother, Son or Daughter?”
But Christians think that God Himself has taught us how to speak of Him. To say that it does not matter is to say either that all the masculine imagery is not inspired, is merely human in origin, or else that, though inspired, it is quite arbitrary and unessential. And this is surely intolerable: or, if tolerable, it is an argument …  against Christianity. It is also surely based on a shallow view of imagery. Without drawing upon religion, we know from our poetical experience that image and apprehension cleave closer together than common sense is here prepared to admit; that a child who has been taught to pray to a Mother in Heaven would have a religious life radically different from that of a Christian child. And as image and apprehension are in an organic unity, so, for a Christian, are human body and human soul.
The innovators are really implying that sex is something superficial, irrelevant to the spiritual life… [But] one of the ends for which sex was created was to symbolize to us the hidden things of God. One of the functions of human marriage is to express the nature of the union between Christ and the Church. We have no authority to take the living and semitive figures which God has painted on the canvas of our nature and shift them about as if they were mere geometrical figures… [God images himself as masculine because]…we are all, corporately and individually, feminine to Him.
…The male you could have escaped, for it exists only on the biological level. But the masculine none of us can escape. What is above and beyond all things is so masculine that we are all feminine in relation to it.
(Quotes from C.S. Lewis Essays Notes on the Way and That Hideous Strength.)

https://www.marykassian.com/re-imagining-god-in-the-shack/

Moments in Bonding - self-confident attaching

Moments in Bonding
“Bonding is a two-way street; parents and children interact.  Although we can, at present, describe only crudely the experience of bonding from the baby’s point of view, we can nevertheless see that the baby that self-confidently attaches itself to its mother is likely to behave in ways that arouse more affectionate and spontaneous maternal responses.  Conversely, a child who has suffered traumatic institutional separation from its mother will react with anger, anxious possessiveness, or self-protective detachment.  This obstructive behavior, in turn, produces negative responses from the mother that increase the child’s anger, possessive clinging, or guarded apathy.”

William F. May, "The Retarded," On Moral Medicine, 2nd ed.: #98: 738.

May’s footnote 8 for this paragraph:
8.  For further details, see John Bowlby, Attachment and Loss, Vol. I (New York: Basic Books, 1969), p. 340

Stuff you don't wanna forget

the following were copied from Desiree's Desired Creations, Desiree McCrorey
http://desiredcreations.com/misc_25Things.htm

25 things you should have learned by the time you have reached middle age

1. If you're too open-minded, your brains will fall out.
2. Don't worry about what people think, they don't do it very often.
3. Going to church doesn't make you a Christian, any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.
4. It ain't the jeans that make your butt look fat.
5. Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity.
6. My idea of housework is to sweep the room with a glance.
7. Not one shred of evidence supports the notion that life is serious.
8. It is easier to get forgiveness than permission.
9. For every action, there is an equal and opposite government program.
10. If you look like your passport picture, you probably need the trip.
11. Bills travel through the mail at twice the speed of checks.
12. A conscience is what hurts when all of your other parts feel so good.
13. Eat well, stay fit, die anyway.
14. Men are from earth. Women are from earth. Deal with it.
15. No one has ever been shot while doing the dishes.
16. A balanced diet is a cookie in each hand.
17. Middle age is when broadness of the mind and narrowness of the waist change places.
18. Opportunities always look bigger going than coming.
19. Junk is something you've kept for years and throw away three weeks before you need it.
20. There is always one more imbecile than you counted on.
21. Experience is a wonderful thing. It enables you to recognize a mistake when you make it again.
22. By the time you can make ends meet, they move the ends.
23. When baking, follow directions. When cooking, go by your own taste.
24. Someone who thinks logically provides a nice contrast to the real world.
25. If you must choose between two evils, pick the one you've never tried before.

A few more goodies...

1. Dogs have owners. Cats have staff.
2. Generally speaking, you aren't learning much when your lips are moving.
3. Don't sweat the petty things. Don't pet the sweaty things.
4. After all this is over, all that will really have mattered is how we treated each other.
5. Always remember you’re unique. Just like everyone else..
6. Don’t approve of political jokes; too many of them are already elected.
7. Age is a very high price to pay for maturity.
8. To avoid hating yourself in the morning--sleep 'till noon.

I don't know the origins of these, but whoever wrote them, thank you so very much! ;-)

Ozymandias

Ozymandias
By Percy Bysshe Shelley

I met a traveller 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 its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, 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.”

written 1817

Redemption

"If you have been forgiven by God
then he gives you the power to forgive others."
~ youth pastor
I Can Only Imagine movie

I Can Only Imagine is a 2018 American Christian drama film directed by the Erwin Brothers and written by Alex Cramer, Jon Erwin, and Brent McCorkle, based on the story behind the MercyMe song of the same name, the best-selling Christian single of all time.
The film stars J. Michael Finley as Bart Millard, the lead singer who wrote the song about his relationship with his father (Dennis Quaid). Madeline Carroll, Priscilla Shirer, Cloris Leachman, and Trace Adkins also star.
I Can Only Imagine was released in the United States on March 16, 2018.