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.

Nothing is ever really lost, or can be lost . . .

Nothing is ever really lost, or can be lost,
No birth, identity, form—no object of the world.
Nor life, nor force, nor any visible thing;
Appearance must not foil, nor shifted sphere confuse thy brain.
Ample are time and space—ample the fields of Nature.
The body, sluggish, aged, cold—the embers left from earlier fires,
The light in the eye grown dim, shall duly flame again;
The sun now low in the west rises for mornings and for noons continual;
To frozen clods ever the spring's invisible law returns,
With grass and flowers and summer fruits and corn.

~ Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much

"Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much."
James 5:16 KJV

Your Bible and your newspaper

"Take your Bible and take your newspaper, and read both. But interpret newspapers from your Bible."
~ Karl Barth

Let's Keep Praying!

LET'S KEEP PRAYING!
Ephesians 6:18

Irina Ratushinskaya's childhood quest for God, even while she was hearing school lectures promoting atheism and mocking Christianity, led her to a deep and unflinching faith. Her poetry expressed that faith and brought inspiration and hope to believers all over Russia.
It also brought her to the attention of the KGB. At age 28, Irina was arrested and sentenced to 7 years hard labor in the Bareshevo labor camp. There she was subjected to relentless interrogations, chilling cold, starvation, hard labor, and months of solitary confinement.
Irina's faith did not break. During the lonely nights, huddled against the cold wall of her cell, she composed poetry in her head about God. When Irina was finally released, she credited the prayers of believers for sustaining her. In one of her poems, she wrote:

Believe me, it was often thus:
In solitary cells, on winter nights
A sudden sense of joy and warmth
And a resounding note of love.
And then, unsleeping, I would know
A-huddle by an icy wall:
Someone is thinking of me now,
Petitioning the Lord for me.

I wonder, have we been faithful in praying for people who are going through difficult situations? Our prayers can make a difference!
- David C. Egner

You can expect God to intervene if you're willing to intercede.

What’s Before Identity Politics - The Galli Report

The Galli Report
email, 8/17/2018
Mark Galli, Editor-in-Chief, Christianity Today

What’s Before Identity Politics

This next piece gave me more empathy for people who are deeply invested in identity politics. I’ve noted many times how unhealthy I think this has become, but I hadn’t considered the root of the passion so many have to understand who they are and do so by fixating on their culture, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, disability, or whatever. Nathanael Blake at Public Discourse argues that it goes back to Nietzsche’s proclamation of the death of God.

Without a transcendent worldview, all that remains is what we can see and touch—that’s the only reality left to find meaning in. But we also recognize how contingent and relative: “Consequently, tribal identity is no longer a secure psychological retreat into a stable source of meaning but a contested construct. Getting ‘woke’ and engaging in identity politics are attempts to find meaning in something that is an acknowledged social construct.”

This is behind the increasingly common claim that to challenge people’s sexual behavior or gender identity is to question, deny, or attack their humanity and even their existence. This seems insane to those who still reside in a Christian cosmos, for whom sexual desire or one’s feelings about gender are not at the core of one’s identity, and for whom criticizing sinful acts is a far cry from enacting a genocide of the sinful. But to those whose experiential sense of self is only that which they have created or adopted from their culture and their own desires, this makes sense. If self-creation is the fullest expression of our humanity, then critiquing someone’s self-constructed identity is to critique his humanity.

José Micard Teixeira – I NO LONGER

José Micard Teixeira – I NO LONGER

I no longer have patience for certain things, not because I’ve become arrogant, but simply because I reached a point in my life where I do not want to waste more time with what displeases me or hurts me.
 I have no patience for cynicism, excessive criticism and demands of any nature.
I lost the will to please those who do not like me, to love those who do not love me and to smile at those who do not want to smile at me.
I no longer spend a single minute on those who lie or want to manipulate.
I decided not to coexist anymore with pretense, hypocrisy, dishonesty and cheap praise.
I do not tolerate selective erudition nor academic arrogance.
I do not adjust either to popular gossiping.
I hate conflict and comparisons.
I believe in a world of opposites and that’s why I avoid people with rigid and inflexible personalities.
In friendship I dislike the lack of loyalty and betrayal.
I do not get along with those who do not know how to give a compliment or a word of encouragement.
Exaggerations bore me and I have difficulty accepting those who do not like animals.
And on top of everything I have no patience for anyone who does not deserve my patience.

~ José Micard Teixeira
Portuguese author

Brother Roger: Love your neighbor, whatever his or her religious or political outlook.

Brother Roger’s purpose in forming the ecumenical monastic community in Taizé, France was to provide safety and the love of God to those fleeing the hurts and conflicts of World War II. As he wrote in The Rule of Taizé,

Never stand still: advance with your brothers, race towards the goal in the steps of Christ. His path is a way of light – I am, but also, you are the light of the world” (John 8:12 and Matthew 5:14). In order for the light of Christ to permeate you, it is not enough to gaze on it as though you were purely spirit: you need to commit yourself resolutely, body and soul, to that path. Be a sign for others of brotherly love and of joy. . . .
Love the disadvantaged, all those who experience human injustice and are thirsting for justice. Jesus had a particular concern for them. . . .
Love your neighbor, whatever his or her religious or political outlook.

Brother Roger, The Rule of Taizé in French and English, Brewster, Mass.: Paraclete Press, 2013, 9-13.

Fearing God

WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
The remarkable thing about fearing God is that when you fear God you fear nothing else, whereas if you do not fear God you fear everything else.
"Blessed is every one that feareth the Lord"; . . .

"I get enough."

How 3 words can stop what's stealing your joy: Instead of staying stuck in comparing and competing
Ann Voskamp

"I get enough."

I get enough… because I get enough Jesus – and Jesus for me is enough.
I get enough… because I get enough God – and God in me is enough.
I get enough… because I get enough grace – and His grace to me is enough.
I get enough… because I get enough Love – and His Love all around me, for me, in me, is enough.
I get enough.
When I can’t remember that I get enough – I just have to remember to give thanks.

Eucharisteo always precedes the miracle:
Give thanks – and you get the miracle of knowing that you do get enough. You get enough God.

The disease of not-enough… is cured when you give thanks for more than enough grace.
. . .
“He who did not spare His own Son, but gave Him up for us all – how will He not also, along with Him, graciously give us all things?
If God didn’t hesitate to put everything on the line for us, embracing our condition and exposing Himself to the worst by sending His own Son  –  is there anything else He wouldn’t gladly and freely do for us?” (Romans 8:32, NIV, MSG)
If God already gave us the extraordinary extravagance of Jesus – He will give the ordinary enough of right now.

The column was originally published on Ann Voskamp’s blog, annvoskamp.com.
www.foxnews.com/opinion/2018/07/29/how-3-words-can-stop-whats-stealing-your-joy-instead-staying-stuck-in-comparing-and-competing.html

She is a friend of my mind.

"She is a friend of my mind. She gather me, man. The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the right order. It's good, you know, when you got a woman who is a friend of your mind."
~ Toni Morrison, Beloved

Fear Not

Fear Not
Our fear is a hump we have to get over, and we have to get over it before we can go very far with Jesus. To help an alcoholic or a drug addict, we must first get him or her off the stuff. That is the first step, the first lesson (if you will): to stop drinking or using. Only then does it make sense to talk about other things.
Jesus knew that people, from the day they are born, are slaves to fear, just as much slaves as a drunkard is to his bottle or an addict to his needle. And, until we can stop being afraid, and trust God, nothing else works. We are simply too consumed by fear and worry and anxiety to think about anything else.
For that reason Jesus spent a great deal of time telling us not to be afraid -- telling us directly, and acting out God's grace by feeding people who were hungry and rescuing those in trouble on the sea. God will be there when we need him. Fear not. It the first lesson in the Christian primer, the one on which all the others build.
~ William R. Boyer, Four Miles Out

truth-telling, confronting injustice, and pursuing peace

William Sloane Coffin, Jr., who died at the age of 81, was a scholar, civil rights leader, antiwar activist, and a prophet. He summed up his faith by saying, "I believe Christianity is a worldview that undergirds all progressive thought and action."
He also said, "The Christian church is called to respond to Biblical mandates like truth-telling, confronting injustice, and pursuing peace."

Hope

"Hope is not a matter of waiting for things outside us to get better. It is about getting better inside about what is going on inside. It is about becoming open to the God of newness."

- Joan D. Chittister, Scarred by Struggle, Transformed by Hope, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co, Grand Rapids, MI, 2003, 110.

Turn your face to the sun

"Turn your face to the sun and the shadows fall always behind you."

- native New Zealand proverb

Give Light

"Give light and the darkness will disappear of itself. "

- Erasmus