Friday, April 14, 2017
GOOD FRIDAY
Welcome !
This whole week,
HOLY WEEK,
daily postings are offered here for reflection
as we focus on our theme,
HOLINESS IS WHOLENESS.
These reflections are a follow up to the blog posted here last Saturday, April 8, 2017,
WHOLE IN ONE.
It would be helpful to read that piece first.
Just scroll down past the postings for Monday through Thursday.
Blessings,
John Frank
**********************************************************************************
A man who was completely innocent,
offered himself as a sacrifice of others,
including his enemies,
and became the ransom of the world.
It was a perfect act.
Mahatma Gandi
***************
Unless the grain of wheat
falls to the earth and dies,
it remains just a grain of wheat.
But if it dies,
it produces much fruit.
Jesus
( John 12; )
***************
The ones who counts are those who -
though they may be of little renown -
respond to and are responsible for
the continuation of the living spirit,
each in the active stillness
of his sphere of work.
Martin Buber
***************
These pains you feel are messengers.
Listen to them.
Rumi
***************
When I let go of what I am,
I become what I might be.
Lao Tze
***************
Faith means being grasped
by a power that is greater than we are,
a power that shakes us and turns us,
and transforms us and heals us.
Surrender to this power is faith.
Paul Tillich
***************
ELOI, ELOI
MY GOD, MY GOD
There, where was the frame of an infant,
the limbs of a lad, the mature mind of a man.
There, from cradle to tomb, dwelt God.
There, on human lips, from a human heart,
spoke the Word of God.
There, beyond the compass of a created soul,
the uncreated Spirit of God.
And there he hung, scorned and dying,
on the abominable cross where we set him.
Yet there, and thence forever, he proclaims
the irrefutable, irresistible Gospel of God,
calling mankind, calling me:
- summoning us to undying victory
along roads where no trumpets sound,
nor temporal profits count,
but faith only, and faithfulness unto death;
Eloi, Eloi.
O my Lord, lead me safe through all the tests,
the darknesses, the pains.
Help me hold fast the beginnings of my confidence
firm unto the end.
Eloi, Eloi, stretch forth thy wounded hands
to succor mine.
Never wilt though forsake me,
never let me forsake thee,
my living, only God.
Palm Sunday Eucharist 2017
St. Peter's Church
Morristown, New Jersey
***************
My life is not about me;
it is about God,
and God is about Love.
Richard Rohr
Daily Email
December 2,2016
Center for Action and Contemplation
**********************************************************************************
Thursday, April 13, 2017
MAUNDY THURSDAY
Welcome !
This whole week,
HOLY WEEK,
daily postings are offered here for reflection
as we focus on our theme,
HOLINESS IS WHOLENESS.
These reflections are a follow up to the blog posted here last Saturday, April 8, 2017,
WHOLE IN ONE.
It would be helpful to read that piece first.
Just scroll down past the postings for Monday through Wednesday.
Blessings,
John Frank
************************************************************************************
The deepest level of communication
is not communication, but
communion.
It is wordless...
beyond speech...
beyond concept.
Thomas Merton
**************
As you, Father,
are in me,
and I am in you,
may they also be in us...
may they be one,
as we are one.
Jesus
( John 17: 21-22 )
***************
You understand so little of what is around you
because you do not use what is within you.
Hildegard of Bingen
***************
The worship of reason is arrogance
and betrays a lack of intelligence.
The rejection of reason is cowardice
and betrays a lack of faith.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
***************
When God enters a human life,
in an authentic religious experience,
the result will be a deeper contact with reality.
The recipient of such an experience of God
will seem to be alive,
more aware of others,
and of the world about him.
His perception of beauty will be keener,
and his compassion for the suffering will be deeper.
John Powell
***************
You were born with potential.
You were born with goodness and trust.
You were born with ideals and dreams.
You were born with greatness.
You were born with wings.
You were not meant for crawling,
so don't.
You have wings.
Learn to use them and fly.
Rumi
*********************************************************************************
Wednesday, April 12, 2017
WEDNESDAY OF HOLY WEEK
Welcome !
This whole week,
HOLY WEEK,
daily postings are offered here for reflection
as we focus on our theme,
HOLINESS IS WHOLENESS.
They are a follow up to the blog here last Saturday, April 8, 2017,
WHOLE IN ONE.
It would be helpful to read that piece first.
Just scroll down past the postings of the past two days.
Blessings,
John Frank
****************************************************************************************
"Is there anything I can do to make myself enlightened?"
"As little as you can do to make the sun rise in the morning."
"Then of what use are the spiritual exercises you prescribe?"
"To make sure you are not asleep when the sun begins to rise."
Zen Master to his disciple
***************
Effortlessly,
Love flows from God to man,
Like a bird
Who rivers the air
Without moving her wings.
Thus we move in God's world,
One in body and soul,
Though outwardly separate in form.
As the Source strikes the note,
Humanity sings -
The Holy Spirit is our harpist,
And all strings
Which are touched in Love
Must sound.
Mechtild of Magdeburg
( 1207 - 1282 )
*************
Seek first
the kingdom of heaven,
and all else
shall be added unto you.
Jesus
( Matthew 6:33 )
*************
The world is too much with us;
late and soon
Getting and spending,
we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in Nature
that is ours.
William Wordsworth
**************
A human being has so many skins inside,
covering the depths of the heart.
We know so many things,
but we don't know ourselves!
Why, thirty or forty skins or hides,
as thick and hard as an ox's or a bear's,
cover the soul.
Go into your own ground
and learn to know yourself there.
Meister Eckhart
**************
Contemplation
The pure, loving gaze that finds God everywhere.
Brother Lawrence
**************
WITH PASSION
With passion pray,
With passion work.
With passion make love.
With passion eat and drink
and dance and play.
Why look like a dead fish
in the ocean of God?
Rumi
***********************************************************************************
Tuesday, April 11, 2017
TUESDAY OF HOLY WEEK
Welcome !
This whole week,
HOLY WEEK,
daily postings are offered here for reflection
as we focus on our theme
HOLINESS IS WHOLENESS.
They are a follow up to the blog posted here last Saturday, April 8, 2017,
WHOLE IN ONE.
It would be helpful to read that piece first.
Just scroll down past yesterday's reflections.
Blessings
John Frank
***************************************************************************************
Passover has a message for the conscience and heart of mankind.
For what does it commemorate?
It commemorates the deliverance of a people from slavery,
from most foul and cruel tyranny.
And so it is Israel's - nay, God's protest against unrighteousness,
whether individual or national.
Morris Joseph
**********************
A religious man is a person
who holds God and man
in one thought at one time,
at all times,
who suffers harm done to others,
whose greatest passion is compassion,
whose greatest strength is love
and defiance of despair.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
*********************
Sin is what obscures the soul.
Andre Gide
**********************
Most people live, whether physically, intellectually, or morally,
in a very restricted circle of their potential being.
They make use of a very small portion of their possible consciousness,
and of their soul's resources in general,
much like a man who, out of his whole bodily organism,
gets into the habit of using and moving only his little finger.
William James
**********************
Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
Jesus
( Luke 6:31 )
**********************
I am in love with every church and mosque and temple
and any kind of shrine
because I know it is there that people say
the different names of the One God.
Hafiz
**********************
We fulfill our role as partners in the cosmos when our pulse quickens in sheer enjoyment
of its rhythmic motion, and catching the infection of its creativity, we ourselves,
cultivating interior resources of mind and imagination, become makers.
Alan P. Tory
********************************************************************************
I