clarity

Be stable. Find out. Be clear. Leave it if it's not to be.

It's not the end of the world. Far from it - "I have overcome it."

"I have done for you everything, my love!"

"The Lord will fight for you. You need only to be still."

To love at all is to be vulnerable

“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket — safe, dark, motionless, airless — it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside of Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.”

The Four Loves by C.S. Lewis

This might just be the biggest challenge yet. 

Some things in life

are like refined sugar. They are easy to find, not hard to get, take you on a high and leave you crashing soon after. 

They bring great flavor to your life, but adds nothing to it. It's an empty, predictably monolithic sort of flavor, like the taste of soy ice cream with a foreign layer of sweetness tangentially floating above it. There is no link, no connection. And you end up making do with this unwelcome stranger since you literally asked to have it. 

:::

Some things in life are like honey. They are so wonderfully dainty or quirky that the only thing plain about them is they are different - from the delicate white sage with an elegant floral aftertaste to the strong zest in basswood that turns minty when mixed with mild honey. 

Easy to find and not hard to get, but only if the eye is trained to not be distracted by pomp vacant within. Takes you on an unfamiliar kind of high that doesn't really end. Instead, you sit on a new baseline of delight, a new level of norm for your life.

And the best part is, sometimes they can be found in some people and certain friendships.

The fact that there are so many counterfeits and substandard versions of these things only affirms the overwhelming delight of the latter. 

So the wonder at its daintiness and quirkiness remains, and the best part remains best, that sometimes they can be found in some people and certain friendships.

and wept

"I think you will agree, once in a while God tries to break into our normal lives and tell us something important. He brings a matter to our attention that tears at our hearts, maybe even brings us to our knees. But then, sadly, so often that is all that happens. Although it consumes us for a little while and we can't stop thinking about it, eventually we start to explore something else and forget.

Because we see and hear so much nowadays, soon our hearts stop hurting. We get used to things as they are.

But that is not the way of Jesus.

Christ was the One who saw the multitudes and wept."

K.P. Yohannan

Every cry for help

is a leap into darkness, in hope that there would be safe landing because maybe, just maybe, rescue would be here.

Every cry for help is a belief in hope, even if it was out of utter desperation that this courage was borne - courage to make frailty and neediness so publicly and chillingly known.

Every cry for help is a belief in hope.

not always

God is not always silent, and man is not always blind. In every man's life there are moments when there is a lifting of the veil at the horizon of the known, opening a sight of the eternal. Each of us has at least once in his life experienced the momentous reality of God. Each of us has once caught a glimpse of the beauty, peace and power that flow through the souls of those who are devoted to Him. But such experiences are rare events. To some people they are like shooting stars, passing and unremembered. In others they kindle a light that is never quenched. The remembrance of that experience and the loyalty to the response of that moment are the forces that sustain our faith. In this sense, faith is faithfulness, loyalty to an event, loyalty to our response.

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel

all cry out

I don't like it when they saw down trees. The chainsaw cries in reluctance because it is forced to kill. And then, all is silent as life in and on the tree ends. The wind blows and fetches nothing but silt. It does not sing - there are no baby swallows that cry, nor sunbirds that flitter. Nor squirrels or macaques that play amongst the trees.

No leaves to even rustle. And I grieve with the chainsaw for all the younglings who fall with the tree. My heart beats in exasperation.

How long more till the end of this? Sometimes I really feel that my heart cannot take it. Yet somehow, I always manage to.