So cool! Never heard this before! “(How can we) separate burning, and shining, from fire?”
Reading Dallas Willard’s book, tonight, and stumbled across this amazing quote from Martin Luther, which I’d never heard before! Just love it!
“It is well known that Martin Luther had severe problems with the Epistle of James, even suggesting that it should be eliminated from the New Testament. Ironically, however, he clearly understood James’ point about the nature of faith and forcefully expresses it in his own language. In the preface to his commentary on Romans, he asserts, through an appropriate comparison, that it is…
“IMPOSSIBLE TO SEPARATE WORKS FROM FAITH — YEA, JUST AS IMPOSSIBLE AS TO SEPARATE BURNING, AND SHINING, FROM FIRE.” – Martin Luther
Thoughts on this Florida school massacre.
As I was wading through a bit more of the book, “The Spirit of the Disciplines” by Dallas Willard just now, I got struck in my heart by this portion, in light of this most recent tragedy of the school shootings in Florida, U.S.A., day before yesterday. Dallas Willard is SO right on in his assessment of human nature!
“The general human failing is to WANT (emphasis mine) what is right and important, but at the same time not to commit to the kind of life that will produce the action we know to be right and the condition we want to enjoy. This is the feature of human character that explains why the road to hell is paved with good intentions. We intend what is right, but we avoid the life that would make it reality.
For example, some people would genuinely like to pay their bills and be financially responsible but they are unwilling to lead the total life that would make that possible. Others would like to have friends and an interesting social life, but they will not adapt themselves so that they become the kind of people for whom such things “come naturally”.
The same concept applies on a larger scale. Many people lament the problem of today’s tragic sexual behaviors, yet are content to let the role of sex in business, art, journalism and recreation remain at the depraved level from which such tragedy naturally comes. And others say they would like to get rid of the weapons of warfare, but at the same time they maintain the attitudes and values toward people and nations that make warfare inevitable. We prefer no social unrest or revolution AS LONG AS OUR STYLE OF LIFE IS PRESERVED (emphasis mine).”
Are these words of Dallas Willard prophetic, true and personally convicting or WHAT? (The book came out in 1988.) Look how much further we’ve traveled in the wrong direction, but in this SAME direction, since 1988. We have a veritable epidemic of school shootings (in U.S.), an epidemic of addictions that run the gamut, and an epidemic of suicide and depression! We have, as societies, a problem of CORRUPTION in business and politics on unprecedented scale in nations such as U.S.A., Bolivia, Venezuela, some of the West African nations and probably many other countries, as well.
Right now, the tolerance in U.S.A. for the power, wealth and corruption of the NRA, and for corruption in U.S. politics and huge business, is driving, in large part, the school shootings epidemic and the whole “guns mess”. Thinking people from other countries and cultures, who follow U.S. news a little because it gets (Trump)eted (pun intended) all over the world faster than you can say “Jack Robinson”, simply because it happens to be U.S. news and not the news from some less wealthy, less powerful nation, are increasingly puzzled by the U.S.’s seemingly endless tolerance for access to firearms, especially assault weapons, which are guns of war. It’s insane that semi-automatic weapons, and/or any firearms, should be relatively easily obtainable.
I was speaking with a Bolivian friend yesterday who said she and her family can’t understand why U.S.A. did not institute and enforce more rigorous gun control, especially assault weapon banning, a long time ago, because, “we all need to do whatever we can right away to keep more children from being murdered”! I told her I agree with her and can’t understand it either, except in the light of this Biblical truth clarified and emphasized by Dallas Willard in the above quote from his book, The Spirit of the Disciplines.
One detail of what happened was very telling – the news reports let it be known that school HAD police officers on the campus, monitoring the place and the kids, for safety reasons, before the time of and all during the time of, the massacre. I’m sure they were carrying arms. It didn’t help the situation, and it didn’t keep the tragedy from happening.
Of COURSE a root cause of the school shootings epidemic is “the heart”! Of course it is PEOPLE who choose to buy the guns, go out to use them, and pull the triggers! And of course the problem and the situation are complex, with multiple partial causes and contributing factors, including parenting needing to be more proactive and involved and godly and excellent in every way, and bullying needing a zero-tolerance policy that somehow is more enforceable. Does that mean that instituting EXTREMELY STRICT and consistent gun control throughout the U.S.A. would not help alleviate the school shootings epidemic, hugely, as well? I think not.
Arms are for holding and for hugging.
A Quote from Eugene Peterson, Another from Chole
These resonate.
“Christian spirituality…..is not about us. It is about God. The great weakness of American spirituality is that it is all about us; fulfilling our potential, getting the blessings of God, expanding our influence, finding our gifts, getting a handle on principles by which we can get an edge over the competition. The more there is of us, the less there is of God.” – Eugene Peterson, by way of the book, The Spirit of the Disciplines, by Dallas Willard.
“God’s words are needful to us. So let us post them on our minds, and hide them in our hearts. Let us honor God’s words, and be encouraged: our lack of understanding cannot sabotage the power or the purpose of His voice.” – Alicia Britt Chole in her book, Forty Days of Decrease.
The photo is of living coral, in the Seattle Aquarium. So beautiful and interesting, and SUCH a special place!
Two quotes from Chole’s book on Lent. She certainly has a turn of phrase!
“With carefully selected quotes from Jesus-centric traditions and readings crafted to engage our modern minds with the most disenchanting days of the first disciples’ lives, 40 days of Decrease seeks to reintroduce Lent as a wise mentor that encourages us to reframe unanswered questions, darker seasons, and spiritual disillusionment as the shedding of earthly illusions and the gaining of God’s reality.” – from the book’s introductory material.
And, on ROOTS: “Roots are, perhaps, among the most humble of God’s creations on earth. They require neither acknowledgment nor praise. Their reward is reached when the living stand upon them and reach for the fruit the roots made possible.” -from Day Two in the book.
(note from La Niña de Sus Ojos) I found this book only a few days ago via Amazon Kindle and, at the moment anyways, it only costs 2 dollars, U.S.)
Thoughts on Lent, borrowed from a marvelous book.
“Lent…is less about well-mannered denials and more about thinning our lives in order to thicken our communion with God…Decrease is holy only when its destination is love.” – Alicia Britt Chole in her book, 40 Days of Decrease, A Different Kind of Hunger, A Different Kind of Fast.
(this photo from activities in my kitchen since Valentine’s Day just came and went)
Haiku #6. Eyes. Photo, the graffiti painting on my next door neighbor’s house.
Eyes
by NinadeSusOjos
We look there first. Search
deep who the person true is.
Gaze those windows. Know.
Haiku #5. Baby
Baby
by NinadeSusOjos
Soft and solid, curved,
ski-jump nose, small rosebud lips,
chubby, changing. Joy.
Haiku #4. Water
Water
by NinadeSusojos
Colors in oceans,
indigo, turquoise, grey, jade,
iridescent charm.
Two Kids and a Crawdad
A Poem.
Two Kids and a Crawdad
by NinadesusOjos
Sun-shot shadows of skitter bugs, on moving amber water,
Our pant knees rolled, our cold wet hands touch
as we pry that biggest rock,
sharing expectancy.
We turn the rock. Mud spurts up
and scooting over our toes, he glides
beneath another rock.
We scream, step back and trip with icy splash,
becoming, briefly, part of
pebbled sunshine, mud,
and dappled crawdad’s world.
Two Kids and a Crawdad
guatemala
lilting chatter, laughs,
mellifluous, wet mud roads,
colored skirts, white smiles. – NinadeSusOjos
Kekchi Girls
Baskets on their heads,
hair flows down like lava streams,
colored skirts swing to ankles. – NinadeSusOjos
Orchids
Jewels nestled in green,
speckled jungle glimmers POP!
roots search to the sky. – NinadeSusOjos
Haiku #2
Travel Haiku #2
-by NinadeSusOjos
Boredom not a theme,
Exhausting, more than foreseen,
Unique delight reigns.
In Australia, or, “The Empty Nest”
In Australia, or, “The Empty Nest”
-a poem by NinadesusOjos
In Australia I watched kangaroos and wallabies.
In a small zoo, saw
iridescent-tailed platypus,
surreal koalas eating gum,
Boxy chocolate kookaburras,
Pea green tree frogs with Yoda faces,
a family of them, eleven,
all different sizes,
piled on top of each other
like a heap of sticky emeralds.
Small gray wallabies like babies,
Tall rangey kangaroos like gawky
adolescents,
All the females
with their offspring in their pouch,
safely, cozy, in their pouch.
But my children, oh, they’re FAR away!
What makes a home?
I never thought I could envy a wallaby.
Zookeepers told, “Joeys keep their offspring
near the pouch two years or longer.”
How many, translated to humans?
I never believed I could envy a kangaroo…
I watched those females,
their young safe within their pouch
or hopping nearby, blythe,
ready to dive back in at sign
of danger.
Those moms grazed alert, brooding,
watchful, content.
My children, so far away,
now with only God vigilant over them
each night and day. (NOT ME!)
No longer me…
I place them, yet again,
in HIS care each day.
No longer me…
Christmas Day 2013 in the Village
THE TUTUMA FULL OF MOQOCHINCHE (the traditional gourd village bowl full of spiced juice made of dried whole rural highland peaches) THAT DOÑA ABUELITA PASSED TO US.
Gathered for breakfast at that same wooden round table Christmas morning we discussed a bit of Dallas Willard, where, in particular in his “The Spirit of the Disciplines” book he waxes eloquent in communicating his passionate belief that modern-day dichotomization of life into “spiritual” versus “nonspiritual” categories, is DAMAGING to persons and to the church, and that the practice of basic “spiritual disciplines” such as prayer, Bible reading, silence, solitude and SERVICE, among others, can be extremely helpful to the Christian. Just then, ancient Doña abuelita’s cane was heard tap-tapping slowly on the cement walkway just outside the village house and her grizzled head, topped by the ubiquitous misshapen felt bowler hat appeared outside the screened window. One of our group quickly went out to speak in Quechua – her only language – with her and returned to announce, “Doña abuelita needs 80 adobes moved, so, how about it, boys?” Seeing as the “boys” in question were our four sturdy and kind-hearted HUSBANDS, all in their fifties! – it touched my heart to see how our “boys” immediately mobilized themselves to rush out there on Christmas morning and practice a bit of what we’d just been “preaching” to ourselves over breakfast – service to widows (of which Doña IS one – an 85-year-old widow, in fact, whose only home and extremely scant possession was a tiny adobe block two-room hovel and bare mud courtyard just outside the house of our friends). Three hours later (!) our “boys” reappeared in the kitchen, sunburned, covered in bee stings and red dirt, panting and exhausted, and with a couple of three-inch cactus thorns having pierced their shoes. Adobes are HUGE! Each one weighs at least 25 pounds! Doña was content, even happy, and our “boys” were FULFILLED with the activities of their very unusual Christmas morning! Later we heard that it was all over the village that the gringos had moved adobes for old Doña abuelita.
A Blazing, Shining Starry Christmas Eve
God gave me a gift on Christmas Eve four nights ago! P. and I had traveled out from Cochabamba with friends in their jeep on the 23rd, first on all those highland roads to and through the city of Oruro, which sits on the Altiplano (the GREAT, HIGH PLAIN of the ANDES of PERU and BOLIVIA, that stretches majestically between the Eastern Cordillera and the Western Cordillera of the Andes Range, and then on to Potosi, an old historic city that lies at 14,000 feet altitude! In Potosi we met up with two other foreign couples, both very old friends of ours, as well. The next day, Christmas Eve, we all traveled in two loaded-down jeeps out to the very rural village of Y. where one of the couples had lived and served for the past 15 years, and they still had a house that they had had built, in Y. Our aim was to do two days of Christmas vacation together, in our friends’ house in the peaceful rural area.
We arrived early afternoon, unloaded the vehicles, deeply breathed the slightly thicker air, and shed one or two of our warm clothing layers, seeing as Y. sat at only 10,000 feet in the Andes, and felt downright balmy and invigorating after the previous part-day and breathless night spent in 14,000 feet Potosi. Of course here deep down in the southern hemisphere we are in the height of full summer, same as in Australia or New Zealand. It’s always so cold in Potosi that many people won’t even go there in the winter.
We filled the rest of the afternoon with sipping water, pulling the Christmas tree out of the jeep and setting it up in the living room, searching for and locating its feet/stand deep in the recesses of a kitchen cupboard, and making homemade ornaments and a tree-topper, since all its ornaments and lights had been stolen off of it – poor little naked tree! – last Christmas Eve in the entryway of the new outreach medical clinic in Potosi.
Later that evening, maybe around eight, we had raclette and apple cider for dinner, gathered around our friends’ round wooden table in the village kitchen.
About ten we we watched “Joyeux Noel”, a movie based on the true story of the “willful fraternization” of the German and Allied troops in the front lines and trenches of World War One, in 1914, and it was wonderful.
At 11:30 p.m., Christmas Eve 1913, our host and friend said, “Let’s go outside the house and see if any stars are out!” So we did. And God gave me my Christmas gift.
THE HEAVENS DECLARE THE GLORY OF GOD! That rural Bolivian highland sky was FILLED with BILLIONS of STARS, with the planet Mars, with the SOUTHERN CROSS, ORION,the Big and Little Dippers, with Casseiopea, and so many constellations, all blazing brightly, that we couldn’t stop looking at them all. It was so beautiful and majestic it made us all want to forget about the crick in our neck from gazing up so long and hard, and just keep on worshipping God together for the rest of the night for the beauty and majesty and variety of His CREATION!
Remembering my “Aunt” with Joy
This, in the photo, is my “Aunt” Marabelle Taylor, a close family friend and colleague of my parents in Cameroun. When I was 19 I bumped in her truck down interminable red dust roads by her side, spending part of a summer learning from her in the context of a small internship for one of my university classes.
Aunt Marabelle was a cross-cultural worker with a huge God-given, life-long love for and commitment to underprivileged children and teenagers and their relatives. She saved hundreds, maybe thousands of orphans from the Babimbi Hills region of French Cameroun during the Basa terrorist uprisings of 1960 – 1965 and their long and horrible-for-children aftermath. Originally from the U.S., she was a nurse and invented high-protein baby and child “physical salvation” formulas out of local, easily-available ingredients like canned sardines and powdered milk and pulverized Australian spinach, to bring the war-starved orphans back from the brink of death. She became well-known in the nation in the sixties decade for being able to work her benificent “magic”, bringing a fragile infant back to health when nobody else could, and Camerounians in the aftermath of that war brought her orphan babies from all over the region and beyond. She spent 40 or 50 years serving in Cameroun, eventually retired and returned to America, lived to an extremely ripe old age and is now “graduated” to Jesus’ presence, joyful and problem-free for eternity with Him. What I remember most about my Aunt Marabelle is her love for me and her love for Jesus.
The other thing that most impresses me about her is the way she always seemed “charmed” and safe, no matter what happened to her and in spite of what many might term an overly adventurous and spartan life. I will never forget waking up each morning before the crack of dawn, from a hard borrowed bed, in one of her friends’ little flea and mosquito-ridden mud huts with a thatched roof, to the scrape of her placing the water kettle over the gas burner to make us each a hot cup of stale Nescafe! Meals seemed to consist mostly of canned sardines and crackers bought by the side of the road. She went through her days cheery and singing, traveling a tremendous amount, helping care for each of the beloved orphan babies, their extended families, small kids and “adopted” Camerounian high-school-aged “daughters”, two of whom she named “Agnes” and “Sweetheart”. Never choosing to marry, Aunt Marabelle had the biggest and most loving (to her!) extended family – from what I could see at the time it seemed to consist of the majority of the population of southern French-speaking Cameroun – of anyone I have ever known. One time, when I was 19, her Camerounian driver, Ibogo dozed off at the wheel and wrecked her vehicle – that’s what the photo shows. Aside from scrapes and bruises, both of them escaped unharmed. Thank God.
My Aunt Marabelle quietly, unassumingly, unsentimentally pointed every person she came in contact with to Jesus, trusting only Jesus hourly, daily, weekly, monthly and yearly to take CARE of her AND HER WORK, in His love plan for all the peoples of the world. This mindset allowed her to live with peace and joy.
She did talk of Jesus, softly, a lot. And she was silent sometimes too…….
Aunt Marabelle, you’ve been gone for awhile now, but I feel like I’m STILL learning SO MUCH from you! Thank you for including me in your life and letting me learn from you!
Thoughts on this Florida school massacre.
As I was wading through a bit more of the book, “The Spirit of the Disciplines” by Dallas Willard just now, I got struck in my heart by this portion, in light of this most recent tragedy of the school shootings in Florida, U.S.A., day before yesterday. Dallas Willard is SO right on in his assessment of human nature!
“The general human failing is to WANT (emphasis mine) what is right and important, but at the same time not to commit to the kind of life that will produce the action we know to be right and the condition we want to enjoy. This is the feature of human character that explains why the road to hell is paved with good intentions. We intend what is right, but we avoid the life that would make it reality.
For example, some people would genuinely like to pay their bills and be financially responsible but they are unwilling to lead the total life that would make that possible. Others would like to have friends and an interesting social life, but they will not adapt themselves so that they become the kind of people for whom such things “come naturally”.
The same concept applies on a larger scale. Many people lament the problem of today’s tragic sexual behaviors, yet are content to let the role of sex in business, art, journalism and recreation remain at the depraved level from which such tragedy naturally comes. And others say they would like to get rid of the weapons of warfare, but at the same time they maintain the attitudes and values toward people and nations that make warfare inevitable. We prefer no social unrest or revolution AS LONG AS OUR STYLE OF LIFE IS PRESERVED (emphasis mine).”
Are these words of Dallas Willard prophetic, true and personally convicting or WHAT? (The book came out in 1988.) Look how much further we’ve traveled in the wrong direction, but in this SAME direction, since 1988. We have a veritable epidemic of school shootings (in U.S.), an epidemic of addictions that run the gamut, and an epidemic of suicide and depression! We have, as societies, a problem of CORRUPTION in business and politics on unprecedented scale in nations such as U.S.A., Bolivia, Venezuela, some of the West African nations and probably many other countries, as well.
Right now, the tolerance in U.S.A. for the power, wealth and corruption of the NRA, and for corruption in U.S. politics and huge business, is driving, in large part, the school shootings epidemic and the whole “guns mess”. Thinking people from other countries and cultures, who follow U.S. news a little because it gets (Trump)eted (pun intended) all over the world faster than you can say “Jack Robinson”, simply because it happens to be U.S. news and not the news from some less wealthy, less powerful nation, are increasingly puzzled by the U.S.’s seemingly endless tolerance for access to firearms, especially assault weapons, which are guns for war. It’s insane that semi-automatic weapons, and/or any firearms, should be relatively easily obtainable.
I was speaking with a Bolivian friend yesterday who said she and her family can’t understand why U.S.A. did not institute and enforce more rigorous gun control, especially assault weapon banning, a long time ago, because, “we all need to do whatever we can right away to keep more children from being murdered”! I told her I agree with her and can’t understand it either, except in the light of this Biblical truth clarified and emphasized by Dallas Willard in the above quote from his book, The Spirit of the Disciplines.
One detail of what happened was very telling – the news reports let it be known that school HAD police officers on the campus, monitoring the place and the kids, for safety reasons, before the time of and all during the time of, the massacre. I’m sure they were carrying arms. It didn’t help the situation, and it didn’t keep the tragedy from happening.
Of COURSE a root cause of the school shootings epidemic is “the heart”! Of course it is PEOPLE who choose to buy the guns, go out to use them, and pull the triggers! And of course the problem and the situation are complex, with multiple partial causes and contributing factors, including parenting needing to be more proactive and involved, and bullying needing a zero-tolerance policy that somehow is more enforceable. Does that mean that instituting and enforcing EXTREMELY STRICT and consistent gun control throughout the U.S.A. would not help alleviate the school shootings epidemic, hugely, as well? I think not.
What happened in Cameroun when I was eleven…
It was a long school vacation time. Our next-door-neighbor family was going away to the seashore for two weeks of yearly holiday. The mom came up to me and asked me if I would like to earn a little pocket money daily feeding and also daily walking, on the end of his chain, their pet “baby” gorilla.
I happily said “yes” and received my instructions for my new responsibilities with conscientious attention. The particular “baby” gorilla in question was much loved by all the kids and teenagers, lived in a large chicken-wire cage/home in the neighbor family’s back yard, and had a general reputation for being tame. I was a fanatical animal lover, had several pets of my own, though none as exotic as a gorilla, and I thought I already had a great relationship with this tame gorilla.
Well! From the very first morning, the gorilla, who had been quietly growing from babyhood, and now was eight months old, (I wonder how old that would equal in people years?) demonstrated a HUGE mind of his own and, instead of walking pleasantly around the grassy yards on the end of his long metal chain, would PLANT himself in the grass and start getting mad at me, working himself up into a rage, then CHARGING me down the length of the chain, wrapping himself around my bony bare shins, and biting on my legs!
Maybe he was missing his family? Probably. Not that used to me, I guess. A few mornings of that and, I’m afraid poor Baby Gorilla didn’t get taken out each day for the rest of the two weeks! He got fed super well though, and petted through the chicken wire, and talked to a lot each day.
Importance of team
Ecclesiastes 4:9-10 Two people are better off than one, for they can help each other succeed. If one person falls, the other can reach out and help. But someone who falls alone is in real trouble. Likewise, two people lying close together can keep each other warm. But how can one be warm alone? A person standing alone can be attacked and defeated, but two can stand back-t0-back and conquer. Three are even better, for a triple-braided cord is not easily broken. (NLT version)
Love of learning. Haiku #3
Love of Learning Haiku #3
by NinadeSusOjos
Thirst for wide knowledge,
slaked, then surging once again,
all through life. Wisdom.
Shepherding, discipling – a high calling and huge responsibility
I love the way she puts this!
“One of my favorite words for PASTOR is curate. The term is unfamiliar to many of us. But the word “curate” signifies a person who partners with God for the “cure of the soul” or, in Dallas Willard’s words, the “renovation of the heart”. Mentors, spiritual directors, spiritual friends, parents, teachers, pastors and disciplers are called to take a risk on God as they accompany people in the Spirit’s soul-curing work.” – Adele Calhoun, p. 265, The Spiritual Disciplines Handbook – Practices that Transform Us.
Haiku #8. “Goodbye”
Haiku #8. “Goodbye”
by NinadeSusOjos
Dread word! Don’t say it.
Hurts too bad again. Shut up.
Pretend that this is normal.
As we think things out in His presence, God guides our minds.
“As we think things out in His PRESENCE, God guides our minds.” – J.I. Packer
GlobeRoamer 