Meditations of the day

[FineLinen]

“The people who know God well—mystics, hermits, prayerful people, those who risk everything to find God—always meet a lover, not a dictator.” - Richard Rohr-

 

[FineLinen]

"God is not only King and Judge, God is Father – he is indeed Father more than anything else. No father could be happy while there were members of his family for ever in agony. No father would count it a triumph to obliterate the disobedient members of his family.
The only triumph a father can know is to have all his family back home. The only victory love can enjoy is the day when its offer of love is answered by the return of love. The only possible final triumph is a universe loved by and in love with God." -Dr. Wm. Barclay-

 

[FineLinen]

"Grace cannot prevail...until our lifelong certainty that someone is keeping score has run out of steam and collapsed." -Robert Farrar Capon-

 

[FineLinen]

 

[FineLinen]

“The Reformation was a time when men went blind, staggering drunk because they had discovered, in the dusty basement of late medievalism, a whole cellar full of fifteen-hundred-year-old, two-hundred proof Grace–bottle after bottle of pure distilate of Scripture, one sip of which would convince anyone that God saves us single-handedly. The word of the Gospel–after all those centuries of trying to lift yourself into heaven by worrying about the perfection of your bootstraps–suddenly turned out to be a flat announcement that the saved were home before they started…Grace has to be drunk straight: no water, no ice, and certainly no ginger ale; neither goodness, nor badness, not the flowers that bloom in the spring of super spirituality could be allowed to enter into the case.” - Robert Farrar Capon-

 

[FineLinen]

"As the marsh-hen secretly builds on the watery sod, behold I will build me a nest on the greatness of God." -Sidney Lanier_

 

[FineLinen]

“Earth's crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God,
But only he who sees takes off his shoes;
The rest sit round and pluck blackberries.”

― Elizabeth Barrett Browning

 

[FineLinen]

"God is not only King and Judge, God is Father – he is indeed Father more than anything else. No father could be happy while there were members of his family forever in agony. No father would count it a triumph to obliterate the disobedient members of his family.

The only triumph a father can know is to have all his family back home. The only victory love can enjoy is the day when its offer of love is answered by the return of love. The only possible final triumph is a universe loved by and in love with God." -Dr. Wm. Barclay-

 

[FineLinen]

 

[FineLinen]

"Most of you will experience the bible as a sort of road map to your life. I have to admit, I also did the same thing. And I was very sure about it. And we went on to try to figure the scriptures out…

But the scriptures have mysteries, and the mysteries are great and wonderful.

God is at work, but in my estimation, not in the way the evangelicals want to believe." -Maintenanceman-

 

[FineLinen]

"This, in a nutshell, is that will: that everything handed over to me by the Father be completed - not a single detail missed - and at the wrap-up of time I have everything and everyone put together, upright and whole." -Jesus, the Christ-

 

[FineLinen]

"You are the God of the early mornings, the God of the late at nights, the God of the mountain peaks, and the God of the sea; but my God, my soul has further horizons than the early mornings, deeper darkness than the nights of earth, higher peaks than the mountain peaks, greater depth than any sea in nature--You who are the God of all these, be my God. I cannot reach to the heights or to the depths; there are motives I cannot trace, dreams I cannot get at--My God search me out!" -King David-

 

[FineLinen]

"While there is a wonderful simplicity in God, much about Him has been obscured by the traditions of men. We are surrounded with things difficult to understand. The way most people take is to look away, lest they should find out they have to understand them." -George MacDonald-

 

[FineLinen]

“It is doubtful whether God can bless a man greatly until He has hurt him deeply.” - A.W. Tozer-

“If man had his way, the plan of redemption would be an endless and bloody conflict. In reality, salvation was bought not by Jesus' fist, but by His nail-pierced hands; not by muscle but by love; not by vengeance but by forgiveness; not by force but by sacrifice. Jesus Christ our Lord surrendered in order that He might win; He destroyed His enemies by dying for them and conquered death by allowing death to conquer Him.”

 

[FineLinen]

"Life is a great sunrise. I do not see why death should not be an even greater one." -Vladimir Nobokov -

"When you were born, you cried and the world rejoiced. Live your life in a manner so that when you die the world cries and you rejoice." -Native American Proverb-

 

[r2d2009]

Cross of Buddha
It is good to start each practice session with emotional attunement and purification of the energy of the surrounding space. For this purpose there exists a wonderful technique known as the Cross of Buddha. It is performed in the following way.

For the best performance of this exercise we have to accept the so-called student posture: we sit down on the heels holding the spine straight, toes looking backward, and the palms of our hands resting upon the thighs. Then we send waves of our benevolence and love from the chest forward, saying mentally:

“May all beings have peace! May all beings be calm! May all beings feel bliss!”

We produce each of these three states inside the chest first and then radiate them forward. Then we repeat this to the right, to the left, backward, up, and down. This is a powerful technique that allows us to bring harmony to ourselves, to the surrounding space, and to the living beings around us.

 

[FineLinen]

“Trust him. And when you have done that, you are living the life of grace. No matter what happens to you in the course of that trusting - no matter how many waverings you may have, no matter how many suspicions that you have bought a poke with no pig in it, no matter how much heaviness and sadness your lapses, vices, indispositions, and bratty whining may cause you - you believe simply that Somebody Else, by his death and resurrection, has made it all right, and you just say thank you and shut up. The whole slop-closet full of mildewed performances (which is all you have to offer) is simply your death; it is Jesus who is your life. If he refused to condemn you because your works were rotten, he certainly isn't going to flunk you because your faith isn't so hot. You can fail utterly, therefore, and still live the life of grace. You can fold up spiritually, morally, or intellectually and still be safe. Because at the very worst, all you can be is dead - and for him who is the Resurrection and the Life, that just makes you his cup of tea.” - Robert Farrar Capon-

 

[Bethsheba Ashe]

“I slept with faith and found a corpse in my arms on awakening; I drank and danced all night with doubt and found her a virgin in the morning.”

― Aleister Crowley, The Book of Lies.

 

[FineLinen]

“The notion that the salvation of Jesus is a salvation from the consequences of our sins, is a false, mean, low notion. The salvation of Christ is salvation from the smallest tendency or leaning to sin. It is a deliverance into the pure air of God’s ways of thinking and feeling. It is a salvation that makes the heart pure, with the will and choice of the heart to be pure. To such a heart, sin is disgusting. It sees a thing as it is,–that is, as God sees it, for God sees everything as it is. The soul thus saved would rather sink into the flames of hell than steal into heaven and skulk there under the shadow of an imputed righteousness. No soul is saved that would not prefer hell to sin. Jesus did not die to save us from punishment; he was called Jesus because he should save his people from their sins.” -George MacDonald-

 

[FineLinen]

God's mercy doesn't expire when you do!