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Third Advent

Advent Two

 You, God, who live next door--

If at times, through the long night, I trouble you
with my urgent knocking--
this is why: I hear you breathe so seldom.
I know you're all alone in that room.
If you should be thirsty, there's no one 
to get you a glass of water.
I wait listening, always. Just give me a sign!
I'm right here.

As it happens, the wall between ius 
is very thin. Why couldn't a cry
from one of us
break it down? It would crumble
easily,

it would barely make a sound.  

 I,6   by Rainer Maria Rilke  translation by Anita Barrows & Joanna Macy

 "Truth is never violent; and the newspaper or magazine or book, the party or the public speech, which makes strong and bitter charges against the other side, we may be sure is, for the moment, calumnious; and, if we steep ourselves in such speaking or reading, the punishment that will come upon us is that we shall become incapable of discerning Truth and shall rejoice in evil speaking.

Fanaticism.––This is what happens to people when they become fanatics. It is not that they will not believe what is said on the other side, but that they cannot; they have lost the power; and efforts to convince them are futile. A man may be a fanatic for peace or a fanatic for war, a fanatic for religion or a fanatic for atheism. In fact, it is sad that good as well as evil causes may have their fanatics, who injure what they would support by their incapacity to see more than one side of a question. A good cause may also have its martyrs; but a martyr is not a clamorous person; he suffers, but does not shout, for the cause he has at heart. It was good and refreshing, after the calumnious clamour of the press on both sides and in several countries, to come upon a book by a British officer wherein the courage and endurance of Boer and Briton alike were duly honoured, and the Boer women who followed their husbands into the trenches were spoken of with kindliness and reverence. There are few better equipments for a citizen than a mind capable of discerning the Truth, whether it lie on the side of our party or on that of our opponents. But this just mind can only be preserved by those who take heed what they hear, and how."

                                                                                                                   ~  Charlotte M. Mason,  Ourselves

“God grant me the serenity
To accept the things I cannot change;
Courage to change the things I can;
And wisdom to know the difference.
Living one day at a time;
Enjoying one moment at a time;
Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace;
Taking, as He did, this sinful world
As it is, not as I would have it;
Trusting that He will make things right
If I surrender to His Will;
So that I may be reasonably happy in this life
And supremely happy with Him
Forever and ever in the next.
Amen”
                                                                                                ~ attributed to Reinhold Niebuhr
 

What's in My Journal
by William Stafford

Odd things, like a button drawer. Mean
Thing, fishhooks, barbs in your hand.
But marbles too. A genius for being agreeable.
Junkyard crucifixes, voluptuous
discards. Space for knickknacks, and for
Alaska. Evidence to hang me, or to beatify.
Clues that lead nowhere, that never connected
anyway. Deliberate obfuscation, the kind
that takes genius. Chasms in character.
Loud omissions. Mornings that yawn above
a new grave. Pages you know exist
but you can't find them. Someone's terribly
inevitable life story, maybe mine.
​

"What's In My Journal" by William Stafford, from Crossing Unmarked Snow © Harper Collins, 1981.