Grace, Life, Work, Slowness

These last few weeks have been crazy...and even in the midst of how busy I've been, thoughts of "the future" keep creeping into my head.  If we are each put here on earth to do something specific...it seems like it takes a long time to find out exactly what that is.  Sometimes I feel like there's some job out there, waiting for me, for after graduation, and I'm on some sort of crazy scavenger hunt trying to find it...

But as challenged as I have felt in the last couple weeks, both in the amount of work there has been to do and in how much I have felt pushed to think more about my future, I have also felt the continuous presence of God's grace.  Sometimes, He is slow.  At one point this week, I prayed that a group meeting would go well and somehow still it seemed like it would fall apart.  And I thought, "wait, God, didn't I just pray about this?!  Come on...help me out here."

But it's because He wants us to expand.  He wants to challenge us.  We are pushed to our very limits and then somehow we are caught.  By our own strength, by our friends, by the beauty of our world.  Someone smiles, or brings you hot chocolate, or makes brownies with you.  Or somehow, something you say or do actually WORKS!

Glory!

Recently

He that loves not knows not God; for God is love. (the Bible)

Rumi, on the same:
Love and imagination do many things.  They conjure up a sweetheart's form,

so that you can speak to it, "Do you love me?" Yes,
yes...

Let your teacher be love
itself, not someone with a white

beard.  In the state of fana, love without form says,
I am the source of sober clarity

and drunken excitement.  You have loved my reflection
informs so well that now there's

no mediating.  When a Christian longs to be
forgiven, the priest disappears

in that longing.  Water flows out of the ground over
a stone.  No one calls it a stone

anymore.  It's the pure substance pouring over it, a
spring.  These forms we're

in are like bowls.  They acquire value from what
pours through to serve as nourishment;

then they're washed and put away for the next
use.