Translating the Ordinary

I don’t know where we’re headed, I don’t know even what comes one minute from now. A constant uncertainty defines our days. We’ve gotten ourselves used to the constant changes of tide, the ebb and flow of daily struggle.

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Be at peace when the trouble comes. Be at peace when the rain falls. Be at peace when you start to hear the voices of doubt, and of fear – for then you will know that the most perfect peace is undisturbed by even the loudest and most terrifying attack. Be at peace and know that you belong to GOD.

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Starlight, star bright, first star I see tonight. Give up the moon and let the stars fall down. The night of reckoning will test your soul and ask you to produce a light from within – no help from without. Are you prepared with the oil your lamp requires to shine as bright as the moon?

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When you are tempted to betray your convictions, remember the shame suffered by Peter, who denied Jesus three times. Or by Judas, who became so filled with remorse that he took his life in despair.

The end of betraying Christ – which is the end of betraying your soul – is intense regret and somber remorse for living apart from the Truth.

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Can we be members of a culture that holds up values that aren’t our own? What do we do when the prevailing thought contradicts our deeper sensibilities and threatens to destroy the integrity of our convictions and beliefs? We must not acquiesce to demands that violate our conscience – for to do so would harm our souls and commit us to a prison of spirit and thought. The way is Freedom – and we must not settle for less.

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The perfect thing about your failure to see is that you are walking in faith – you are walking in the dark and as a result you are clinging to the Light.

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Try to be OK with not knowing the way. Try to be OK with a voice of uncertainty. Try to accept the possibility that all is beyond your grasp – but that it is unfolding, nevertheless, with a true and constant speed.

When you start to acknowledge the hopelessness of controlling what’s beyond your control, you will see how much energy you save by letting it all go free.

Follow the path through the woods and lose yourself among the branches. The key to living an unimpeded life is having the courage to walk a different way. When you constrain yourself to following the paths already trodden by others, you lose a sense of the salt that gives life its flavor. You mustn’t worry about the reception others will give you – it’s more important that you take the chance to wipe your feet and walk in the way you are called.

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“Dance until you drop,” she said. “Dance until your heart is about to burst from your chest and your feet are nearly numb with exhaustion. Then – and only then – will you know what it means to be free.”

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Be my friend.
By my companion through life.
Be the one I turn to in distress,
the one I cry on in pain.
Be he who lifts my soul
to higher things
and lights my way with joy.
Be for me
exactly the person you are
and I will let myself revel in the garden of pure delight.

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Ecstasy is what you desire, ecstasy is what you seek. How will you find it by crawling among the weeds, doing the same things you’ve always done and expecting a different result? Haven’t you heard that that’s the path of the insane? You must have the courage, my friend, to seek out richer terrain, to plant your seeds in fertile ground. Then you will taste the goodness of the sublime – forgetting yourself in the pursuit of a monstropolous Love.

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When all we want is light, it’s a grief and a burden to find only darkness.

Where is the candle I lit an hour ago? Where is the lantern I’d laid at my feet?

Has the wax melted down so low that there’s no oil left to burn? Can you live your life and do your work in the dark?

Fumbling encounters, blinded attempts.

The life of a babe still unable to open his eyes to see his mother’s face.

But all is not lost. All is not taken away. The thing to remember is that there glows from the depths an unquenchable fire – neither water nor sand nor attempts to smother can put it out. It is the eternal flame – the stuff of stories, the prize of legends and myths. It is real, it exists – and it can be found by an honest attempt to seek it out. When you are ready to throw off the darkness you’ve been wearing – the shadow you’ve drawn about you like a cloak – speak aloud into the cavernous depths and proclaim your wish. The echoes of your desire will move you step by step along the road you must travel, and your eyes, slowly but surely, will accustom themselves to the light.

…

Once upon a time, a child was born.

His parents were older folk, and poor, and they cried to see his entrance into the world.

Their joy was simple and sure, but their sadness was equally resolute.

How could they bring a child – a little boy, full of light – into a dusty, darkened home where the winds blew through the door and the crickets chirped a constant refrain?

The mother sighed and the father hunched his shoulders in thought.

After a while, the baby cooed and his mother took him in her arms. The full moon shone through the curtains into the room and the stars glittered with light.

The mother smiled, the father relaxed, and the child stirred a little – in joy.

Whatever it is that’s holding you back – you must vow to let it go. When you stop yourself from becoming the person you’re meant to be, you’ve committed a mortal sin – mortal, I say, because you’ve separated yourself in one fell swoop from the will of GOD in your life. Sounds harsh, perhaps – but the reality of an unlived life is harsher and harder to account for in the end.

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Find me ten people you love and I will tell you what kind of woman you are. For it is in the quieter choices of our own hearts – the intuitive preference for This thing or That – that our natures are revealed, for better or for worse.

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C.S. Lewis remarked: “Surely what a man does when he is caught off guard is the best evidence for what sort of man he is?”

It’s of no value to pretend to yourself. It’s only the fool who thinks he can deceive his own heart in the silence of the night. “Cathy, how could you betray your heart!?” Heathcliff screamed. Brutish ways aside, the man had a point – to violate your heart is a form of mutilation, an act of violence against the self. If the heart is the wellspring of life, why pollute the waters with lesser things and muddied truths? Drink of the pure waters of Life and live.

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I’m getting too abstract, I’m growing too naïve. How can I put it better?

You must listen to the promptings of your innermost voice when it comes to matters of life and love.

If you don’t, you start to lose touch with the force that animates your being and you resign yourself to a smaller way of life. And how, I wonder, could you be content with that?

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But come thou and stayest with me the night and we shall find our rest.