FootprintsintheWind.com

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 614

Jesus was not trying to make sense: he was trying to upset it. We should therefore not seek to understand Jesus, but to stand with him in improvisation.

Please pass it on.

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Faith is not for developing trust–that is too weak; rather it is to bring you to meet G-d, to smell G-d’s breath on your face.

:- Doug.

I am not special: the glimpses and insights I get, others get as well. We must encourage each other to honor the good we receive and are. By the same token, I am special, and so is everyone. Honor.

:- Doug.

I must not dwell on any pain, but move on to what is possible, what good can be made. All things work together for good for those who are willing to work toward the good.

This is a way of saying that I am feeling free, since reading Funk’s Honest to Jesus, to say, as Jesus said, You have heard it said of old…but I say to you…. We do need to shake up our thinking, just to shake it up occasionally, so that we make sure we are seeing what is.

Lord, we cannot shake up you in doing so. We can ourselves be shaken and when done by you that is good, no matter how it might feel. You are not angered by such, but loving. We may provoke your love, but your wrath is not at all likely. You want us to know what is, because what is is you.

:- Doug.

One of the people here is having a weird telephone conversation. She just got off it, somebody trying to give her a “grant,” asking her for her bank and routing number and similar things. The person on the other side knew her home address. How people prey upon others, thinking they are getting ahead of “the game.”

They cannot get ahead, they are only putting themselves behind. Crime carries its own punishment, somehow. If only in a vague unclean feeling, or in dealing with shadowy people who will not have honor among thieves. Too bad for this lady on the other side. Lord, help them.

G-d it seems to me you are much more home-spun than we have made you out to be. The punishment is built in to the crime, the love into the suffering. It does not all even out, but goes upward: there is the hope of improvement, there is the built in desire to have each other do better. Some people have missed the import, or subverted it, but that is bound to happen, and gives the vast numbers of the peoples something to work on. G-d is a doting grandmother, unable to keep her grandchildren from the scrapes and bruises of growing up and out into the world, but there to kiss and hug and encourage in the bigger things.

:- Doug.

Could we enact living dramas to challenge our own smugness?

:- Doug.