this week actually worked 8 hours a day for $ for the first time this year. neirmans gables are finished and lakjers fire escape is almost totally prepped. was offered a grinder to do the job which proved to be a great answer to prayer.
continue to struggle spiritually because of who i am. God is off the charts. His love is so precious. His forgiveness so amazing, the grace He gives that allows me to do things that otherwise would be impossible and the sweetness of His presence - from time to time like a cooling, refreshing breeze - are all so much more than i deserve. yet because of my fallen part i perversely do not earnestly seek to please Him, i fear and honor men much more than i do Him and many other spiritual dysfunctions.
if only i could give myself totally to Him. but as i am learning again and again - i may intellectually understand something, i may even make strides to do it, but to really, for real, do and be what He would have me do and be - i can do nothing but wait on Him. i am experiencing, something along the same line as but much less than david was when he said, 'save me oh God for the waters are come into my soul. i sink in deep mire where there is no standing. i am come into deep waters where the floods overflow me. i am weary of my crying, my throat is dried. mine eyes fail me while i wait for my God'. i can do nothing. at the same time it seems important to try to imitate what God wants.
am so all alone. the realization of profound aloneness i powerful. the years at leidy church were probably an unconscious attempt to escape this aloneless. but as the time there came to an end there was a strong impression that the whole time there, immersed in people-related activity, i was still all alone. now with the masquerade of intimacy gone the aloneness comes into much more powerful focus. this week a group of young children living in the neighborhood of where i was at worked played around me and interacted with me in such a way that it has been a while since i felt the joy of what fellowship will be like when in heaven. there was such freedom and joy and comradary..it's hard to explain...it was beautiful and encouraging. this happened two times! so God gave me two little oasises to tell me a bit of what like heaven will be. in terms of otherworldliness, it recalled the first visit to brooklyn tabernacle when the time of oral and audible praises of the congregation of how many came floating to me like some totally otherworldly spiritual beehive. thank You Lord for these experiences in which You give a glimpse of what it will be.
i'm wondering whether a certain circumference of fishing line would not provide me with a never-ending piece of floss to cut my expense in the bathroom supply area. i tried one circumference but it was too wide but have heard that there are different types of lines with different 'test' strengths and, i think, different circumferences.
this a.m. was a sort of breakthrough for me in the area of spanish. i have been asking God to give help in speaking. today, at the mothers' day lunch i was actually able to have some beginning, very halting types of interactions with some men...there was even a joke about fruit salad. they said that there were plantains and then something about 'macho' (male) and 'hembra' (female) and i, with mock astonishment said, looking into the cup of fruit, 'en aqui?' (in here) and they all broke up laughing. it was good and is, i hope, a promising start of more to come.
along the line of spanish i have been praying for God to give me some $ to buy a good spanish dictionary. i am especially interested in synonyms (how do different spanish words for the same thing actually differ...so as to use the correct one in each different situation). i am also interested in the etymology of words (this is a love in words of any language!). this week, out of the blue, God gave me some $ to get maybe one of them. so i'm asking for guidance and hope that God will be seen and known through this.
it struck me, and i have to look at the word 'laugh' throughout the bible to learn more but in proverbs 1 and psalm 2 God laughs. in both cases the context is the judgment of those who resist, refuse, will not listen to or, as psalm 2 says, 'serve the Lord with fear and rejoice with trembling. these are the only times i remember when it talks of God laughing. on the face of it, so my human side tends to think, isn't it a mean thing, even a totally inappropiate thing to laugh at someone when they are being, or just about to be condemned to eternal suffering? but without apology that is the way God reveals Himself in judgment...a horrible concept...a never-t0-be-defaced-from-the-memory 'picture'. why would He laugh? i'm not so sure how to think about this. one tepid attempt to figure it out might be His thinking about that type of thinking that, in the face of all He does to make reality clear, refuses to give Him His due...we all continue to chose to ignore (or worse) Him and do what we want...against all sane thinking...
the TREMENDOUS SLUGGISHNESS of my entire life at this point comes from one simple fact, and that is not to do anything i want and to do everything i don't want. my life has been filled with long and extended periods of zest and zeal and excitement because i was doing what i wanted to do. now much of this part of life is consigned to death and so...no wonder i have no feeling, no 'joy' (not the true joy which is the distillation of 'You-Lord-are-enoughness' but the feelings counterfeit commonly designated 'joy'), no desire to do this that i am doing, the thing that i will do next and next and next and next. i guess this living hell of a life will continue until everything 'passes thru the cross' and steve paine and all he wants are dead as a doornail. the I will be consigned to death so that the true i free at last to drop from sight and totally loose itself in God. oh Lord deliver me from being a talker and set me free to DO.
this week talking to a guy who was doing the same thing i am doing - grousing about his circumstances. and, as so often happens, i am much better at preaching to the pot than at calling the kettle (myself) black...i said to him, preaching!, 'isn't it enough to not be in hell?! that's where we all belong and yet.....here we are!
God's leading as far as loving those who don't love me... to a woman who has said some pretty nasty things to me and will not talk to or acknowledge me anymore...smile! use her name! speak blessing type words to her.. to a person who i have asked to clean up after themselves and they leave more than before...pick pubic hairs out of the tub strainer and wipe up the tub after them. oh Lord help us to actually do good to those who are doing bad to us...
the more i think about it...people must hate to be asked 'how can i pray for you?' it's something i deeply long to ask and be asked. it is, to ME, a central thing in fellowship. the whole thing, no matter how technically the concept may in some sense 'be right', is flawed- i'm coming to see- in that it is all about me and my spiritual pride. i ask this because i am spiritual. others do not ask this because they are not as spiritual. barf. in this mode it becomes another of the innumerable stinking proclamations of the self-righteous stiff who thinks himself more spiritual than and looks down the long spiritual nose at the rest of, less spiritual, humanity. why am i trying to FORCE people to interact with me spiritually? why not rather wait for God to open doors natually for things He might want done rather than go around knowing oneself what He wants done and proceeding to do that in one's own power, according to one's own inadequate comprehension. doesn't God make what HE wants done abundantly clear in His word. what a novel approach! Lord, do You want me to just practice doing exactly what You say? that's right, You never said that i was to ask other people how i could pray for them. oh Lord, help me, help me, help me just have the humility do quietly, unnoticed do what You say rather than do things aimed to pointing out my spirituality. ...this a.m. at mision luke 18.14 'whoever exalts himself will be abased and whoever abases himself will be humbled. also 10.39 maria a los pies de Jesus...
c.s.lewis..when i first became a christian..i thot that i would do it on my own, by retiring to my rooms and reading theology and i wouldn't go to the churches and gospel halls; and then later i found that it was the only way of flying your flag and, of course, i found that this meant being a target. it is extraordinary how inconveient to your family it becomes for you to get up early to go to church. it doesn't matter so much if you get up early for anything else, but if you get up early to go to church it's very selfish of you and you upset the house. if there is anything in the teaching of the new testament which is in the nature of a command, it is that you are obliged to take the sacrament and you can't do it without going to church.
..the proper pleasure of ritual..this will be understood by anyone who really understands the meaning of the middle english word solimpne. this means something different, but not quite different, from modern english slemn. like solemn it implies the opposite of what is familiar, free and easy, or ordinary. but unlike solemn it does not suggest gloom, oppression, or austerity.
the ball in the first act of romeo and juliet was a' solemnity'. the feast at the beginning of gawain and the green knight is very much of a solemnity. a great mass by mozart or beethoven is as much a solemnity in its hilarious gloria as in its poignant crucifixus est. feasts are, in this sense, more solemn than fasts. easter is solempne, good friday is not. the solempne is the festal which is also the stately and the ceremonial, the proper occasion for pomp - and the very fact that pompous is now used only in a bad sense measures the degree to which we have lost the old idea of 'solemnity'.
to recover it you must think of a court ball, or a coronation, or a victory march, as these things appear to people who enjoy them; in an age when everyone puts on his oldest clothes to be happy in, you must re-awake the simpler state of mind in which people put on gold and scarlet to be happy in. above all, you must be rid of the hideous idea, fruit of a widespread inferiority complex, that pomp, on the proper occasions, has any connection with vanity or self-conceit. a celebrant approaching the altar, a princess led out by a king to dance a minuet, a general officer on a ceremonial parade, a major domo preceding the boar's head at a christmas feast - all these wear unusual clothes and move with calculated dignity. this does not men that they are vain, but that they are obedient; they are obeying the hoc age which presides over every solemnity. the modern habit of doing ceremonial things unceremoniously is no proof of humility; rather it proves the offender's inability to forget himself in the rite and his readiness to spoil for everyone else the proper pleasure of ritual.
..the perfect church service would be one we were almost unaware of; our attention would have been on God..
hope you have a good week. love, dad
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