Luminous Gift

The planes have stilled their flying

The sky is free of stench, this night

The air sings her dusky arias

and the Spirit blows where She wills

Just a breeze tousling the hair

on Autumn-trees' luxuriant heads

meditating upon the full-moon

this eve before jubilee

Tis luminous gift, this dark

this stilled moment of day

resting in Quiet's engulfing arms

and God's near, incarnate grace

*Is it You I want or some image or idea of You?

-"I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones."

  -Albert Einstein 

*Reflections of Frederick Buechner:

  -We must gird our loins with truth, and for us, in the end, there is only one truth, and it is the Christ. He is the truth about who man really is, about it is the Christ.  He is the truth about who man really is, about what it means to be really human, and about who God really is.  And his Cross is the truth about what the darkness is, in us and in our world; and his Cross is the truth about what love of God is, in us and in our world.  We must put on the breastplate of righteousness, and righteousness in the last analysis is love - not love as an emotion necessarily but love as an act of the will: love as the act of willing another's good even though we may despise the darkness in him just as we will our own good even though we despise the darkness in ourselves.  It is not until we love a person in all his ugliness that we can make him beautiful, or ourselves either.  Above all, we must take the shield of faith, and faith here is not so much believing this thing or that thing about God as it is hearing a voice that says, "Come unto me."  We hear the voice, then we start to go without really knowing what to believe either about the voice or about ourselves; and yet we go.  Faith is standing in the darkness , and a hand is there, and we take it.

  -The decisive war is the other one - to become fully human, which means to become compassionate, honest, brave. And this is a war against the darkness which no man fights alone.  It is the war which every man can win who wills to win because it is the war which God also wills us to win and will arm us to win if only we will accept his armor.