Active Contemplative

Wounded Healer revisited

2006-07-08T23:23:00.000+08:00

Nobody escapes being wounded. We all are wounded people, whether physically, emotionally, mentally, or spiritually. The main question is not "How can we hide our wounds?" so we don't have to be embarrassed, but "How can we put our woundedness in the service of others?" When our wounds cease to be a source of shame, and become a source of healing, we have become wounded healers.

Jesus is God's wounded healer: through his wounds we are healed. Jesus' suffering and death brought joy and life. His humiliation brought glory; his rejection brought a community of love. As followers of Jesus we can also allow our wounds to bring healing to others.

Henri Nouwen, Wounded Healer.

A classic from Nouwen's better known classics. And a timeless truth for all seasons. For when are we without wounds, and when is life without pain? Surely wounds and blessing go hand in hand, flowing into each other, ever intertwined. Greater highs, deeper lows. Making us better channels of love and blessing.

No doubt, no faith

2006-06-12T23:43:00.000+08:00

Let no one hope to find in contemplation an escape from conflict, from anguish or from doubt. On the contrary, the deep, inexpressible certitude of the contemplative experience awakens a tragic anguish and opens many questions in the depths of the heart like wounds that cannot stop bleeding. For every gain in deep certitude there is a corresponding growth of superficial "doubt." This doubt is by no means opposed to genuine faith, but it mercilessly examines and questions the spurious "faith" of everyday life, the human faith which is nothing but the passive acceptance of conventional opinion.
Merton, Thomas. New Seeds of Contemplation. New Directions Publishing Co. 1961, p. 12-13.

It's amazing that impregnated in us is a quest for Truth that never rests. Even if it does, it does so only momentarily, till new conflict between what is and what we believe emerges. Either my belief is wrong or it is inadequate. Doubt fuels the growth of my belief, conflict opens up its boundaries and pain breaks through the floor of my conviction.

Like oil to fire

2005-11-04T10:30:00.000+08:00

Both water and oil come from the earth. And though they are similar in many ways, they are opposites in their nature and their purpose.
One extinguishes fire, the other gives fuel to the fire. Similarly, the world and its treasures are creations of God along with the soul and its thirst for spiritual truth. But if we try to quench the thirst of our soul with the wealth and pride and honors of this world, then it is like trying to extinguish fire with oil. The soul will only find peace and contentment in the One who created it along with its longing. When we turn to the living Master, we receive water that satisfies our soul. This water is a well of spiritual life that springs up deep within us.
-- Sadhu Sundar Singh

Too Big to Put Behind

2005-10-18T18:35:00.000+08:00

Disappointment and loss are a part of every life. Many times we can put them behind us and get on with the rest of our lives. But not everything is amenable to this approach. Some things are too big or too deep to do this, and we will have to leave important parts of ourselves behind if we treat them in this way. These are the places where wisdom begins to grow in us.

It begins with suffering that we do not avoid or rationalize or put behind us. It starts with the realization that our loss, whatever it is, has become a part of us and has altered our lives so profoundly that we cannot go back to the way it was before.

The thing about the many strategies we use to shelter ourselves from feeling loss is that none of them leads to healing. Although denial, rationalization, substitution, avoidance, and the like may numb the pain of loss, every one of them hurts us in some far more fundamental ways.

None is respectful toward life or toward process. None acknowledges our capacity for finding meaning or wisdom.

-- Rachel Naomi Remen

This affirms for me the truth that suffering, hunger, or need in any form is a gift from God. Like the deer that pants for streams of water, we are driven forward by need. It is by embracing our pain that we can begin to seek real answers and make deep changes within to embrace life and God in a greater way. What is too big to put behind is also too good an opportunity to pass on! - YY

The Paradox of Humanness

2005-10-15T21:01:00.000+08:00

John Stott proposes the reason for the ongoing duality in us in his book,Essentials:

'It is part, I think, of the paradoxical nature of our humanness that we are both breath of God and dust of earth, godlike and bestial, created and fallen, noble and ignoble. That seems to be why we both seek God and run away from him, both practise righteousness and suppress the truth in our unrighteousness, both recognize the claims of the moral law upon us and refuse to submit to it, both erect altars in God's honour and need to repent of our ignorance and sin.

How often have I felt the desire to move forward towards God. To grow in the spirit and leave the things of the flesh and the world. But instead again and again I find myself, for a total lack of will, back in a rut of ambition, desire, jealousy and resentment. My powerlessness itself is proof of my need of a saving God.

The Word only A Means

2005-10-15T20:44:00.000+08:00

"Sound Bible exposition is an imperative must in the Church of the Living God. Without it no church can be a New Testament church in any strict meaning of that term. But exposition may be carried on in such a way as to leave the hearers devoid of any true spiritual nourishment whatever. For it
is not mere words that nourish the soul, but God Himself, and unless and until the hearers find God in personal experience they are not the better for having heard the truth. The Bible is not an end in itself, but a means to bring men to an intimate and satisfying knowledge of God, that they may enter into Him, that they may delight in His presence, may taste and know the inner sweetness of the very God Himself in the core and center of their hearts."-- Tozer, A.W. The Pursuit Of God. Christian Publications, Harrisburg, PA.
1982. pp 34-35.

It's wonderful to hear someone like Tozer say this, reminding us how easily we slip into making the things ABOUT God substitute God Himself. In that way many of our churches, our prayers, our worship have become bereft of the reason they are there - to both increase and whet our longing for the Living God. It is not mere words that nourish the soul, but God Himself.

Once They Deny Themselves

2005-10-04T20:06:00.000+08:00

'People who seek peace in things, places, people, and activities - or inworld-flight, poverty, and humiliation, whatever the avenue or degree - look in vain, for there is no peace this way. But once they deny themselves, then whatever they keep, be it wealth, honor, or anything else, they will still be free from it all.'-- Meister Eckhart

How much more of God I can have if I will only let go of things.. and how much less of things I will need if I have more of God...

Real action or reaction?

2005-10-01T21:50:00.000+08:00

If you watch your life carefully you will discover quite soon that we hardly ever live from within outwards; instead we respond to incitement, to excitement. In other words, we live by reflection, by reaction. Something happens and we respond, someone speaks and we answer. But when we are left without anything that stimulates us to think, speak or act, we realize that there is very little in us that will prompt us to action in any direction at all. This is really a very dramatic discovery. We are completely empty, we do not act from within ourselves but accept as our life a life which is actually fed from the outside; we are used to things happening which compel us to do other things. How seldom can we live simply by means of the depth and the riches we assume that there is within ourselves." -- Bloom, Anthony. Beginning To Pray. Paulist Press, New York. 1970 pp.38-39.

I have nothing useful to say if I have not been silent. I have nothing to give if I have not first humbly received from above.

When We Share Woundedness

2005-09-30T22:07:00.000+08:00

'How strange that we should ordinarily feel compelled to hide our wounds
when we are all wounded! Community requires the ability to expose our wounds
and weaknesses to our fellow creatures. It also requires the ability to be
affected by the wounds of others...But even more important is the love that
arises among us when we share, both ways, our woundedness.'

-- M. Scott Peck

Each Choice

2005-09-29T23:16:00.000+08:00

'As the eagle soars in the endless blue,
Its shadow races after it, far below.
Yet space does not divide: bird and shadow
are linked. So too each act - each choice
and consequence.'

-- Jigme Lingpa

Doing or not doing?

2005-09-27T18:57:00.000+08:00

In a Zen koan someone said that an enlightened man is not one who seeks
Buddha or finds Buddha, but simply an ordinary man who has nothing left to
do. Yet mere stopping is not arriving. To stop is to stay a million miles
from it and to do nothing is to miss it by the whole width of the universe.
As for arriving, when you arrive you are ruined. Yet how close the solution
is: how simple it would be to have nothing more to do if only - one had
really nothing more to do. The man who is unripe cannot get there, no matter
what he does or does not do. But the ripe fruit falls out of the tree
without even thinking about it. Why? The man who is ripe discovers that
there was never anything to be done from the very beginning.

-- Merton, Thomas. Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, Doubleday & Company,
New York. 1966. P. 258.

<i>Always a struggle for me: To do this or to do that? To do or not to do at
all? To do more or to do less? But all that is missing the point. The real
issue of the heart has never been about doing or not doing, or how much we
do. But what is it really about? - YY </i>

Killing Him Softly

2005-09-27T17:18:00.000+08:00

Nothing is more dangerous to the advancement of God's kingdom than religion.

But this is what Christianity has become. Do you not know that it is possible to kill Christ with such Christianity? After all, what is more important - Christianity or Christ? And I'll say even more: we can kill Christ with the Bible! Which is greater:

the Bible or Christ? Yes, we can even kill Christ with our prayers. When we approach God with our prayers full of self-love and self-satisfaction, when the aim of our prayers is to make our world great, our prayers are in vain.

- C. F. Blumhardt

My soul, find rest!

2005-09-19T17:20:00.000+08:00

My soul, find rest!
Find rest in God alone.

Alone,
Not with your thoughts

Alone,
Not with your ambitions

Alone,
Not with your books
or PC
or projects

Alone,
Not clawing at things to achieve
Things to hold
People to impress

Alone,
It's so hard isn't it?
Are you afraid,
There is nothing there?

Do not fear
Being alone
For alone is where I am
And where you are is where God is

-YY

Teach me your will

2005-09-08T18:01:00.000+08:00

A slow and repetitive reading (Lectio Divina-style) of Psalm 143:10 makes my heart ache.

“ Teach me to do your will, for you are my God; may your good Spirit lead me on level ground. ”

The words 'teach me' and 'lead me ' captures my longing for the direction and purpose I so need at this point of my life. No one can give me the kind of over-arching navigational sense through life. Not my employer, not the world's needs, and certainly not my own impulses that are driven by ambition and comfort-seeking than truth. I need a real guide I can trust.

'Your will' sinks in even more deeply.

'Your will',
Not my own
'Your' thoughts
Higher than mine
'Your' lead
I shall follow

Not the will of man
Not my selfish dreams or foolish ambitions
Not the pace of the world
Only YOUR will

For 'You' are Yoke Yeow's God
No other God and no other will, will do.

A Shared Home

2005-08-12T16:45:00.000+08:00

The words 'You are not your own, you were bought at a price' - is both convicting and liberating.

It condemns the runaway arrogance of absolute self-rule. My life is not for me to run as I wish and to do with any way I so please. I am not my own. I belong also to someone else.

On the other hand, the success and outcome of my life isn't squarely on my shoulders either. I am not solely responsible. The burden isn't all mine. I am not my own. I belong also to someone else.

What joy to be called a temple. A tabernacle. A home. To be a heart/body that is a shared space with the One who transforms it, enlivens it and nurtures it together with me. I want to be a space always full of love, warmth and truth, and a space always available to others.

- YY

The Problem with Wealth

2005-08-01T20:54:00.000+08:00

The penalty of affluence is that it cuts one off from the common lot, common experience, and common fellowship. In a sense it outlaws one automatically from one’s birthright of membership in the great human family.

- Arnold Toynbee

Incriminating, but true. We know it. With every up-step in status, income and lifestyle I am distancing myself. Increasing status makes me inaccessible to many, worse still, it walls me off from reaching out. Look at the high-security gates we build - who is being protected from whom, I wonder? When faced with choices to 'upgrade', I must consider the larger consequences.. I am not always enriched by becoming richer. Gaining wealth, I can lose my place in humanity.

Fed up?

2005-07-20T19:31:00.000+08:00

'You are fed up with words, and I don't blame you. I am nauseated by them sometimes. I am also, to tell the truth, nauseated by ideals and with causes. This sounds like heresy, but I think you will understand what I mean.

It is so easy to get engrossed with ideas and slogans and myths that in the end one is left holding the bag, empty, with no trace of meaning left in it. And then the temptation is to yell louder than ever in order to make the meaning be there again by magic. Going through this kind of reaction helps you to guard against this. Your system is complaining of too much verbalizing, and it is right...

The big results are not in your hands or mine, but they suddenly happen, and we can share in them; but there is no point in building our lives on this personal satisfaction, which may be denied us and which after all is not that important.'

- by Thomas Merton

Only One Way

2005-06-30T22:54:00.000+08:00

'Christ's will was, and is, to unite. Think how he wept over Jerusalem!
Think of his prayer, “That they all might be one.” But people did not and do not want this. Christ said. “I am the Way,” and that is what matters.
Not what denomination or church group one belongs to, not social work, not reform, etc.—but the Way. Modern life is so complicated and torn, so distracting and disintegrating. Whereas the Way is simple, light and straight, and unifies the whole of life.'
- Kathleen Hasenberg

It's lovely to be reminded to halt the tide towards divisions, dichotomies and fragmentations and to always look for unification amidst diversity. Life IS simple if I will let it be. I get so caught up, so uptight about so many things. Things to do, things to learn, things I must know... ad nauseum. If I will only let go for a moment, and come into Reality as it is. That is all there is to life -- God and me. - YY

Everything becomes a distraction

2005-06-23T17:41:00.000+08:00

'Suppose that my "poverty" be a secret hunger for spiritual riches: suppose that by pretending to empty myself, pretending to be silent, I am really trying to cajole God into enriching me with some experience - what then? Then everything becomes a distraction. All created things interfere with my quest for some special experience. I must shut them out, or they will tear me apart. What is worse - I myself am a distraction.
But, unhappiest thing of all - if my prayer is centered in myself, if it seeks only an enrichment of my own self, my prayer itself will be my greatest potential distraction. Full of my own curiosity, I have eaten of the tree of Knowledge and torn myself away from myself and from God. I am left rich and alone and nothing can assuage my hunger: everything I touch turns into a distraction.'

- Merton, Thomas.Thoughts In Solitude.Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New
York. 1956. Pg. 93, 94.

It seems to take a lot of wearing down - disillusionment, frustration, failures - to give up chasing things. The worst thing one could chase, of course, is spirituality. And what a contradiction in terms that is! For real spirituality is the ultimate non-attachment and non-pursuit. It is a pursuit that only happens when one gives it up. And sometimes when we have a bit too much self energy, we try to try, in vain, of course. - YY

Real Love

2005-06-23T17:32:00.000+08:00

'Let everyone understand that the real love of God does not consist in tear-shedding, nor in that sweetness and tenderness for which we often long, just because they console us, but in serving God by serving those around us, in justice, fortitude of soul, and humility.'

- Teresa of Avila

The ultimate test, the highest result of true contemplation must be the most liberal of service. Because servanthood is the measure of completeness and freedom. When I have renounced all need (even the need to be useful!), only serving remains. When I serve so self-lessly, I have complete freedom from the grips of Self. - YY

Liberty Worth Having

2005-06-22T17:49:00.000+08:00

'How watchful we must be to keep the crystal well that we were made, clear!-- that it not be made turbid by our contact with the world, so that it will not reflect objects. What other liberty is there worth having, if we have not freedom and peace in our minds--if our inmost and most private man is but a sour and turbid pool? If you would avoid uncleanness and all the sins, work earnestly, though it be at cleaning a stable.'
- by Henry David Thoreau

The Cause of Unhappiness

2005-06-21T17:44:00.000+08:00

'If you look carefully you will see that there is one thing and only one thing that causes unhappiness. The name of that thing is attachment. What is an attachment? An emotional state of clinging caused by the belief that without some particular thing or some person you cannot be happy.'
- by Anthony de Mello

There must be a million things in my life that I falsely believe I need for happiness. This is the wisdom of all spiritual gurus - desire and attachment is the root of all misery, it is our self-enslavement to things, power, opinion that keeps us from our spiritual freedom. It is a hard pill to swallow, even harder to walk the long journey of detachment. And I will surely be plagued by immense insecurity and self-doubt every step of the way.. Yet it's a journey I must make.. - YY

Out of the Pit - Abraham Heschel

2005-06-14T12:16:00.000+08:00

'The greatest task of our time is to help our fellow human beings out of the pit. God will return to us when we are willing to let Him in— into our banks and factories, into our Congress and clubs, into our homes and theaters. For God is everywhere or nowhere, the father of all people or of none, concerned about everything or nothing. Only in His presence shall we learn that the glory of humankind is not in its will to power but in its power of compassion. We will reflect either the image of God's presence or that of a beast. There can be no neutrality.'
- Abraham Joshua Heschel

The Cloud of Unknowing

2005-06-14T12:10:00.000+08:00

"Now when I call this exercise a darkness or a cloud, do not think that it is a cloud formed out of the vapours which float in the air, or a darkness such as you have in your house at night, when your candle is out. For such a darkness or such a cloud you can certainly imagine by subtle fancies, as though it were before your eyes, even on the clearest day of summer; and likewise, on the darkest night of winter, you can imagine a clear shining light. But leave such falsehood alone. I mean nothing of that sort. When I say 'darkness,' I mean a privation of knowing, just as whatever you do not know or have forgotten is dark to you, because you do not see it with your spiritual eyes. For this reason, that which is between you and your God is termed, not a cloud of the air, but a cloud of unknowing."

Light From Light: An Anthology of Christian Mysticism. Edited by Louis Dupre & James A. Wiseman, O.S.B. Paulist Press, New York. 1988. P.230.

The Cloud of Unknowing. (14th Century).

Helplessness

2005-06-14T12:00:00.000+08:00

'Sometimes, meditation is nothing but an unsuccessful struggle to turn ourselves to God, to seek His Face by faith. Any number of things beyond our control may make it morally impossible for one to meditate effectively. In that case, faith and good will are sufficient. If one has made a really sincere and honest effort to turn himself to God and cannot seem to get his wits together at all, then the attempt will have to count as a meditation. This means that God, in His mercy, accepts our unsuccessful efforts in the place of a real meditation. Sometimes it happens that this interior helplessness is a sign of real progress in the interior life - for it makes us depend more completely and peacefully on the mercy of God.'
- by Merton, Thomas, in Thoughts In Solitude, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New
York. 1956. Pg. 50.

Entering Eternity

2005-06-14T11:58:00.000+08:00

'It is truly the Christian's birthright to remain silent and recollected, like Mary of Bethany, in the Presence of the Father. This Presence is not, however, something outside one or separate from one, as when we see or imagine someone in front of us. It is rather a matter of entering inwardly within that unique Presence which fills time and eternity, the Presence of the Father to the Son and of the Son to the Father.

At the very heart of that glory and joy we hear the Thou which God in his love addresses to us from all eternity, and we no longer have the right to utter our own 'I' except within the Father's eternal I, where Being awakes to Itself.'

from The Fire of Silence and Stillness: An Anthology of Quotations for the Spiritual Journey. Edited by Paul Harris. Templegate Publishers, Illinois. 1995.

Of thunderbolts and sunsets

2005-06-14T11:56:00.000+08:00

'Sometimes a thunderbolt will shoot from a clear sky; and sometimes, into the midst of a peaceful family – without warning of gathered storm above or slightest tremble of earthquake beneath – will fall a terrible fact, and from that moment everything is changed. The air is thick with cloud, and cannot weep itself clear. There may come a gorgeous sunset, though.'
- George MacDonald

Like A Butterfly - Emmy Arnold

2005-06-10T15:24:00.000+08:00

'It dawns on me more and more how trivial and short our lifespan is. It is like smoke; like a butterfly—it passes so quickly, flying away. Nobody, no one can bring back wasted years. One wishes that one would have always lived with eternity in mind.' - Emmy Arnold

It seems to me the certainty of mortality, when we are not delusionally denying it, provokes two kinds of responses. One is despairing - life is short, I'm going to die anyway, so what can I achieve? The second is neurotic - life is short, so I must do as much as I can within the years given to me. Isn't there a third, more wholesome way of embracing death and living in the present with eternity in full view? What would that look like? - YY

Only Connect

2005-06-10T15:09:00.000+08:00

'It is not physical solitude that actually separates one from others; not physical isolation, but spiritual isolation. It is not the desert island nor the stony wilderness that cuts you from the people you love. It is the wilderness in the mind, the desert wastes in the heart through which one wanders lost and a stranger. When one is a stranger to oneself then one is estranged from others too.

If one is out of touch with oneself, then one cannot touch others. How often in a large city, shaking hands with my friends, I have felt the wilderness stretching between us. Both of us were wandering in arid wastes, having lost the springs that nourished us - or having found them dry. Only when one is connected to one's own core is one connected to others, I am beginning to discover. And, for me, the core, the inner spring, can best be refound through solitude.'
- Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Gift from the Sea

How often have I been saved by a few moments of quiet. When things were spiralling out of control, when I was headed for a sure crash and burn down the F1 circuit of life. When there were no indicators whatsoever to where I was going, what was happening. It was only silence. But IT IS in silence that our redemption is found, when there are no answers, no light, no hope. Only in silence do I hear my heart's true cry and God's still voice. Then I know. Then, I am found. Then, I am truly me again - and from nowhere can I relate to another person except from being in touch with my true self. - YY

The Most Precious Insights

2005-06-07T20:12:00.000+08:00

'You yourself are the child you must learn to know, rear, and above all enlighten. To demand that others should provide you with textbook answers is like asking a strange woman to give birth to your baby. There are insights that can be born only of your own pain, and they are the most precious. Seek in your child the undiscovered part of yourself.'
- Janusz Korczak (1878-1942, Polish-Jewish children´s writer and educator who is as well known in Europe as Anne Frank. Like her, he died in the Holocaust and left behind a diary; unlike her, he had a chance to escape that fate-a chance he chose not to take.)

I used to disagree when a mentor-friend said, we are two persons - the adult and the child. It's taken me years to now understand and fully agree with him. In many ways I am still the person I was 25 years ago. I still have the same longings, same fears, and same hurts. But in many ways that child has been supressed and buried - much by the self-imposed expectations of the adult. I want to be, do, think, speak in ways that isn't really me, just the image of a person I'd like to be - the 'false construct' so to speak.

The only way to real joy and authenticity is to find that child again, exhume him from the grave I've buried him alive in years ago. Go back, I must, to confront my fears. Find healing for the hurts. And pursue my longings and passions the I was made to. - YY

Thoughts inspired by Ray Bradbury

2005-06-05T02:57:00.000+08:00

Reading through the last pages of Yancey's collection of authors-review-sifu-authors (More Than Words Can Say), I was very heartened by what Calvin Miller had to say about Ray Bradbury's worldview streaming through his books.

He says: 'Bradbury warns us away from any science that leaves no room for imagination; I find a similar danger at work in some Christian circles. The gospel itself may be made harsh by precepts void of warm narrative. In spite of the fact that the Bible is filled with parables and stories, our zeal to evangelize and to encounter secular cultures with moral reform has shackled evangelicals to deadening presuppositions. These presuppositions do not kill because they are false (they are indeed true) but because they strip away mystery and process - the very ingredients of a good story. In their evangelistic intensity some Christians see fiction as a waste of time in a lost society where so many are "perishing in hell."'

Further on he says: 'Life can bear only so much reality; we need the mysteries to live. In every message that I preach, I call men, not to a scientifically reasonable faith, but to a faith which gains its power through stories - stories of God invading history through a virgin's womb and then shattering death (in defiance of more reasonable, and powerless, definitions of death).'

Bradbury, Miller claims, lifts him from the 'heaviness of earth' and helped him 'believe in a better world' by giving him a 'prospect of both goodness and hope.'

Indeed if we think and live in a closed system only of present woes and dreariness, then there is no reason for tomorrow. Not even for today. The only worthwhile reason I have for living each day is a higher reality, a prospect of goodness in every moment and hope in a greater future. We are not merely creatures bound in time and space. Standing on the foundation of the past, invigorated by the prospect of the future, we live fully in the present.

We are gifted with imagination and the capacity for immense mystery and awe. These are elements that must be present in some amount to keep us plodding on. It is the invisible rope that lifts us above the mundane and gives us forward drive.We are nothing if not for our ability to dream. We die when our dreams die.

And it seems fiction is the most powerful vehicle to "trick" our logic-locked minds into seeing afresh. Capturing higher truths, those lofty things beyond the grasp of reasoning. We need stories more than ever. Let's never lose the ability to see the story in our lives - if just to give us a sense of adventure and to live with passion.

The Devotional Attitude

2005-05-30T14:46:00.000+08:00

"Quietude, even in the purely outward sense, means a great deal to our inward composure. Not until we have come apart from those things which divert our attention to outward things, are our souls free to engage in inward activity. Or perhaps we should speak first of that inward, passive state known as the devotional attitude. As soon as outward things lose their distracting influence over our soul-life, God Himself can attune our souls to prayer, because we are in a devotional attitude."

Hallesby, O. Prayer. Augsburg Publishing House, Minneapolis. 1931. Pg. 93

When I can see prayer as a dialog - spoken or unspoken - of love, between God and ourselves, then I can be in prayer all day long. Everything I see, hear and touch are 'words' and all that I think, feel and do are words spoken back. It is not the ambient noises that distract us from this dialog, but our own inner voice - of desire, fear, insecurity. Much work to be done to silence these voices and allow the voice of trust and surrender to emerge sweetly.

Nisi Dominus Frustra

2003-12-24T00:07:00.001+08:00

A prayer of ceasing

Just being present to You
More important than any work
Any concern
Even pain or trouble anywhere

Without You, all is futile
Only with You
In the picture
All things make sense.

You say, 'Walk with me,
I am your friend and your partner;
It is I who will bear fruit through you.'

The inward struggle : What's more important? God's work or being present to God? Being still seems a waste of time, and uneffective use of it. But if I just keep working without time with God, what and whom am I working for? And what kind of work am I doing?
-YY

Terrifying Presence

2003-12-24T00:07:00.000+08:00

A burning bush moment

So many encounters
None like tonight's.

The air grew heavy
Weighing down on me
My limbs numb

An otherness upon me
Pinned down
Breathing is difficult
Paralysed

Perhaps this is how Daniel felt
Prostrate before God

For the first time
I glimpse at how awesome
How terrifying, how petrifying
God is

I could be snuffed out in a moment
Not just small but utterly insignificant
Nothinq, less than nothing
Terrified but cannot run

Great ls The Lord
Awesome. Majestic.
Overpowering.

I have no words even to repent
Prostrate is not low enough!
O that the ground would open and swallow me!

May I always live in reverent fear of my God!

-YY

You Alone

2003-12-22T00:09:00.000+08:00

You Lord alone
Be my all
Nothing else before You
Or above You

You lead me
Go before me
Draw me
Spur me on

Take me further
Into You
Nothing is more important
Nothing is important

But You
You Alone
And alone with You
-YY