(no subject)

"Do not the angels differ from us in this respect, that they do not want so many things as we do? Therefore the less we need, the more we are on our way to them; the more we need, the more we sink down to this perishable life."~St. John Chrysostom

(no subject)

kizmet_42 made me think of this tonight.

"Bright are the stars that shine in somebody else's sky
Green is the grass that grows some place different
More possibilities, more than You offered me
More than I care to see from a distance

I was certain that the truth would be
In a place that kept eluding me
But every stone turned and unturned again
Would only serve to prove
That I never had to move to find You

And You will always be
The only love I'll ever know,
Home
And You have made for me
The only place I'll ever go,
Home

God, for the shameless pride
The times when I rolled my eyes
To laugh at simplicity, show me mercy
Knowing what I know now it's hard to imagine how
I could feel anything but unworthy

And the mystery of Your love for me
Is not as hidden as it seemed to be
Should have known then when You said to me
"Seek and you will find"
It was right here all the time

And You will always be
The only love I'll ever know,
Home
And You have made for me
The only place I'll ever go,
Home

I believe in the quest and the journey
I believe that the answers come in time
And where we begin is where we arrive

And You will always be
The only love I'll ever know,
Home
And You have made for me
The only place I'll ever go,
Home

--Nichole Nordeman

(no subject)

Hmmmm...this might be a record number of posts in one day for me.

I was just thinking about how these monumentally huge things go on in life all the time, but they have to remain under the surface. These epiphanies, these tragedies, these miracles that we all want to shout from the rooftops, but when we do we realize that no one else really cares. We discover, horrifed, that after the words are out of our mouths these amazing things shrink suddenly, we become ashamed of them and what we thought was so important about them. Sometimes they even warp and twist and what could have been a vision of light becomes only darkness. The only way to keep them, the only way for them to do their work on us, the only way for them to grow even bigger, is for us to keep them quiet. Keep them inside. Not secrets exactly, but something to only be shared with a very few select souls. And maybe no one but God.

I've often thought of this when looking at an icon of the Theotokos. What did she know? What did she think? She seems to have been very quiet about it all. Did she perhaps know that to speak of these Mysteries would be to shrink them, shroud them, twist them in the misunderstandings of sinful, sick men? Perhaps she knew that the only way to know these things was to experience them.

"But Mary kept all these things and pondered them in her heart." Luke 2:19