taize thought process

sometimes i think. (surprising, right?)

well, sometimes i think my spirituality is a very active (as opposed to a passive) one. this morning during taize as brian was leading us in prayer for the lonely, the oppressed, the anguished, the less fortunate, the lost, etc., all i could think about was what i could do for them. how i could serve them. how i could be Christ to them. i guess in that way i'm practical, too (but that's another idea entirely).

keep us from just praying
move us into action
we must go

i guess prayer changes me more than it changes God (thanks, c. s. lewis). when i hear of others' needs in prayer, it makes me want to DO SOMETHING. i guess this is the Spirit's gift of compassion and helping in me. it certainly wasn't evident a few years ago. praise God for transforming us into His likeness.

maybe this is why i see the Church best as a servant Church. i wrote an entire paper about that last year, and i'm a little bit proud of it (and of myself for writing it).

also, is this God trying to point me towards more details about my calling? or is this me trying to compensate for my inability to be intentional about my own spiritual formation?

ah, sometimes life is unclear. murky at best. like the water that my sister and i used to slop around in in the mountains, catching salamanders and building dams. there was a spring of fresh, clean, cool water (except for that one time when it made my uncle deathly sick) right across the road from my daddy's shack. (i guess that's why they built the shack there and not a half mile down the road. also, the shack does not have electricity or running water or even indoor toilets. mmm, rustic.) but back to my point. this spring water flowed out of the bank in a long pipe, clear and beautiful, but when it hit the dust-laden dirt road, it mixed and became cloudy and muddy and brown before it ran down the ditch alongside the road to the next shack a few miles down.

maybe that's what it looks like when divinity and humanity collide. dirty, cloudy, murky water.

ooh, and let's take it a step further: eventually, when all the sediment settles, the water becomes clearer, and you can see the what's going on at the bottom of the little stream. but it takes a looong time for the dirt to settle. and you have to be patient and still and wait for the commotion to calm down.

hm.