When we resist evil with evil, when we lash out at it in kind, we simply guarantee its perpetuation, as we ourselves are made over into its likeness.  The way of nonviolence, the way Jesus chose, is the only way that is able to overcome evil without creating new forms of evil and making us evil in return.  To those trapped in the Myth of Redemptive Violence, nonviolence must appear suicidal.  But to those who have looked unflinchingly at the record of violence in the everyday world, nonviolence appears to be the only way left.

Walter Wink - The Powers That Be

 

It seems to me that January resolutions are about will; September resolutions are about authentic wants.... The beauty of autumnal resolutions is that no one else knows we're making them. Autumnal resolutions don't require horns, confetti and champagne. September resolutions ask only that we open to positive change.

-- Sarah Ban Breathnach

Source: Simple Abundance via herondance.org

The general human failing is to want what is right and important, but not to commit to the kind of life that will produce such actions.

  --Dallas Willard

Picture courtesy of Peter Schrock 2009

And just like that, a month and a half between posts!  There's always a lot going on in my head, sometimes for one reason or another it doesn't make it's way to the blog.  I've forgotten things I wanted to write about, I've written some posts and then deleted them, and stashed others away for a time when I can look back with a different perspective.  I'd like to get back to publishing a few though.

I think mostly I've been trying to get my head, and sometimes my heart, around this idea recently:

 

Coming home from very lonely places, all of us go a little mad: whether from great personal success, or just an all-night drive, we are the sole survivors of a world no one else has ever seen.

• John le Carre

Over the last month or so I've been coming to terms with returning to the States for a few months.  While not my ideal, there are good things waiting.  But what I've been struggling with is this feeling of trying to communicate a world no one has ever seen.

I know plenty of people have seen Germany but my experience here, what I do, etc. is a difficult picture to paint.  In some ways it's a lonely place and going back to tell the story makes me feel like a sole survivor, kind of like I'm going a little mad.

We've all been there though, on varying scales, trying to describe something to someone who wasn't there to experience the truth of it.  I just remembered - that's what song-writers are good at though.  Maybe the beginning of an idea...

Disturb us, Lord, when

We are too pleased with ourselves,

When our dreams have come true

Because we dreamed too little,

When we arrived safely

Because we sailed too close to the shore.

Disturb us, Lord, when

with the abundance of things we possess

We have lost our thirst

For the waters of life;

Having fallen in love with life,

We have ceased to dream of eternity

And in our efforts to build a new earth,

We have allowed our vision

Of the new Heaven to dim.

Disturb us, Lord, to dare more boldly,

To venture on wilder seas

Where storms will show Your mastery;

Where losing sight of land,

We shall find the stars.

We ask you to push back

The horizons of our hopes;

And to push back the future

In strength, courage, hope, and love.

This we ask in the name of our Captain,

Who is Jesus Christ.

– Sir Francis Drake, who sailed in 1577.