Time to Lighten Up for the Holidays...

The History of the Church of England

Wisdom from Tobias

The surest way to become a sect is to establish something other than Christ as the focus of your unity or identity.*

Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG

*like a covenant, the episcopate, the chair of Peter, a confession, national boundaries, a political agenda, a program, a locale, a tradition, a language, a culture, whatever

“Love is what we were born with. Fear is what we learned here.”

Self Pity (D. H. Lawrence)

I never saw a wild thing
sorry for itself.
A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough
without ever having felt sorry for itself.

We have no reason to mistrust
our world, for it is not against us.
Has it terrors, they are our terrors;
has it abysses, those abysses belong to us;
are dangers at hand, we must try to love them.
And if only we arrange our life
according to that principle
which counsels us that we must
always hold to the difficult,
then that which now still seems
to us the most alien
will become what we most
trust and find most faithful.
How should we be able to forget
those ancient myths
that are at the beginning of all peoples,
the myths about dragons
that at the last moment turn into princesses;
perhaps all the dragons of our lives
are princesses who are only waiting
to see us once beautiful and brave.
Perhaps everything terrible
is in its deepest being something
helpless that wants help from us.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

For As Long As Space Endures


For as long as space endures
And for as long as living beings remain,
Until then may I, too, abide
To dispel the misery of the world.

- Shantideva, The Way of the Bodhisattva

Holy health and safety at Mount Saint Bernard Abbey, in Charnwood Forest, Leicestershire

"Erosion"

"For some reason, the most vocal Christians among us never mention the Beatitudes. But, often with tears in their eyes, they demand that the Ten Commandments be posted in public buildings. And of course that’s Moses, not Jesus. I haven’t heard one of them demand that the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, be posted anywhere.
"Blessed are the merciful" in a courtroom? "Blessed are the peacemakers" in the Pentagon? Give me a break!"

--------Kurt Vonnegut Jr.