For when allegory is at its best, it approaches myth, which must be grasped with the imagination not the intellect. If, as I still sometimes hope, my North and South and Mr. Sensible have some touch of mythical life, then no amount of 'explanation' will quite catch up with their meaning. It is the sort of thing you cannot learn from definition: you must rather get to know it as you get to know a smell or a taste, the 'atmosphere' of a family or a country town, or the personality of an individual.

C.S. Lewis. THE PILGRIM'S REGRESS. Preface.

To live a remote, retired, secluded life is the antipodes of spirituality as Jesus Christ taught it.
The test of our spirituality comes when we come up against injustice and meanness and ingratitude and turmoil, all of which have the tendency to make us spiritual sluggards. We want to use prayer and Bible reading for the purpose of retirement. We utilize God for the sake of getting peace and joy, that is, we do not want to realize Jesus Christ, but only our enjoyment of Him. This is the first step in the wrong direction.

Oswald Chambers. MY UTMOST FOR HIS HIGHEST. July 10. The Spiritual Sluggard.

With bitterness and true compunction of heart I acknowledge before Thee gross and selfish thoughts that I so often allow to enter my mind and to influence my deeds.
I confess, O God--
...that often I deceive myself as to where my plain duty lies:
that often, by concealing my real motives, I pretend to be better than I am:
...that often my affection for my friends is only a refined form of caring for myself:
that often my sparing of my enemy is due to nothing more than cowardice:
...O holy One, let the fire of Thy love enter my heart, and burn up all
this coil of meanness and hypocrisy, and make my heart as the heart of a little child.

John Baillie. A DIARY OF PRIVATE PRAYER. Seventeenth Day, Evening.

Sometimes we don't know what God wants because there are stories yet to play out and people's lives still to be impacted by yours.

Jake Colsen. SO YOU DON'T WANT TO GO TO CHURCH ANY MORE.

"All models are wrong, but some are useful." So proclaimed statistician George Box 30 years ago, and he was right. But what choice did we have? Only models, from cosmologial equations to theories of human behavior, seemed to be able to consistently, if imperfectly, explain the world around us. Until now.....

The new availability of huge amounts of data, along with the statistical tools to crunch these numbers, offers a whole new way of understanding the world. Correlation supercedes causation, and science can advance even without coherent models, unified theories, or really any mechanistic explanation at all.

Chris Anderson. THE END OF THEORY: THE DATA DELUGE MAKES THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD OBSOLETE. Wired. July 08.

Seeing the church as a reality instead of an activity will allow you to celebrate the church however she expresses herself around you....

When you only see it one way, you miss so many other ways in which Father works. Instead of thinking about what kind of meeting or group we should have, ask what would help people best grow in his life.

The church thrives where people are focused on Jesus, not where they are focused on church.

Jake Colsen. SO YOU DON'T WANT TO GO TO CHURCH ANYMORE: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY INTO THE REALITY OF THE FATHER'S FAMILY.

If I could offer only one piece of advice, it would be: "Listen to everyone, follow no one." Each runner is unique, so there's no one thing that will work for everyone.

Dean Karnazes. Runners World.

Once in my twenties, I was listening to a mentor give an after-dinner talk on communication. As an aside he said, “And as we all know, insight is not transferable.” As we all know? I queried myself. The line never let go of me….
If we cannot pass wisdom around the table the way we do food, then why do I write another book, or teach? Even though insight is not directly transferable, the desire for it can be. It can be prompted by a deep love of the subject, the lure of the teller’s example, or a traumatic surprise in one’s life.

Kent Ira Groff. WHAT WOULD I BELIEVE IF I DIDN’T BELIEVE ANYTHING: A HANDBOOK FOR SPIRITUAL ORPHANS.

In the modern era, people came to church and asked, “Who is God?” But today, if people come to church at all, they ask, “Who are God’s people? How does Christianity cash out in community and in practice?”

Leonard Sweet. OUT OF THE QUESTION…INTO THE MYSTERY.

Tripping over Joy

What is the difference
Between your experience of Existence
And that of a saint?

The saint knows
That the spiritual path
Is a sublime chess game with God

And that the Beloved
Has just made such a Fantastic Move

That the saint is now continually
Tripping over Joy
And bursting out in Laughter
And saying, “I Surrender!”

Whereas, my dear,
I am afraid you still think

You have a thousand serious moves.

Renderings of Hafiz by Daniel Ladinsky. I HEARD GOD LAUGHING: POEMS OF HOPE AND JOY.

Saints Bowing in the Mountains

Do you know how beautiful you are?

I think not, my dear.

For as you talk of God,
I see great parades with wildly colorful bands
Streaming from your mind and heart,
Carrying wonderful secret messages
To every corner of this world
…..

Renderings of Hafiz by Daniel Ladinsky. I HEARD GOD LAUGHING: POEMS OF HOPE AND JOY.

If you want to write about the mountain - you have to experience the mountain.

To reach the top of the mountain was to experience everything that the mountain had to offer; to see the land below in all it's glory and the other mountains that joined in union. I was seeing the full picture; recieving the full gift that the mountain wanted to give...the reason it was there. We had endured the climb and reached the top, and this was our reward.

I believe that God gives each one of us our own mountain. God wasn't wanting to give me inspiration of the mountain by what it looked like but he wanted to give me the gift of the mountain by what if felt like to experience it.

Lorna Main. FANCY A CLIMB?

Making art now means...living with doubt and contradiction, doing something no one much cares whether you do, and for which there may be neither audience nor reward. Making the work you want to make means setting aside these doubts so that you may see clearly what you have done, and thereby see where to go next. Making the work you want means finding nourishment within the work itself.

Bayles & Orland. ART & FEAR: OBSERVATIONS ON THE PERILS (AND REWARDS) OF ARTMAKING.

"I began to see things about myself I'd never seen before, like how demanding I can be, and how little I trust Jesus with the details of my life. But you know what? My failures didn't seem to matter to him. He just kept showing me how real he wanted to be in my life."

"That's great! I know it is hard to believe, but enjoying that simple relationships will accomplish everything God wants to do through you."

Jake Colsen. SO YOU DON'T WANT TO GO TO CHURCH ANYMORE: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY INTO THE REALITY OF THE FATHER'S FAMILY.

The people who influence us the most are not those who detain us with their continual talk, but those who live their lives like the stars in the sky and “the lilies of the field”— simply and unaffectedly. Those are the lives that mold and shape us.

If you want to be of use to God, maintain the proper relationship with Jesus Christ by staying focused on Him, and He will make use of you every minute you live— yet you will be unaware, on the conscious level of your life, that you are being used of Him.

Oswald Chambers quoted by Anne Jackson on flowerdust.net