Reflections for Sunday July 9th, 2023

These are the few ways we can practice humility:
To speak as little as possible of one’s self.
Never to stand on one’s dignity.
To be kind and gentle even under provocation.
To choose always the hardest.
~ Mother Teresa, The Joy in Loving: A Guide to Daily Living

I think that taking life seriously means something such as this: that whatever man does on this planet has to be done in the lived truth of the terror of creation, of the grotesque, of the rumble of panic underneath everything. Otherwise it is false. Whatever is achieved must be achieved with the full exercise of passion, of vision, of pain, of fear, and of sorrow. How do we know, that our part of the meaning of the universe might not be a rhythm in sorrow?
~ Ernest Becker, 1924-1974, Cultural Anthropologist / Author

I have held many things in my hands, and I have lost them all; but whatever I have placed in God’s hands, that I still possess.
~ Martin Luther (1483-1546)

The soul is torn apart in a painful condition as long as it prefers the eternal because of its Truth but does not discard the temporal because of familiarity.
~ St. Augustine of Hippo (354-430), Theologian and philosopher

There’s an invitation to redemption and that our best self found in Jesus is only found to the extent that we can go through our pain, including our pain of anxiety.
~ Curtis Chang, Author, Theologian

It is the dogma that is the drama — not beautiful phrases, nor comforting sentiments, nor vague aspirations to loving-kindness and uplift, nor the promise of something nice after death — but the terrifying assertion that the same God who made the world lived in the world and passed through the grave and gate of death. Show that to the non-believer, and they may not believe it; but at least they may realize that here is something that a man might be glad to believe.
~ Dorothy L. Sayers, 1893-1957, Author, Creed or Chaos? 
(Why Christians Must Choose Either Dogma or Disaster;
Or, Why It Really Does Matter What You Believe)