Knowing and Loving






My mind today is on the Cloud of Unknowing, a fourteenth-century writing by an anonymous English author.  This is a quote from that author, from another of his works, which is called Discretion in the Stirrings:

God cannot be known by reason, he cannot be thought, caught, or sought by understanding.  But he can be loved and chosen by the true, loving will of your heart…. If God is your love and your purpose, the chief aim of your heart, it is all you need in this life, although you never see more of him with the eye of reason your whole life long. Such a blind shot with the sharp dart of longing love will never miss its mark, which is God.


That's all for today. I'm am trying to hold on to that claim of my heart--to love God completely, wholly giving myself into that love.

Life has been challenging lately, and most of it is too internal for a blog post.  But I'm still here, and will try to catch up a little bit soon.

May God bless each one who comes to this page.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Transitions

Image
On Monday, we had a feast day here (the patron of El Ejido, so a very local feast) and my community went for an outing together. We passed this: I giggled for miles. Erh, kilometros.  I'm still a little giggly about it. I don't know that they can be seen well in the photo below, but there are also tepees and storefronts. This area was used as a filming location for "spaghetti westerns," including also some scenes from The Good, The Bad, and The  Ugly.  I'm not sure what else. It is in many ways like the southwest of the United States...and yet it is so far away. *Giggles* Across the highway was a medieval Arabic (Arabian? Not sure the right word) castle... we couldn't find a way up via car (I think we could have hiked, but that wasn't on the agenda). Our destination took us past "mini-hollywood" to a town called Sorbas, population 2,400. It's just a sweet little pueblo in the mountains of Spain, surrounded by o
Read more

A little spring beauty

Image
Sometimes it's just necessary to go to the beach... We had guests with us all weekend, which means my brain was on Spanish language overload. Sunday we took them to the beach--it was a beautiful summery day for walking along the boardwalk. I love being able to listen to the waves come in. This was only the third time I've been to the ocean since coming here over two months ago. If I had my way, I'd be there every weekend! Alas, that's not how life works. I'm very grateful we had time to be there now!     This week is right in the middle of my time here in Spain . Knowing this makes me a little reflective of what's going on inside me. I don't share a lot of that here because it's such a public space! Yet, there's a ton moving in my heart and passing through my thoughts all the time. I'm understanding more every day why people are on the move, why they leave behind everything in order to come to a place where they don't know anyone
Read more

Beginning Holy Week

Image
(I wrote this on Sunday and just now am getting to post it... enjoy!) Holy Week is upon us! Living in a Catholic country means that it is a holiday for us here, with no classes to teach or offices open. It also means a bunch of celebrations/events, many of which I'm told are unique to Andalucia.  There is a confradia here that has had its own triduum these past three days, culminating in a postres contest (desserts) and the giving of medals to new members, who are mostly very small children (even one baby). I know they have something to do with up-coming processions, but I still don't exactly understand what. Today, Domingo de Ramos (which literally means Branches' Sunday, rather than Palm Sunday) included a lovely mass with many more people in attendance than usual... Here are some pics and a little video of the parish during the blessing of the branches before we entered the church. This evening there is what's called an "auto-sacramental,"
Read more