One Thousand Gifts

p 110 now

To name a thing is to manifest the meaning and value God gave it...to know it comes from God...

If you think of this world as a place intended simply for our happiness, you find it quite intolerable: think of it as a place of training and correction and it's not so bad."  CS Lewis

It takes a full twenty minutes after your stomach is full for your brain to register satiation.  How long does it take your soul to realize that your life is full?  The slower the living, teh greater the sense of fullness and satisfaction.

That initial discipline, the daily game to count, keeping counting to one thousand, it was God's necessary tool to reshape me, remake me, rename me...  p. 84

All that God makes is good.  Can it be that, that which seems to oppose the will of God actually is used of Him to accomplish the will of God?  That which seems evil only seems so because of perspective, the way eyes see the shadows.  Above the clouds, light never stops shining.  p. 88

"See that I am God.  see that I am in everything.  See that I do everything.  See that I have never stopped ordering my works, no ever shall, eternally.  See that I lead everything on to the conclusion I ordained for it before time began, by the same power, wisdom and love with which I made it.  How can anything be amiss?"  Julian of Norwich.

I know eucharisteo and the miracle.  But I am not a woman who ever lives the full knowing.  I am a wandering Israelite who sees the flame in the sky above, the pillar, the smoke from the mountain, the earth open up and give way, and still I forget.  I am beset by chronic soul amnesia.  I am empty of truth and need the refilling.  I need to come again every day...for who can gather the manna but once, hoarding, and store away sustenance in the mild for all of the living?  p. 107

While I may not always feel joy, God asks me to give thanks in all things, because He knows that the feeling of joy begins in the action of thanksgiving.  p. 176

True saints know that the place where all the joy comes from is far deeper than that of feelings; joy comes from the place of the very presence of God.  Joy is God and God is joy and joy doesn't negate all other emotions--joy transcends all other emotions.  p. 176

Joy is a flame that glimmers only in the palm of the open and humble hand.  In an open and humble palm, released and surrendered to receive, light dances, flickers happy.  The moment the hand is clenched tight, fingers all pointing toward self and rights and demands, joy is snuffed out.  Anger is the lid that suffocates joy until she lies limp and lifeless.  The demanding of my own will is the singular force that smothers out joy--nothing else.  p. 177

And what do I really deserve?  Thankfully, God never gives whwat is deserved, but instead, God graciously, passionately offers gifts, our bodies, our time, our very lives.  p. 178

...dying to self demands that I might gratefully and humbly receive the better, the only things that a good God gives.  p. 179

This time, I know healing.  Eucharisteo makes the knees the vantage point of a life and I bend and the body, it says it quiet: "Thy will be done."  This is the way a body and a mouth say thank you: Thy will be done.  This is the way the self dies, falls into the arms of Love.  p .180

No one who ever said to God, 'Thy will be done,' and meant it with his heart, ever failed to find joy--not just in heaven, or even down the road in the future of this world, but in this world at that very moment, asserts Peter Kreeft.  p. 180

Dorothy Sayers: Whenever man is made the centre of things, he becomes the storm-centre of trouble.  The moment you think of serving people, you begin to have a notion that other people owe you something for your pains...  But when Christ is at the center, when dishes, laundry, work is my song of thanks to Him, joy rains....the work becomes worship, a liturgy of thankfulness.  p. 194

It is by the very function of our being, not our doing, that we are the beloved of God.  p. 199

The way through the pain is to reach out to others in theirs.  p. 199

He sings love over me?
What else can all these gifts mean?
Crazy, I know, but until eucharisteo had me write the graces on paper, in my own handwriting, until it alerted my mind to see the graces in the details of my very own life, I hadn't really known.  p. 204

Why doubt the dare to fully live?  Now and right here.  Why not let all of life be penetrated by grace, gratitude, joy?  This is the only way to welcome the Kingdom of God.  p. 223

I still don't know why He took her.  I don't know why my parents' hearts were left to weep.  Though I cry, this I know: God is always good and I am always loved and eucharisteo has made me my truest self.  p. 225