The Stained Glass Buffalo: Wisdom Borrowed

02 April 2009

Wisdom Borrowed

I used to live in the desert.

The barrenness was so jarring I would intentionally schedule my flights into Phoenix at night. The bird’s eye view of all that dirt and dryness made my heart ache. I missed the comfort of lush foliage, trees with leaves, fields of tall grass.

It took me a good 6 months before I saw any beauty there. Before I started to appreciate the strength of all that exists there.

In the desert, everything has a purpose. Nothing is wasted.

The sparseness eliminates distraction. Allows you to focus.

This kind of simplicity is what Lent is about.

We let go of a few comforts and maybe rediscover our own purpose.

via The Windshield Rosary

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It is Jesus

“It is Jesus that you seek when you dream of happiness; he is waiting for you when nothing else you find satisfies you; he is the beauty to which you are so attracted; it is he who provokes you with that thirst for fullness that will not let you settle for compromise; it is he who urges you to shed the masks of a false life; it is He who reads in your heart your most genuine choices, the choices that others try to stifle.

It is Jesus who stirs in you the desire to do something great with your lives, the will to follow an ideal, the refusal to allow yourselves to be ground down by mediocrity, the courage to commit yourselves humbly and patiently to improving yourselves and society, making the world more human and more fraternal.”
--Pope John Paul II

Carlo Carretto:

How much I must criticize you, my church, and yet how much I love you! You have made me suffer more than anyone and yet I owe more to you than to anyone. I should like to see you destroyed and yet I need your presence. You have given me much scandal and yet you alone have made me understand holiness. Never in this world have I seen anything more compromised, more false, yet never have I touched anything more pure, more generous or more beautiful. Countless times I have felt like slamming the door of my soul in your face - and yet, every night, I have prayed that I might die in your sure arms! No, I cannot be free of you, for I am one with you, even if not completely you. Then too - where would I go? To build another church? But I could not build one without the same defects, for they are my defects. And again, if I were to build another church, it would be my church, not Christ's church. No, I am old enough, I know better.