Writing Journal Scraps

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One moment you feel elated and close to heaven. You feel your own goodness. Maybe its in a smile you give to some humiliated soul, showing how magnanimous you are. But will you remain so? Will your love really go with this little one on their soul's journey? Or will you do your best to forget the broken vessel who sat once and cried in your chair?

Is it sufficient to be useful in a moment of crisis, but impotent beyond that moment? Bonhoeffer reflects in his letters about pastors to often being like tabloid journalists, digging through people's garbage to expose their sin and need of God. He said too often the church only works at man's limits, sin and death, only preaches to those edges, only invites people to God at their ends. But if Jesus is Lord, isn't he also Lord of the living, of life, of the center? I wonder about this question, is the center growing, does the pastor work at the center, is his vocation to see the souls in their long growth or simply to seize the crisis moment. Is the church a home or a turnstile? One heart in (click) then another (click) then another (click).

.....

I've noticed something lately about my daughter Cate. Her eyes seem so bright lately. What I think people mean when they say that or what I mean anyway is that her eyes seem completely awake and alive. Her eyes are ready and will take in all the world and beam out upon your skin like a bright star.

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It was a dead run as the scouts were all around. Bullets everywhere and it was only the limbs and trunks of the forest that kept him whole. He moved left and ran like a trackstar, ran for his life and to distract any investigation of what lay to his right, deep in those woods.

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I ask myself this question: What do we live from?  Do we think out our lives and live from thoughts?  Or do we feel and move on our feelings?  Is our life substantially proactive or reactive?  If it is proactive, do we drive toward our desires with feelings or with thought?  Is there only immediate, impulsive feelings or can there be steadier, thoughtful feelings?  And what of the wind that comes and goes as it wishes, moving us through the waters or leaving us silent in a dead calm.

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