A Few of My Favorite Things and *SLOW Word*

{SLOW Word Lectio Divina is right here pasted onto the bottom of this post.  Remember, Lectio Divinas are posted right here every Monday and Thursday. Subscribe on the right to get them slipped into your inbox.}

Here are a few of my favorite things:

My bee earrings:

It’s easy to feel lost in a world addicted to big. Big projects. Big success. You question your worth. You wonder if somehow BIG passed you by and if you should scrape and strive for it. I’m pretty sure that would be the death of my soul. My bee earrings remind me to celebrate my smallness and know that the essential work of pollination by tiny beings makes the world go round.

It’s my cheer for a mustard-seed life. I’ll tell you more another time. Go bees!

 

The quote from Pedro Arrupe I can’t get enough of. Pedro Arrupe was a missionary to the Japanese and a political prisoner during WW2. After WW2 he moved to the outskirts of Hiroshima and cared for people during the bombing and its aftermath. He was voted Superior General of the Jesuits in 1965 and served until 1983. This gorgeous quote came from that life.

Nothing is more practical than
finding God, than
falling in Love
in a quite absolute, final way.
What you are in love with,
what seizes your imagination, will affect everything.
It will decide
what will get you out of bed in the morning,
what you do with your evenings,
how you spend your weekends,
what you read, whom you know,
what breaks your heart,
and what amazes you with joy and gratitude.
Fall in Love, stay in love,
and it will decide everything.

From Finding God in All Things: A Marquette Prayer Book © 2009 Marquette University Press.

 

I am undone by Elgar’s Lux Aeterna. Every. Single. Time.

 

Chatbooks – I adore these little square books that are so simple to put together. In fact, I’ve created four in the last two months. I’m NOT a scrapbook mom. This is totally worth every penny. Besides this video cracks. me. up:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTTs7ewuDY8

 

 

This teaching. Want more of that same Exodus 33 passage from today’s SLOW Word Lectio Divina? Don’t miss this. If you’ve never been introduced to the beautiful ministry of Terry Wardle, you’re missing out. Terry’s one of my professors for the Spiritual Formation Spiritual Direction Certificate I’m attending. #blessed.

“What distinguishes our faith from all the other religions of the world?” The Presence.

Listen:

 

 

How to Survive a Shipwreck:  by Jonathan Martin

What a book. There aren’t many books written from the point of view of a Christian falling apart, in full acceptance of the free-fall. This book is vulnerable and beautiful with the gift of being given access of someone’s holy of holies.  You feel the need to talk softly, to take off your shoes. Jonathan Martin does some stunning theology as he listens to Scripture in the midst of the pain. He invites us to get comfortable with humiliation, grace and the love of God. It is tender and gorgeous, authentic and rich. I heartily recommend this book. Perhaps we will see the “shipwreck” seasons of our lives and others as not something to be judged, but a time to sit shiva, listen to the grief, and watch for the gentle movements of the Spirit. Resurrection is coming. The Resurrection and the Life is coming.

“Letting the storm and the night have their way with you, letting the Spirit come in with the wind to make you into something new, is much easier said than done. There are so many reasons not to be reborn. There are so many reasons to choose resuscitation over resurrection.” Jonathan Martin

 

 

These verses. Let’s savor the Word together:

 

Friend, what area of your life do you sense God inviting you to stop and invite His Presence in?