Wednesday, June 25, 2014

Blessed are the uncool

I had cool thoughts coming together this weekend to write up. But then I read this in Brennan Manning's Furious Longing of God and realized this was better than anything I could do. 

I say to you,
Blessed is he who exposes himself to an existence never brought under mastery,
who does not transcend,
but rather abandons himself to my ever-transcending grace.

Blessed are not the enlightened whose every question has been answered and who are delighted with their own sublime insight,
the mature and ripe ones whose one remaining action is to fall from the tree.

Blessed, rather, are the chased, the harassed who must daily stand before my enigmas and cannot solve them.
Blessed are the poor in spirit,
those who lack a spirit of cleverness.

Woe to the rich, and woe to the doubly rich in spirit!
Although nothing is impossible with God, it is difficult for the Spirit to move their fat hearts.

The poor are willing and easy to direct. Like little puppies they do not take their eyes from their master's hand to see if perhaps he may throw them a little morsel from his plate. So carefully do the Poor follow my promptings that they listen to the wind (which blows where it pleases), even when it changes. From the sky they can read the weather and interpret the signs of the times. My grace is unpretentious, but the poor are satisfied with little gifts.
~Hans Urs Von Balthasar; Heart of the World (Fort Collins, CO: Ignatius Press, 1980)

2 comments:

Unknown said...
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Unknown said...

Wow. You could have some very beautiful thoughts and still have them be a little lower than what was written here. (But perhaps, according to the writer, that is ok.)