Let Me Be a Woman: Notes on Womanhood for Valerie
* Who is it you marry?
* What is marriage?
* What makes marriage work?
Chapter 23 You Marry a Sinner
* Settle it once for all, your husband is a son of Adam. Acceptance of him - of all of him - includes acceptance of his being a sinner. He is a fallen creature, in need of the same kind of redemption all the rest of us are in need of, and liable to all the temptations which are "common to man."
* "Well, dear, we're none of us prize packages. Just look for the essentials and skip the rest!" The prize package we think we've found is likely to contain some surprises, not all of them welcome. What a lot of heartbreak would be avoided if we could concentrate on the essentials and skip the rest. How much more we could relax with one another and enjoy all there is to enjoy.
* "We have erred and strayed from Thy ways like lost sheep, we have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts, we have offended against Thy holy laws. We have left undone those things which we ought to have done, and we have done those things which we ought not to have done, and there is no health in us."
* You will be less likely to turn into a nagging wife if you recall continually that it is not only your husband who leaves undone those things which (you think) he ought to do, and does things which (you think) he ought not to do, but that you, too, have erred and strayed like a lost sheep, sinning daily by omission and commission.
The consciousness that we are alike in our need of redemption is a liberating one. For there will be times when you find yourself accusing, criticizing, resenting. You begin, almost without realizing that you are doing it, to make a mental list of offenses, anticipating the day when some straw will break the camel's back and you can recite the whole list, sure to add at the end "and another thing ...!" But you will find yourself disarmed utterly, and your accusing spirit transformed into loving forgiveness the moment you remember that you did, in fact, marry only a sinner, and so did he. It's grace you both need.
'Tis grace hath brought us safe thus far
And grace will lead us home.
* If it doesn't make you sorry to hurt somebody you love, what in the world would ever make you sorry? You do need forgiveness. You do need to forgive. And it is a wonderfully healing thing to confess your sin to the one you've sinned against and to ask for his forgiveness. At times when you are thinking to yourself that it's high time he asked for yours, remember that you are equal in your need of redemption. There's no keeping of score in love.
* Nor is love blind. If fact, the one who truly loves sees clearly the truth about the beloved which is hidden from other eyes. It is perhaps because the beloved makes the very sunshine brighter and the whole world sing that it is not always easy to remember that he is a sinner. But when love becomes an everyday fact that we live with we begin to discover imperfections to which we respond either lovingly or unlovingly.
* Appraisal (by Sara Teasdale)
Never thing she loves him wholly,
Never believe her love is blind,
All his faults are locked securely
In a closet of her mind;
All his indecisions folded
Like old flags that time has faded,
Limp and streaked with rain,
And his cautiousness like garments
Frayed and thin, with many a stain -
Let them be, oh let them be.
There is treasure to outweigh them,
His proud will that sharply stirred,
Climbs as surely as the tide.
Senses strained too taut to sleep,
Gentleness to beast and bird,
Humor flickering hushed and wide,
As the moon on moving water,
And a tenderness too deep
To be gathered in a word.
* So - you marry a sinner. And you love, accept, and forgive that sinner as you yourself expect to be loved, accepted, and forgiven. You know that "all have sinned and come short of the glory of God," and this includes your husband who comes short, also, of some of the glories you expected to find in him. Come to terms with this once and for all and then walk beside him as "heirs together of the grace of life."
Chapter 24 You Marry a Man
* Strange how easy it seems to be for some women to expect their husbands to be women, to act like women, to do what is expected of women. Instead of that they are men, they act like men, they do what is expected of men and thus they do the unexpected. :-)
* It was marriage, or some vague idea of marriage, which provided the fringe benefits they were looking for - a home, children, security, social status. But somehow marriage has also insinuated into their cozy lives this unpredictable, unmanageable, unruly creature called a man. :-) He is likely to be bigger and louder and tougher and hungrier and dirtier than a woman expects ...
* Anything he does which seems to her inexplicable or indefensible she dismisses with "Just like a man!" as though this were a condemnation or at best an excuse instead of a very good reason for thanking God. It is a man she married, after all, and she is lucky if he acts like a man.
* It is probably not only a safer course but much wiser not to tell a man everything that is on your mind, not to press him with hard questions. Leave room for mystery.
* Well, women cry. Many of them don't do it often, of course, but it's a possibility a man should be ready for. Nothing is more baffling to a young husband than his wife's tears - usually at most unexpected moments and for seemingly wholly unexplainable reasons. His anxious questions get nowhere, and her attempts to explain only increase his anxiety. Men ought to be warned that this is likely to occur, and women ought to be warned that it's no use trying to explain. It's just one of the things that prove that men are men and women are women.
* For some reason women have no difficulty imagining a discussion on marriage. Men find it unimaginable.
* But I can't leave this part of the discussion without adding that men cry too. I am not drawing simple dichotomies here, as though all women and no men cry. I know men who weep much more readily than I do. Know your man. Know that there are things that make him different from you. His masculinity will help to explain some of them.
Chapter 25 You Marry a Husband
* For some (women) it is easy to transfer what they expected of fathers, brothers, sisters, mothers or girlfriends to their unfortunate husbands and this is a burden no man can bear.
* If you succumb to the temptation to expect your husband to fulfill all the roles of all the relationships you have had prior to marriage you will learn that this is asking too much. He needs his male friends, you need your female ones, even though your marriage and your home take top priority in your interest.
* All I'm suggesting is that you not be a bore. Some topics will interest your mother more than they will interest your husband. Remember he's a husband!
* Your father used to say that every woman needed three husbands: one to bring home the bacon, one to love her, and one to fix things around the house. :-) It is a lot to expect of one man, and a woman ought not to judge her husband solely on the basis of how good he is with ...
* I believe a woman, in order to be a good wife, must be (among other things) both sensual and maternal. Marriage entails sensuality - an appreciation of the body and the senses as distinguished from the intellect - but a woman must also have a certain maternal feeling toward her husband. Not that she babies him. Deep resentment is expressed sometimes by women who feel that their husbands want to be babied. But a wife must want to take care of her husband and to minister to him as gladly as a mother ministers to her child.
* The husband has a corresponding task. The word husband carries the connotation of conserving, caring for, managing, or protecting. A wife needs to allow herself to be cherished. Let him "husband" you.
Chapter 26 You Marry a Person
* As a person, he has a name. Nothing more infallibly reveals your attitude to another person than the name you call him by.
* All I ask is that a couple call each other something. That they show by the way they address each other, in public or in bed, that they recognize a personality.
* One of the most joyful discoveries of life is that in recognizing, affirming, and comforting another person we find ourselves recognized, affirmed, and comforted. It is a dead-end street to set out to know yourself or to "find" yourself or to define "who am I?"
* "It is plain that no man can arrive at the true knowledge of himself without first having contemplated the divine character." - John Calvin, Institutes
* And it is in relation to other people that we ourselves become full persons. "No man is an island." We are called to fellowship with God and we are called to fellowship with each other. Marriage is the most intimate and continuous relationship into which two people may enter, and as such provides the most uninterrupted opportunity for fulfillment of the personality.
* The measure of self-giving is the measure of fulfillment.
* Your husband is known fully only to God, and stands in a sense alone before Him. God said to Abraham, "Walk before Me and be thou perfect." He did not suggest that Abraham could walk before Sarah and be perfect. :-) Ultimately he is God's man. He is free, and you must always reverence this freedom. There are questions you have no right to ask, matters into which you must not probe, and secrets you must be content never to know.
"Hasn't the wife a right to know all?"
No. She cannot take or even ask for what is not given, and there are things a man cannot and ought not to give. The deeps call only to God.
Chapter 27 Forsaking All Others
* Marriage is a choice of one above all others. Each partner promises to forsake all others, and the Bible says that man will leave his father and mother and "cleave" to his wife. Any choice we ever make in life instantly limits us.
* When you decide to marry this particular sinner you have committed yourself to putting up with his particular sins even though you don't have a very clear idea of what they will be. You will begin at once to find them out, and as you do, remind yourself that you married this sinner. You can always look at other sinners and thank God you don't have to live with their varieties of failure, but then what kind of sins would you choose if you could choose which ones to live with? It's a good thing you are not asked. You love this man who happens to be this kind of sinner and you do your best to accept, to forgive, to overlook, to forbear, and, perhaps, in the mercy of God, to help him to overcome.
* "Marry somebody to whom you are willing to adjust." - Mrs. Billy Graham
* If you are a very generous wife, you may perhaps allow that your husband lives up to 80 percent of your expectations. The other 20 percent you may want to change. You may, if you choose, pick away at that 20 perfect for the rest of your married life and you probably will not reduce it by very much. Or you may choose to skip that and simply enjoy the 80 percent that is what you hoped for.
* But life settles down to humdrum.
* ... you married this person. Whatever the inner qualities were that enabled him to do the things he did then are still a part of this person that you go to bed with and eat breakfast with and wrestle over the monthly budget with. He is a person with the same potentials he had when you married him. Your responsibility now is not merely to bat your eyelashes and tell him how wonderful he is (but breathes there a man with soul so dead as not to be cheered by a little of that?) but to appreciate, genuinely and deeply, what he is, to support and encourage and draw out of him those qualities that you originally saw and admired.
* But, I said, "There's one thing I can give you that no woman on earth can outdo me in and that's appreciation." The perspective of widowhood has taught me that.
* "Snoring is the sweetest music in the world. Ask any widow."
* What could be a greater help to a wife than to see her husband as God sees him? God has created him, formed him, redeemed him, he is His. God is bringing him to perfection and is not by any means through with him yet. We are all unfinished, a long way from what we ought to be, but if we can look at ourselves and one another from God's point of view we will know where we ought to be going and in which direction our relationship should move.
* "I've learned that Marcie can give me things Sue could never have given. Sue gave me things Marcie can't give. So I've learned appreciation - for both of them. I appreciate Marcie for exactly what she is, in a way I hadn't the capacity to appreciate Sue."
... It's natural, and the comparison between Marcie and Sue was made not to disparage either, but to appreciate each fully for what she was.
* To the Christian who has prayed for years to be led to the right partner and who believes that the one he marries is indeed God's choice for him, it is reasonable to conclude that the personality given is the one that best complements his own, the one that meets his needs in ways he could not himself have foreseen or chosen. It is the very differences themselves that open our eyes to what we are and, if we pray for the spiritual insight and understanding that Paul prayed for, we see them as God sees them and appreciate the glorious imagination of the Creator who made them.
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
Thanskgiving Thoughts - Nov. 21
* Thank you, LORD, for recovering my wallet even before I knew its missing.
* Thank you for the fellowship group.
* Thank you for the phone call with John and come together to pray. Please bless him today with his friends. May Your name be gloried and may everyone be blessed!
* Thank you for the rest I can have in You. I don't have to fear and suffering anxiously when the visa website was not working. You know and You are never late. Your timing is perfect.
* Thank you for your leading, teaching, and calling.
* Thank you for the fellowship group.
* Thank you for the phone call with John and come together to pray. Please bless him today with his friends. May Your name be gloried and may everyone be blessed!
* Thank you for the rest I can have in You. I don't have to fear and suffering anxiously when the visa website was not working. You know and You are never late. Your timing is perfect.
* Thank you for your leading, teaching, and calling.
Monday, November 19, 2007
Nov. 19, 2007
Dear LORD, would you help me quiet my heart to focus on this task? Will you please help me be constructive in my feedback in the review? Dear LORD, you said that if anyone lacks wisdom, he/she shall ask you. I do ask you for wisdom.
My sweet Jesus, how I long to serve you. Thank you for opportunity presented in front of me. I am with wide-opened eyes waiting to see your wondrous ways again in my life. Dear LORD, touch my heart, mold it, and transform it.
Dear Jesus, give me the faith to follow you with wild abandon and with great joy. Give me the strength to walk by faith, not by sight. Dear LORD, thank you for your faithfulness, for your leading and guiding and equipping and calling. Give me ears to hear, eyes to see, a pure heart to love and to enjoy your perfect love. There is no fear in your perfect love.
I do commit all the things to prepare for December to you. I ask for your blessings as I go out of my comfort zone and I pray that your name will be glorified.
Now, my sweet Jesus. Will you help me focus on my homework. Oh, how I love you! How I am loved :-)
My sweet Jesus, how I long to serve you. Thank you for opportunity presented in front of me. I am with wide-opened eyes waiting to see your wondrous ways again in my life. Dear LORD, touch my heart, mold it, and transform it.
Dear Jesus, give me the faith to follow you with wild abandon and with great joy. Give me the strength to walk by faith, not by sight. Dear LORD, thank you for your faithfulness, for your leading and guiding and equipping and calling. Give me ears to hear, eyes to see, a pure heart to love and to enjoy your perfect love. There is no fear in your perfect love.
I do commit all the things to prepare for December to you. I ask for your blessings as I go out of my comfort zone and I pray that your name will be glorified.
Now, my sweet Jesus. Will you help me focus on my homework. Oh, how I love you! How I am loved :-)
Let Me Be a Woman (By Elisabeth Elliot) - Part IV
Let Me Be a Woman: Notes on Womanhood for Valerie
Chapter 21 A Choice Is a Limitation
* "Keep her from and for the man she is to marry," ("from" meaning until His chosen time, that you would not hurry ahead of His will) - and yours to be guided to the man of His choice.
* It is a vow you are making before God and before witnesses, a vow you will by God's grace keep, which does not depend on your moods or feelings or "how things turn out." As others have said, love does not preserve the marriage, the marriage preserves love.
* When you make a choice, you accept the limitations of that choice. To accept limitation requires maturity.
* To choose to do this is to choose not to do a thousand other things.
* But long ago Betty (Greene) had made up her mind that if she was going to make her way in a man's world she had to be a lady. She would have to compete with men in being a pilot, but she would not compete with men in being a man. She refused to try in any way to act like a man.
* It is a naive sort of feminism that insists that women prove their ability to do all the things that men do. This is a distortion and a travesty. Men have never sought to prove that they can do all the things women do. Why subject women to purely masculine criteria? Women can and ought to be judged by the criteria of femininity, for it is in their femininity that they participate in the human race. And femininity has its limitations. So has masculinity. That is what we've been talking about. To do this is not to do that. To be this is not to be that. To be a woman is not to be a man. To be married is not to be single - which may mean not to have a career. To marry this man is not to marry all the others. A choice is a limitation.
Chapter 22 Commitment, Gratitude, Dependence
* No marriage "experiment" has any validity, lacking the essential ingredient of total and irrevocable commitment.
* You know, I am sure, that your love is a gift. And if it is a gift you are grateful for your Giver. To acknowledge your gratitude to Him is also to acknowledge your dependence on Him, to acknowledge above all the authority of Christ. That is a good place to begin a marriage.
Chapter 21 A Choice Is a Limitation
* "Keep her from and for the man she is to marry," ("from" meaning until His chosen time, that you would not hurry ahead of His will) - and yours to be guided to the man of His choice.
* It is a vow you are making before God and before witnesses, a vow you will by God's grace keep, which does not depend on your moods or feelings or "how things turn out." As others have said, love does not preserve the marriage, the marriage preserves love.
* When you make a choice, you accept the limitations of that choice. To accept limitation requires maturity.
* To choose to do this is to choose not to do a thousand other things.
* But long ago Betty (Greene) had made up her mind that if she was going to make her way in a man's world she had to be a lady. She would have to compete with men in being a pilot, but she would not compete with men in being a man. She refused to try in any way to act like a man.
* It is a naive sort of feminism that insists that women prove their ability to do all the things that men do. This is a distortion and a travesty. Men have never sought to prove that they can do all the things women do. Why subject women to purely masculine criteria? Women can and ought to be judged by the criteria of femininity, for it is in their femininity that they participate in the human race. And femininity has its limitations. So has masculinity. That is what we've been talking about. To do this is not to do that. To be this is not to be that. To be a woman is not to be a man. To be married is not to be single - which may mean not to have a career. To marry this man is not to marry all the others. A choice is a limitation.
Chapter 22 Commitment, Gratitude, Dependence
* No marriage "experiment" has any validity, lacking the essential ingredient of total and irrevocable commitment.
* You know, I am sure, that your love is a gift. And if it is a gift you are grateful for your Giver. To acknowledge your gratitude to Him is also to acknowledge your dependence on Him, to acknowledge above all the authority of Christ. That is a good place to begin a marriage.
Case Study MTG Notes
* Case Study is a professional presentation to professional colleagues.
* It is permitted to ask a faculty member or a UCS staff for feedback.
* Consistency among assessment, data, conceptualization, treatment, and transcript.
* The purpose/focus of the transcript is not to show CL change, but to show counselor's intervention based on particular theory.
* Two types of assessment: (a) diagnosis & prognosis, such as MMPI-2, need to be administered at the initial stage of treatment; (b) therapeutic treatment, such as BDI-2, ongoing, etc.
* Two types of conceptualization: (a) professional conceptualization; (b)
* It is permitted to ask a faculty member or a UCS staff for feedback.
* Consistency among assessment, data, conceptualization, treatment, and transcript.
* The purpose/focus of the transcript is not to show CL change, but to show counselor's intervention based on particular theory.
* Two types of assessment: (a) diagnosis & prognosis, such as MMPI-2, need to be administered at the initial stage of treatment; (b) therapeutic treatment, such as BDI-2, ongoing, etc.
* Two types of conceptualization: (a) professional conceptualization; (b)
Development Course through Practicum
1st practicum - anxiety within the self; all about me; the goal is to get comfortable with yourself in the session and to lower your anxiety; most of the time, struggles to conceptualize, i.e., what is the problem, what is the solution; CL does not understand what is in your head.
2nd practicum - what to translate what is in your head to CL's head; translate the conceptualization out of psychology to simple cause-solution CL can use; What happened & What to do about it;
Draw the block diagram for every CL to explain the symptom & to guide the treatment plan.
2nd practicum - what to translate what is in your head to CL's head; translate the conceptualization out of psychology to simple cause-solution CL can use; What happened & What to do about it;
Draw the block diagram for every CL to explain the symptom & to guide the treatment plan.
MMPI-2 Validity Indices
compliance --> omission (? or cannot says, cutoff 30) --> response pattern --> VRIN & TRIN (cutoff 80) --> L (cutoff 65) --> K & S (cutoff 65) --> F & F(B) (60-80 a large number of mental health problems; cutoff 90; 110 malingering); Elevations of more than T = 60 on the F(p) mean that this individual has endorsed considerably more mental health symptoms than most psychiatric patients do.
* ? or Cannot Says - cut off 30 (raw score)
* L (lying; faking good) - cut off 65 (T score)
* F (faking bad) - cut off 90 (T score) exaggerated symptom presentation
* K (test defensiveness) - cut off 70 (T score)
In practice, K does not really improve empirical discrimination over non-K corrected scores (Archer, Fontaine, & McCrae, 1998; Sines, Baucom, & Gruba, 1979).
* Yea-saying and nay-saying: If 20% or less of the items are endorsed in the true or false direction, the protocol is likely to be invalid.
* VRIN (Variable Response Inconsistency scale) - random responding
* TRIN (True Response Inconsistency scale) - TRIN-T > 80 respond inconsistently in the true direction; TRIN-F
* S (superlative self-presentation scale) - defensiveness; high S responders are viewed by their spouses as emotionally well-controlled and generally free of pathological behavior features.
* ? or Cannot Says - cut off 30 (raw score)
* L (lying; faking good) - cut off 65 (T score)
* F (faking bad) - cut off 90 (T score) exaggerated symptom presentation
* K (test defensiveness) - cut off 70 (T score)
In practice, K does not really improve empirical discrimination over non-K corrected scores (Archer, Fontaine, & McCrae, 1998; Sines, Baucom, & Gruba, 1979).
* Yea-saying and nay-saying: If 20% or less of the items are endorsed in the true or false direction, the protocol is likely to be invalid.
* VRIN (Variable Response Inconsistency scale) - random responding
* TRIN (True Response Inconsistency scale) - TRIN-T > 80 respond inconsistently in the true direction; TRIN-F
* S (superlative self-presentation scale) - defensiveness; high S responders are viewed by their spouses as emotionally well-controlled and generally free of pathological behavior features.
Saturday, November 17, 2007
Let Me Be a Woman (By Elisabeth Elliot) - Part III
Let Me Be a Woman: Notes on Womanhood for Valerie
Chapter 16 A Paradoxical Principle
* "If you pour yourself out for the hungry and satisfy the desire of the afflicted, then shall your light rise in the darkness and your gloom be as the noonday. And the Lord will guide you continually, and satisfy your desire with good things, and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters fail not. And your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt; you shall rise up the foundations of many generations; you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to dwell in" (or, instead of "streets to dwell in" another translation says "paths leading home").
Here, I think, lies the answer to the barrenness of a single life, or of a life that might otherwise be selfish or lonely. It is the answer, I have found, to depression as well. You yourself will be given light in exchange for pouring yourself out for the hungry; you yourself will get guidance, the satisfaction of your longings, and strength, when you "pour yourself out," when you make the satisfaction of somebody else's desire your own concern; you yourself will be a source of refreshment, a builder, a leader into healing and rest at a time when things around you seem to have crumbled.
* St. Ignatius of Loyola prayed, "Teach us, Good Lord, to serve Thee as Thou deservest; to give and not to count the cost; to fight and not to heed the wounds; to toil and not to seek for rest; to labor and not to ask for any reward save that of knowing that we do Thy will. Through Jesus Christ our Lord."
Chapter 17 Masculine and Feminine
* God created male and female, the male to call forth, to lead, initiate and rule, and the female to respond, follow, adapt, submit. Even if we held to a different theory of origin the physical structure of the female would tell us that woman was made to receive, to bear, to be acted upon, to complement, to nourish.
* Masculinity and femininity defined by Kathy Kristy - "Creation has as one of its fundamental themes the pattern of rule and submission. Power and passivity, ebb and flow, generativity and receptivity are abut a few of the ways that these paired polarities have been described. The Chinese called them yin and yang and made the symbol of their religion a graphic representation of their interaction. Even the physical realm is founded on and held together by the positive and negative attraction of atomic particles. Everywhere the universe displays its division into pairs of interlocking opposites ...
"We know that this order of rule and submission is descended from the nature of God Himself. Within the Godhead there is both the just and legitimate authority of the Father and the willing and joyful submission of the Son. From the union of the Father and the Son proceeds a third personality, the Holy Spirit. He proceeds from them not as a child proceeds from the union of a man and a woman, but rather as the personality of a marriage proceeds from the one flesh which is established from the union of two separate personalities.
"Here, in the reflection of the nature of the Trinity in the institution of marriage is the key to the definition of masculinity and femininity. The image of God could not be fully reflected without the elements of rule, submission, and union."
* Motherhood requires self-giving, sacrifice, suffering. It is going down into death in order to give life, a great human analogy of a great spiritual principle (Paul wrote, "Death worketh in us but life in you"). Womanhood is a call. It is a vocation to which we respond under God, glad if it means the literal bearing of children, thankful as well for all that it means in a much wider sense, that in which every woman, married or single, fruitful or barren, may participate - the unconditional response exemplified for all time in Mary the virgin, and the willingness to enter into suffering, to receive, to carry, to give life, to nurture and to care for others. The strength to answer this call is given us as we look up toward the Love that created us, remembering that it was that Love that first, most literally, imagined sexuality, that made us at the very beginning real men and real women. As we conform to that Love's demands we shall become more humble, more dependent - on Him and on one another - and even (dare I say it?) more splendid.
Chapter 18 The Soul Is Feminine
* Psalm 144:12 says, "May our daughters be like corner pillars cut for the structure of a palace." Pillars uphold and support. This is a woman's place, and all of us need to know what our place is and to be put in it. The command of God puts us there where we belong. We know our "creatureliness," our dependence. ... Meekness, I believe, is the recognition of that place. ... To be meek is to have a sane and proper estimate of one's place in the scheme of things. It is a sense of proportion.
* "Be it unto me" ought to be the response of every man or woman to that will, and it is in this sense that the soul and the Church have been seen throughout Christian history as female before God for it is the nature of the woman to submit.
Chapter 19 Is Submission Stifling?
* I have been called to be a missionary and to write, but surely there is nothing incompatible with such tasks and acknowledgment of the fundamental fact that woman was made for man. That wasn't my idea, after all - I got it all out of the Book!
* God's service is, as our Prayer Book says, "perfect freedom."
* The lady's idea that mothers do not need a college education floors me. What, she asks, is your college educating women for? Surely it is to draw out (the root meaning of the word educate) the gifts God has given, whatever they may be. Surely I did not send you to college on the assumption that you would not marry. A Christian liberal education will make you a better wife and mother. I'm convinced, if that is God's will for you. If you were called to be a tax collector or a philosopher I should likewise want you to have that kind of education.
Chapter 20 Twenty Questions
1) Is this the man you want to spend the rest of your life with? That's every day of every week of every month of every year from now till one of you dies.
2) Is he:
- punctual or habitually late?
- orderly or disorderly?
- a reader or a TV watcher?
- an outdoor man or an indoor man?
3) Does he:
- like your family?
- treat you as you think a woman ought to be treated?
- have men friends?
- have approximately the same education you have?
- like the kind of food you like to cook?
- come from a home similar to your?
- like your friends?
- like to entertain, and would you be proud to have him as host at the other end of the table?
- laugh at the same jokes you do?
4) Can you agree on:
- sex?
- in-laws?
- children and their training?
- money?
- your respective roles in the family?
* Let me assure you that I've known happy couples of which one is an indoor person and the other an outdoor one, or one punctual and the other late, but it requires particular grace, and it's just as well to consider in advance whether or not you think it's going to be worth it. Later, when you're up against it, remind yourself that it's worth it!
* Agreement in the matters of 4) can only be in principle until you've had the chance to work on them as husband and wife. ... Deep, underlying principles will determine your handling of these things, and you must thoroughly agree on these before you agree to marry a man.
* It is mutual commitment to a common belief that is the only solid base for lasting communion, in marriage or in any other fellowship. Anything less will not stand the test of living.
Chapter 16 A Paradoxical Principle
* "If you pour yourself out for the hungry and satisfy the desire of the afflicted, then shall your light rise in the darkness and your gloom be as the noonday. And the Lord will guide you continually, and satisfy your desire with good things, and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters fail not. And your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt; you shall rise up the foundations of many generations; you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to dwell in" (or, instead of "streets to dwell in" another translation says "paths leading home").
Here, I think, lies the answer to the barrenness of a single life, or of a life that might otherwise be selfish or lonely. It is the answer, I have found, to depression as well. You yourself will be given light in exchange for pouring yourself out for the hungry; you yourself will get guidance, the satisfaction of your longings, and strength, when you "pour yourself out," when you make the satisfaction of somebody else's desire your own concern; you yourself will be a source of refreshment, a builder, a leader into healing and rest at a time when things around you seem to have crumbled.
* St. Ignatius of Loyola prayed, "Teach us, Good Lord, to serve Thee as Thou deservest; to give and not to count the cost; to fight and not to heed the wounds; to toil and not to seek for rest; to labor and not to ask for any reward save that of knowing that we do Thy will. Through Jesus Christ our Lord."
Chapter 17 Masculine and Feminine
* God created male and female, the male to call forth, to lead, initiate and rule, and the female to respond, follow, adapt, submit. Even if we held to a different theory of origin the physical structure of the female would tell us that woman was made to receive, to bear, to be acted upon, to complement, to nourish.
* Masculinity and femininity defined by Kathy Kristy - "Creation has as one of its fundamental themes the pattern of rule and submission. Power and passivity, ebb and flow, generativity and receptivity are abut a few of the ways that these paired polarities have been described. The Chinese called them yin and yang and made the symbol of their religion a graphic representation of their interaction. Even the physical realm is founded on and held together by the positive and negative attraction of atomic particles. Everywhere the universe displays its division into pairs of interlocking opposites ...
"We know that this order of rule and submission is descended from the nature of God Himself. Within the Godhead there is both the just and legitimate authority of the Father and the willing and joyful submission of the Son. From the union of the Father and the Son proceeds a third personality, the Holy Spirit. He proceeds from them not as a child proceeds from the union of a man and a woman, but rather as the personality of a marriage proceeds from the one flesh which is established from the union of two separate personalities.
"Here, in the reflection of the nature of the Trinity in the institution of marriage is the key to the definition of masculinity and femininity. The image of God could not be fully reflected without the elements of rule, submission, and union."
* Motherhood requires self-giving, sacrifice, suffering. It is going down into death in order to give life, a great human analogy of a great spiritual principle (Paul wrote, "Death worketh in us but life in you"). Womanhood is a call. It is a vocation to which we respond under God, glad if it means the literal bearing of children, thankful as well for all that it means in a much wider sense, that in which every woman, married or single, fruitful or barren, may participate - the unconditional response exemplified for all time in Mary the virgin, and the willingness to enter into suffering, to receive, to carry, to give life, to nurture and to care for others. The strength to answer this call is given us as we look up toward the Love that created us, remembering that it was that Love that first, most literally, imagined sexuality, that made us at the very beginning real men and real women. As we conform to that Love's demands we shall become more humble, more dependent - on Him and on one another - and even (dare I say it?) more splendid.
Chapter 18 The Soul Is Feminine
* Psalm 144:12 says, "May our daughters be like corner pillars cut for the structure of a palace." Pillars uphold and support. This is a woman's place, and all of us need to know what our place is and to be put in it. The command of God puts us there where we belong. We know our "creatureliness," our dependence. ... Meekness, I believe, is the recognition of that place. ... To be meek is to have a sane and proper estimate of one's place in the scheme of things. It is a sense of proportion.
* "Be it unto me" ought to be the response of every man or woman to that will, and it is in this sense that the soul and the Church have been seen throughout Christian history as female before God for it is the nature of the woman to submit.
Chapter 19 Is Submission Stifling?
* I have been called to be a missionary and to write, but surely there is nothing incompatible with such tasks and acknowledgment of the fundamental fact that woman was made for man. That wasn't my idea, after all - I got it all out of the Book!
* God's service is, as our Prayer Book says, "perfect freedom."
* The lady's idea that mothers do not need a college education floors me. What, she asks, is your college educating women for? Surely it is to draw out (the root meaning of the word educate) the gifts God has given, whatever they may be. Surely I did not send you to college on the assumption that you would not marry. A Christian liberal education will make you a better wife and mother. I'm convinced, if that is God's will for you. If you were called to be a tax collector or a philosopher I should likewise want you to have that kind of education.
Chapter 20 Twenty Questions
1) Is this the man you want to spend the rest of your life with? That's every day of every week of every month of every year from now till one of you dies.
2) Is he:
- punctual or habitually late?
- orderly or disorderly?
- a reader or a TV watcher?
- an outdoor man or an indoor man?
3) Does he:
- like your family?
- treat you as you think a woman ought to be treated?
- have men friends?
- have approximately the same education you have?
- like the kind of food you like to cook?
- come from a home similar to your?
- like your friends?
- like to entertain, and would you be proud to have him as host at the other end of the table?
- laugh at the same jokes you do?
4) Can you agree on:
- sex?
- in-laws?
- children and their training?
- money?
- your respective roles in the family?
* Let me assure you that I've known happy couples of which one is an indoor person and the other an outdoor one, or one punctual and the other late, but it requires particular grace, and it's just as well to consider in advance whether or not you think it's going to be worth it. Later, when you're up against it, remind yourself that it's worth it!
* Agreement in the matters of 4) can only be in principle until you've had the chance to work on them as husband and wife. ... Deep, underlying principles will determine your handling of these things, and you must thoroughly agree on these before you agree to marry a man.
* It is mutual commitment to a common belief that is the only solid base for lasting communion, in marriage or in any other fellowship. Anything less will not stand the test of living.
Let Me Be a Woman (By Elisabeth Elliot) - Part II
Let Me Be a Woman: Notes on Womanhood for Valerie
Chapter 11 Trust for Separation
* "Let not our longing slay the appetite of our living," he wrote to me, and those words have helped me very often since. We accept and thank God for what is given, not allowing the not-given to spoil it.
* This is the call. This is the order of our lives. There is nothing haphazard about them. We can commit them to God, and accept them from Him.
Chapter 12 Self-Discipline and Order
* We are the creatures of a great Master-Designer, and His ordering of our lives is sure and certain, yet many people live without any visible order or peace or serenity. The way we live ought to manifest the truth of what we believe. A messy life speaks of a messy - an incoherent - faith.
* Freedom begins way back. It begins not with doing what you want but with doing what you ought - that is, with discipline.
* How shall we learn to believe and obey God if we have not been taught from earliest childhood to believe and obey the ones He puts over us? A child has to know first of all and beyond any shadow of doubt that the word spoken will be the word carried out.
* Failure to fulfill threats and promises trains a child to discount what is said. It trains him to lie. The parents are not to be trusted, therefore they need not be obeyed, therefore no authority is trustworthy or need be obeyed. Obedience is optional, depending on convenience or inclination or obvious reward.
* I learned very soon that I had to give my full attention to you when I spoke. ... I mean that when a matter needs the mother's attention it must get her full attention for that moment. I had to turn from my work and turn to you.
* The way you keep your house, the way you organize your time, the care you take in your personal appearance, the things you spend your money on all speak loudly about what you believe. "The beauty of Thy peace" shines forth in an ordered life. A disordered life speaks loudly of disorder in the soul.
Chapter 13 Whose Battle?
* The universe moves at the command of God, and men and women are at all times under that command, but, distinct from robins and lobsters, they have been given the power to disobey. They are capable of doing a great many things they are not supposed to do. The ability to do them is not a command to do them. It is not even permission. .... Men and women who have used their minds, their talents, and their genius to move multitudes to evil have used the minds, talents, and genius given to them by their Creator. But they have not asked what God has commanded. They have not offered themselves first to Him, trusting His direction for their proper sphere of operation.
So the question of ordination hinges on far more than competence. It cannot be decided on the basis of the church's need or an individual's urge or any of the sociological or humanistic arguments put forth by those who seek to liberate. It has to do with things vastly more fundamental and permanent, and the meaning of womanhood is one of these things.
We have something to respond to, something that directs and calls and holds us, and it is in obedience to the command that we will find our full freedom.
Chapter 14 Freedom through Discipline
* The freedom of the sailboat to move so swiftly and beautifully is the result of obedience to laws. ... She is doing the things she was made for. She is free not by disobeying the rules but by obeying them.
* This choice meant restriction, a willingness to limit themselves to the walks. It meant not doing what they wanted to do in order to have something they wanted more.
* This is the crux of the question of liberty and liberation. Does it mean casting off all restrictions? Does it mean doing what we feel like doing and not doing what don't? It means discipline. It means doing the thing we were meant for. What is it to which we are called, we women under God?
Chapter 15 God Sets No Traps
* We are called to be women. The fact that I am a woman does not make me a different kind of Christian, but the fact that I am a Christian does make me a different kind of woman. For I have accepted God's idea for me, and my whole life is an offering back to Him of all that I am and all that He wants me to be.
* We have not the motive to prepare ourselves for a "lifetime" of teaching, of social work - we know that we would lay it down with hallelujah in the height of our success, to make a home for the right man. - Ruth Benedict
* For the Christian woman, however, whether she is married or single, there is the call to serve.
* The woman who defines her liberation as doing what she wants, or not doing what she doesn't want, is, in the first place, evading responsibility. Evasion of responsibility is the mark of immaturity.
Chapter 11 Trust for Separation
* "Let not our longing slay the appetite of our living," he wrote to me, and those words have helped me very often since. We accept and thank God for what is given, not allowing the not-given to spoil it.
* This is the call. This is the order of our lives. There is nothing haphazard about them. We can commit them to God, and accept them from Him.
Chapter 12 Self-Discipline and Order
* We are the creatures of a great Master-Designer, and His ordering of our lives is sure and certain, yet many people live without any visible order or peace or serenity. The way we live ought to manifest the truth of what we believe. A messy life speaks of a messy - an incoherent - faith.
* Freedom begins way back. It begins not with doing what you want but with doing what you ought - that is, with discipline.
* How shall we learn to believe and obey God if we have not been taught from earliest childhood to believe and obey the ones He puts over us? A child has to know first of all and beyond any shadow of doubt that the word spoken will be the word carried out.
* Failure to fulfill threats and promises trains a child to discount what is said. It trains him to lie. The parents are not to be trusted, therefore they need not be obeyed, therefore no authority is trustworthy or need be obeyed. Obedience is optional, depending on convenience or inclination or obvious reward.
* I learned very soon that I had to give my full attention to you when I spoke. ... I mean that when a matter needs the mother's attention it must get her full attention for that moment. I had to turn from my work and turn to you.
* The way you keep your house, the way you organize your time, the care you take in your personal appearance, the things you spend your money on all speak loudly about what you believe. "The beauty of Thy peace" shines forth in an ordered life. A disordered life speaks loudly of disorder in the soul.
Chapter 13 Whose Battle?
* The universe moves at the command of God, and men and women are at all times under that command, but, distinct from robins and lobsters, they have been given the power to disobey. They are capable of doing a great many things they are not supposed to do. The ability to do them is not a command to do them. It is not even permission. .... Men and women who have used their minds, their talents, and their genius to move multitudes to evil have used the minds, talents, and genius given to them by their Creator. But they have not asked what God has commanded. They have not offered themselves first to Him, trusting His direction for their proper sphere of operation.
So the question of ordination hinges on far more than competence. It cannot be decided on the basis of the church's need or an individual's urge or any of the sociological or humanistic arguments put forth by those who seek to liberate. It has to do with things vastly more fundamental and permanent, and the meaning of womanhood is one of these things.
We have something to respond to, something that directs and calls and holds us, and it is in obedience to the command that we will find our full freedom.
Chapter 14 Freedom through Discipline
* The freedom of the sailboat to move so swiftly and beautifully is the result of obedience to laws. ... She is doing the things she was made for. She is free not by disobeying the rules but by obeying them.
* This choice meant restriction, a willingness to limit themselves to the walks. It meant not doing what they wanted to do in order to have something they wanted more.
* This is the crux of the question of liberty and liberation. Does it mean casting off all restrictions? Does it mean doing what we feel like doing and not doing what don't? It means discipline. It means doing the thing we were meant for. What is it to which we are called, we women under God?
Chapter 15 God Sets No Traps
* We are called to be women. The fact that I am a woman does not make me a different kind of Christian, but the fact that I am a Christian does make me a different kind of woman. For I have accepted God's idea for me, and my whole life is an offering back to Him of all that I am and all that He wants me to be.
* We have not the motive to prepare ourselves for a "lifetime" of teaching, of social work - we know that we would lay it down with hallelujah in the height of our success, to make a home for the right man. - Ruth Benedict
* For the Christian woman, however, whether she is married or single, there is the call to serve.
* The woman who defines her liberation as doing what she wants, or not doing what she doesn't want, is, in the first place, evading responsibility. Evasion of responsibility is the mark of immaturity.
Thursday, November 15, 2007
Chapter 9 Childlike Faith
* Pray Like a Child
- Children tell God what they are genuinely thinking. They are honest, simple, and direct. They understand that God is listening, and they understand that prayers are very important. Somehow when we become adults, we forget how important praying is. So if you and I are going to be like little children, we must not forget our prayers.
* Don't Be Limited by Adult Vocabulary
- Little children don't have a large vocabulary ... of words, but their vocabulary outside of words is massive. It's not limited to but included hugs, winks, tears, squeezes, laughter, screaming, jumping, hopping, skipping, dancing, and silence. When you and I decide to be childlike, let's remember the vocabulary of children.
* Ask for Help!
- Children are not afraid to ask for help. They have no problem admitting they are in over their heads. To children, a call for help is a proud expression of their dependency on those who love them. Adults, on the other hand, are anxious about calling for help. We are hesitant to admit we're in trouble. Calling for help is humiliating; it's an admission of need, an acknowledgment of weakness, and we don't want to experience that kind of humiliation.
- It is hard to ask for help. Childlike faith is not for people who need a little help; it is for people who are desperate, who are at the end of their rope. Faith is for those who are not too proud to wave their arms and admit they are drowning.
- Faith is not religious positive thinking. It's not a motivational course, a pep talk, an exercise in positive self-imaging. Faith is for the helpless. It is a humiliation, out of which humility is birthed. We do not come to faith to find the extra punch we need to make it over the hill. We come to faith because we are exhausted, weakened, ready to give up. Faith is more than giving up, it is giving in.
- If we want to experience a childlike faith, we must be more than willing to admit our helplessness.
* Embrace Your Ordinariness
- Children have an innate leveling mechanism that keeps reality in perspective. They are neither overly impressed with power or unimpressed with the ordinary. Faith allows us to recognize the indiscriminate power of God that takes the ordinary and makes it extraordinary.
- Genuine saints are genuine human beings who are capable of boredom and bad God days. Grumpiness, idiosyncrasies, pouting, and pettiness are all present in saints as well as the rest of us. Silence and solitude are not instant cures to busyness. They are lifetime commitments worked out in the real world of schedules and flawed human beings.
- Childlike faith is for ordinary people. People like you and me who know our flaws only too well. We are familiar with our inconsistencies and our unsaintliness and understand the good news of the gospel - Jesus Christ liberates us from the oppression of our ordinariness and gives us permission to trust God to make us extraordinary.
* Don't Stop Playing
- As you look at your life, as you contemplate embracing the faith of a little child, as you wonder what difference your bumbling, flawed life will make, I hope you have heard in the pages of this book God's whispering voice, "Don't stop, Keep on playing. You're doing great."
One day we shall all be gathered in that great concert hall of God, and we will hear the glorious beauty of the concerto God was playing while you and I plunked out our childlike version of "Chopsticks."
- Children tell God what they are genuinely thinking. They are honest, simple, and direct. They understand that God is listening, and they understand that prayers are very important. Somehow when we become adults, we forget how important praying is. So if you and I are going to be like little children, we must not forget our prayers.
* Don't Be Limited by Adult Vocabulary
- Little children don't have a large vocabulary ... of words, but their vocabulary outside of words is massive. It's not limited to but included hugs, winks, tears, squeezes, laughter, screaming, jumping, hopping, skipping, dancing, and silence. When you and I decide to be childlike, let's remember the vocabulary of children.
* Ask for Help!
- Children are not afraid to ask for help. They have no problem admitting they are in over their heads. To children, a call for help is a proud expression of their dependency on those who love them. Adults, on the other hand, are anxious about calling for help. We are hesitant to admit we're in trouble. Calling for help is humiliating; it's an admission of need, an acknowledgment of weakness, and we don't want to experience that kind of humiliation.
- It is hard to ask for help. Childlike faith is not for people who need a little help; it is for people who are desperate, who are at the end of their rope. Faith is for those who are not too proud to wave their arms and admit they are drowning.
- Faith is not religious positive thinking. It's not a motivational course, a pep talk, an exercise in positive self-imaging. Faith is for the helpless. It is a humiliation, out of which humility is birthed. We do not come to faith to find the extra punch we need to make it over the hill. We come to faith because we are exhausted, weakened, ready to give up. Faith is more than giving up, it is giving in.
- If we want to experience a childlike faith, we must be more than willing to admit our helplessness.
* Embrace Your Ordinariness
- Children have an innate leveling mechanism that keeps reality in perspective. They are neither overly impressed with power or unimpressed with the ordinary. Faith allows us to recognize the indiscriminate power of God that takes the ordinary and makes it extraordinary.
- Genuine saints are genuine human beings who are capable of boredom and bad God days. Grumpiness, idiosyncrasies, pouting, and pettiness are all present in saints as well as the rest of us. Silence and solitude are not instant cures to busyness. They are lifetime commitments worked out in the real world of schedules and flawed human beings.
- Childlike faith is for ordinary people. People like you and me who know our flaws only too well. We are familiar with our inconsistencies and our unsaintliness and understand the good news of the gospel - Jesus Christ liberates us from the oppression of our ordinariness and gives us permission to trust God to make us extraordinary.
* Don't Stop Playing
- As you look at your life, as you contemplate embracing the faith of a little child, as you wonder what difference your bumbling, flawed life will make, I hope you have heard in the pages of this book God's whispering voice, "Don't stop, Keep on playing. You're doing great."
One day we shall all be gathered in that great concert hall of God, and we will hear the glorious beauty of the concerto God was playing while you and I plunked out our childlike version of "Chopsticks."
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
Chapter 8 Naive Grace
* The heart of Jesus loves us as we are not as we should be, beyond worthiness and unworthiness, beyond fidelity and infidelity; He who loves us in the morning sun and the evening rain without caution, regret, boundary, limit, or breaking point. - Brennan Manning, The Signature of Jesus
* What I am suggesting is that God's grace is so outside the lines of our understanding that we can only stand in awe and wonder. Christianity is not about learning how to live within the lines; Christianity is about the joy of coloring. The grace of God is preposterous enough to accept as beautiful a coloring that anyone else would reject as ugly. The grace of God sees beyond the scribbling to the heart of the scribbler - a scribbler who is similar to two thieves who hung on crosses on either side of Jesus. One of the two asked Jesus to please accept his scribbled and sloppy life into the kingdom of God ... and He did. Preposterous. And very good news for the rest of us scribblers.
* Grace equalizes the unequal.
* The grace of God is dangerous. It's lavish, excessive, outrageous, and scandalous. God's grace is ridiculously inclusive. Apparently God doesn't care who He loves. He is not very careful about the people He calls His friends or the people He calls His church. Exactly.
* Jesus was making it very clear that there was not one iota of room in the church for arrogance because none of us belongs in it!
* The grace of God levels us all. All of us are broken, all of us are flawed, all of us are undeserving. There's no room in the church for pride, a judgmental attitude, or arrogance. All of us have had our debt "paid in full."
* Grace graces even our failures.
* Grace is difficult to believe and difficult to accept. We want so desperately to believe that God loves us unconditionally, yet we keep adding conditions. "Okay, fine," we say reluctantly, "but once we accept God's grace, we'd better get our act together. We had better be successful or we won't be worthy of His grace." We just cannot believe God can grace even our "failures."
* The grace of God says to you and to me, "I can make last place more significant than first place. I will use prostitutes to teach others about gratitude. I will use lepers as examples of cleanliness. I will take men who persecute the church and make them its pillars. I will take the dead and give them life. I will take uneducated fishermen and make them fishers of men." God's grace does not exist to make us successful. God's grace exists to point people to a love like no other love they have ever known. A love outside the lines.
* Grace includes the excluded.
* Naive grace is the kind of love that wants everyone to be included instead of finding ways to exclude. Jesus Christ was naive enough to love anyone and everyone. Even adulterers.
* Jesus was not ambiguous about sin and certainly did not condone adultery, and luckily He wasn't ambiguous about grace.
* This woman knew all about condemnation. She knew the Scriptures, knew the sad and empty consequences of her lifestyle, but she didn't know about grace. Jesus introduced her to a scandalous grace and then reminded her, "Leave your life of sin."
* The grace of God is indiscriminate, foolish, impractical, unrealistic, crazy, and naive. If God is not careful, people like you and me might actually believe Jesus Christ is winking at us ... just like a little child.
* What I am suggesting is that God's grace is so outside the lines of our understanding that we can only stand in awe and wonder. Christianity is not about learning how to live within the lines; Christianity is about the joy of coloring. The grace of God is preposterous enough to accept as beautiful a coloring that anyone else would reject as ugly. The grace of God sees beyond the scribbling to the heart of the scribbler - a scribbler who is similar to two thieves who hung on crosses on either side of Jesus. One of the two asked Jesus to please accept his scribbled and sloppy life into the kingdom of God ... and He did. Preposterous. And very good news for the rest of us scribblers.
* Grace equalizes the unequal.
* The grace of God is dangerous. It's lavish, excessive, outrageous, and scandalous. God's grace is ridiculously inclusive. Apparently God doesn't care who He loves. He is not very careful about the people He calls His friends or the people He calls His church. Exactly.
* Jesus was making it very clear that there was not one iota of room in the church for arrogance because none of us belongs in it!
* The grace of God levels us all. All of us are broken, all of us are flawed, all of us are undeserving. There's no room in the church for pride, a judgmental attitude, or arrogance. All of us have had our debt "paid in full."
* Grace graces even our failures.
* Grace is difficult to believe and difficult to accept. We want so desperately to believe that God loves us unconditionally, yet we keep adding conditions. "Okay, fine," we say reluctantly, "but once we accept God's grace, we'd better get our act together. We had better be successful or we won't be worthy of His grace." We just cannot believe God can grace even our "failures."
* The grace of God says to you and to me, "I can make last place more significant than first place. I will use prostitutes to teach others about gratitude. I will use lepers as examples of cleanliness. I will take men who persecute the church and make them its pillars. I will take the dead and give them life. I will take uneducated fishermen and make them fishers of men." God's grace does not exist to make us successful. God's grace exists to point people to a love like no other love they have ever known. A love outside the lines.
* Grace includes the excluded.
* Naive grace is the kind of love that wants everyone to be included instead of finding ways to exclude. Jesus Christ was naive enough to love anyone and everyone. Even adulterers.
* Jesus was not ambiguous about sin and certainly did not condone adultery, and luckily He wasn't ambiguous about grace.
* This woman knew all about condemnation. She knew the Scriptures, knew the sad and empty consequences of her lifestyle, but she didn't know about grace. Jesus introduced her to a scandalous grace and then reminded her, "Leave your life of sin."
* The grace of God is indiscriminate, foolish, impractical, unrealistic, crazy, and naive. If God is not careful, people like you and me might actually believe Jesus Christ is winking at us ... just like a little child.
Chapter 7 Happy Terror
* A tremor seizes our limbs; our nerves are struck, quiver like strings; our whole being bursts into shudders. But then a cry, wrestled from our very core, fills the world around us, as if a mountain were suddenly about to place itself in front of us. It is one word: GOD. Not an emotion, a stir within us, but a power, a marvel beyond us, tearing the world apart. - Abraham Heschel
* I want to know what happened to the bone-chilling, earth-shattering, gut-wrenching, knee-knocking, heart-stopping, life-altering fear that leaves us speechless, paralyzed, helpless, and glad. The terror I am speaking of is a mix of wonder, awe, fear, and worship, all happening at the same time.
I am beginning to wonder if we modern followers of Christ are capable of being terrified of God. No fear of God. No fear of Jesus. No fear of the Holy Spirit. As a result, we have ended up with a feel-good gospel that attracts thousands ... but transforms no one.
It is time for Christianity to become a place of terror again; a place where God continually has to tell us, "Fear not"; a place where our relationship with God is not a simple belief or doctrine or theology, but the constant awareness of God's terrifying presence in our lives. The nice, nonthreatening God needs to be replaced by the God whose very presence smashes our egos into dust, burns our sin into ashes, and strips us naked to reveal the real person within. A healthy, childlike fear should make us more in awe of God than we are of our government, our problems, our beliefs about abortion, our doctrines and agendas, or any of our other earthly concerns. Our God is perfectly capable of both calming the storm and putting us in the middle of one. Either way, if it's God, we will be speechless and trembling ... and smiling, too. It's time to become people whose God is big and holy and frightening and gentle and tender and ours; a God whose love frightens us into His strong and powerful arms where He dares to hold us in His terrifying, loving presence.
* If Jesus is the son of God, we should be terrified of what He will do when He gets His hands on our lives; if the Bible is the Word of God, we should be quaking every time we read its soul-piercing words; if the church is the body of Christ, our culture should be threatened by our intimidating presence. But our culture is not threatened by our presence; it's not terrified of the Jesus in our lives; and it's not quaking at the Word of God. Why? Because we have familiarized the gospel, sanitized it, flattened it, taken the sting and the terror out of it. We've been intimidated by those who claim to be familiar with Jesus.
* When you and I are in the presence of the mysterious Son of God, the mystery becomes more mysterious. God does not shrink when we know Him, He expands. God does not become smaller, He becomes bigger.
* The mysterious, marvelous fear we feel in the presence of God is a sign of maturity; it's a sign of intimacy, of a deep and abiding faith. It is the moment when we understand the "ghost" (the monster) is really our daddy.
* Darkness is a breeding ground of fear. When we are in the dark, we can't see anyone or anything. We feel panicky, helpless, isolated, vulnerable, lost, confused, frightened. Most of all, what we feel is alone. Darkness isolates us; it disorients us and causes us to exaggerate and distort reality.
* God does not always rid us of the darkness; He joins us in the darkness.
* They understood now, but only now, that when life gets dark, when we are alone, we aren't alone. Jesus Christ is Lord, even in the darkness.
* Attributing all good things to God and all bad things to the Devil appears to make life much easier to understand. No complications here. No mystery to unravel, no difficult issues to resolve. God is easy to understand and easy to decipher. There's nothing to be afraid of when you're around a God who is easy to understand.
But ... God made the bee, and He made the stinger! We are living in a world where bee stings can kill us, and that is scary. Reality is complicated, life is complicated, God is complicated. His footprints are not easy to see in the dust and dirt of the real world's trail. And when we are lost in the forest, we want to find God's tracks. When it's dark and we're stuck in a boat during a gale, we don't want dark, indistinguishable shapes roaming around on the water. We get frightened when we lose track of God. We get terrified when we are not sure what God is doing.
* One of the glorious complications of God is His ability to reveal Himself in the unrevealable. God is not lost when we are. God is waiting for us even in the darkness!
* The one terrifying truth - the Jesus who can rescue you is the One you can trust even when you're not rescued.
* Jesus said, "John, you have staked your life on the Truth. You can trust Me, John. You can know now deep in your soul that I will be here in life, and I will be with you in death! Death is only the second to the last word, it is not the last word. Yes, John, your upside-down life may be coming to an end, but even death is not the end."
* "Watching her (the turtle) swim slowly away and remembering her nightmare ride through the dunes, I noticed that sometimes it is hard to tell whether you are being killed or being saved by the hands that turn your life upside down." - Barbara Taylor
All the turtle could do was hang on, and hanging on was pretty darn miserable. She could easily have died, but she lived. It must have been a terrifying ride through the dunes. If turtles can experience fear, this turtle must have done so, but it was life-giving fear, it was life-saving fear, it was the upside-down fear that always comes when we put ourselves in the hands of Jesus.
* I want to know what happened to the bone-chilling, earth-shattering, gut-wrenching, knee-knocking, heart-stopping, life-altering fear that leaves us speechless, paralyzed, helpless, and glad. The terror I am speaking of is a mix of wonder, awe, fear, and worship, all happening at the same time.
I am beginning to wonder if we modern followers of Christ are capable of being terrified of God. No fear of God. No fear of Jesus. No fear of the Holy Spirit. As a result, we have ended up with a feel-good gospel that attracts thousands ... but transforms no one.
It is time for Christianity to become a place of terror again; a place where God continually has to tell us, "Fear not"; a place where our relationship with God is not a simple belief or doctrine or theology, but the constant awareness of God's terrifying presence in our lives. The nice, nonthreatening God needs to be replaced by the God whose very presence smashes our egos into dust, burns our sin into ashes, and strips us naked to reveal the real person within. A healthy, childlike fear should make us more in awe of God than we are of our government, our problems, our beliefs about abortion, our doctrines and agendas, or any of our other earthly concerns. Our God is perfectly capable of both calming the storm and putting us in the middle of one. Either way, if it's God, we will be speechless and trembling ... and smiling, too. It's time to become people whose God is big and holy and frightening and gentle and tender and ours; a God whose love frightens us into His strong and powerful arms where He dares to hold us in His terrifying, loving presence.
* If Jesus is the son of God, we should be terrified of what He will do when He gets His hands on our lives; if the Bible is the Word of God, we should be quaking every time we read its soul-piercing words; if the church is the body of Christ, our culture should be threatened by our intimidating presence. But our culture is not threatened by our presence; it's not terrified of the Jesus in our lives; and it's not quaking at the Word of God. Why? Because we have familiarized the gospel, sanitized it, flattened it, taken the sting and the terror out of it. We've been intimidated by those who claim to be familiar with Jesus.
* When you and I are in the presence of the mysterious Son of God, the mystery becomes more mysterious. God does not shrink when we know Him, He expands. God does not become smaller, He becomes bigger.
* The mysterious, marvelous fear we feel in the presence of God is a sign of maturity; it's a sign of intimacy, of a deep and abiding faith. It is the moment when we understand the "ghost" (the monster) is really our daddy.
* Darkness is a breeding ground of fear. When we are in the dark, we can't see anyone or anything. We feel panicky, helpless, isolated, vulnerable, lost, confused, frightened. Most of all, what we feel is alone. Darkness isolates us; it disorients us and causes us to exaggerate and distort reality.
* God does not always rid us of the darkness; He joins us in the darkness.
* They understood now, but only now, that when life gets dark, when we are alone, we aren't alone. Jesus Christ is Lord, even in the darkness.
* Attributing all good things to God and all bad things to the Devil appears to make life much easier to understand. No complications here. No mystery to unravel, no difficult issues to resolve. God is easy to understand and easy to decipher. There's nothing to be afraid of when you're around a God who is easy to understand.
But ... God made the bee, and He made the stinger! We are living in a world where bee stings can kill us, and that is scary. Reality is complicated, life is complicated, God is complicated. His footprints are not easy to see in the dust and dirt of the real world's trail. And when we are lost in the forest, we want to find God's tracks. When it's dark and we're stuck in a boat during a gale, we don't want dark, indistinguishable shapes roaming around on the water. We get frightened when we lose track of God. We get terrified when we are not sure what God is doing.
* One of the glorious complications of God is His ability to reveal Himself in the unrevealable. God is not lost when we are. God is waiting for us even in the darkness!
* The one terrifying truth - the Jesus who can rescue you is the One you can trust even when you're not rescued.
* Jesus said, "John, you have staked your life on the Truth. You can trust Me, John. You can know now deep in your soul that I will be here in life, and I will be with you in death! Death is only the second to the last word, it is not the last word. Yes, John, your upside-down life may be coming to an end, but even death is not the end."
* "Watching her (the turtle) swim slowly away and remembering her nightmare ride through the dunes, I noticed that sometimes it is hard to tell whether you are being killed or being saved by the hands that turn your life upside down." - Barbara Taylor
All the turtle could do was hang on, and hanging on was pretty darn miserable. She could easily have died, but she lived. It must have been a terrifying ride through the dunes. If turtles can experience fear, this turtle must have done so, but it was life-giving fear, it was life-saving fear, it was the upside-down fear that always comes when we put ourselves in the hands of Jesus.
Chapter 6 Irresponsible Passion
* You called, you cried, you shattered my deafness. You sparkled, you blazed, you drove away my blindness. You shed your fragrance, and I drew in my breath, and I pant for you. I tasted and I now hunger and thirst. You touched me, and I now burn with longing for your peace. - Saint Augustine, Passion for Pilgrimage
* Passion is the roller coaster ride that can happen when you follow Jesus Christ. It is the breathtaking, thrill-filled, bone-rattling ride of a lifetime where every moment matters and all you can do is hang on for life dear. When you become a Christian, when you decide to follow Christ, you decide in favor of passion. Jesus came to forgive us of our sin, yes, but His mission was also to introduce us to the passion of living. Most people believe that following Jesus is all about living right. Not true. Following Jesus is all about living fully.
* What is passion? Aliveness. Living with expectancy, anticipation, and enthusiasm. What is the opposite of passion? Dead living. Living a life that is borrrrring!
* I had no idea that God's love was extravagant, irresponsible ... and irresistible. I had no idea that God of the universe loved me with no conditions, no addenda to the contract, no fine print. I had no idea God was passionate about me! His passion for me, His love for me, makes me want to love like Him. Passion is much harder than legalism. The behavior of the father appears to be irresponsible, but his passion is irresistible, staggering, compelling - the young man is loved to his senses. It was an act of pure passion.
* Passion is extravagant. Passion can't be fabricated or manipulated. Passion springs from gratitude.
* Go ahead, live irresponsibly! Forget about what is sensible, responsible, and prudent and rediscover the childlike passion of falling in love with God. Take the ride of your life on the roller coaster of His unconditional love. Go ahead, say it: What a ride!
* Passion is the roller coaster ride that can happen when you follow Jesus Christ. It is the breathtaking, thrill-filled, bone-rattling ride of a lifetime where every moment matters and all you can do is hang on for life dear. When you become a Christian, when you decide to follow Christ, you decide in favor of passion. Jesus came to forgive us of our sin, yes, but His mission was also to introduce us to the passion of living. Most people believe that following Jesus is all about living right. Not true. Following Jesus is all about living fully.
* What is passion? Aliveness. Living with expectancy, anticipation, and enthusiasm. What is the opposite of passion? Dead living. Living a life that is borrrrring!
* I had no idea that God's love was extravagant, irresponsible ... and irresistible. I had no idea that God of the universe loved me with no conditions, no addenda to the contract, no fine print. I had no idea God was passionate about me! His passion for me, His love for me, makes me want to love like Him. Passion is much harder than legalism. The behavior of the father appears to be irresponsible, but his passion is irresistible, staggering, compelling - the young man is loved to his senses. It was an act of pure passion.
* Passion is extravagant. Passion can't be fabricated or manipulated. Passion springs from gratitude.
* Go ahead, live irresponsibly! Forget about what is sensible, responsible, and prudent and rediscover the childlike passion of falling in love with God. Take the ride of your life on the roller coaster of His unconditional love. Go ahead, say it: What a ride!
Janie's Dialogue with God
i feel awkward
because it's been so long
since i've been near you.
i've missed you too;
i think about you every day.
But i've messed up;
i've done a lot of things
that i regret.
it's okay, child.
i forgive you.
i don't understand
i turn away,
i ignore you ...
i'm still here
right beside you.
i try to live without you
even though i know deep inside
that you're still a part of me.
you don't have to make yourself lovable;
i love you how you are.
even after everything I've done,
and everything that has happened,
would it offend you if i called you bizarre?
i am bizarre;
more so than you'll ever know.
this may seem strange,
but could I please ask you
to hold me, for a little while?
my child, i've been waiting for you
with outstretched arms.
(pp. 93-4; Dangerous Wonder)
because it's been so long
since i've been near you.
i've missed you too;
i think about you every day.
But i've messed up;
i've done a lot of things
that i regret.
it's okay, child.
i forgive you.
i don't understand
i turn away,
i ignore you ...
i'm still here
right beside you.
i try to live without you
even though i know deep inside
that you're still a part of me.
you don't have to make yourself lovable;
i love you how you are.
even after everything I've done,
and everything that has happened,
would it offend you if i called you bizarre?
i am bizarre;
more so than you'll ever know.
this may seem strange,
but could I please ask you
to hold me, for a little while?
my child, i've been waiting for you
with outstretched arms.
(pp. 93-4; Dangerous Wonder)
Chapter 5 Wide-eyed Listening
* The moment we deny God's fingerprint on our soul, the instant we stop listening to our uniqueness, our God hearing starts to deteriorate.
* God is present with us. But God is more than present with us, He knows us. He doesn't follow alongside of us, He follows inside of us. We don't have to attend church to find God. We don't have to make sure our life is clear of any sin to find God. God has found us regardless of our situation, regardless of our condition. We can be lost, dizzied by our own spiritual vertigo, but God is present with us, luring us back to Himself. We may turn our backs on God, but God is always facing us.
* I would like to suggest a new way of hearing God's whisper - savoring. Savoring is the lost art of cherishing, appreciating, relishing. When you and I stop and savor a particular of life, we soak it in, we listen with all of our senses, we immerse ourselves in what we are savoring.
* If we truly want to hear God, if we truly want to hear Him speak, then we need to take the time to savor Him. To immerse ourselves in our Father and bask in the intoxicating presence of God's speaking voice - this is prayer. Prayer is savoring God. Savoring is immersing ourselves in His presence, hearing Him with all of our senses.
* "When you are waiting you are not doing nothing. You're doing something. You're allowing your soul to grow up. If you can't be still and wait, you can't become what God created you to be." - Sue Monk Kidd
* We will hear the whispering God if we are willing to wait, if we are willing to abandon our need for the quick fix. "God is our midwife not our rescuer," Sue reminds us.
* God is present with us. But God is more than present with us, He knows us. He doesn't follow alongside of us, He follows inside of us. We don't have to attend church to find God. We don't have to make sure our life is clear of any sin to find God. God has found us regardless of our situation, regardless of our condition. We can be lost, dizzied by our own spiritual vertigo, but God is present with us, luring us back to Himself. We may turn our backs on God, but God is always facing us.
* I would like to suggest a new way of hearing God's whisper - savoring. Savoring is the lost art of cherishing, appreciating, relishing. When you and I stop and savor a particular of life, we soak it in, we listen with all of our senses, we immerse ourselves in what we are savoring.
* If we truly want to hear God, if we truly want to hear Him speak, then we need to take the time to savor Him. To immerse ourselves in our Father and bask in the intoxicating presence of God's speaking voice - this is prayer. Prayer is savoring God. Savoring is immersing ourselves in His presence, hearing Him with all of our senses.
* "When you are waiting you are not doing nothing. You're doing something. You're allowing your soul to grow up. If you can't be still and wait, you can't become what God created you to be." - Sue Monk Kidd
* We will hear the whispering God if we are willing to wait, if we are willing to abandon our need for the quick fix. "God is our midwife not our rescuer," Sue reminds us.
Chapter 4 Daring Playfulness
* Life is tough. It takes up much of your time, all your weekends, and what do you get in the end of it? I think that the life cycle is all backward. You should die first, get that out of the way. Then you live twenty years in an old-age home. You get kicked out when you're too young. You get a gold watch, you go to work. You work forty years until you're young enough to enjoy your retirement. You go to college; you party until you're ready for high school; you go to grade school; you become a little kid; you play. You have no responsibilities. You become a little baby; you go back into the womb; you spend your last nine months floating; and you finish up as a gleam in somebody's eye.
* Jesus Christ knew how to play as well as pray; how to laugh as well as cry; how to be serious about life abut not take Himself too seriously. Jesus Christ came to save us from our sin and to save us from becoming severe, unyielding, harsh, and terminally serious.
* As people heard Jesus tell these stories, they saw at once that they weren't about God, so there was nothing in them threatening their own sovereignty. They relaxed their defenses. They walked away perplexed, wondering what they meant, the stories lodged in their imagination. And then, like a time bomb, they would explode in their unprotected hearts. An abyss opened up at their very feet. He was talking about God; they had been invaded. - Eugene Peterson, Living the Message.
* Jesus understood He could protect the seriousness of the gospel by interspersing His life and message with a sense of playfulness.
* Just because we believe the gospel is a life-death matter doesn't mean we have to act as if we're dead.
* Play is an expression of God's presence in the world; one clear sign of God's absence in society is the absence of playfulness and laughter. Play is not an escape; it is the way to release the life-smothering grip of busyness, stress, and anxiety. (Playfulness is a modern expression of hope, a celebration of the flickering light of the gospel that plays with the dark by pouncing on the surrounding darkness like a cat toying with a mouse.)
* The nature of God is playful, that is why He hides. God is not only present when we can see Him, He is present when we can't, and joy comes from recognizing God in places we never thought He would be. God hides in difficulty, He hides in suffering, He hides in poverty, He hides in failure, and He hides in the stories of our lives. Whatever our circumstance, whatever the status of our lives, God is present - invisible, hiding, waiting for us to discover Him, waiting for us to learn from Him in the shadows as well as the light.
* "God loves you just as you are! Surrender to His love!"
* Jesus Christ knew how to play as well as pray; how to laugh as well as cry; how to be serious about life abut not take Himself too seriously. Jesus Christ came to save us from our sin and to save us from becoming severe, unyielding, harsh, and terminally serious.
* As people heard Jesus tell these stories, they saw at once that they weren't about God, so there was nothing in them threatening their own sovereignty. They relaxed their defenses. They walked away perplexed, wondering what they meant, the stories lodged in their imagination. And then, like a time bomb, they would explode in their unprotected hearts. An abyss opened up at their very feet. He was talking about God; they had been invaded. - Eugene Peterson, Living the Message.
* Jesus understood He could protect the seriousness of the gospel by interspersing His life and message with a sense of playfulness.
* Just because we believe the gospel is a life-death matter doesn't mean we have to act as if we're dead.
* Play is an expression of God's presence in the world; one clear sign of God's absence in society is the absence of playfulness and laughter. Play is not an escape; it is the way to release the life-smothering grip of busyness, stress, and anxiety. (Playfulness is a modern expression of hope, a celebration of the flickering light of the gospel that plays with the dark by pouncing on the surrounding darkness like a cat toying with a mouse.)
* The nature of God is playful, that is why He hides. God is not only present when we can see Him, He is present when we can't, and joy comes from recognizing God in places we never thought He would be. God hides in difficulty, He hides in suffering, He hides in poverty, He hides in failure, and He hides in the stories of our lives. Whatever our circumstance, whatever the status of our lives, God is present - invisible, hiding, waiting for us to discover Him, waiting for us to learn from Him in the shadows as well as the light.
* "God loves you just as you are! Surrender to His love!"
Chapter 3 Wild Abandon
* Every day was vivid, electric, adventurous, invigorating, and exhilarating. Every nerve was standing on tiptoe, every sense was activated, every emotion was alive! My whole being was on call, on alert. (The spaceship play)
* I was given my first taste of abandon, my first experience of giving myself over unrestrainedly to an idea larger than myself. God was gifting me, preparing me for that moment when I would bump into Jesus and He would beckon me to come, abandon all else, and follow Him.
* ... somehow these men knew that life with Jesus is the life they had been seeking unsuccessfully in the confines of safety and caution. They knew life's greatest adventure was waiting just beyond the limits of carefulness.
* "Abandon yourself to the One who will never abandon you."
* Christianity is this wild religion that has always been more concerned about following Jesus than following the rules of Jesus.
* Mistakes are the guaranteed consequence of wild abandon. Mistakes are signs of growth. That is why the Old and the New Testament are full of people who made mistakes. The church should be the one place in our culture where mistakes are not only expected but welcomed.
* Faith is about recklessly following Jesus wherever He goes. ... Reckless abandon does not mean we make the rules and He follows us. Following Christ with abandon does not give us permission to kill those who make rules we don't agree with. Remember, Jesus let the rule monitors use their rules to kill Him.
* There is nowhere else to go except to follow Jesus.
* Fear keeps us from experimenting, from taking chances, from trying the new, from choosing the discomfort of exploring uncharted waters, from stepping out in the darkness, from going where no one else has gone.
* When we follow the rule-violating, religion-threatening, category-breaking Jesus, our lives are always in jeopardy.
* The Christian life is more than finding Jesus - it is following Jesus. Following, it turns out, is not a one-time, spectacular act of faith, but a one-day-at-a-time, ordinary, unspectacular following; a daily act of fearlessness that takes us through the most frightening and rugged terrain to a place of peace, joy, and abandon.
* A life of abandon is a life of resistance, a lonely life, a minority life, and, above all, an incomprehensible life.
* Two roads diverged in this little girl's life. One is the road of rules and expectations, the other is the road of love. The roads of our lives are much the same. Will we go for the safe, predictable road of rules and expectations? Or will we go for the One we love, Jesus, who bids us come with wild abandon?
* I was given my first taste of abandon, my first experience of giving myself over unrestrainedly to an idea larger than myself. God was gifting me, preparing me for that moment when I would bump into Jesus and He would beckon me to come, abandon all else, and follow Him.
* ... somehow these men knew that life with Jesus is the life they had been seeking unsuccessfully in the confines of safety and caution. They knew life's greatest adventure was waiting just beyond the limits of carefulness.
* "Abandon yourself to the One who will never abandon you."
* Christianity is this wild religion that has always been more concerned about following Jesus than following the rules of Jesus.
* Mistakes are the guaranteed consequence of wild abandon. Mistakes are signs of growth. That is why the Old and the New Testament are full of people who made mistakes. The church should be the one place in our culture where mistakes are not only expected but welcomed.
* Faith is about recklessly following Jesus wherever He goes. ... Reckless abandon does not mean we make the rules and He follows us. Following Christ with abandon does not give us permission to kill those who make rules we don't agree with. Remember, Jesus let the rule monitors use their rules to kill Him.
* There is nowhere else to go except to follow Jesus.
* Fear keeps us from experimenting, from taking chances, from trying the new, from choosing the discomfort of exploring uncharted waters, from stepping out in the darkness, from going where no one else has gone.
* When we follow the rule-violating, religion-threatening, category-breaking Jesus, our lives are always in jeopardy.
* The Christian life is more than finding Jesus - it is following Jesus. Following, it turns out, is not a one-time, spectacular act of faith, but a one-day-at-a-time, ordinary, unspectacular following; a daily act of fearlessness that takes us through the most frightening and rugged terrain to a place of peace, joy, and abandon.
* A life of abandon is a life of resistance, a lonely life, a minority life, and, above all, an incomprehensible life.
* Two roads diverged in this little girl's life. One is the road of rules and expectations, the other is the road of love. The roads of our lives are much the same. Will we go for the safe, predictable road of rules and expectations? Or will we go for the One we love, Jesus, who bids us come with wild abandon?
Monday, November 12, 2007
BMI Formula
--------------------- Weight (Kg)
BMI = -------------------------------------
------------- (Height Square in Meter)
BMI = -------------------------------------
------------- (Height Square in Meter)
Sunday, November 11, 2007
Case Study
Assessment
* Better to use objective assessment instruments
* MMPI, SEL-90, NEO, MCMI-III, etc.
* Better to use objective assessment instruments
* MMPI, SEL-90, NEO, MCMI-III, etc.
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