Here is something to ponder ...

"The purpose [of God's becoming man] is that God's inner nature and life should be opened up to us, should become familiar to us, and that we should experience with our very being, and thus also with our minds and senses, what it means to say that God is love." ~ Hans Urs von Balthasar

I once heard Handel’s Messiah performed at the Royal Albert Hall, with the majestic pipe organ there, with orchestra and combined choirs of hundreds of voices. It was … glorious.

Every year our church tries to sing the Hallelujah Chorus. Painful. Very, very painful.

Life feels like that to me. There is amazing music to it – you can hear it in your head, and hear notes and phrases of it around you * … but it falls so far short of what you know it could be. We are so out of tune, off the rhythm of what we know we can be. I am so out of tune and off the rhythm that I can hear in my head from time to time. Painful. Very, very painful.

I am very glad to know that in the end, Jesus wins – and we will get to be part of the combined choir: human beings and this creation as we dream it, as God dreamed it. Won’t that be a relief?

The Spirit and the Bride say “Come!”

*Here are a few I have seen lately: friends and neighbors bringing meals to Laurie’s family … giant golden maple leaves decorating the trail at Washington Park, Malisa and Brian dancing at their wedding, a practically perfect apple pie (even if I do say so myself), friends who pray.

The Pink Couch Has Moved...

...not the blog, the actual couch. We got a new couch - which I hesitated over, since the pink couch is kind of an institution. But don't worry, pink couch fans - we moved it into the room which will now be my study - with a view of the garden and a table for the tea tray... coming?