From:The Confessions of Saint Augustine

                          CHAPTER IV

    4.  What, therefore, is my God?  What, I ask, but the Lord
God?  "For who is Lord but the Lord himself, or who is God besides
our God?"[13]  Most high, most excellent, most potent, most
omnipotent; most merciful and most just; most secret and most
truly present; most beautiful and most strong; stable, yet not
supported; unchangeable, yet changing all things; never new, never
old; making all things new, yet bringing old age upon the proud,
and they know it not; always working, ever at rest; gathering, yet
needing nothing; sustaining, pervading, and protecting; creating,
nourishing, and developing; seeking, and yet possessing all
things.  Thou dost love, but without passion; art jealous, yet
free from care; dost repent without remorse; art angry, yet
remainest serene.  Thou changest thy ways, leaving thy plans
unchanged; thou recoverest what thou hast never really lost.  Thou
art never in need but still thou dost rejoice at thy gains; art
never greedy, yet demandest dividends.  Men pay more than is
required so that thou dost become a debtor; yet who can possess
anything at all which is not already thine?  Thou owest men
nothing, yet payest out to them as if in debt to thy creature, and
when thou dost cancel debts thou losest nothing thereby.  Yet, O
my God, my life, my holy Joy, what is this that I have said?  What
can any man say when he speaks of thee?  But woe to them that keep
silence -- since even those who say most are dumb.

(http://www.iclnet.org/pub/resources/text/ipb-e/epl-01/agcon-02.txt)

Precious.

"You cannot show the preciousness of a person by being happy with his gifts. Ingratitude will certainly prove that the giver is not loved. But gratitude for gifts does not prove that the giver is precious. What proves that the giver is precious is the glad-hearted readiness to leave all his gifts to be with him. This is why suffering is so central in the mission of the church. The goal of our mission is that people form the nations worship the true God. But worship means cherishing the preciousness of God above all else, including life itself. It will be very hard to bring the nations to love God from a lifestyle that communicates a love of things. Therefore, God ordains in the lives of his messengers that suffering sever our bondage to the world. When joy and love survive this severing, we are fit to say to the nations with authenticity and power: hope in God."
-John Piper, Suffering and the Sovereignty of God, 109
(emphasis added)
"Blessed are you when people insult you and persecute you, and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of Me. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward in heaven is great; for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you."
-Jesus, Matthew 5.11-12

What is precious? To you, personally; to me? What has highest value in our lives, what is our deepest longing, our determined goal? I examine my heart, and find ashamedly that Jesus is not precious to me. Not really, deep down, beautifully precious.

"Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in the field, which a man found and hid again; and from joy over it he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.
Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant seeking fine pearls, and upon finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it."
-Jesus, Matthew 13.44-46

Worthy. Worth every sacrifice, worth complete surrender, worth it.

Sell-outs. Misfits. Counter-cultural. Not mainstream. Stupidly generous. Ridiculously joy-filled.

In love.

Isn't this what we should be called?

Prisoners. Persecuted. Hated. Despised.

Isn't this what we should be?

If Jesus is precious, if He and His kingdom have highest value in the universe, how does that change our hearts?

The Dance

I have sent you my invitation,
the note inscribed on the palm of my hand by the fire of living.
Don’t jump up and shout, “Yes, this is what I want! Let’s do it!”
Just stand up quietly and dance with me.

Show me how you follow your deepest desires,
spiraling down into the ache within the ache,
and I will show you how I reach inward and open outward
to feel the kiss of the Mystery, sweet lips on my own, every day.

Don’t tell me you want to hold the whole world in your heart.
Show me how you turn away from making another wrong without abandoning yourself when you are hurt and afraid of being unloved.

Tell me a story of who you are,
and see who I am in the stories I live.
And together we will remember that each of us always has a choice.

Don’t tell me how wonderful things will be . . . some day.
Show me you can risk being completely at peace,
truly okay with the way things are right now in this moment,
and again in the next and the next and the next. . .

I have heard enough warrior stories of heroic daring.
Tell me how you crumble when you hit the wall,
the place you cannot go beyond by the strength of your own will.
What carries you to the other side of that wall, to the fragile beauty of your own humanness?

And after we have shown each other how we have set and kept the clear, healthy boundaries that help us live side by side with each other, let us risk remembering that we never stop silently loving
those we once loved out loud.

Take me to the places on the earth that teach you how to dance,
the places where you can risk letting the world break your heart.
And I will take you to the places where the earth beneath my feet and the stars overhead make my heart whole again and again.

Show me how you take care of business
without letting business determine who you are.
When the children are fed but still the voices within and around us shout that soul’s desires have too high a price,
let us remind each other that it is never about the money.

Show me how you offer to your people and the world
the stories and the songs
you want our children’s children to remember.
And I will show you how I struggle not to change the world,
but to love it.

Sit beside me in long moments of shared solitude,
knowing both our absolute aloneness and our undeniable belonging.
Dance with me in the silence and in the sound of small daily words,
holding neither against me at the end of the day.

And when the sound of all the declarations of our sincerest
intentions has died away on the wind,
dance with me in the infinite pause before the next great inhale
of the breath that is breathing us all into being,
not filling the emptiness from the outside or from within.

Don’t say, “Yes!”
Just take my hand and dance with me.

© Oriah Mountain Dreamer, from the book The Dance, HarperSanFrancisco, 2001

The Call

I have heard it all my life,
A voice calling a name I recognized as my own.

Sometimes it comes as a soft-bellied whisper.
Sometimes it holds an edge of urgency.

But always it says: Wake up my love. You are walking asleep.
There's no safety in that!

Remember what you are and let this knowing
take you home to the Beloved with every breath.

Hold tenderly who you are and let a deeper knowing
colour the shape of your humanness.

There is no where to go. What you are looking for is right here.
Open the fist clenched in wanting and see what you already hold in your hand.

There is no waiting for something to happen,
no point in the future to get to.
All you have ever longed for is here in this moment, right now.

You are wearing yourself out with all this searching.
Come home and rest.

How much longer can you live like this?
Your hungry spirit is gaunt, your heart stumbles. All this trying.
Give it up!

Let yourself be one of the God-mad,
faithful only to the Beauty you are.

Let the Lover pull you to your feet and hold you close,
dancing even when fear urges you to sit this one out.

Remember- there is one word you are here to say with your whole being.
When it finds you, give your life to it. Don't be tight-lipped and stingy.

Spend yourself completely on the saying.
Be one word in this great love poem we are writing together.

© Oriah Mountain Dreamer, from the book The Call, Harper Collins, 2003