or, Essential Duet
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Christ, the heart and Way to the heart of things.
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It is not inevitable that we should populate and demarcate life's inevitably vague horizons with fearsome phantoms and hopeless verdicts.
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Our being begets our seeing, which sparks our striving, which ordains the destination.
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There is a Strength, an undiminishable locus of Life, a holy Power that illumines endurance, a radiant Region of Imagination's birth, truth and materialization in Love; there is and because there is we say, 'I must....'
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The doorway in to Christ is the doorway out to 'rugged Reality'; the way in is open to those ready to follow Him out. There is no 'breaking in' to the secret places of God; there is only a breaking out—out into the open places of the Spirit, the Son-illumined expanses where every soul is His secret place.
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The royal highway from Sinai to Zion, from Alpha to Omega, from Epiphaneia to Parousia, runs its course and measures its meaning through the valley of drudgery and humiliation, Christ-illuminated with faith-charged, radiant might.
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The truest life in spirit is marked by unconcious holiness, not anxiety whether holiness may ever be possessed. Beyond surrender, unconscious holiness makes the whole man whole; ever-extending vistas of righteousness compel him to offer what he cannot know is in him.
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The Beauty, Silence and Surrender: The infant soul clutches the beautiful thing to keep it forever, and grief follows; the soul grown deeper in Love surrenders to the Beauty that retreats and, by retreating, returns, and by returning remakes the soul for Its own forever.
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The most appalling sacrilege: to impose violence and disfigurement on the form and being of a divine child-spirit, whose Father alone knows how to pierce, train and transfigure.
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The mystery of individuality is the deepest--that of the eternal basis, of holy necessities, of the primal, unretreating hope.
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Arise and go to Him, Cry out to Him, and do; He will make sense, light, a kingdom... and you.
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There is no sublimity, no exquisiteness, of concept, of illumination, of inspiration or devotion, that is not magnified, perfected and surpassed in act.
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The contrite spirit--a sacrifice of will: ascent to the height only ever begins from wherever you are, if it is to begin at all.
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Bent upon Heaven: to yield to the fresh springs means un-clinging to the... remnants; soon or late, with light abandon or severing pang, it means letting go.
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It's in the seeing: to earn trouble dearly in shrewd but flawed, fading, self-stamped coin, or to look out from Love's safe, selfless harbor of Light.
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Before appearances and non-appearances, circumstances and forces, I speculate and doubt... I run to Honesty's door and knock... harmonious percussion greets my touch... calling calls to calling in essential duet: 'Come in... and enflesh the purpose'.
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Though it jar the soul and prod our deepest fortress-fears, the knocking at the door is the sound of Pity's hand, Compassion's urge, of holy, reclaiming Cure.
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Growing complete in Christ is a path filled with painful, creative tension, a path pervaded with countervailing, interweaving forces aimed at a single destination.
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The faith-life created in Christ can only be known as His life, creating...and consuming in its fire whatever cannot live in faith.
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To chafe and brood
Over wounded rights
And tout my self-charged view
Is to smother His
Creating Breath
And drown
In proud confusion
The living hue
Of Grace.
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From the purging perimeter to the pervading center--the secret life in the depths of the fire.
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The slave of Grace draws near the sacred mount with free hands, clean heart... and triumph's glow.
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Over wounded rights
And tout my self-charged view
Is to smother His
Creating Breath
And drown
In proud confusion
The living hue
Of Grace.
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From the purging perimeter to the pervading center--the secret life in the depths of the fire.
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The slave of Grace draws near the sacred mount with free hands, clean heart... and triumph's glow.
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The will to wake,
The will to take
The broken steps
On,
No matter the dream or draw
Of backward glance
Or sideways glimmer.
Be it the dark you see
Clearly ahead,
Keep on, keep straight
In faith and hope,
And love the Light
In which, in Whom
You clearly see.
It is not the dark
Sees the dark,
But Light infused--
Sees, steps, pierces,
Masters in simplicity,
And knows itself there.
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The will to take
The broken steps
On,
No matter the dream or draw
Of backward glance
Or sideways glimmer.
Be it the dark you see
Clearly ahead,
Keep on, keep straight
In faith and hope,
And love the Light
In which, in Whom
You clearly see.
It is not the dark
Sees the dark,
But Light infused--
Sees, steps, pierces,
Masters in simplicity,
And knows itself there.
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Caught up into the Greater-Than-Me, forever implanted in the wheeling love-bound circle, fully part of His un-comprehended fullness.
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Praise God--He gave the Church, His Bride, a sure and gushing spring of life, the living gauge of truth and Eternity's 'oil of gladness': The Paraclete, Who curbs pernicious pride, Who chides the stale distracted heart, Who tugs the drooping spirit up again to go and grow and flame with primal joy.
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The Next Thing: 'Behold, I am making everything new'... The adamant will, aggressive light, inexorable advent of the living God are despair's unmaking for the child of God.
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From the withering, world-cobbled dominion of things into the life-stirring ebullience of Kingdom brotherhood.
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The human heart enfolded by the timeless Life will incorrigibly blossom and burst with Life's fruits and--yes!--with sweet joy trace the changeless Face displayed on Heaven's swirling sky
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No horizon, however far, evades Hope's conquered domain, Her subdued territory and transfigured vista: the exultant embrace of first and last, sons and servants, creation's lords and the Lord's creation.
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No horizon, however far, evades Hope's conquered domain, Her subdued territory and transfigured vista: the exultant embrace of first and last, sons and servants, creation's lords and the Lord's creation.
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