A Quote by Duke Ellington
Yet, every time God's children have thrown away fear in pursuit of honesty-trying to communicate themselves, understood or not, miracles have happened.
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How can anyone expect to be understood unless he presents his thoughts with complete honesty? This situation is unfair because it asks too much of the world. In effect, we say, ' I don't dare show you what I am because I don't trust you for a minute but please love me anyway because I so need you to. And, of course, if you don't love me anyway, you're a dirty dog, just as I suspected, so I was right in the first place.' Yet, every time God's children have thrown away fear in pursuit of honesty-trying to communicate themselves, understood or not, miracles have happened.
Some persons can give themselves away to an ambitious pursuit and have that be all the giving-themselves-away-to-something they need to do. Though sometimes this changes as the players get older and the pursuit more stress-fraught. American experience seems to suggest that people are virtually unlimited in their need to give themselves away, on various levels. Some just prefer to do it in secret.
The pursuit of God is not a part-time, weekend exercise. If it is, chances are you will experience a part-time, weekend freedom. Abiding requires a kind of staying power. The pursuit is relentless. It hungers and thirsts. It pants as the deer after the mountain brook. It takes the kingdom by storm...The pursuit of God is a pursuit of passion. Indifference will not do. To abide in the Word is to hang on tenaciously. A weak grip will soon slip away. Discipleship requires staying power. We sign up for duration. We do not graduate until heaven.
We need saints; we need this head - this talking head - to communicate. Every single religion you have people that go in-between, that can talk to god or communicate ideas. Then there are the talking heads in the news every time we watch TV. No matter how complex, you still need a person there to tell you what happened: a storyteller of sorts. I find that fascinating that we feel so attached to this primitive mode of connection, this primitive interface to the world.
Miracles are signs, and like all signs, they are never about themselves; they're about whatever they are pointing toward. Miracles point to something beyond themselves. But to what? To God himself. That's the point of miracles - to point us beyond our world to another world.
I think my biggest fear is trying to communicate in Spanish with someone I don't know and them laughing at me or thinking it's awful, but for the most part, people I've encountered just see that I'm trying, and they're helpful. It's helpful to me to communicate with people.
Few men who have liberated themselves from the fear of God and the fear of death are yet able to liberate themselves from the fear of man.
It's late at night and I can't sleep.
Missing you just runs too deep.
Oh I can't breathe, thinking of your smile.
Every kiss I can't forget, this aching heart ain't broken yet.
Oh God I wish I could make you see
Cause I know this flame isn't dying
So nothing can stop me from trying
Baby you know that
Maybe it's time for miracles
Cause I ain't giving up on love
You know that maybe it's time for miracles
Cause I ain't giving up on love
No I ain't giving up on us
It is important to communicate to children about what we are going through. We often speak in half truths. We don't frame the truth or explain our experience in terms they can understand. We need to take time to do this. What has to happen is that more people have to get involved with more children. Focus energy on the child. Children are raising themselves these days in all sorts of strange ways.
Indeed, children thrown together in a community that doesn't have a language of its own will invent one in order to communicate with each other.
If you just communicate, you can get by. But if you communicate skillfully, you can work miracles.
Unfortunately, what is thrown away is not only food and dispensable objects, but often human beings themselves, who are discarded as 'unnecessary.' For example, it is frightful even to think there are children, victims of abortion, who will never see the light of day; children being used as soldiers, abused and killed in armed conflicts; and children being bought and sold in that terrible form of modern slavery which is human trafficking, which is a crime against humanity.
I'm always drawn to stories about characters who are somewhat isolated inside themselves by their inability to communicate in some way. That's what interested me about 'Children of a Lesser God.'
We have an epidemic of gun violence in America, and in trying to understand how that has happened, part of what we need to do is help equip our children to respond not with fear but with kindness. This has to be the way we go forward.
I'm not sure I'm trying to communicate a message. I'm just trying to be part of the movement away from the unacceptable present.
Miracles are supposed to point us to Him, but we can get to God without miracles. It is God himself we should long for rather than for the miracles that point to him. To get caught up in wanting miracles is a bit like thinking the destination of a road trip is the highway you're supposed to take.
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