I know I keep posting Richard Rohr quotes, but that's partly because they're so damn good and also partly because I've psyched myself out after posting that poem.
It's kind of like singing this incredible song that sums up your entire life and then you realize that the audience isn't going anywhere and you're still standing in front of the microphone... and it's getting kind of awkward, because... you just said all you had to say for probably the next decade or so.
But hey! Enough about me- here's a Richard Rohr quote:
"I believe that faith might be precisely an ability to trust the river, to trust the Flow and the Lover. It is a process that we don't have to change, coerce, or improve, and is revealed in the notion of God as a Trinitarian relationship that "flows" unguarded! We only need to allow the Flow to flow- and through us. That takes immense confidence in God's goodness, especially when we're hurting. Usually, I can feel myself get panicky. I want to make things right, quickly. I lose my ability to be present, and I go up in my head and start obsessing. I am by nature goal-oriented, as many of us are, trying to push or even create the river- the river that is already flowing through me, with me and in me (John 7:38-39).
"The people who know God well- the mystics, the hermits, the prayerful people, those who risk everything to find God- always meet a lover, not a dictator. God is never found to be an abusive father or a manipulative mother, but a lover who is more than we dared hope for."
-River of Love, Adapted from Everything Belongs: The Gift of Contemplative Prayer, pp. 142-143, 131
Yes.
What he said.
In other news, the video camera has arrived and we are trying to take what they call "short shots."
Short shots are anything that makes Keith and I look like attractive, fit, laughing, loving, spectacular prospective parents.
Picture golden sunny afternoons, an ice cream truck, happy children running around, me in lovely clothes that are just fashionable enough, standing in the kitchen or pushing a child on a swing, and Keith looking playful, like he's about to chase a small child around on the grass while pretending to be a bear.
At least he's got his part down. Me, I had to go shopping so I could look the part. I bought some tunic tops.
The pamphlet people complained that we were wearing the same shirts too often, thinking we had taken a bunch of pictures all and once, and, yes- that is true. We did do that.
What they didn't know is that I really only had the same few shirts. I didn't realize that an up to date and varied warddrobe was necessary to prove my readiness to parent.
But whatever it takes.
Now I have to go and tidy up the set, or as we like to call it around here- jokingly, of course- "our home."
