i think we would have been friends...

warning: this is a bit random tonight...i'm going to blame the heat! :-)

maybe i'm the only one who does this, but have you ever started reading a book, and immediately, whether because of the author's tone or style, or maybe something completely undefined, you start to feel like like you have something in common with the him or her...like, if you lived next door to each other, you would have been friends?

when i read G.K. Chesterton's books, that is how i feel. there's something about the way he writes, i can't help but think that we would have enjoyed may cups of coffee while discussing books and life in general together. i just picked up 'orthodoxy' again tonight, and as i wasn't very far, i started back at the beginning again. as i read, i found this:

"how can we contrive to be at once astonished at the world and yet at home in it? how can this queer cosmic town, with its many-legged citizens, with its monstrous and ancient lamps, how can this world give us at once the fascination of a strange town and the comfort and honor of being our own town?"

when you hold these up to Peter's words, "Dear friends, I urge you, as aliens and strangers in world, to abstain from sinful desires, which war against your soul," (1 Peter 2:11), it's easy to understand how so many people who love God can get caught up in temporal thinking. this world is all we've ever known. It's all we've ever seen. it is far too easy to forget that there is another world coming.

i am always amazed when i meet someone who has never been out of canada. it amazes me that someone could be satisfied living a life without seeing the rest of the world we live in. like being given a whole yard to play in and only staying in one corner. i realize that for some people, it's just being content where they are, and perhaps i am too much like my father, in that i am always wanting to go somewhere...anywhere! but it seems impossible to me that there will ever be a day when there is no where in the world where i will want to go (even if it is simply calgary to see my little people!)

but how does one remember that this world, although all we can see with our eyes, is only a fragment of our existence? that is my question for tonight. and for tonight, my only answer is that i have to do it on a minute by minute basis. for this moment, i choose to remember that there is more than i can see. for this moment i will choose to listen to God's heart instead of the other clamoring voices. for this moment... may my heart's desires always mirror those of my God.

Favorite words...

It's been a while since I've done a Favorites Fridays post, but this week, when I read this poem, I knew that it was time for another one.

I've made no secret that Rainer Maria Rilke is my favorite poet. The more of his writing-both poetry and letters- I read, the more I love them. The first time I walked into the Rodin garden in Paris, France and saw his name on the plaque on the museum wall, it was like running into a friend in a place where never would have expected to find one.

Like G.K. Chesterton, I feel like Rainer and I would have been friends, had history and geography been kinder.

This poem is from 'A Year with Rilke: Daily Readings from the Best of Rainer Maria Rilke', one that I am reading this year. I could gush and tell you how wonderful it is...but I think that is what this whole post is anyway!

Here is the poem...

A hunger drives us.
We want to contain it all in our naked hands,
our brimming senses, our speechless hearts.
We want to become it, or offer it—but to whom?
We could hold it forever—but, after all,
what can we keep? Not the beholding,
so slow to learn. Not anything that has happened here.
Nothing. There are the hurts. And, always, the hardships.
And there's the long knowing of love—all of it
unsayable. Later, amidst the stars, we will see:
these are better unsaid.

—Rainer Maria Rilke, from the Ninth Duino Elegy