Dark Veil

From a journal entry a couple years back....

Praying just now, I didn't know there was a thin, dark veil shading my mind. Then I saw all my sadness and darkness, and it was nothing but cloth, and behind the cloth shapes were moving, shapes bright and true. What the mind-veil was hiding were the truths of my soul.

Sometimes the truth gets covered. I don't realize it's there. I think the flimsy muslin is deepest darkness and reality. My moods, mistakes, momentary doubts and disappointments are not reality; there is something on the other side.

Look to all things light and bright beyond the veil.

Look for the Hook

How can I discover God's plan for me?

All I have to do is find the fishhook, those places where I am happily caught. I can ask: Where has God's love hooked me? For it is upon this glorious sharpness that I am suspended, surrendered, lifted by peace. --CJ Krug

Hooked

"Love is like a fishhook. A fisher cannot catch a fish unless the fish first picks up the hook. If the fish swallows the hook, no matter how it may squirm and turn the fisher is certain of the fish. Love is the same way. Whoever is captured by love takes up this hook in such a fashion that foot and hand, mouth and eyes, heart and all that is in a person must always belong to God. Therefore look only for this fishhook, and you will be happily caught."

--Meister Eckhart, from Meditations from Meister Eckhart

Harmony

I have a lot to say to God, or to myself about God, in my journal. But when it comes to sharing these insights, understandings and whimsies with others, I clam up. I can't talk about that. I can't blog this. Folks might disagree. Besides, I'll sound dumb.

Too embarrassed to sing along with the music I hear.

I start to wonder, if we are created to work together, to sing together, to create harmony - and I believe we are - then, what happens if some of us refuse to sing, out of shyness, awkwardness and doubt?

It makes for a pretty unbalanced choir when various singers, perhaps the whole alto section, refuse to open their mouths. Meanwhile, those tenors are belting it out, and everyone watching thinks that if you're in this particular choir, you must be a tenor. Yep. They're sure you sing those same exact notes as the other guys. And how will they know different, if you don't add a squeak of your own music?

Harmony isn't about singing the same notes, but striking a chord that blends and beautifies. If I'm silent, or pretending to be a tenor when I'm not, or standing in a corner complaining and critizing, I am not doing my part to contribute to faith on the planet.

In all the ways we can, we need to be singing.