I am using SacredSpace as an on-line prayer retreat tonight. It has been a long semester, and as is par for the last couple of years, I have even more thoughts running through my head… but less to say. It’s as if the older I get (don’t laugh… most of the kids I’m going to school with now were in 7th grade when I started at CSP), the older I get the more I realize nothing I have to say is important. And what’s worse, I am the type of person who wants to be important. Oh well, you can’t win them all.

So, instead, I find peace in finding meaning in God. Emmanuel. God with us.

I won’t be on my computer for a while.
Don’t worry… I wont’ be dead or anything.

I will check e-mail once a day at dydimustk@gmail.com.

Sometimes God will wake us in the night to watch with Him and see things from a new perspective. Sometimes it’s the only time He can be sure of getting our complete attention. Sometimes that is the time, the exact time, when our prayers are needed.

Maybe that’s why I haven’t been sleeping lately.

“For the earth will be filled
with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD,
as the waters cover the sea.”
- Habakkuk 2:14

Can you drown in knowlege? I’ve watched people drown in glory, but we call that pride. So what’s it like to be treading in the knowledge of the glory of the LORD? I dunno… gotta think about this one for a while.

It is good for me that I was afflicted,
That I may learn Your statues.
- Psalm 119:71

Feel the burn.

Help me to know that the secret of contentment
lies in organizing the self
in the direction of simplicity.

Unless You have another task for me,
keep me vigilant in prayer.

Yesterday in my cross-cultural outreach class, we discussed ‘routines,’ whether they are good or bad, and how they play into the Christian life. I’m personally not a big fan of routines. That’s not to say I don’t have any or that I’m not just as set in my own ways as the next guy, but I do believe that routine is juxtaposed to the Christian Life.

If I buy flowers for my wife every day (which I wish I could do), at what point does it stop being special and just become routine? Even so, what if my prayers become routine?

I don’t think ‘daily,’ or any other set repetition of time is equivalent to routine, but what is? What makes something routine? Maybe doing something for the sake of doing it. Maybe that makes something routine and maybe that’s what I want to avoid.

So, not for the sake of doing it, but for the sake of growing a deeper trust in my creator and putting myself last, here is my prayer:

Unless you have another task for me,
keep me vigilant in prayer.

“seek peace and pursue it”

- Peter

Jenny Turpish Slapped Me: Quizzes – Better Personality
You are a WECL–Wacky Emotional Constructive Leader. This makes you a people’s advocate. You are passionate about your causes, with a good heart and good endeavors. Your personal fire is contagious, and others wish they could be as dedicated to their beliefs as you are.

Your dedication may cause you to miss the boat on life’s more slight and trivial activities. You will feel no loss when skipping some inane mixer, but it can be frustrating to others to whom such things are important. While you find it difficult to see other points of view, it may be useful to act as if you do, and play along once in a while.

In any event, you have buckets of charisma and a natural skill for making people open up. Your greatest asset is an ability to make progress while keeping the peace.

I’ve started reading New Seeds of Contemplation by Thomas Merton. Very insightful and exciting book. Something I read today reminded me of the movie Hollow Man (which has a 0 degree of separation from Kevin Bacon). Merton says this:

And I wind experiences around myself and cover myself with pleasures and glory like bandages in order to make myself perceptible to myself and to the world, as if I were an invisible body that could only become visible when something visible covered its surface.

Essentially, Merton suggests that we find ourselves when we take off our masks and allow God to sanctify us and recreate us to who he intended for us to be. And no amount of trying or striving on our part can make us who we are. Therefore , the true contemplative is the one who has found God, because God found them.