Author: Laurie Gudim

“So I have been allowing myself to bring my aggrieved heart to God in age-old questioning that comes straight from the inner kid. “Where are you?” I ask.”

“I have learned that my most authentic self will never be beyond God’s protective reach.  But, then, I have a different understanding of other people than I did when I was four.  I have learned that nobody is on the wrong side; God cherishes all and longs for each.”

“Rather there’s a spiritual wakefulness that anchors us to a deeper belonging.  Having awakened I need to wake up again, from ordinary consciousness into an awareness of my union with God.  At this next level I feel the peace that passes understanding.  I am not any less passionate nor any less aware of my obligations.  But I realize that in duty and anguish I am doing what I was born to do, learning what I was created to learn.  God breathes the tainted air with me and helps me feel the greatest connection, the one that runs from God’s self through every single one of us.”

“…Christ is right here beside me, in companionable solidarity.  Whatever happens to me as an individual, to my faith community, to my country, Christ is right here.  Love accompanies me.  Love accompanies me, and for that reason my hands can be busy in the activity of love.  Christ pours through me right along with genuine love.  In fact, perhaps they are one and the same.”

“God created us each to be the person we are — with talents and passions that need to be used.  We are not what our family or culture dictates that we should be.  Instead we have a unique purpose, whispered to us from the depths of our own hearts, where Christ dwells.”

“This level of listening is, for me, the sign of Jesus’ divinity.  Only God listens so well.  He allowed the Canaanite to speak to him and he listened to what she had to say.  He allowed himself to be astounded by it and to learn — and he made the change at lightning speed.”

“O Holy tamer of waves and wind, help us discern what you long for from us.  Get us out of the boat and out on the waves.  Help us remember to reach out to you.  Lord, save us.”

“This is a spiritual transformation.  It’s a reorienting of life that places the welfare of our neighbors and of the planet as our foremost, our primary concerns,  But more than that, it’s a complete change in where we look for the meeting of our needs.  We count on God’s provision rather than our own.  We are not fed by ‘Caesar,’ we are fed by Christ.”

“I find myself taking the free moments in the midst of my activities to listen for what the Holy might be saying to me.  While I am waiting for Rosean to walk down the hall on her walker, I let my senses drift out the window, embracing a soft breeze and the songs of many birds.  When I am cooking dinner, I let my mind drift, listening for what meaningful current will carry my heart.  Christ reaches out for me in the dancing of a leaf, the flash of a blue flower, the ringing of our neighbor’s wind chimes, the memory of a favorite hymn, or the whisper of an imagined conversation.  The Holy One is always right there.”

“Parables are like onions, replete with layer upon layer of meaning.  Was Matthew wrong, or is there some other way of understanding?  Human judgment is itself the devil’s child, the strangling weed that wraps around all our good grain.  How will it happen that we slip out of either-or thinking into a new reality?  When we do that, what gets burned away?  The “end of the age” may be a time of accounting that has nothing to do with space and time in the natural world, and it may not happen for everybody at the same point and in the same way.”