May 31, 2021

REAL  PRESENCE

 

Real Presence: this is a real person here.

 

Which is easier to believe and accept? 

The real presence of Jesus here

in this bread and this wine or in this person –

body and blood – standing next to me?

 

Why do we concentrate on Jesus

in gold cups and behind tabernacle doors?

Why do we keep people locked up in words

and labels and our descriptions about them?

 

Real Presence: why can’t we be really present to each other?

 

© Andy Costello, Reflections 2021

 May 31, 2021

Thought for today: 

“No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion.  People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.”

 

Nelson Mandela

 

 May 30,  2021

 

THE  IMPOSSIBLE 

Step back. Hesitate!

Pause. Be quiet!

Sometimes people
have made up their mind
about you or one of life’s
automatics and you don’t
know that: like God or Grace.
Guess what: they might be wrong
and “Pssssst!  They don’t know that yet.”

 

 © Andy Costello, Reflections 2021

May  30,  2021

 

Thought for the Day

 

“Were it possible for us to see further than our knowledge reaches, and yet a little way beyond the outworks of our divinings, perhaps we would endure our sadnesses with greater confidence than our joys. For they are the moments when something new has entered into us, something unknown; our feelings grow mute in shy perplexity, everything in us withdraws, a stillness comes, and the new, which no one knows, stands in the midst of it and is silent.”

 

 

Rainer  Maria  Rilke,

Letters to a Young Poet

May  29,  2021

 

Thought for the Day

 “Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear - not absence of fear. Except a creature be part coward it is not a compliment to say it is brave; it is merely a loose misapplication of the word. Consider the flea! - Incomparably the bravest of all the creatures of God, if ignorance of fear were courage. Whether you are asleep or awake he will attack you, caring nothing for the fact that in bulk and strength you are to him as are the massed armies of the earth to a sucking child; he lives both day and night and all days and nights in the very lap of peril and the immediate presence of death, and yet is no more afraid than is the man who walks the streets of a city that was threatened by an earthquake ten centuries before. When we speak of Clive, Nelson, and Putnam as men who "didn't know what fear was," we ought always to add the flea -and put him at the head of the procession.”

 

Mark Twain

 May 29,  2021

 

COULD  I  DO  IT?

 

Could I do it?
Could I lay down my life for my friends?
Could I have the courage to volunteer – 
when it would probably mean death –
and never returning?
Could I face my fears –
for the benefit of those in the future?
Could I do it?

Could I?

 

 

© Andy Costello, Reflections 2021

May 28,  2021

HOME  SCHOOLING

 

An emperor had three daughters.
 
Like most fathers he wanted them
to have the best education possible.
 
He sent his oldest daughter to
the best schools in his kingdom.
 
He sent his second daughter
to the wisest teachers in the land.
 
The third daughter was not given
any special education. Just live.
 
His oldest – secretly his favorite -
got three Ph. D’s – in 3 different fields.
 
His second sat and listened to
the wisdom  of the masters.
 
The third was told by an old maid.
Go and watch everyone and everything.
 
Who got the best education?
Who became the wisest?
 
Some think it was daughter # 1 -
the one with the three Ph.D’s.
 
Others thought it was # 2 – the one
who got to know the wisdom of the ages.
 
But most found out it was # 3.
She knew the currents of the rivers.
 
She knew the greed, the betrayals,
in the marketplace and in marriages.
 
She learned the echoes of the heart
and the gift of giving time and love to others.
 
Go and watch them – their parents –
and their maids – and you’ll know the answer.

 

 © Andy Costello, Reflections 2021