Being a Good Host/other happenings

You may recall from some recent postings here that I was talking about the Reaching Out book and mentioning that people are guests and we need to create a free safe space for them in our lives and homes. Now we talk about how to become a good host:

"Once we become poor, we can be a good host." If you are poor you don't own anything so everything is for everyone else and you have nothing to lose. It is hard for them to hurt you when you don't cling to anything and you are willing to give all. Remember in Matthew "Blessed are the poor in spirit"-they are the humble.

"Poverty is the inner disposition that allows us to take away our defenses and convert our enemies into friends. We only perceive the stranger as an enemy as long as we have something to defend." It is hard to think we don't own all this stuff and even the people around us, but the truth is, we don't. God says all the silver and gold are mine! Everything is God's, including the people and children in our lives.

"Turning the other cheek means showing our enemies that they can only be our enemies while supposing that we are anxiously clinging to our private property, whatever it is: our knowledge, our good name, our land, our money or the many objects we have collected around us. But who will be our robber when everything he wants to steal from us becomes our gift to him?...Who wants to sneak in our back door when our front door is wide open?"

"Poverty of the mind as a spiritual attitude is a growing willingness to recognize the incomprehensibility of the mystery of life. ...a learned ignorance...an education not to master God but to be mastered by God."

"Have less to say and much more to listen to....people whose 'not-knowing' makes them free to listen to the voice of God in the words of the peo0ple, in the events of the day and in the books containing the life experience of men and women from other places and other times....with great attention...the continual refusal to identify God with any concept, theory, document or event, thus preventing man or woman from becoming a fanatic sectarian or enthusiast, while allowing for an ongoing growth in gentleness and receptivity."

"God...cannot be defined by any specific feeling or emotion....avoid adapting God to our small concepts...and our small feelings...poverty of the heart creates community since it is not in self sufficiendy but in a creative interdependedncy that the mystery of life unfolds itself to us."

"Training for service...not a training to become rich but to become voluntarily poor; not to fill ourselves but to empty ourselves, not to conquer God but to surrender to his saving power. ..hard to accept in our world which tells us about the importance of power and influence....we should like Paul, boast in our weakness."

Stay tuned in future for Henri Nouwen's thought on prayer.
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New Ariannaism: We were hiking yesterday in the Shenandoah's/Appalachian trail (yes we were all off and all free and actually had an entire family day!!!!!!!!) when we passed by some growths on a tree. Elizabeth thought they look like ice cream. She asked what they were. I replied that I thought they were fungus. I also said they were kind of funky. So Arianna says, "Well they are funkus!"

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Haggai talks about the people dwelling in nice houses while the Lord's house just sat in ruins, unfinished. The point: Do we care about our own stuff and kingdom or God's? How much time am I spending on my cares, worries, and stuff instead of God and His "stuff"? Then I remember, oh yeah, God, and give him "blemished sacrifices", easy things for me to do so I can "get Him off my back" so to speak. So I harvest but God blows it away, I drink but am thirsty. God wants my (and your) attention. He comes up with some interesting and difficult ways to get it. In Haggai I thought it was interesting that they were having a drought and their land was only producing half of what it should. Sound like our area? Hope you are convicted. I was! Read Haggai-only 2 jam packed chapters.

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School is almost half way over. I have settled in and am doing well. It is a lot to think about and learn and I wonder how God is going to use me and all this learning.