Tuesday, August 27, 2024
Memorial of Saint Monica (Mother of St. Augustine)
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Echoes in the East Frio Canyon
The Lord is king. He has made the world firm, not to be moved. Let the heavens be glad and the earth rejoice.
Driving south on US 83 toward Leakey, Texas, I see a small sign.
Laity Lodge. Beside the words an arrow, pointing down.
Turn in, and then you follow a winding dirt, gravel, and sand road a few miles down into the East Frio River Canyon, to the Lodge, to the Youth Camp and Family Camp, to The Quiet House. For decades the HEB family has built up this camp, much of which is reserved for kids who can’t afford camp otherwise.
In Echoes, the HEB Foundation’s quarterly magazine, stories of some of those campers accompany articles about communication, generosity and gratitude. Following an article about Austin’s Church Under the Bridge ministry to homeless men and women, the recent issue shared some of the favorite “Words to Live By” solicited from readers and campers. I was caught up in the beauty and truth of these words:
The place God calls you is the place where your deepest gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet. – Frederick Buechner
When it’s over, I want to say, “All my life I was a bride married to amazement. I was the bridegroom taking the world into my arms. – Mary Oliver
Let your light shine so brightly that others will want to know its source. – Madeline L’Engle
Do what you can with what you have. – Teddy Roosevelt
Tell all the truth, but tell it slant. The Truth must dazzle gradually or every man be blind.
A tall building arises from a mound of earth. A journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step. – Lau Tzu
Being heard is so close to being loved that for the average person, they are indistinguishable. – David Augsberger
Become the change you want to see in the world. – Mahatma Gandhi
We share the sky, all of us, the whole world: Together, we are a tribe of eyes that look upward, even as we stand on uneven ground. – Alberto Rios
Do you remember the Peace Prayer of Saint Francis?
O divine Master,
Grant that I may not so much
Seek to be consoled as to console;
To be understood as to understand;
To be loved as to love;
For it is in giving that we receive;
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned; and
It is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
Whether written by St. Francis in the 13th century or (see Franciscan historian Murray Bodo’s research on this) by a retiring French monk in the 20th, the prayer calls me to pass on the consolation, understanding, love, and pardon that comes only from God to all the others around me.
Against such things there is no law.
May our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father, who has loved us and given us everlasting encouragement and good hope through his grace, encourage your hearts and strengthen them in every good word and deed.
(2 Thessalonians 2, Psalm 96, Hebrews 4, Matthew 23)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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