Newly added

GOODBYE

This is the final post for Value of Sparrows. Thank you for all your warmth, support, and enthusiasm. With all my love, [...]

Prayers

  • Third Friday Of Advent by Mitch Finley
    From Season of Promises If we are not humble, we tend to demand that faith must also bring with it good health, peace of mind, good luck, success in business, popularity, world peace, and every other good thing we can imagine.  And it is true that [...]

My writing

  • Creation—The Devil Is In the Details
    There is a parallel saying to the title of this essay: God is in the details. When God is in the details then he will be revealed through your attention to detail.  Your sacred devotion to your work will return great rewards. But when the devil is in the details, your lack of attention to the work in front of you will result in mistakes, and you will be disappointed in your effort. I’m not using that phrase in the usual way. Instead I’m going on my own path with those words. [...]

Poetry

Thomas Merton poetry

  • The Transformation—For The Sacred Heart by Thomas Merton
    Heart, in the ardor of Whose holy day The June is blazing on our world of fruit and wheat, Smile on our lives, and sanctify them with a new love’s vintage And with Your fires vivify our veins. Lo, the whole humble earth Bows and is broken with Your loads of bounty, and the trees Fail and give way as we besiege them with a score of ladders. We have no time to turn and hear the tiger-lilies all along the field, Whose outcry warns the world [...]

Evelyn Underhill

  • ADVENT WITH EVELYN UNDERHILL: Humility
    From The Fruits of the Spirit Humility and moderation at the heart of our prayer quiet the soul and protect us against the spiritual itch.  It sometimes comes into my head, says De Caussade, to wonder whether I have ever properly confessed my sins, whether God has ever forgiven me my sins, whether I am in a good or bad spiritual state.  What progress have I made in prayer or in the interior life?  When this happens I say to myself at once, God has chosen to hide all this from me, so that [...]

Mysticism

  • No Picture
    From The Sun At Midnight: Monastic Experience of the Christian Mystery The “mystery” we are talking about is not a synonym for an enigma or a problem, as in a “mystery story.”  Mystery is incomprehensible, but not unintelligible.  If it were unintelligible, it would be absurd.  Mystery refers to the deepest dimension of reality, to the final nucleus that gives meaning to everything that exits.  This is why each and every human being is a mystery and has been created for living this [...]

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