Saturday, June 03, 2006
Mr. Toad´s Wild Ride (November, 2005)
Reflections from November Journeys:
The week following my visits to Zumbi and Gil Branco brought an unexpected visit to yet another community. Brother Rodrigo was not doing well health wise and asked me to go to the town of Monte Carmelo to deliver money to a group of small land owners from the community of Atalio participating in a micro credit project. I left via bus and delivered the money to Patrick, who was already there visiting and who would distribute the money to its recipients. It was a good experience for me to get a better understanding of how micro credit works. It was also great meeting the friends Patrick had made when he worked with the community during his time in Brasil. It was this trip that I wrote of in my email, describing the muddy roads and the tiny car we rode in swerving back and forth, barely avoiding the huge puddles and wire fences-and me not avoiding the bug that flew into my mouth, finding its way down my throat, making me feel quite the toad :).
November 2005 Reflections while riding the Bus
The following is an entry I felt fitting for what I have been feeling ever more intensely each day. During my trip to the land settlements and communities, I was reading Karl Rahner´s Encounters with Silence and hearing clearly the Truth it expresses.
“God comes to us continually, both directly and indirectly. He demands of us both work and pleasure, and wills that each should not be hindered, but rather strengthened, by the other. Thus the interior man possesses his life in both these ways, in activity and in rest. And he is whole and undivided in each of them, for he is entirely in God when he joyfully rests, and he is entirely in himself when he actively loves.
The interior man is constantly being challenged and admonished by God to renew both his rest and his work. Thus he finds justice; thus he makes his way to God with sincere love and everlasting works. He enters into God by means of the pleasure-giving tendency to eternal rest. And while he abides in God, still he goes out to all creatures in an all-embracing love, in virtue and justice. And that is the highest stage of the interior life.
Those who do not possess both rest and work in one and the same exercise have not yet attained this kind of justice. No just man can be hindered in his interior recollection, for he recollects himself as much in pleasure as in activity. He is like a double mirror, reflecting images on both sides. In the higher part of his spirit he receives God together with all His gifts; in the lower he takes in corporal images through his senses…”
-Ruysbroeck; Taken from Karl Rahner´s Encounters with Silence (50-1)
“O God…Only through You can I continue to be myself with You, when I go out of myself to be with the things of the world.”
-Karl Rahner (ibid)
The week following my visits to Zumbi and Gil Branco brought an unexpected visit to yet another community. Brother Rodrigo was not doing well health wise and asked me to go to the town of Monte Carmelo to deliver money to a group of small land owners from the community of Atalio participating in a micro credit project. I left via bus and delivered the money to Patrick, who was already there visiting and who would distribute the money to its recipients. It was a good experience for me to get a better understanding of how micro credit works. It was also great meeting the friends Patrick had made when he worked with the community during his time in Brasil. It was this trip that I wrote of in my email, describing the muddy roads and the tiny car we rode in swerving back and forth, barely avoiding the huge puddles and wire fences-and me not avoiding the bug that flew into my mouth, finding its way down my throat, making me feel quite the toad :).
November 2005 Reflections while riding the Bus
The following is an entry I felt fitting for what I have been feeling ever more intensely each day. During my trip to the land settlements and communities, I was reading Karl Rahner´s Encounters with Silence and hearing clearly the Truth it expresses.
“God comes to us continually, both directly and indirectly. He demands of us both work and pleasure, and wills that each should not be hindered, but rather strengthened, by the other. Thus the interior man possesses his life in both these ways, in activity and in rest. And he is whole and undivided in each of them, for he is entirely in God when he joyfully rests, and he is entirely in himself when he actively loves.
The interior man is constantly being challenged and admonished by God to renew both his rest and his work. Thus he finds justice; thus he makes his way to God with sincere love and everlasting works. He enters into God by means of the pleasure-giving tendency to eternal rest. And while he abides in God, still he goes out to all creatures in an all-embracing love, in virtue and justice. And that is the highest stage of the interior life.
Those who do not possess both rest and work in one and the same exercise have not yet attained this kind of justice. No just man can be hindered in his interior recollection, for he recollects himself as much in pleasure as in activity. He is like a double mirror, reflecting images on both sides. In the higher part of his spirit he receives God together with all His gifts; in the lower he takes in corporal images through his senses…”
-Ruysbroeck; Taken from Karl Rahner´s Encounters with Silence (50-1)
“O God…Only through You can I continue to be myself with You, when I go out of myself to be with the things of the world.”
-Karl Rahner (ibid)
# posted by Rhegan Hyypio @ 2:05 PM 
