Oh sorry, just saw that I didn’t publish the blog post yesterday. Too much going on then I guess with me caught in the big city with no money. But things resolved themselves well. Somehow I got some financial aid out of the deal from the hospital and American Cancer Society, like help with parking and ferry expenses and a super market gift card. Just what I need for my weight gain program. So bad turns into good.
We had Bible Guys this morning and we are working on the first book of the whole shebang, Genesis. Reading the Old Testament or the Hebrew Bible is not something that we do mostly, or well really but there is a lot there that yields itself with some digging and figuring. The newest member of our group has some real experience in Holy Land archeological so digging seems appropriate as he lead the group today.
So this is all BC, this reading that we are doing but it can be read as history plus more because it to the believers eyes is loaded with hints and foreshadowing about things far in the future as in AD. It is one continuous story. So, we dig and figure.
All this talk about my Bible class is really a lead up to showing you a paragraph from a book I have been reading in conjunction with this study of Genesis and the early Israelites and their relationship with God. The book is entitled The Compact Guide To The Whole Bible with the keyword being whole. It points out the continuous story through the Ages as it goes through the whole Bible.
Anyway, there is a paragraph that jumped out at me the other day and I had to search back a dozen pages to find it and look at it again. It reminds me of something that the blog deals with more than a little. I am not sure I can put it in a few words but with things Camino mundane things and happenings have a way of turning sacred on us as we walk, as we live. We have talked about it.
”…God has no trouble working with and through broken and flawed Israelites. This capacity on God’s part may be viewed as sacramental. That is, God has the ability to transform human activity into divine activity, to make the ordinary extraordinary, and to make the mundane sacred.” Frank Anthony Spina.
This touches on us, we the broken and flawed pilgrims in our wanderings. Our walking in the mud is more than that. Yes?
Love, Felipe.
Hi Phil,
This was wonderful. I love how God can take our brokenness and turn it into something good and for His glory. Thanks for sharing.
Terri
California
Terri ~ how are you? I do miss my Marauders. God works with us where we are if we give Him a chance. Hello to everyone, Felipe.x
Hola Felipe,
Reading this paragraph you posted, I thought of something I read this morning, even before getting off from bed. Yesterday, I downloaded the album “The Goat Rodeo Sessions”, done by a quartet of strings with Yo Yo Ma, Chris Thile, Edgar Meyer and Stuart Duncan. (Did I ever mention that I LOVE Yo Yo Ma? If not, here is a declaration of LOVE that can go public!!!! Also, I LOVE the cello, I would have loved to be a cello player…)
Going to the point, before I am lost in the butterflies in my belly for this LOVE-CRUSH, the downloaded CD has an extra video of the make-off, where Edgar Meyer says that Stuart Duncan cannot read music, so he plays the fiddle (or mandolin too) after he listens the music first from the other musicians. In the video, you can see him with a piece of paper, with 2 lines of encrypted writing, for a 7 minutes song. Next to him, it is Yo Yo Ma, with a full cannot-be-tidiest score in front of him. Today, I was reading about this situation, I googled “how does Stuart Duncan play without reading music?” and I landed in a blog where the writer was expressing how espectacular it was this performance put together by these 4 musicians, so gifted each of them, but somehow so different too. And the writer went on saying that focused on the “disability” or “flaw” of Stuart Duncan, who tried to learn how to read music but never could, this espectacular music would have never come up, and Stuart Duncan would have never become the player he is (he would have been condemned by his “flaw”) and we would all have lost the chance to listen to what he is able to “pull out of a violin”.
I guess, what we do with our flaws and despite of them, and what we allow the others to do with their flaws and despite of them is where the grace resides. But obviously, we learn this as we go, and cannot be learned if we are not generous, and if we are not attentive and encouraging of the others, and if we don’t love us too despite all. I think I read that somewhere… 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂
Encouraging Love,
Flawed Cris
Cris ~ maybe you could send me the link to this music. I listened to it on FB but as of yet I don’t know how to make a link of something like that. So please and then I could put it up on the blog.
Yes, and I understand your point. Sometimes a flaw needs to be looked at in a new way. And then we can work with it and it may ultimately teach us something important. But all that takes attention and patience which we need to practice also. Felipe.x