Fact and Illusion
Saturday, April 11, 2020 at 10:01AM
Robert Gallagher

Fact and Illusion: Holy Saturday in a time of plague 

In Reaching Out, Henri Nouwen writes of the movement from illusion to prayer. It’s a movement from the illusions of control, quick healing, of making idols of our dreams and longings, and from a life of the trivial and sentimental toward a life that longs for reality, an acceptance and patience with all the complexities and uncertainness of life. It is a movement from illusion to prayer, from illusion to reality.

For Charles Williams the redeemed life of the City lies in affirming the good in all facts even when we cannot see the presence of the good. Love takes pleasure in fact; evil is the choosing of illusion. Repentance is "a passionate intention to know all things after the mode of heaven . . . to find right knowledge and perfect freedom together; to know all things as occasions of love.”  Facts are holy. 

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Postings on the inner life and the virus

You know, and they know, that they are offering their lives      

Intercessions and the virus  

Solitude

The mystery of the cross

Solitude in Surrey 

We'll meet again

Fact and Illusion 

God's not indifferent to our pain 

Endures all things

Becoming an Associate of a Religious Order

People Touch

Spiritual vitality and authenticity 

The path of servanthood

Down into the mess

Missing the Eucharist 

In you we live

Faith to perceive

Faith to perceive: In your great compassion  

Turn everything that happens to account

We no longer know what to do

 

Postings on Parish Development during the Virus

Power from the center pervades the whole 

To everything there is a season 

Faith to perceive: Remaining inseparable

 

Article originally appeared on Congregational Development (http://www.congregationaldevelopment.com/).
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