aiming to avoid clanging

Thinking about love today, as everyone else is I suppose, but have been frequently of late. It seems important, even without a higher knowledge of its essence. I find it is everywhere - cinema, books, music. I find it is inescapable. C.S. Lewis classifies four loves, I started this earlier. Still haven't finished his thoughts. I was interrupted with Elisabeth Elliot's Passion and Purity. Interesting read. I am swimming in thoughts not quite congealed on what she said. Most of what I took away had nothing to do with romance. Today I heard that hearts are failing. What does this relate of our ideas of love? I suppose we have missed all if our aim is morality.

"If I speak in the tongues of mortals with human eloquence and of angels with angelic ecstasy, but don't have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions to the poor, and if I hand over my body to the stake to be burned as a martyr so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing, have gotten nowhere. No matter what I say, what I believe, what I do, I'm bankrupt without love.
Love is patient - never gives up; love is kind - cares more for others than for self; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but takes pleasure in the flowering of truth. It bears all things, putting up with anything, trusts God always, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.
We don't yet see things clearly. We're squinting in a fog, peering through a mist. But it won't be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright! We'll see it all then, see it all as clearly as God sees us, knowing him directly just as he knows us!
But for now, until that completeness, we have three things to do to lead us toward that consummation: Trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly, love extravagantly. And the best of the three is love."


Dallas saw the most beautiful sunrise I have known in ages this morning.

a path to writings not my own

I took a trail that lead past rocks and water, and had the feel of nature but was most certainly enclosed by fence and planned. Walking along, I climbed stone steps and reclined to re-begin a book I had picked up some years ago. The author spoke of nearness to God. It seemed familiar, closer than just a glance of a read from the distant past. The nearness-by-likeness seemed like an echo of something I had heard from a friend. And then I remembered her story - It’s still one of the most beautiful things I have ever read. In reference to the Introduction of C.S. Lewis’ “The Four Loves” - he speaks to things I have felt were beautiful but never knew why. “Read it. I know you’ll love it.”