Tabitha

Hans Boersma writes that radically open communion invites the devil to the Table, but we with our own hubris are enough to cause problems. After all, wasn’t it pride that led Lucifer to fall from Heaven in the first place?

“I don’t believe in proofs of God. Proofs are human things based in the logic of materiality. But it seems to me what we know as beauty must be the expression of God’s very nature. Unlike the arts we make, which are always open to interpretation, this sort of loveliness is purified of anything like thought. It is what it is—and isn’t that the name

I reminded him of a story from an ancient Chinese Zen master, of the Buddha coming upon some people who had just been robbed while picnicking. They were racing around, enraged, asking him to help them. But Buddha asks, “Who would you rather find, the burglars or yourself?”

Tim nodded, and then said, “The burglars.”

“Same.”

— Anne Lamott, Somehow

“The world is suited to human enjoyment—”out of the ground made the LORD God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sign”—in anticipation of human pleasure, which the Lord presumably shares. This is an extremely elegant detail. The beauty of the trees is noted before the fact that they yield food. It is a rich goodness that the Lord intended