~ Clare of Assisi
During my early teens I was a sea scout messing about on sailing dinghies, canoes, and even a whaler learning how best to respond to life's invitation to deal with those moments when danger lurked, and my life appeared to be in peril. Perception is that awareness that during difficult periods our life invites us to grasp the opportunities appearing out of the blue, so to speak as if some one had intervened lending us a helping hand guiding us into safe waters.
What then joy when facing what appears to be an overwhelming challenge to our sense of well being, and happiness? Wise sages over the centuries tell us that when we reach out to assist those, who by apparent chance enter our orbit we are thanked by Our Father, reaching out to us when we face a dilemma challenging our capacity to cope and resolve.
“The man who comes back through the Door in the Wall will never be quite the same as the man who went out. He will be wiser but less sure, happier but less self-satisfied, humbler in acknowledging his ignorance yet better equipped to understand the relationship of words to things, of systematic reasoning to the unfathomable mystery which it tries, forever vainly, to comprehend”
~ Aldous Huxley, The Doors of Perception
After we have been rescued from a dangerous episode we begin to piece together those events leading us out of danger, into safety. That door opening a path out of our quandary just happened to appear at the right moment, sufficient for us to realise that someone was looking after our well being, even proposing that our life has a specific purpose...serving Our Father's plan.
That unfathomable mystery that we also know as God, will inevitably encourage us to become His outreach, into the lives of those who are seeking answers to those trials driving them into hightened states of anxiety.
The purpose of our church, our community of believers is to become Our Father's outreach into the lives of those He sends to us, witnessing to our faith in Him not in words alone, but through our actions evidencing our words of faith.
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.
O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive;
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
Amen.
— St. Francis of Assisi
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