First, a quote from Henri Nouwen I found this week, and then a word that someone gave at the last Prayer Summit. I just came accross it and it really spoke to me.
"You have to incorporate your pain into yourself and let it bear fruit in your heart and the hearts of others...taking up your cross means first of all befriending your wounds and letting them reveal to you your own truth." (Nouwen)
"Whom will I send?
The word still stands.
They are a ‘holy seed’ that grows up from the stump of yesterday,
Cleansed lives, lives the world walks past,
Warriors in disguises of inadequacy,
Changed lives that are the living rungs of a ladder.
Not the ladder of success or riches
But the ladder of obedience and justice.
Whom will I send?
They are a ‘holy seed’,
Seeds that shoot up in front of the dignitaries noses,
Seeds that speak words of truth, love and acceptance,
To the hardened monuments of self-righteous ‘churchiness’.
Who will go?
In quiet confidence, they breathe life words into the ‘God-club’.
Within a context of belonging, they lay out their rough tablecloths in parks of pain-filled people,
Grouping together round tuneless pianos, they teach the voiceless to sing again.
Weeping in quiet repentance, they lay down their invisible lives,
and invite the visible organisation to immerse itself again in the crimson flood.
Together we watch that holiness infusion take place."
