What is this joy which we feel in order and design? Isn’t it the same kind of pleasure we experience in the rhythm (which is the predictability) of music, the pattern of an Oriental rug, the measured movements of a dance, the unimprovable form of any true work of art? Our joy is in the very discipline of the thing. The discipline doesn’t stifle, it gives power, it makes beauty possible. Why shouldn’t it be so when we consider the glorious hierarchical order too? Each being plays its part in the music, in the pattern, in the dance, and in playing it in accord with the Creator’s instructions finds its fullest joy.
From The Book - Let Me Be a Women
From The Book - Let Me Be a Women
I learned that when achievement has come because of our helplessness linked to God’s power, it has a rightness about it that no amount of self inspired striving can have. Furthermore, when achievement comes this way, it does not bear in it the seeds of increasing egocentricity that success sometimes brings. Because we know that ideas and the ability to implement them flowed in to us from somewhere beyond ourselves, we can be objective about our good fortune. We know, too, that if, in the future, the connection with the source of creativity is broken, there will not be success the next time.
Helplessness is a terrifying thing to most of us. We resist it, deny it, and when we are finally face to face with it, a few of us find that we are unable to endure it.
Helplessness is actually one of the greatest assets a human being can have. Since God does exist, then the cult of self-sufficiency is mistaken-tragically so in some instances, misleading in all.
Nor should anyone say, 'I am cleaver enough to overcome all the difficulties of my crises. I can bring myself through all their changes.' Such statements reflect egocentric thinking... He who relies upon his own small private consciousness must fail, for the source of creativity is not the individual but the God who manifests Himself in us of which the self is part...
Crisis brings us face to face with our inadequacy and our inadequacy in turn leads us to the inexhaustible sufficiency of God. This is the power of helplessness.
From the book- Beyond Our Selves by Catherine Marshall
Helplessness is a terrifying thing to most of us. We resist it, deny it, and when we are finally face to face with it, a few of us find that we are unable to endure it.
Helplessness is actually one of the greatest assets a human being can have. Since God does exist, then the cult of self-sufficiency is mistaken-tragically so in some instances, misleading in all.
Nor should anyone say, 'I am cleaver enough to overcome all the difficulties of my crises. I can bring myself through all their changes.' Such statements reflect egocentric thinking... He who relies upon his own small private consciousness must fail, for the source of creativity is not the individual but the God who manifests Himself in us of which the self is part...
Crisis brings us face to face with our inadequacy and our inadequacy in turn leads us to the inexhaustible sufficiency of God. This is the power of helplessness.
From the book- Beyond Our Selves by Catherine Marshall