Friday, August 26, 2016

Make my heart Your home. - Cameron Hood and 4Tucson


Set a watch before my mouth, O LORD, and guard the door of my lips; let not my heart incline to any evil thing. Let me not be occupied in wickedness with evildoers, nor eat of their choice foods. Let the righteous smite me in friendly rebuke; let not the oil of the unrighteous anoint my head. Psalm 141:3–5

Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O LORD, my strength and my redeemer. Psalm 19:14

Jesus taught us, saying: ‘You are the light of the world. Matthew 5:14

I invite you to offer a simple, full-hearted “Yes” to the moment as it is, into the whole field, the full horizon of God and future. Choose every now in its wholeness. Whenever you choose or allow or surrender to the now, you can hold it in its entirety—the good and bad, the satisfying and unsatisfying, both what fulfills and what disappoints you. –Richard Rohr

You know how you pull up to a stoplight, and sometimes the person in the car next to you is playing their music loud? Maybe it isn't even the kind of music that you listen to most often, but you roll your window down and you find the beat, and you tap it out on your steering wheel too. Perhaps you guys nod or even smile at each other, and you think, "Alright. Sweet. That person is human, like me." Don't you love those moments? Let's BE those people.

You know how you're in line at the grocery store and there's a toddler in the seat of the shopping cart in front of you, and maybe you don't even speak their language, but you want to communicate, "Hey, I see you. I want the world to be safe for you," even though you can't really do more than smile at them and make a goofy face? Let's be THOSE people. Let's make the world that way.

Let's be people who can accept that we are just never going to be as perfect as we'd like, so that we can learn to accept other people too.

They say Johnny Cash and June Carter loved each other so much, and so well, that their love wore off onto everyone that knew them. Let's be that way in the world.

Let's walk out after a maybe-not-award-winning movie and say everything that was right with it, everything that we liked about it.

Let's be people who LOVE things.

Let's be people who have trained our eyes to see good, to find good. To find nobility and beauty hiding everywhere and in everyone.

I love space. I love music. I love movies. I cry when I read C.S. Lewis. I'm pretty much always 10 lbs more than I'd like and I'm starting to go grey at the sides, but I try to be kind to myself about those things, among others. I study the bible and love Jesus and it's a complete mystery to me, but it's more compelling now than when I was younger and knew more.

I'm not sure how to change the world, except to love the world. Maybe enough people doing small, loving things over a long-enough time is enough. So let's tell THOSE stories. The true stories, the ones with the pain AND the beauty, the perfume AND the dirty fingernails. Let's find the thing inside that wants to come out, and let's be brave enough to let it color all over the walls.


What do you love? What makes you come alive? –Cameron Hood



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