Heartwrest V

There never has, nor ever will be, but one humility, and that is the one humility of Christ. Pride and self have the all of man, till man has his all from Christ. He therefore only fights the good fight whose strife is that the self-idolatrous nature which he hath from Adam may be brought to death by the supernatural humility of Christ brought to life in him.

-W. Law,  “Address to the Clergy.”

Maywrest I

a short story

I already know what he’s going to say. I’m going to walk in there, sit at his table, put my backpack down, and lay into him.

“You either don’t know what we need or you don’t have a heart.”

He smiles, not sinister. “How have you been? I miss you so much.”

“How have I been?” I’m bleeding from a cut above my eye. My knuckles are swollen and disfigured from fighting.

“Yeah you never really talk to me, how have you been?”

My sarcasm, “I’m in pieces, how have you been?”

“I’ve been really good.” He gets up and steps into the kitchen, “Do you want a cup of coffee?”

I want a shot of alcohol, I want cigarettes. I run my tongue across the back of my teeth, several are sensitive, maybe cracked. “Yeah that would be great, thank you.”

He sits back down and hands me a warm cup, which feels great. My shaky hands spill a decent amount on the white table cloth. I start to apologize but he only smiles, “I don’t care about the table cloth, how are you?”

I weep. I open my mouth to speak but I gasp and I cough and there’s blood on the tablecloth too now. The tears flow and I barely explain,

“I can’t breathe. I can’t.”

Heartwrest IV

Humility must sow seed, or there can be no reaping in Heaven. Look not at pride only as an unbecoming temper, nor at humility only as a decent virtue: for the one is death, and the other is life: the one is all hell, the other is all heaven. So much as you have of pride within you, you have of the fallen angels alive in you; so much as you have of true humility, so much you have of the Lamb of God within you. Could you see what every stirring of pride does to your soul, you would beg of everything you meet to tear the viper from you, though with the loss of a hand or an eye. Could you see what a sweet, divine, transforming power there is in humility, how it expels the poison of your nature, and makes room for the Spirt of God to live in you, you would rather wish to be the footstool of all the world than want the smallest degree of it.

-Spirit of Prayer, Pt. II,  Edition of Moreton, Canterbury 1893

Heartwrest III

Rom. XIV

VII. For none of us lives to himself, and no one dies to himself.

VIII. For if we live, we live to the LORD; and if we die, we die to the LORD. Therefore, whether we live or die, we are the LORD’s.

IX. For to this end Christ died and rose and lived again, that he may be be Lord of both the living and the dead.