Status Updates From Reclaiming Quiet: Cultivati...

I’m going to give this a few more chapters since the next section looks more practical. Clarkson is a poetic writer. There are moments of shining beauty in thought and expression. But this book is just overwrought to a purple pitch. I believe the author when she describes her pain, loneliness, fear. But these have been over-processed to a point where they feel disassociated from the author as well as the reader.

Have you ever noticed that when angels crashed into a person’s world in scripture they almost always begin with the words “Do not be afraid”? I suppose that command could mean simply that angels are terrifying in aspect and appearance, but I’m inclined to think… the angels are inviting us with that phrase… to step into a story where fear is no longer necessary because God is telling the world right again.

“We must not merely study these ideas, it seems, but rather embody them. This is the only way we may come both to understand and, more vitally, to inhabit the divine work of the incarnation as it tethers us afresh to the life of God. Our action comes, in a radical and roundabout way, before our full understanding.”