{"version":1,"type":"rich","provider_name":"Libsyn","provider_url":"https:\/\/www.libsyn.com","height":90,"width":600,"title":"Advent III: The Power of your Intense Fragility","description":"Welcome to our third Sunday of Advent. In this episode, Mandy invites us to consider how each of us may show up for the advent of Christ, as our truest selves. For show notes see: www.mandybgreen.com\/podcast Matt 5:48: https:\/\/biblehub.com\/interlinear\/matthew\/5-48.htm Patience doesn't mean making a pact with the devil of denial, ignoring our emotions and aspirations. It means being wholeheartedly engaged in the process that's unfolding, rather than ripping open a budding flower or demanding a caterpillar hurry up and get that chrysalis stage over with. Sharon Salzberg somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond E. E. Cummings somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond any experience, your eyes have their silence: in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me, or which i cannot touch because they are too near your slightest look easily will unclose me though i have closed myself as fingers, you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens (touching skillfully, mysteriously) her first rose or if your wish be to close me, i and my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly, as when the heart of this flower imagines the snow carefully everywhere descending; nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals the power of your intense fragility: whose texture compels me with the colour of its countries, rendering death and forever with each breathing (i do not know what it is about you that closes and opens; only something in me understands the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses) nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands From Complete Poems: 1904-1962 by E. E. Cummings, edited by George J. Firmage https:\/\/poets.org\/poem\/somewhere-i-have-never-travelledgladly-beyond ","author_name":"REFLECTING LIGHT","author_url":"http:\/\/www.reflectinglight.org","html":"