#twentymonths

[edugarmic]

#MyBeautifulSon #JosueEduardo #TwentyMonths #ILoveYou https://www.instagram.com/p/B8AkJZ1l0Uw/?igshid=ooei4n1k9l2g

[maoparra]

💪🏻 Cumplimos y logramos otro maravilloso mes juntos, donde cada día es una oportunidad de luchar y hacernos felices, de saber que absolutamente todo vale la pena y vivir nuestra vida 🖐🏻 Gracias por regalarnos tanto y todo, por permitirnos ser nosotros mismos y apoyarnos incondicionalmente 👣 Te amo montones, con todo lo que soy para nosotros 🌹 Te Amo Mamor 😻 🗺️ 🚀 👬 👨‍❤️‍💋‍👨 👑 🦁 ♥️ 🐯 @16christ 🤴🏻 13/07/2019 #13 #thirteen #CrisMa #607days #twentymonths #vamosportodoypormas #crismaventuras #pata #happilyinlove #lovers #couplegoals #gaycouple #freedom #happiness #life #maledancer #dance #gaylife #gayteen #gayguy #gayboy #gay #instagay #likeforlike #followforfollow (at San Luis Teusaquillo, Bogotá) https://www.instagram.com/p/Bz6jRe4AzbR/?igshid=1gv46e6zf5vi0

[marlenafitz]

Welcome to a new day #numerology #timesnapshot #missingyou #twentymonths

[timeintogo]

Things do not always work out so well, of course. History is full of tragically failed visions of possibility, and the more profound the vision, the more likely we are to fall short of achieving it. But even here, Merton has a word of hope for us, a paradoxical word, of course: "…do not depend on the hope of results. …you may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no result at all, if not perhaps results opposite to what you expect. As you get used to this idea, you start more and more to concentrate not on the results, but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself." As long as we are wedded to “effectiveness” we will take on smaller and smaller tasks, for they are the only ones with which we can get results. If we want to witness to important but impossible values like love, truth and justice, there must be a standard that trumps effectiveness. The name of that standard is “faithfulness.” At the end of the road, I will not be asking about outcomes. I’ll be asking if I was faithful to my gifts, to the needs I saw around me, to the ways in which my gifts might meet those needs, to “the truth of the work itself.”

Listening to an On Being podcast is my version of the UU sermon I cannot hear while in Togo. Not a bad way to spend a Sunday morning!

Here, Parker Palmer talks about Thomas Merton. His words resonate with the challenging emotions many of my fellow volunteers are struggling with after twenty months of service in Togo. Have we been "effective" volunteers? Have our two years here mattered? Palmer's emphasis on "faithfulness" instead of "effectiveness" speaks volumes. 

For the full text: A Friendship, A Love, A Rescue.