This is me caving.

As it seems that people keep tagging me (read: TARA) and that Colin caved and wrote up one of these tagging things... I decided that I would play along, but I do it somewhat begrudgingly and am mildly annoyed at Colin for caving so that my stand was made that much harder....

Anyhow, I've been tagged a number of times so I'll start with this one:

The Rules:
1. Pick up the nearest book (of at least 123 pages).
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people.


Okay here goes:
"Dark Night of the Soul" by St. John of the Cross; translated and edited by E. Allison Peers

On page 123 there is only 5 sentences (gotta love books translated from another language! - in this case 16th century spanish)


The spirit (referring to the human spirit) suffers all these afflictive purgations of the spirit to the end that it may be begotten anew in spiritual life by means of this Divine inflowing, and in these pangs may bring forth the spirit of salvation, that the saying of Isaias may be fulfillled: 'In Thy sight, O Lord, we have brought forth the spirit of salvation.' Moreover, since by means of this contemplative night the soul is prepared for the attainment of inward peace and tranquillity, which is of such a kind and so delectable that, as the Scripture says, it passes all understanding, it behoves the soul to abandon all its former peace. This was in reality no peace at all, since it was involved in imperfections; but to the soul aforementioned it appeared to be so, because it was following its own inlcinations, which were for peace. It seemed, indeed, to be a twofold peace-that is, the soul believed that it had already acquired the peace of sense and that of spirit, for it found itself to be full of the spiritual abundance of this peace of sense and of spirit-as I say, it is still imperfect.


So that isn't five sentences but you get the idea, if you want to read the book for yourself you can find HERE. I am working through this book with my home group. It can be tough to get through at times, but so far I would say that there is value in perseverance.

I am going to "tag" the following people

Jinny
Colin
Chris
Aaron although he seems to have forgotten how to use blogs
Dave (although he doesn't write in this blog anymore)