When we fail we are merely joining the great parade of humanity that has walked ahead of us and will follow after us.
The most common one-liner in the Bible is, “Do not be afraid.” Someone counted, and it occurs 365 times.
I think your heart needs to be broken, and broken open, at least once to have a heart at all or to have a heart for others.
The same powerful Scripture text that brings a loving person to even greater love will be mangled and misused by a fearful or egocentric person. This is surely what Jesus means when he talks about the one who has being given more and those who have not losing what little they have.
The journey never happens alone.
Prayer is not about changing God, but being willing to let God change us.
One wonders how far spiritual and political leaders can genuinely lead us without some degree of mystical seeing and action.
You come to God not by being strong, but by being weak; not by being right, but through your mistakes.
You cannot heal what you cannot acknowledge.
When you don’t need to play the victim or create victims you are FREE.
Whole people see and create wholeness wherever they go; split people see and create splits in everything and everybody.
Transformed people transform people.
Remember finally, that the ashes that were on your forehead are created from the burnt palms of last Palm Sunday. New beginnings invariably come from old false things that are allowed to die.
In my opinion, most organized religion does neither agentic service nor relational nurturance very well.
Solitude is a courageous encounter with our naked, most raw and real self, in the presence of pure love.
A skilled listener can help people tap into their own wisdom.
The greatest enemy of ordinary daily goodness and joy is not imperfection, but the demand for some supposed perfection or order.
You have to find some way to not become a cynical or negative person, a person who keeps walking around and opening your eyes in the outside world but inside you close down, a person who stops expecting tomorrow to be better than today.
Until we learn to love others as ourselves, it’s difficult to blame broken people who desperately try to affirm themselves when no one else will.
The morning glories and the sunflowers turn naturally toward the light, but we have to be taught, it seems.