Rumi –
Look at humanity, how lacking in light people are,
how they perish out of desire for perishable things.

Because of pride they keep separate from God,
dead to the spirit, living a lie.

Isn’t it amazing how their spirits are imprisoned,
while all the while they hold the key in their hands!

For the addicted person alone, struggling only with willpower, the desire to continue the addiction will win. It will win because it resides, as we shall see, at the level of biological conditioning, and it is always operative. Willpower and resolutions come and go, but the addictive process never sleeps. The caring community around the person has more potential than this. Even though this community is bound to have its own mind tricks and mixed motivations, it has a chance for a better perspective. Most importantly, the people who care about a chemically addicted person have one another. Grace is always a present possibility for individuals, but its flow comes to fullness through community. Grace flows toward appreciating the truth, toward an accurate understanding of what is going on beneath the confused surface of addiction.

Gerald May, from Addiction and Grace

Henri Nouwen – Standing erect, holding our heads high, is the attitude of spiritually mature people in face of the calamities of our world. The facts of everyday life are a rich source for doomsday thinking and feeling. But it is possible for us to resist this temptation and to stand with self-confidence in this world, never losing our spiritual ground, always aware that “sky and earth will pass away” but the words of Jesus will never pass away (see Luke 21:33).

“Art is a lie that makes us realize truth.”

• Pablo Picasso

What is your religion telling you? How to be a Jew? A Catholic? Or how to be a human being? – Joseph Campbell