“Winter’s just the curtain, Spring will take the bow…”
~ Richard Shindell

Christianity’s view is: forgiveness is forgiveness; your forgiveness is your forgiveness; your forgiveness of another is your own forgiveness; the forgiveness which you give, you receive, not contrariwise, that you give the forgiveness for which you receive. – Soren Kierkegaard

The psyche knows how to heal, but it hurts. Some times the healing hurts more than the initial injury, but if you can survive it, you’ll be stronger, because you’ve found a larger base. Every commitment is a narrowing and when that commitment fails, you have to get back to a larger base and have the strength to hold to it.

Nietzsche was the one who did the job for me. At a certain moment in his life, the idea came to him of what he called “the love of your fate.” Whatever your fate is, whatever the hell happens, you say, “This is what I need.” It may look like a wreck, but go at it as though it were an opportunity, a challenge. If you bring love to that moment-not discouragement-you will find the strength is there. Any disaster you can survive is an improvement in your character, your stature, and your life. What a privilege! This is when the spontaneity of your own nature will have a chance to flow. – Joseph Campbell

Henri Nouwen:

Your true identity is not in the hands of other people. Your identity can never be what some other person may think about you. You were fashioned by God in your mother’s womb. God knew you intimately before you were born. You are God’s beloved child. That is who you truly are.

If we spend all day controlling and blocking others, why would we change when we kneel to pray? – Richard Rohr

The society is the enemy when it imposes its structures on the individual.

On the dragon there are many scales. Everyone of them says “Thou Shalt.”

Kill the dragon “Thou Shalt.”

When one has killed that dragon, one has become The Child.

– Joseph Campbell

The resurrection is, like the healing miracles of Jesus, a reality that restores us to life as we should and can live it – without fear of death, without being controlled by shame, confident that we are welcome home and that we are pre vented even from the self-rejection and self-destructiveness which is the darkest corner of our shadow side. As those on whom the light of the resurrection shines-simply because we turn toward it and allow it to – we live this life day by day in a new way. – Laurence Freeman, OSB

We praise and thank you, Lord, for the uncertain, in-between times in our lives when we can be still and know that you are God. We praise and thank you for the hidden wonders of each day. We praise and thank you for acts of kindness, great and small, that serve to bring about your kingdom. We praise and thank you for the courage to place ourselves under your protection, not allowing fear to have the upper hand. We praise and thank you for your patience with our weakness, for being willing to work in and through us in ways we do not understand. We praise and thank you for our emptiness, which will one day be filled with your love. We praise and thank you for the silent wonders you work in us, preparing us for a life that will find its completion in you. Amen.