forgive every bit of your life

R. Rohr – When you finally come to maturity, you can look back at your life and forgive every bit of it. You can let go of everyone who hurt you, even your first wife or husband. You don’t even need to hate the church that hurt you. Wisdom is where you see it all and you eliminate none of it and include all of it as important training. Finally, “everything belongs.” You are able to say, from some larger place that even surprises you, “It is what it is” and even the “bad” was good.

These are the people who will change the world. These are the people who will transform history. We call them “larger than life” because they are living more than their own life. As Paul says, “I live no longer, not I, but Christ lives in me” (Galatians 2:20). Non-dualistic people are able to be fully present to the now and trust God with the future and the past. God can use them because their small and petty self is finally out of the way

total animal soup of all time

“…and the last fantastic book flung out of the tenement window, and the last door closed at 4 A.M. and the last telephone slammed at the wall in reply and the last furnished room emptied down to the last piece of mental furniture, a yellow paper rose twisted on a wire hanger in the closet, and even that imaginary, nothing but a hopeful little bit of hallucination—
ah, Carl, while you are not safe I am not safe, and now you’re really in the total animal soup of time.”
From Howl, Allen Ginsburg

Living Through Your Wounds

“The great challenge is living your wounds through instead of thinking them through. It is better to cry than to worry, better to feel your wounds deeply than to understand them, better to let them enter into your silence than to talk about them. The choice you face constantly is whether you are taking your hurts to your head or to your heart. In your head you can analyze them, find their causes and consequences, and coin words to speak and write about them. But no final healing is likely to come from that source. You need to let your wounds go down into your heart. Then you can live them through and discover that they will not destroy you. Your heart is greater than your wounds.”

  • Henri Nouwen, The Inner Voice of Love