A Brass Ring

Core Value, Love, Relationships 0

It turns out there is a brass ring, but you don’t have to compete for it. It’s yours already. The brass ring is your own deep humanity — and the relationship in which you feel treasured. No matter what you’ve been told, no matter what you’ve feared to be true, your search for love is not a race against time. It is not a hunt for a needle in the haystack. You are on a much greater journey than that. You are learning love by finding its source within you. Every insight you gain moves you closer to your goal of a wonderful life partner.

You can do this. You have the tools you need. You have the gifts that lie in the core of your heart, and you have learned to treasure their humanity and their promise. In the long run, it is the act of treasuring and the sense of being treasured that makes all the difference in the world. Trust in your gifts; they will lead you to love. It’s a promise.

— Ken Page, Deeper Dating, p. 231

Learning to Love Ourselves – With Help

Core Value, Love, Relationships 0

We all need to be reminded that we have a song and that it is good and worthy of hearing. We don’t learn that lesson through willpower or through forced “positive thinking.” We learn it through intimacy….

Everyone’s heard the self-help platitude “You must love yourself before you can love anyone else.” This may sound wise, but it misses a great truth: if we want to experience true intimacy, we need to be taught to love aspects of ourselves — again and again — by the people around us. As much as most of us want to control our own destiny, the humbling truth is that sometimes the only way to learn self-love is by being loved — precisely in the parts of ourselves where we feel most unsure and tender. When we are loved in such a way, we feel freedom and relief and permission to love in a deeper way. No amount of positive self-talk can replicate this experience. It is a gift of intimacy, not of will-power. When we surround ourselves with people who honor our gifts and whose gifts we also honor, our lives blossom.

— Ken Page, Deeper Dating, p. 72-73

Practicing Gratitude

Gratitude, Life, Love 0

Gratitude is a spiritual practice. Every time you give thanks for your life, even if it’s only for green lights and free parking spaces, you take a step closer to love. Gratitude always takes you in the direction of love. Gratitude takes you to your heart. Practicing gratitude helps you to cultivate a loving awareness for your life and for yourself. When you remember to give thanks you feel blessed, not just for what you have but also for who you are. Practicing gratitude helps you to remember the basic truth I am lovable. The more you practice gratitude, the more you become who you really are.

— Robert Holden and Louise Hay, Life Loves You, p. 158

The Culmination of the Gospel

Faith, God, Love 0

This is the culmination of the Gospel, it is the Good News par excellence: Jesus, who was crucified, is risen! This event is the basis of our faith and our hope. If Christ were not raised, Christianity would lose its very meaning; the whole mission of the Church would lose its impulse, for this is the point from which it first set out and continues to set out ever anew. The message which Christians bring to the world is this: Jesus, Love incarnate, died on the cross for our sins, but God the Father raised him and made him the Lord of life and death. In Jesus, love has triumphed over hatred, mercy over sinfulness, goodness over evil, truth over falsehood, life over death.

— Pope Francis, The Spirit of Saint Francis, p. 51.

Love Working Through Us

Forgiveness, Growth, Love, Relationships 0

I have to believe that a real higher power is struggling in this as much as we are. But horribly, if healing and care are going to get done, it will be love working through us. Us! In our current condition, not down the road, when we are in the fullness of our restoration, in wholeness, compassionate detachment, patient amusement. Us, now. It has taken years for me to get this well, which is to say, half as reactive and a third less obsessed with my own neurotic disappointing self. I don’t agree with the pace of how slowly we evolve toward patience, wisdom, forgiveness. Anyone would understand if we gave up and settled, the way people settle for terrible marriages. But these are our lives. So we try, we do the work of becoming saner and more authentic, which is hard enough without truly monstrous people crashing into our lives, often — not always — through marriage, although I am not going to name names. Well, maybe just one. . .

— Anne Lamott, Small Victories, p. 268

Your Gift Zone

Joy, Love, Relationships 0

Your Gift Zone isn’t static. It is constantly generating a living stream of impulses toward intimacy and authentic self-expression. It wants things. It reaches for life. It needs to connect — and it tells you how. In your Gift Zone you might feel a desire to listen to a piece of music or to go for a walk, to be alone or to reach out to someone. Your intimacy journey becomes an adventure when you act on the promptings of your Gift Zone. Doing so will change your love life from the inside out. It will begin a wave of unknotting and self-expression that will ripple into the ways you love and the way you live.

— Ken Page, Deeper Dating, p. 26

Love Is Essential.

Life, Love 0

Love is essential; gregariousness is optional. Cherish your nearest and dearest. Work with colleagues you like and respect. Scan new acquaintances for those who might fall into the former categories or whose company you enjoy for its own sake. And don’t worry about socializing with everyone else. Relationships make everyone happier, introverts included, but think quality over quantity.

— Susan Cain, Quiet, p. 264

The Dependency Paradox

Love, Relationships 0

Attachment principles teach us that most people are only as needy as their unmet needs. When their emotional needs are met, and the earlier the better, they usually turn their attention outward. This is sometimes referred to in attachment literature as the “dependency paradox”: The more effectively dependent people are on one another, the more independent and daring they become.

— Amir Levine, M. D., and Rachel S. F. Heller, M. A., Attached, p. 21

Celebrating God’s Reflections

Connection, Forgiveness, God, Joy, Love 0

The interesting thing is that when you can forgive people for not being God then you can celebrate that they are a reflection of God. You can say, “Since you are not God, I love you because you have such beautiful gifts of God’s love.” You don’t have everything of God, but what you have to offer is worth celebrating. By celebrate, I mean to lift up, affirm, confirm, to rejoice in another person’s gifts. You can say you are a reflection of that unlimited love.

— Henri J. M. Nouwen, The Only Necessary Thing, p. 150-151

The Prodigal Father

Forgiveness, God, Love 0

God does not require a pure heart before embracing us. Even if we return only because following our desires has failed to bring happiness, God will take us back. Even if we return because being a Christian brings us more peace than being a pagan, God will receive us. Even if we return because our sins did not offer as much satisfaction as we had hoped, God will take us back. Even if we return because we could not make it on our own, God will receive us. God’s love does not require any explanations about why we are returning. God is glad to see us home and wants to give us all we desire, just for being home.

— Henri J. M. Nouwen, The Only Necessary Thing, p. 73