Each season has its gifts. What did my life’s hardest season give to me? Most of all, belief in my own ability not only to come back after a long winter but to grow stronger, more alive. Belief that change makes everything possible. Belief in my own spring. In the meantime, thanks to the bare trees, I can see more sky. It’s a beauty emergency — all that blue through the branches.
— Maggie Smith, Keep Moving, p. 55
Photo: South Riding, Virginia, March 27, 2021
Get back up. Dust yourself off. Remember that you’re playing the long game, and trust that over time, the good days will outnumber the bad. Do what you can to make this day more livable than yesterday.
KEEP MOVING.
— Maggie Smith, Keep Moving, p. 51
Photo: South Riding, Virginia, March 19, 2021
Be sure of at least one thing in this moment — that you are loved and worthy of love. Hold tightly to what you know to be real and true and good about who you are. Be sure of yourself.
KEEP MOVING.
— Maggie Smith, Keep Moving, p. 47
Photo: Keukenhof, Holland, April 21, 2004.
Trust that everything will be okay, but that doesn’t mean that everything will be restored. Start making yourself at home in your life as it is. Look around and look ahead.
KEEP MOVING.
— Maggie Smith, Keep Moving, p. 37
Photo: South Riding, Virginia, March 13, 2021
I would insist that the foundation of Jesus’s social program is what I will call non-idolatry, or the withdrawing of your enthrallment from all kingdoms except the Kingdom of God. This is a much better agenda than feeling you have to attack things directly, or defeat other nation-states, the banking system, the military-industrial complex, or even the religious system. Nonattachment (freedom from full or final loyalties to man-made domination systems) is the best way I know of protecting people from religious zealotry or any kind of antagonistic thinking or behavior. There is nothing to be against, but just keep concentrating on the Big Thing you are for! (Think Francis of Assissi and Mother Teresa.) Paul’s notion of sin comes amazingly close to our present understanding of addiction. And he thus wanted to free us from our enthrallments with what he considered “mere rubbish” (Philippians 3:8), which is not worthy of our loyalty. “If only I can have Christ and be given a place in him!” Can you hear Paul’s corporate understanding in phrases like that?
The addict, or sinner, does not actually enjoy the world as much as he or she is enslaved to it, in Paul’s understanding. Jesus had come to offer us a true alternative social order here and not just a “way to heaven” later.
— Richard Rohr, The Universal Christ, p. 197-198
Photo: South Riding, Virginia, March 13, 2021
You are not betraying your grief by feeling joy. You are not being graded, and you do not receive extra credit for being miserable 100% of the time. Find pockets of relief, even happiness, when and where you can.
KEEP MOVING.
— Maggie Smith, Keep Moving, p. 38
Photo: South Riding, Virginia, December 2, 2020
I wish I could go back and tell the fearful young person I was what I know now about fire and growth. What would I say to her? Even if you do not feel brave, practice bravery. There will be times in your life when you feel as if life is burning down around you, but know that renewal is in its wake. Trust in what will open, what will grow, after something else has burned away, even when the landscape is charred black. And trust that one of the things guaranteed to grow — time after time, fire after fire — is you. Possibilities, like seeds, are being released into the air.
— Maggie Smith, Keep Moving, p. 94-95
Photo: South Riding, Virginia, March 6, 2015
Stop expecting the worst: at least as many things could go right as could go wrong. Think of optimism as a way of sitting in the sun now, regardless of what the weather might be tomorrow or next week.
KEEP MOVING.
— Maggie Smith, Keep Moving, p. 27
Photo: South Riding, Virginia, February 7, 2021
For much of my life, this guilt, pressure, and fear of exposure had left me fairly exhausted. But I am slowly but surely walking into a new story, gradually but most definitely jettisoning those things that don’t ring true anymore and traveling much lighter. My reverence for God has never been greater, my wonder never more full, my desire to know my Maker never stronger. The difference is, I now see God through the lens of one who is beloved, not one who is beloved with conditions. Life now is not a test to try and reach God, but an opportunity to notice God. I am seeking Jesus more deeply than ever — not to escape punishment, but to discover life as it is best lived. My faith is not about fleeing something horrible, but running toward something beautiful. I am daily responding in gratitude for the beauty of the gift of this world, not in the hope I can eventually escape it. I come to the Scriptures now not as divine dictation, but as the journal entries of those who came before me and who have walked this road of asking, seeking, and knocking.
— John Pavlovitz, A Bigger Table, p. 164
Photo: Rocky Mountains, January 7, 2020
Accept that you are a work in progress, both a revision and a draft: you are better and more complete than earlier versions of yourself, but you also have work to do. Be open to change. Allow yourself to be revised.
KEEP MOVING.
— Maggie Smith, Keep Moving, p. 22
Photo: South Riding, Virginia, December 6, 2020