Wholehearted living is about engaging in our lives from a place of worthiness. It means cultivating the courage, compassion, and connection to wake up in the morning and think, No matter what gets done and how much is left undone, I am enough. It’s going to bed at night thinking, Yes, I am imperfect and vulnerable and sometimes afraid, but that doesn’t change the truth that I am also brave and worthy of love and belonging.
— Brene Brown, The Gifts of Imperfection
Though it was not part of a lesson plan, it imparted a truth that left me spellbound. Great words, arranged with cunning and artistry, could change the perceived world for some readers. From the beginning, I’ve searched out those writers unafraid to stir up the emotions, who entrust me with their darkest passions, their most indestructible yearnings, and their most soul-killing doubts. I trust the great novelists to teach me how to live, how to feel, how to love and hate. I trust them to show me the dangers I will encounter on the road as I stagger on my own troubled passage through a complicated life of books that try to teach me how to die.
— Pat Conroy, My Reading Life, p. 10-11
Let us imagine a woman’s life improving as she ages. Age doesn’t have to be bad. It could, in fact, be magnificent, if we would take our spiritual lives more seriously. Throughout our twenties and thirties, we care so much about what the Joneses think, even if we think we don’t. These two decades are the time when we’re most tempted to try to live for others. Around forty, it occurs to us that the Joneses are either going to like us or they’re not, that the Joneses have holes in their socks too, thank you, and that we have less control over what other people think than we ever imagined.
— Marianne Williamson, A Woman’s Worth, p. 49
The idea that God can be invited to co-create a life with us gives us a vested interest in the life we are making. We are not the victim any longer. On the other hand, we are not the sole creator. We are the collaborator. We are involved with God in a partnership, and this is where it gets interesting.
If God’s will and our will are not at opposite ends of the table, they may be said to be in communication with each other. We may find, as we pray, that what we pray for becomes more and more what we have. Which came first, the chicken or the egg? Which came first, God’s will for us or our will to do God’s will? We are endowed with freedom, and it is our perfect right to use that freedom to pursue an understanding of God’s will for us. That is to say, we can entrain our own will to a higher will and in so doing experience more freedom, not less.
— Julia Cameron, Faith and Will, p. 87
Gratitude is not an attitude that comes to most of us easily. It is a learned skill. It is the ability to see and say thank you for the many gifts in our life as they are unfolding. In order to have a grateful heart, we must be willing to open the lens of our vision far enough to take in what is actually being given to us. We cannot just stay focused on the one thing we demand and seem to be denied. No, gratitude involves looking at our lives more holistically. There is always some small thing for which we can be grateful — and often many larger things as well.
— Julia Cameron, Faith and Will, p. 81
“Please give me knowledge of your will for me and the power to carry it out.” It is in the knowledge of God’s will for us that we begin to discover our true nature. God’s will and our will are not at opposite ends of the table, although we may fear that they are. It is God’s will for us to be happy, joyous, and free and just what will make us that way is what we are out to discover. Things may make us happy that we do not credit with the power to give us happiness. Things may make us unhappy that we falsely believe will make us happy. When we turn our will and our life over to the care of God, the key word there is care. In God’s care, we discover ourselves and our true nature. We learn to see which of the many things on life’s menu might be appropriate to our own genuine appetites — and as we pray for knowledge of God’s will, we may find our tastes shifting. We can cooperate with where and how we are being led. The chief means by which we are able to cooperate is through our gratitude. Gratitude leads us to alertness to God’s involvement with our lives.
— Julia Cameron, Faith and Will, p. 80-81
And why are we always trying to figure out how to be more attractive to men, anyway? Why shouldn’t they work a little and try to figure out how to be attractive to us? Not every man knows how to handle a woman who is full of passion, glory, power, and intelligence. So what should we do? Shrink? Many, many women do. And then perhaps they’re married or hitched. But they’re not necessarily happy, and neither are their men. It is better to be alone than to be living at half throttle.
— Marianne Williamson, A Woman’s Worth, p. 36
One of the principal parts of faith is patience, and the settings of wrong things right is so far from easy that not even God can do it all at once.
— George MacDonald, Wisdom to Live By, p. 174
Elder brothers expect their goodness to pay off, and if it doesn’t there is confusion and rage. If you think goodness and decency is the way to merit a good life from God, you will be eaten up with anger, since life never goes as we wish. You will always feel that you are owed more than you are getting. You will always see someone doing better than you in some aspect of life and will ask, “Why this person and not me? After all I’ve done!” This resentment is your own fault. It is caused not by the prosperity of the other person, but by your own effort to control life through your performance.
— Timothy Keller, The Prodigal God, p. 52-53
We see that the elder brother “became angry.” All of his words are dripping with resentment. The first sign you have an elder-brother spirit is that when your life doesn’t go as you want, you aren’t just sorrowful but deeply angry and bitter. Elder brothers believe that if they live a good life they should get a good life, that God owes them a smooth road if they try very hard to live up to standards.
What happens, then, if you are an elder brother and things go wrong in your life? If you feel you have been living up to your moral standards, you will be furious with God. You don’t deserve this, you will think, after how hard you’ve worked to be a decent person! What happens, however, if things have gone wrong in your life when you know that you have been falling short of your standards? Then you will be furious with yourself, filled with self-loathing and inner pain….
Elder brothers’ inability to handle suffering arises from the fact that their moral observance is results-oriented. The good life is lived not for delight in good deeds themselves, but as calculated ways to control their environment.
— Timothy Keller, The Prodigal God, p. 49-50