Part of Our Story

Growth, Healing, Life, Story 0

Our scars are part of our story, but they are not its conclusion. The past is ours and will always be a part of us, and yet it is not all there is. It’s a process, moving from wounds to scars to grief to showing those scars. It takes time, and maybe therapy, and maybe being vulnerable in community, and maybe working through the twelve steps, and maybe making a lot of mistakes, and maybe experiencing a tiny bit of joy.

— Nadia Bolz-Weber, Shameless, p. 158-159

Photo: South Riding, Virginia, May 25, 2020.

Purity Systems

God, Life 0

The desire to live a holy life that is pleasing to God is understandable, but this desire is also fraught with pitfalls.

Our purity systems, even those established with the best of intentions, do not make us holy. They only create insiders and outsiders. They are mechanisms for delivering our drug of choice: self-righteousness, as juice from the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil runs down our chins. And these purity systems affect far more than our relationship to sex and booze: they show up in political ideology, in the way people shame each other on social media, in the way we obsess about “eating clean.” Purity most often leads to pride or to despair, not to holiness. Because holiness is about union with, and purity is about separation from.

–Nadia Bolz-Weber, Shameless, p. 26

Photo: Paris, France, April 2001

Stories

Life, Story 0

In my current less-young age, I’ve learned that almost more than anything, stories hold us together. Stories teach us what is important about life, why we are here and how it is best to behave, and that inside us we have access to treasure, in memories and observations, in imagination.

— Anne Lamott, Almost Everything, p. 179

Photo: South Riding, Virginia, February 20, 2019

A Happy Life

Joy, Life 0

No one has a greater impact on our joy than we do. While all the factors affecting joy are not within our reach, it’s helpful to act as if they are. Until we start reaching for joy in all circumstances, we’ll have no idea how happy we can be. Much more of our happiness rests with us than we tend to believe. Taking full responsibility for our emotional state is itself a powerful step toward joy.

With all of life’s various moods and seasons, a happy day may not always be attainable. But a happy life is. By acting as if happiness is always within our grasp, we put ourselves in the best position to live happily.

— Mike Mason, Champagne for the Soul, p. 156