Learning to Wait

Letting Go, Life, Trials 0

I’ve started to realize that waiting is an art, that waiting achieves things.  Waiting can be very, very powerful.  Time is a valuable thing.  If you can wait two years, you can sometimes achieve something that you could not achieve today, however hard you worked, however much money you throw up in the air, however many times you banged your head against the wall.

— The Courage to Change by Dennis Wholey

. . .

We don’t have to put our life on hold while we wait.  We can direct our attention elsewhere; we can practice acceptance and gratitude in the interim; we can trust that we do have a life to live while we are waiting — then we go about living it.

— Melody Beattie, The Language of Letting Go, p. 293

New Choices

Healing, Letting Go, Life 0

That’s the heartening news for those of us on a spiritual path.  We don’t have to do what we always did!  We don’t have to think the way we always thought.  We don’t have to expect what we always expected.

— Karen Casey, Change Your Mind and Your Life Will Follow, p. 19-20

Seduced Into Growth

Life, Trials 0

There is a certain innocence about beginning, with its excitement and promise of something new.  But this will emerge only through undertaking some voyage into the unknown.  And no one can foretell what the unknown might yield.  There are journeys we have begun that have brought us great inner riches and refinement; but we had to travel through dark valleys of difficulty and suffering.  Had we known at the beginning what the journey would demand of us, we might never have set out.  Yet the rewards and gifts became vital to who we are.  Through the innocence of beginning we are often seduced into growth.

John O’Donohue, To Bless the Space Between Us, p. 2-3

Fairy Tales

Life, Story 0

Fairy tales awaken the inner child in us all, and that child is sorely needed in the middle years, when men and women are weighed down with responsibilities and endless chores.  This is the promise of the stories.  To every man or woman, pausing perplexed in the middle of life, magic and wisdom wait in unexpected places.

— Allan B. Chinen, Once Upon a Midlife, p. 21

Blessing

Joy, Life 0

There is a quiet light that shines in every heart.  It draws no attention to itself, though it is always secretly there.  It is what illuminates our minds to see beauty, our desire to seek possibility, and our hearts to love life.  Without this subtle quickening our days would be empty and wearisome, and no horizon would ever awaken our longing.  Our passion for life is quietly sustained from somewhere in us that is wedded to the energy and excitement of life.  This shy inner light is what enables us to recognize and receive our very presence here as blessing.  We enter the world as strangers who all at once become heirs to a harvest of memory, spirit, and dream that has long preceded us and will now enfold, nourish, and sustain us.  The gift of the world is our first blessing….

May we all receive blessing upon blessing.  And may we realize our power to bless, heal, and renew one another.

— John O’Donohue, To Bless the Space Between Us, p. xiii, xvi

Perspective

Letting Go, Life 0

Perspective will come in retrospect.

We could strain for hours today for the meaning of something that may come in an instant next year.

Let it go.  We can let go of our need to figure things out, to feel in control.

Now is the time to be.  To feel.  To go through it.  To allow things to happen.  To learn.  To let whatever is being worked out in us take its course.

In hindsight, we will know.  It will become clear.  For today, being is enough.  We have been told that all things shall work out for good in our life.  We can trust that to happen, even if we cannot see the place today’s events will hold in the larger picture.

— Melody Beattie, The Language of Letting Go, p. 263

The Radical Difference Between Cynicism and Joy

Joy, Life 0

For me it is amazing to experience daily the radical difference between cynicism and joy.  Cynics seek darkness wherever they go.  They point always to approaching dangers, impure motives, and hidden schemes.  They call trust naive, care romantic, and forgiveness sentimental.  They sneer at enthusiasm, ridicule spiritual fervor, and despise charismatic behavior.  They consider themselves realists who see reality for what it truly is and who are not deceived by “escapist emotions.”  But in belittling God’s joy, their darkness only calls forth more darkness.

People who have come to know the joy of God do not deny the darkness, but they choose not to live in it.  They claim that the light that shines in the darkness can be trusted more than the darkness itself and that a little bit of light can dispel a lot of darkness.  They point each other to flashes of light here and there, and remind each other that they reveal the hidden but real presence of God.  They discover that there are people who heal each other’s wounds, forgive each other’s offenses, share their possessions, foster the spirit of community, celebrate the gifts they have received, and live in constant anticipation of the full manifestation of God’s glory.

Every moment of each day I have the chance to choose between cynicism and joy.  Every thought I have can be cynical or joyful.  Every word I speak can be cynical or joyful.  Every action can be cynical or joyful.  Increasingly I am aware of all these possible choices, and increasingly I discover that every choice for joy in turn reveals more joy and offers more reason to make life a true celebration in the house of the Father.

— Henri J. M. Nouwen, The Return of the Prodigal Son, p. 117-118