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

My Spiritual Identity

Acceptance, Core Value, God, Prayer 0

Prayer, then, is listening to that voice — to the One who calls you the Beloved. It is to constantly go back to the truth of who we are and claim it for ourselves. I’m not what I do. I’m not what people say about me. I’m not what I have. Although there is nothing wrong with success, there is nothing wrong with popularity, there is nothing wrong with being powerful, finally my spiritual identity is not rooted in the world, the things the world gives me. My life is rooted in my spiritual identity. Whatever we do, we have to go back regularly to that place of core identity.

— Henri J. M. Nouwen, The Only Necessary Thing, p. 67

Fear or Love

Acceptance, Letting Go, Love, Relationships 1

We are being motivated by fear or love in every encounter we experience. This may seem like an oversimplification, but I have found that it’s the best way for me to judge my actions or reactions to others on my path. If I am able to observe people living however they choose, without it unduly upsetting me, then I am practicing acceptance, which is an act of love. If I am agitated by their actions, I am experiencing fear, and I want them to change.

— Karen Casey, Let Go Now, p. 227

Self-Compassion vs. Self-Criticism and Self-Pity

Compassion, Core Value, Healing, Trials 0

Self-compassion is a sympathetic response to your hurt, distress, or vulnerability, with a motivation to heal, repair, and improve. It brings a sense of empowerment — a feeling that you can do something to make your life better, even if you are not sure what that might be at the moment. It tends to keep you focused on solutions in the present and future.

Self-criticism is blaming yourself for your hurt, distress, or vulnerability, usually with a measure of punishment or contempt. It’s based on the mistaken idea that if you punish yourself enough you won’t make similar mistakes in the future, when just the opposite is true — self-punishment leads to more mistakes. (Who is more likely to make more mistakes, the valued self or the devalued self?) Self-pity is focus on your pain or damage with no motivation to heal, repair, or improve. It has an element of contempt for your perceived incompetence or inadequacy because it assumes that you can’t do anything to make your life better. Needless to say, self-criticism and self-pity turn pain into suffering.

— Steven Stosny, PhD, Living and Loving After Betrayal, p. 22-23

Not Our Job

God, Letting Go, Love, Relationships 0

Remaining detached actually allows for greater love, I think, because our own emotions don’t begin to dictate what the other person should be doing, thus clouding the impact of our silent though very powerful expression. Sitting in quiet prayer on behalf of someone else when he or she is struggling may seem like a cold act, but it is fulfilling God’s will for our lives in that moment. Every person needs to establish his or her own relationship with God. It’s not our job to introduce them.

— Karen Casey, Let Go Now, p. 213

Asking Our Father

Faith, God, Prayer 0

A man will please God better by believing some things that are not told him, than by confining his faith to those things that are expressly said — said to arouse in us the truth-seeing faculty, the spiritual desire, the prayer for the good things which God will give to them that ask him.

“But is this not a dangerous doctrine? Will not a man be taught thus to believe the things he likes best, even to pray for that which he likes best? And will he not grow arrogant in his confidence?”

If it be true that the Spirit strives with our spirit; if it be true that God teaches men, we may safely leave those dreaded results to him. . . . If he is not taught of God in that which he hopes for, God will let him know it. He will receive something else than he prays for. If he can pray to God for anything not good, the answer will come in the flames of that consuming fire. These will soon bring him to some of his spiritual senses. But it will be far better for him to be thus sharply tutored, than to go on a snail’s pace in the journey of the spiritual life. And for arrogance, I have seen nothing breed it faster or in more offensive forms than the worship of the letter.

And to whom shall a man, whom the blessed God has made, look for what he likes best, but to that blessed God? . . . What a man likes best may be God’s will, may be the voice of the Spirit striving with his spirit, not against it; and if, as I have said, it be not so — if the thing he asks is not according to his will — there is that consuming fire. The danger lies, not in asking from God what is not good, nor even in hoping to receive it from him, but in not asking him, in not having him of our council. . . .

What should I think of my child, if I found that he limited his faith in me and hope from me to the few promises he had heard me utter! The faith that limits itself to the promises of God, seems to me to partake of the paltry character of such a faith in my child — good enough for a Pagan, but for a Christian a miserable and wretched faith. Those who rest in such a faith would feel yet more comfortable if they had God’s bond instead of his word, which they regard not as the outcome of his character, but as a pledge of his honour. They try to believe in the truth of his word, but the truth of his Being, they understand not. In his oath they persuade themselves that they put confidence: in himself they do not believe, for they know him not. . . . Brother, sister, if such is your faith, you will not, must not stop there. You must come out of this bondage of the law to which you give the name of grace, for there is little that is gracious in it. You will yet know the dignity of your high calling, and the love of God that passeth knowledge. He is not afraid of your presumptuous approach to him. It is you who are afraid to come near him. He is not watching over his dignity. It is you who fear to be sent away as the disciples would have sent away the little children.

— George MacDonald, Unspoken Sermons, First Series, p. 56-60