Love once said to me, “I know a song,
would you like to hear it?”
And laughter came from every brick in the street
and from every pore
in the sky.
After a night of prayer, He
changed my life when
He sang,
“Enjoy Me.”
— St. Teresa of Avila, translated by Daniel Ladinsky in Love Poems from God, p. 276
Love is not denying ourselves and doing for others; rather, it is honestly expressing whatever our feelings and needs are and empathically receiving the other person’s feelings and needs. To receive empathically does not mean that you must comply — just accurately receive what is expressed as a gift of life from the other person. Love is honestly expressing our own needs; that doesn’t mean making demands, but just, “Here I am. Here’s what I like.”
— Marshall Rosenberg, PhD, Living Nonviolent Communication, p. 29
Accepting our powerlessness over the behavior of others isn’t easy. We think, If only I’d said it this way. Or perhaps, If only I had made that special dinner or bought flowers first. We get fooled into thinking that if we do something differently, we might get the object of our attention to do something differently, too. Alas, that’s never going to happen, unless by accident. People do what they do. Period. Our good fortune is to learn how empowered we feel when we let them!
Awaking each morning, being grateful to know that we can have the kind of day we want, is one of the gifts of embracing a spiritual program. Relieving ourselves of the burden of trying to make others conform to our wishes is a gift we can gladly unwrap a day at a time.
— Karen Casey, Let Go Now, p. 105
If all humans were to start singing more, many of the earth’s troubles would cease to exist; I am convinced of that.
— Agneta Nyholm Winqvist, Wabi Sabi, p. 66
Most of us figure out by a certain age — some of us later than others — that life unspools in cycles, some lovely, some painful, but in no predictable order. So you could have lovely, painful, and painful again, which I think we all agree is not at all fair. You don’t have to like it, and you are always welcome to file a brief with the Complaints Department. But if you’ve been around for a while, you know that much of the time, if you are patient and are paying attention, you will see that God will restore what the locusts have taken away.
— Anne Lamott, Help Thanks Wow: The Three Essential Prayers, p. 50
When God seems silent and our prayers go unanswered, the overwhelming temptation is to leave the story — to walk out of the desert and attempt to create a normal life. But when we persist in a spiritual vacuum, when we hang in there during ambiguity, we get to know God. In fact, that is how intimacy grows in all close relationships.
— Paul E. Miller, A Praying Life, p. 192
When definitions of “us” and “them” begin to contract, there seems to be no limit to how narrow these definitions can become. As they shrink and narrow, they are increasingly inflamed, more dangerous and inhumane. They present themselves as movements toward truer and purer community, but, as I have said, they are the destruction of community. They insist that the imagination must stay within the boundaries they establish for it, that sympathy and identification are only allowable within certain limits. I am convinced that the broadest possible exercise of imagination is the thing most conducive to human health, individual and global.
— Marilynne Robinson, When I Was a Child, I Read Books, p. 26
How long will grown men and women in this world
keep drawing in their coloring books
an image of God that
makes them
sad?
— Meister Eckhart, translated by Daniel Ladinsky, in Love Poems from God, p. 117
One modest tool for letting go in prayer that I’ve used for twenty-five years is a God box. I’ve relied on every imaginable container — from a pillbox, to my car’s glove box, to decorative boxes friends have given me. The container has to exist in time and space, so you can physically put a note into it, so you can see yourself let go, in time and space.
On a note, I write down the name of the person about whom I am so distressed or angry, or describe the situation that is killing me, with which I am so toxically, crazily obsessed, and I fold the note up, stick it in the box and close it. You might have a brief moment of prayer, and it might come out sounding like this: “Here. You think you’re so big? Fine. You deal with it. Although I have a few more excellent ideas on how best to proceed.” Then I agree to keep my sticky mitts off the spaceship until I hear back.
— Anne Lamott, Help Thanks Wow: The Three Essential Prayers, p. 36
And imagination is from God. It is part of the way we understand the world. I think it’s okay to imagine God and grace the best you can. Some of the stuff we imagine engages and connects and calls for the very best in us to come out. Other imaginings disengage us, and shut us down. My understanding is that you get to choose which of your thoughts to go with.
Imagining God can be so different from wishful thinking, if your spiritual experiences change your behavior over time. Have you become more generous, which is the ultimate healing? Or more patient, which is a close second? Did your world become bigger and juicier and more tender? Have you become ever so slightly kinder to yourself? This is how you tell.
— Anne Lamott, Help Thanks Wow: The Three Essential Prayers, p. 21