No Greener Grass

Contentment, Joy 0

We don’t find happiness. We become it. We embody it. We decide to see our life through a different lens. We cease telling ourselves that we should be somewhere else — that “other” place we will never actually get to. There is no greener grass; it’s the lawn we are standing on that we must water and care for. Happiness begins the second we stop believing it is somewhere other than here. And then, no matter where we want to go, it comes along with us.

— Caroline Myss, Intimate Conversations with the Divine, p. 79

Photo: Leithöfe, Germany, April 1997

Image-Bearers

Community, Core Value, God, Love 1

When we are living in a spiritual community where radical hospitality, total authenticity, true diversity, and agenda-free relationships are the spiritual operating system, every question is not only manageable but welcome, because our default condition becomes hope and not fear. We don’t come burdened with shame, we don’t come fearful of expulsion, and we don’t spend our time waiting for the judgmental shoe to drop. When people come to the bigger table, they don’t need to earn acceptance — this is a given. When we gather at the table Jesus sets, none of us are misfits. By our very presence we fit, because we are full image bearers of God and beloved as we are, without alteration. The traditional Church tends to favor a clearly defined, very narrow inside and outside, and this is where many people part ways because they find their messy, gritty reality doesn’t feel compatible with such clear delineation. But when everyone is openly bringing everything, there’s real connection — when each person realizes they are not outsiders around the table.

— John Pavlovitz, A Bigger Table, p. 163-164

Photo: Alsenborn, Germany, December 2001

Dreams

Creativity, God, Hope 0

Dreaming — impractical, foolish, impossible dreaming — gave us the very real civil rights movement. Dreaming gave us a South Africa freed from apartheid. Dreaming, as I see it, has saved me and many others from turning to despair and destruction in the darkest days, when evil seems to be winning. Dreams are love’s visions — the boundless faith that the world can be remade to look more like what God hoped for his creation.

— Bishop Michael Curry, Love Is the Way, p. 73

Photo: South Riding, Virginia, December 26, 2014

Triumphing

Growth, Healing, Life 0

Consider all you’ve outlived — including the life you thought you would have. You are durable, adaptable, resilient; just being here is a triumph. Hour by hour, prove the voice inside wrong — the one that says you can’t do it. Do it.

KEEP MOVING.

— Maggie Smith, Keep Moving, p. 16

Photo: Centreville, Virginia, February 7, 2010

A Generous Lens

Core Value, Healing, Story 0

Your story differs from the ones my mom and I tell, but the courage and perseverance you’ve drawn on just to survive are beautiful too. You can continue to connect with those parts of yourself that are brave and strong. That is the beauty of cowriting a new story with God: We get to choose what to cultivate and what we must learn to forgive in ourselves. I encourage you to see your story through a generous lens. Where are the nuggets of goodness for you to mine? Don’t forget these treasures.

— Aundi Kolber, Try Softer, p. 222

Photo: South Riding, Virginia, March 6, 2015

Beloved

Acceptance, Core Value, God, Love 0

The world tells you many lies about who you are, and you simply have to be realistic enough to remind yourself of this. Everytime you feel hurt, offended, or rejected, you have to dare to say to yourself: “These feelings, strong as they may be, are not telling me the truth about myself. The truth, even though I cannot feel it right now, is that I am the chosen child of God, precious in God’s eyes, called the Beloved from all eternity, and held safe in an everlasting embrace.”

— Henri Nouwen, You Are the Beloved, p. 15

Photo: South Riding, Virginia, January 2016

That Good

God, Love 0

We all need to know that God does not love us because we are that good; God loves us because God is good. Nothing humans can do will inhibit, direct, decrease, or increase God’s eagerness to love.

— Richard Rohr, Eager to Love, p. 188

Photo: South Riding, Virginia, January 29, 2016

Changing Our Minds, Not God’s

God, Jesus, Love, Redemption 0

As John puts it, “He will show the world how wrong it was about sin, about who was really in the right, and about true judgment” (16:8). This is what Jesus is exposing and defeating on the cross. He did not come to change God’s mind about us. It did not need changing. Jesus came to change our minds about God — and about ourselves — and about where goodness and evil really lie.

— Richard Rohr, The Universal Christ, p. 151

Photo: South Riding, Virginia, February 21, 2015

God Is Not Out to Squash You

Acceptance, God, Love 0

One of the great comforts in my travels to build a bigger table and to right-size God has been a simple reality that I’ve embraced, one that I hope seeps deep into your heart whatever your theological leanings are: God is not out to squash you. This is an incredibly difficult truth to claim if you’ve experienced religion through the lens of fear that told you otherwise.

I grew up believing that God loved me dearly. I also grew up believing God was very angry with me. I was taught that God personally created me and yet was immediately displeased by my sinfulness. So my very earliest identity was forged in the crucible of this unsettling duplicity: I was both adored and resented by my Creator. As a child I lived in the tension of being the object of both the wrath and the love of God simultaneously. As I grew, I was told I needed to find and do and believe what would tip the scales from punishment to reward, from damnation to salvation, from abandonment to blessing. I had to remove the massive barrier between myself and God, to bridge the wide expanse between the two of us — which somehow was me. For simply being, the problem was me. Apologize for my inborn transgressions and I earned the right to be God’s child. One wrong move, one doctrinal deviation, one errant belief, though, and I would be toast. Living always in paradox, I learned that I had a tender, caring Maker who knit me together in my mother’s womb, numbered every hair on my head — and was never far from destroying me for the birth defect I’d inherited somewhere in the process.

— John Pavlovitz, A Bigger Table, p. 161-162

Photo: South Riding, Virginia, 1/23/21

New and Improved

Growth, Hope, Life 0

Revise the story you tell yourself about starting over. Consider not only how terrifying change can be but also how exhilarating. Consider this time an opportunity to make a new and improved life.

KEEP MOVING.

— Maggie Smith, Keep Moving, p. 12

Photo: American Library Association Annual Conference, Washington DC, June 22, 2019