Our Vocation as Prayer

Life, Prayer 0

Our vocation is an asset to prayer because our work becomes prayer.  It is prayer in action.  The artist, the novelist, the surgeon, the plumber, the secretary, the lawyer, the homemaker, the farmer, the teacher — all are praying by offering their work up to God….

We do not need to have good feelings or a warm glow in order to do work for the glory of God.  All good work is pleasing to the Father.  Even the jobs that seem meaningless and mindless to us are highly valued in the order of the kingdom of God.  God values the ordinary.  If, for the glory of God, you are putting an endless supply of nuts on an endless line of bolts, your work is rising up as a sweet-smelling offering to the throne of God.  He is pleased with your labor.

— Richard J. Foster, Prayer, p. 171-173

The Secular and the Sacred

Life, Prayer 0

In the creation and the incarnation the great God of the universe intertwined the spiritual and the material, wedded the sacred and the secular, sanctified the common and the ordinary.  How astonishing!  How wonderful!

The discovery of God lies in the daily and the ordinary, not in the spectacular and the heroic.  If we cannot find God in the routines of home and shop, then we will not find him at all.  Ours is to be a symphonic piety in which all the activities of work and play and family and worship and sex and sleep are the holy habitats of the eternal.

— Richard J. Foster, Prayer, p. 171

Redemption

Core Value, Forgiveness, Love 0

Love means the ability to identify with imperfection and to recognize the inadequacies, weaknesses, fears and confusion in ourselves and others.  Loving what is unlovable in them is always a challenge.  It’s so much easier to dismiss people for their failings than it is to stick by them.  I wonder why it is that we are more prone to finding fatal flaws than looking for redeeming qualities?

— Leo Buscaglia, Born for Love, p. 217

Good Enough

Healing, Letting Go, Life, Peace 0

I made a decision that day.  I was here, I was me, and I was enough in spite of my past, my present, my future, my weaknesses, my foibles, my mistakes, and my humanness.

We’re good, and we’re good enough.  Sometimes we make big mistakes; sometimes we make little mistakes.  But the mistake is what we do, not who we are.  We have a right to be, to be here, and be who we are.  If we’re not certain who we are, we have a right to make that exciting discovery.  And we don’t ever have to let shame tell us any differently.

–Melody Beattie, Beyond Codependency, p. 111

God’s Gift

Forgiveness, God, Healing 0

We are the children of God, every one of us, and nearly nineteen hundred years ago He gave us the greatest of all the gifts He has, greater even than life.  He gave us hope:  a way back from every mistake we have made, no matter how small or how large, how ugly or how incredibly stupid, or how shameful.  There is no corner of hell secret enough or deep enough for there to be no path back, if we are willing to climb up.  It may be hard, and steep, but there is a light ahead, and freedom.

— Dominic Corde, in A Christmas Secret, by Anne Perry

Guilt and Shame

Core Value, Forgiveness, Healing 0

Learn to recognize the difference between shame and guilt.  Guilt is believing that what we did isn’t okay.  Authentic guilt is valuable.  It’s a signal that we’ve violated our own, or a universal, moral code.  It keeps us honest, healthy, and on track.  Shame is worthless.  Shame is the belief that whether what we did is okay or not, who we are isn’t.  Guilt is resolvable.  We make amends for what we did, learn from our mistake, and attempt to correct our behavior.  Shame isn’t resolvable.  It leaves us with a sense that all we can do is apologize for our existence, and even that falls short of what’s needed….

If we feel ashamed because we’ve done something we feel guilty about, we convert shame to guilt, then make any appropriate amends and change our behavior.  If we decide shame is trying to enforce an unhealthy, inappropriate message on us, we change the message.  If we feel ashamed about something we cannot or need not change, we surrender to the situation and give ourselves a big hug.

— Melody Beattie, Beyond Codependency, p. 107-110

 

Out Endure the Ego

Forgiveness 0

Forgiveness is the decision to out endure the ego.  Therefore, don’t try to forgive for all time; just forgive in the moment.  Two minutes from now the grievance may come back.  Simply forgive again in the moment.  If you keep surrounding someone in the light, soon your ego — which hates light — will stop handing you the grudge.

— Hugh Prather, Spiritual Notes to Myself, p. 21