There’s power in love. There’s power in love to help and heal when nothing else can. There’s power in love to lift up and liberate when nothing else will. There’s power in love to show us the way to live.
— Michael Curry, The Power of Love, p. 8
Photo: South Riding, Virginia, January 6, 2018
The lesson here is that there is no fix. There is, however, forgiveness. To forgive yourselves and others constantly is necessary. Not only is everyone screwed up, but everyone screws up.
— Anne Lamott, Almost Everything, p. 62-63
Photo: South Riding, Virginia, January 5, 2015
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For God to resort to violence in order to save the world is not saving the world; it’s condemning the world. But John tells us, “Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.” God saves the world not through the impatience of violence but through the infinite patience of divine love. I understand the incredulity of unbelievers toward the idea that the world can be saved by love and without violence; it is this very incredulity that lies at the foundation of their unbelief. But it is the very inconceivability of God-saving love in Christ that Christians are to believe in most of all. If John 3:16 is to mean anything, it must mean that God gets what God wants through love, or not at all. If I believe that love never fails, it’s because I believe that God is love. To believe in the sufficiency of God’s love to save the world is not naïve optimism; it’s Christianity.
— Brian Zahnd, Sinners in the Hands of a Loving God, p. 206-207.
Photo: South Riding, Virginia, March 21, 2018
Instead of gripping tightly to a fixed idea of how things are and how they should be, we can train our mind to hold those notions lightly and begin each day ready to explore. We do not need to face the world demanding that it prove us right. Instead, we can say to it: Surprise me. We can become excited by the possibility that if we keep our eyes open, we open our hearts to something new. To have the kind of openness that cultivates awe does not mean we have to be credulous and sentimental, but the ironic stance – to act unimpressed because we fear looking foolish – has us experiencing our own lives at a distance. If, instead, we open our hearts to real love, we allow ourselves to feel the wonder of life, which research says is vital to sustaining our connection to the world and to one another.
— Sharon Salzberg, Real Love, p. 283
Photo: January 24, 2004, Sembach, Germany
According to the traditionalists, God’s holiness lies in God’s right to retributively punish sin forever out of being offended by human sin. However, Jesus defined God’s holy perfection much differently. He didn’t describe God’s holiness as God’s need to restore his offended majesty, but rather he explicitly and clearly defined God’s holiness as God’s unbounded love for God’s enemies (Matt 5:43-48). Remember, it was the Pharisees who defined God’s holiness in terms of separation from sinners. The Pharisees (whose name means “separate ones”) excluded sinners from their fellowship because they believed they were imitating the way God relates to sinners. Jesus, on the other hand, welcomed sinners into fellowship with himself because he believed he was imitating the way God relates to sinners. Jesus subversively redefined God’s holiness as compassion, not separation. When thinking about the holiness of God, it is crucially important that we let Jesus define divine holiness for us, since he is the pinnacle of God’s revelation to us. “No one has ever seen God,” the apostle John writes, but Jesus “who is close to the Father’s heart has made him known” (John 1:18). God is holy, to be sure, but traditional defenders of hell rely far too much on the vision of divine holiness put forth by the Pharisees, and not enough on the way Jesus revealed the holiness of God as compassionate love.
— Heath Bradley, Flames of Love, p. 146-147
Photo: Ely Cathedral, England, April 24, 2005
Empathy is not connecting to an experience, it’s connecting to the emotions that underpin an experience.
— Brené Brown, Dare to Lead, p. 140
Photo:Â Mission Bay, California, December 31, 2003
Often when joy seems to fade, I recall Jim Brandenburg’s idea of allowing himself only one photograph per day. Then, turning my mental camera upon the day I’m living, I seek to locate in it the one moment that holds the most joy. No matter how dull or stressful my day may seem, a point of light always gleams. The more I focus on the light, the larger and brighter it becomes. By nourishing one ray of joy like a seedling, joy takes root in me and grows and grows until it fills my heart.
— Mike Mason, Champagne for the Soul, p. 114
Photo: South Riding, Virginia, December 7, 2016
We all clamor for praise and recoil at blame. They are oddly and equally seductive. They pull us away from our center, and yet we strangely have grown dependent on blame and praise. Instead, we have to find our way to notice and return. Notice the positive sheen of praise and still refuse to cling to it. Choose to move quickly back to the center. Let the pang of this blame wash over you, abide in it, and then return immediately to your center. We want the “bliss of blamelessness,” as the Buddha would say, and yet find ourselves attaching to the praise of the crowd or the surly comment of the disgruntled. We try and gently catch ourselves when we’re about to let resentment harden into blame and let the illusion of praise define who we are.
— Gregory Boyle, Barking to the Choir, p. 104
Photo:Â South Riding, Virginia, October 24, 2018
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As you are willing to move forward, your playfulness is a way of moving beyond any kind of contraction. Play creates flow. Be willing to share anything that needs to be shared, but be playful about that sharing. See how much you can play today, and how much you can get yourself into the flow. Play is the little sister of creativity, so treat it well. It will release old feelings of hurt and revenge if you allow it to do so.
— Chuck Spezzano, If It Hurts, It Isn’t Love, p. 393-394
Photo: Lake Ontario, July 1990
Failure gives us the chance to experiment with life, to play with it a bit, to move in different directions until we find, as we learned from Cinderella as children, the shoe that fits. Because what doesn’t fit will irritate us all our life. We will live in the unnecessary pain that comes from forcing ourselves into something that not only embarrasses us but cramps our hearts and damps our spirits.
Life is about participating in the fine art of finding ourselves — our talents, our confidence, our sense of self, our purpose in life. The world waits for each of us to give back to the best of our ability what we have been given for its sake. The only way to know what that is depends on learning to follow our hearts until our hearts and our abilities are one, until what we love and what we do well are one and the same thing.
— Joan Chittister, Between the Dark and the Daylight, p. 64
Photo: Gundersweiler, Germany, December 1999