The power of love

This is a quote from Mary Jo Leddy's book Radical Gratitude. In the chapter called 'Creative Power' she is writing also about the implications for each of us when we feel powerless.

' For want of a sense of power, the dream of something new and someone different dies. When we don't believe we can make any difference, some small part of God's dream for the world dies.' *

Sadly, I did not take this photo. It is of Jean Vanier and Dolores Szarfinski

* Mary Jo Leddy: Radical Gratitude, Orbis Books, Maryknoll, N.Y.,  2002

Your own path

Mary Oliver in this poem entitled, The Journey, reminds us that we each have a path and it belongs to us, not anyone else.

One day you finally knew

what you had to do, and began,

though the voices around you

kept shouting

their bad advice--

though the whole house

began to tremble

and you felt the old tug

at your ankles.

"Mend my life!"

each voice cried.

But you didn't stop.

You knew what you had to do,

though the wind pried

with its stiff fingers

at the very foundations,

though their melancholy

was terrible.

It was already late

enough, and a wild night,

and the road full of fallen

branches and stones.

But little by little,

as you left their voices behind,

the stars began to burn

through the sheets of clouds,

and there was a new voice

which you slowly

recognized as your own,

that kept you company

as you strode deeper and deeper

into the world,

determined to do

the only thing you could do--

determined to save

the only life you could save.

Awe

Beauty is so healing: 

From Abraham Heschel:

Awe is an act of insight into a meaning greater than ourselves...the beginning of awe is wonder, and the beginning of wisdom is awe...Awe is a way of being in rapport with the mystery of all reality.

Abraham Joshua Heschel: The Wisdom of Heschel, selected by Ruth Marcus Goodhill, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, N.Y., 1975.

Hope

For a little while I am just going to 'write' my blog with one of my photos and a quote or a poem that I like. I want to take some time to ponder...

 

 A quote from Henri Nouwen:

When we become aware that we do not have to escape our pains, but that we can mobilize them into a common search for life, those very pains are transformed from expressions of despair into signs of hope.

Nouwen, Henri: The Wounded Healer, Doubleday, N.Y., 1972