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 

Date books and meaning (revisited)

I am once again reading Mary Jo Leddy's very fine book: *Radical Gratitude, and finding so much to ponder, even to startle. Here's one of her thoughts that I found really struck a chord. This quote is from a chapter entitled, The Point of our Being:

Consider date books, their shape and size and color, how they are used and why. Not only are they helpful, they are also a sign of identity and maybe even purpose in life. You can tell a person, so they say, by his or her date book. The fuller it is the more important you must be, the more meaningful your life - or so it would seem. You sense your true insignificance when someone merely pencils you in - and tilts the date book toward you so you can see how lucky your are to have been fitted in between all those other to do's. An empty day in a date book can seem like a day devoid of meaning and purpose. No crisis seems worse than losing your date book, because then you wouldn't know what you were supposed to do or when.

Yet, would you still know why?

I may have used this quote before but I find it so powerful. Do we define the value of our lives by how many things we have to do? By how many people we may see in a day? By the sheer number of items we have to remember? And then those questions are followed by the big question: why?


Why are we rushing around filling up our time with all those 'to do's'? Do we have a sense of what the purpose of it all is? Do we have a sense of purpose at all or are we just filling in the time? Why is it so hard for us to enjoy doing nothing - literally doing nothing? Being silent? being alone? 

Midnight wait at the Pizza Pizza

The Buddhist and Christian sense of being in the present moment is so worth giving some thought to. The present moment is in fact, all we have. What if we come to the end of our lives and find ourselves wondering - did I really LIVE this gift of my life. Was I actually THERE for those whom I love? Was I there for the events of history that are happening everywhere around me?

I have recently realized in my own life how much I miss and I am trying to commit to paying better attention. What a hard task though and yet I sense it is the way to real life.

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

Easter

I wish you a most blessed Easter:

Holy Thursday / Good Friday

The crucifixion didn't just happen two thousand years ago... it still happens.




 But if we try to care for one another LIFE will thrive for all people...

If God is like Jesus, then we find out that God is not, after all,  distant and uninvolved. God is here hanging with us on our own crosses of terror, loneliness, injustice giving us the wherewith, not just to endure, but in the end, to overcome all that is hurtful and dark in a world meant to be loving and care-full and joyful. 

Whatever our burdens: