Give me work to do;
Give me health;
Give me joy in simple things.
Give me an eye for beauty,
A tongue for truth,
A heart that love,
A mind that reasons,
A sympathy that understands;
Give me neither malice nor envy,
But a true kindness
And a noble common sense.
At the close of each day
Give me a book,
And a friend with whom
I can be silent.
Dear Friends ~ I recently participated in a conversation in which dissatisfaction or dissonance was a recurring theme poignantly and piercingly captured in a line quoted from a Mary Oliver poem:
I am so distant from the hope of myself,
in which I have goodness, and discernment...
St. Augustine said, "Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord,
and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in thee."
Our dissatisfaction could, therefore, be the admission and
awakening of our longing for the eternal. Rather than being
simply the edge of some personal emptiness, it could be the
first step in the opening up of our eternal belonging...desire
cultivates dissatisfaction in the heart with what is, and kindles
an impatience for that which has not yet emerged...There
should always be a healthy tension between the life we have settled for and the desires that still call
us. In this sense our desires are the messengers of our unlived life, calling us to attention and action
while we still have time here to explore fields where the treasure dwells!
Tears are prayers that reveal our truth before the Beloved...God honors tears...receives and tenderly
holds tears as if they are precious, explosive testimony that must be preserved for some future day.
Perhaps this vigilant, seeing, and tear-collecting God weeps with the weeping world.
~from LAMENTATIONS AND THE TEARS OF THE WORLD by Kathleen M. O'Connor
In feigned completeness I would walk the lonely
longest distance between all points and all others
because in their connection my geometry will have
been faithful to its own imagined laws.
~ from "American Biographies" in ANOTHER AMERICA by Barbara Kingsolver
What if the question is not why am I so infrequently the person I really want to be, but why do I so infrequently want to be the person I am?
How would this change what you think you have to learn?
What if becoming who and what we truly are happens not through striving and trying but by recognizing and receiving the people and places and practices that offer us the warmth of encouragement we need to unfold?
How would this shape the choices you make about how to spend today?
~ from Oriah Mountain Dreamer in WOMANPRAYERS, ed. by Mary Ford-Grabowsky
When somebody you've wronged forgives you, you're spared the dull and self-diminishing throb of a guilty conscience. When you forgive somebody who has wronged you, you're spared the dismal corrosion of bitterness and wounded pride. For both parties, forgiveness means the freedom again to be at peace inside their own skins and to be glad in each others' presence.
~ from LISTENING TO YOUR LIFE by Frederick Buechner
Forgiveness is a method FOR GIVING
love...a way of saying, "I am going to let go
of the wrong you did; I am not going to be bitter and I am going to go
on loving you anyway"...Every time we forgive, we begin a new life,
free of the past and open to love. Remember, forgiveness is not only
about your relationship with others but also about your relationship with
yourself.
~ from PRESCRIPTIONS FOR LIVING by Bernie S. Siegel
Even in our sleep
Pain, which cannot forget
Falls drop by drop
Upon the human heart.
Until, against our will,
We come to wisdom
Through the strength of God.
