What I've seen on my rounds is that if you are lucky enough to have the opportunity to reflect at the end of a life, then love is revealed as the great currency. It's the thing. The treasury. It's what mattered...
How well did I love? whom did I love?, and how was love central to the life that I made for myself?
...When the lots are counted, when we are gathered in, we will find that it was love that mattered. Love expressed, given, received, fought for. So for those of us fighting right now, I say; keep going. As a culture, as an individual, believe in the full life that is your bequeathed inheritance, not the subterranean half-life that terror and impoverished minded bullies will try and spike your wine with. You are too good for that.
~ Martin Shaw in A COUNSEL OF RESISTANCE AND DELIGHT IN THE FACE OF FEAR
The discipline of gratitude is the
explicit effort to acknowledge that all I am and have is given to me as a gift of love, a gift to be celebrated with joy.
~ from THE RETURN OF THE PRODIGAL SON by Henri J. M. Nouwen
Real prayer penetrates to the marrow of our soul and leaves nothing untouched. The prayer of the heart is prayer that does not allow us to limit our relationship with God to interesting words or pious emotion...the prayer of the heart is the prayer of truth.
For me, the question is whether my encounter with death has freed me enough from the addictions of the world that I can be true to my vocation as I now see it "sent" from above. It clearly involves a call to prayer, contemplation, silence, solitude, and inner detachment. I have to keep choosing my "not belonging" in order to belong, my not being from below in order to be from above. For, the taste of God's unconditional love quickly disappears when the addictive powers of everyday existence make their presence felt again.
~ from BEYOND THE MIRROR: REFLECTIONS ON DEATH AND LIFE by Henri J. M. Nouwen
