There is a time in every life
when the very act
of looking back and taking stock
becomes essential
to going forward.
Without the light
that shines out of the darkness
of the past,
we cannot chart
a new path
to the future.
We may enjoy an experience of God that is so delightful that we may think all our troubles are over and we have at last completed the journey.Then after a few hours or a few days we find ourselves on the spiral staircase again and cannot even remember the pleasures of that transient experience of divine union.The whole purpose of this alternation is to bring the soul to the total transformation of love.
A God seeker is a person on a journey.When the thirst has been awakened, we are no longer persons wandering aimlessly about, but persons who have begun to discern the bare outlines of a path.We become more than wanderers.It is a journey based upon the assumption that there is more to life than meets the eye.
There is no there anywhere, no destination, only ways through,
passages, resting spots, doors that swing open to where
a vision is hammered out, painted, written, sung or prayed
behind the facade of the common.
To journey hopefully is better than to arrive.
There is no glimpse of the light without walking the path.You can’t get it from anyone else, nor can you give it to anyone.You take whatever steps seem easiest for you, and as you take a few steps it will be easier to take a few more.
To embrace one's brokenness, whatever it looks like, whatever has caused it, carries within it the possibility that one might come to embrace one's healing, and then one might come to the next step: to embrace another and their brokenness and their possibility for being healed.To avoid one’s brokenness is to turn one’s back on the possibility that the Healer might be at work here, perhaps for you, perhaps for another.
There is healing in the universe.
There is a fabric that holds things together.
When it is ready . . . in its own good time,
shall it not bind together . . . all of us?
At first I was surprised that people with the same disease had such very different stories.Later I became deeply moved by these stories, by the people and the meaning they found in their problems, by the unsuspected strengths, the depths of love and devotion, the rich and human tapestry initiated by the pathology I was studying and treating. . .These stories engaged me at another, more hidden point.I too suffer from an illness . . . I listened to human beings who were suffering, and responding to their suffering in ways as unique as their fingerprints.Their stories were inspiring moving, important.In time, the truth in them began to heal me.
The more I can love everything -- the trees, the land, the water, my fellow men, women and children, and myself -- the more health I am going to experience and the more of myself I am going to be . . .