And I wonder if this broken-down-ness is supposed to be. Everything created enters a state of disrepair at times. Your car breaks down – you kind of expect that, but there’s brokenness in the natural world, too. Sometimes things do not work just right. Babies are born with deficits. There is disease in the human body, and turmoil among people and wildlife alike.
And we look out from this perfectionistic perspective, thinking we are going to reach a place where everything works perfectly. ...
The only real way to grow is through connection. Sometimes we think we need to pressure, prod, or push growth by telling people what to do or making a plan to which they must adhere. The only real growth in the natural world around us, though, is through cells connecting with one another. There is no real laid out plan for how plants should grow (except maybe their DNA – the plans are encoded within), and there is not someone there demanding they straighten themselves up and reach out further ...
I am in pain with my brother. People say a lot of things when you are grieving, and you don’t hear most of them. They don’t land. They don’t even make sense. You are just in pain and all you need is for people to be there in your pain with you. You don’t need them to say anything or try to interpret why this happened or tell you it’s going to be alright or “God has a purpose.” None of that helps. Only your presence helps, your commitment to be there grieving ...
When we experience loss or trauma, we don’t forget. And it’s good to keep our traumas, our dark nights of the soul, our griefs and losses in mind. We can learn from them. Even when you’re bursting forth with growth, you should always remember and acknowledge it can all be whisked away in a moment. You can die any second, so be thankful – for life and death. You may have another dark night of the soul, another loss, another little ...
And so long as you do not know that to die is to become, you are just a wretched visitor on this dark earth. —Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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It strikes me how much tension is in the world. It’s hard to contain sometimes. If you sit with two people in conflict, sometimes you feel like you’re going to burst. It’s all you can do to stand up to it. We all have people in our lives who are in conflict with one another. (Lately it has seemed like our whole country has been in conflict!) The easiest thing to do when you are in the middle is side with one against the other: “They are wrong and we are ...
You will always be in conflict and there will always be a need for reconciliation and repair. The people around you are different than you, and your competing desires produce tension, sometimes agonizingly so. It is not hard to see the world around you is in turmoil. You are probably even in conflict within yourself. Repair, or reconciliation, is what brings all things together. Any beauty we see is the orchestrating of disparate parts into a state of resonance. ...