Category: Blog

I Am Valuable, I Am Nothing

October 30, 2013

The paradox of being human is that you are nothing and very valuable all at the same time. It’s a little hard to understand, but if you look around, you will see that you are a very small part of a very big universe careening through time – just one very small speck in a very large nebula of actions and reactions. It’s easy to think that what you do doesn’t really matter. It’s true, it doesn’t; and yet, you are also very important. You have probably also had ...  Keep reading

Sketching

September 28, 2013

I heard a friend say once that “works of art are never finished, only abandoned.” My art teacher in high school taught me to develop a composition moving around and across the entire image at once, sketching in parts of the whole a little at a time, rather than  finishing one part in detail and then moving onto another (which may be our tendency). Life is kind of like that, too. You don’t ever really finish it. It’s just that one day you die. You might not have everything ...  Keep reading

Real Strength

September 18, 2013
Real strength is not defined by your ability to conquer any and every thing that might stand in your way. To overpower and dominate is often weakness. Real strength is knowing your own fragility (for you can be snuffed out at any moment). And it is realizing that though they kill your body, they cannot kill your soul.

Me

July 30, 2013

I am learning that getting older means becoming more like myself than anyone else. Before, in the name of becoming a more balanced human being, I spent a lot of time trying to become more like someone else. In doing so, I did not trust my own compass to lead me to what I needed. That has caused a lot of anxiety for me. I was the most healthy when I was a kid and I didn’t know any better and I just developed my own way of coping and dealing with life out of necessity. 🙂

A New Story

July 18, 2013
A child who hates himself will act in such a way as to cause you to hate him as well. This is the only safe way he knows to find out if there is something other than hate in the world. He acts this way in order to check and see if there is love for him even when he is at his worst. One of our only jobs with children is to show them that there is something other than the choir of voices that confirm the way they already feel about themselves.

The Move

June 20, 2013

To be human is to be broken and wanting. This keeps us in a perpetual state of needing and seeking. We get hungry, we seek food. We get lonely, we seek connection. We feel empty, we seek fulfillment. We are all addicted to something, and the deficits we experience daily cause us to be seeking our drug: attention, esteem, comfort.

This move from need to fulfillment is what defines us and how it happens is very important. Most of the time, it happens quite compulsively since we seek without knowing ...  Keep reading

Growing Down

June 3, 2013

We often think that as we grow spiritually, we will leave people behind. We tend to struggle with how to approach or talk to people we see as “beneath us” because we are just so “spiritually mature.” We act like we have entered some other realm they cannot even come near.

Then I look at Jesus, who embodied perfect consciousness, all wisdom, maturity and strength and I see how he treated people who might have been seen as “beneath him.” Beggars, cripples, the ...  Keep reading

Sustained Ecstasy

June 1, 2013

Someone gave me this bit of wisdom once: she said, “the pain tells me that I am alive.” She was battling cancer and all the pain and agony that go along with that, and she stopped taking her pain medication almost altogether. She is a brave soul. She said when the meds covered all of the pain, she would wake up and not know if she was alive or dead. Her illness had progressed to a point where she could go any time, and she didn’t want to be in a drug-induced stupor. She wanted ...  Keep reading