Last week I spoke about a safe place within ourselves or with another. Such a safe place seems to be essential if we are to be open and vulnerable. A key component in this process is trust–trust in ourselves, in at least some others, and in life itself. We need […] Read more
A Safe Place
I have spoken of kindness, friendship, and love as involving an openness and vulnerability. We open our heart, our core, both to reach out and to let another in. This vulnerability carries the risk of receiving a vulnus, a wounding or hurt. In the song, Some Say Love, this thought […] Read more
The Crack That Lets in the Light
Last week, we spoke of kindness as an essential quality of a fulfilling life, beginning with kindness to ourselves and extending to those near to us, and even to those we meet only casually or on occasion. It implies both a sense of connection to others, who are somehow kin, […] Read more
Kindness as Life-Giving
I was very struck lately by Susan Cain’s observation that Darwin has been readily misinterpreted. She notes that perhaps his view is better understood, not as survival of the fittest, but as survival of the kindest. Very shortly before her death, writer June Callwood stated simply: “I believe in kindness.” […] Read more
At Home in the Garden of Our Heart
Last week, using the image of tears, we suggested that there is a place within us that is deeper than the separation of thoughts and feelings into opposite like joy and sorrow, fear and hope and the like. And it is this same place that is able to contain all […] Read more
Tears of Joy and Sorrow
In the last while, we have spoken of the difference between life scripts we inherit from without and our true story from within. We have also spoken of memory as the process not so much of recalling past events, but of remembering who we are. It is a process of […] Read more
Memory as Remembering Who We Are
Last week we mentioned the importance of discovering what we have called a true story–a true image of who we are and a worthwhile script to follow in living out our life. We need a story that takes into account all our spiritual richness and complexity and depth, as well […] Read more
Freedom as Gathering and Gift of Self
Last week, we spoke of imagination as a gateway to freedom. Imagination does so by opening up alternatives, new possibilities, in how we think and feel, in our attitudes and actions, our way of life. Two themes come from this reflection: one is the need for what spiritual writer, Wayne Muller, […] Read more