Living Water

Christ shows us the way to life, and those who embark on this way are like a fountain of living water bubbling forth from the earth, which steadily moves in all directions in spite of the obstacles blocking it.  One who follows Christ's way can just as little ask what he must positively do as the spring of water flowing from the earth can ask such a question.  It flows, refreshing the soil, the earth, the trees, the birds, the animals, and people.  The same is true for the one who genuinely believes in Christ.

Leo Tolstoy

Look Outside

Anyone who looks only at themselves will inevitably sink into melancholy.  Open your eyes to creation all around you, and the shadows already begin to disperse.

Br. Roger of Taize

Healing

I am not a mechanism, an assembly of various sections.

And it is not because the mechanism is working wrongly, that I am ill.

I am ill because of wounds to the soul, to the deep emotional self,

And wounds to the soul take a long, long time,

Only time can help,

And patience, and a certain difficult repentance,

Long, difficult repentance, realization of life's mistake,

And the freeing oneself from the endless repetition of the mistake

Which mankind at large has chosen to sanctify.

"Healing" by D.H. Lawrence

Original Sin

Original sin is our sharing int he common pain of being human.  It does not need hatred.  It needs healing.  It does not deserve punishment.  It deserves tears.  It is not worked through so much as washed away by situating one's life in a much bigger picture.

Richard Rohr, OFM, Adam's Return

Transfiguration and suffering

What allows us to discover [an inner] transfiguration?  With our thorns themselves, God lights a fire that never goes out.

Brother Roger of Taize

Identity and Integrity

“Identity lies in the intersection of the diverse forces that make up my life and integrity lies in relating those forces in ways that bring me wholeness and life rather than fragmentation and death.”

• • • • Parker Palmer

Reason and Imagination

When Descartes said, “I think, therefore I am,” he did us no favor, but further fragmented us, making us limit ourselves to the cognitive at the expense of the imaginative and the intuitive. But each time we read the gospels we are offered anew this healing reconciliation and, if we will, we can accept the most wondrous gift of the magi.

Madeleine L'Engle

Healing

A friend of mine once remarked when I looked physically worn down, "Even God cannot play on a broken violin."
Francis MacNutt, Healing p. 59