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

Do we want to live forever?

Death was not part of nature; it became part of nature. God did not decree death from the beginning; he prescribed it as a remedy. Human life, because of sin... began to experience teh burden of wretchedness in unremitting labour and unbearable sorrow. There had to be a limit to its evils; death had to restore what life had forfeited. Without the assistance of grace, immortality is more of a burden than a blessing."

St. Ambrose, quoted in Spe Salvi (10)

Preaching

"To try to preach without referring to the history one preaches in is not to preach the gospel. Many would like a preaching so spiritualistic that it leaves sinners unbothered and does not term idolaters those who kneel before money and power. A preaching that says nothing of the sinful environment in which the gospel is reflected upon is not the gospel."

Oscar Romero

Sin

Man’s sin is a failure to live what he is. Being the master of the earth, man forgets that he is servant of God.

Abraham Joshua Heschel

What do most of us know about the substance of words? Estranged from the soil of the soul, our words do not grow as fruits of insights, but are found as sapless clichés, refuse in the backyard of intelligence. To the man of our age nothing is as familiar and nothing as trite as words… We all live in them, feel in them, think in them, but failing to uphold their independent dignity, to respect their power and weight, they turn waif, elusive – a mouthful of dust…

Abraham Joshua Heschel 1907-1972