“If you are living in love, you are in heaven no matter where you are… If you are not in love, you are in hell, no matter where you are. The stories we tell of heaven and hell are not about how we die, but about how we live.”
Kate Braestrup, from her book: Here If You Need Me
“We have to hope that there is always something better around the corner. We doubt our ability to rise to meet hardship, and we do everything in our power to avoid it. We have to dig down, to believe unfailingly in the ability of the human spirit to triumph in ways we didn’t think possible. To make the choice to be resilient, ultimately to bounce back, is to make the choice to be grateful, as grateful as possible for the cards you’ve been dealt.”
Lee Woodruff, from her book In An Instant: A Family’s Journey of Love and Healing
“If I bore the sins of all in My agonized heart…on Calvary, then when you seek to punish others whom you despise, you punish and despise me.”
From the April 3rd reading in God at Eventide
This one caught me off guard the first time I read it years ago. It was one of those entries you read, swallow hard, remember how many times you were guilty of this, and you hope nobody else finds out because you feel like a jerk.
Then there’s that moment of fear, that “I mere mortal, have probably pissed off God” and you start looking over your shoulder for the incoming lightening bolt.
The truth is, the God I believe in, is not about vengeance. A God of total love doesn’t need to have vengeance. Humans often want it, but a being of total love can’t even comprehend that. So, I don’t expect there’ll be any cries of “INCOMING” from the Almighty.
Frankly though, after I thought about it, I almost wanted the lightening bolt. Instead of anger, what I heard in those words was sorrow. God helped somebody, set them free, and I came along and dumped all over everyone. Who wants to admit making God feel bad? Makes you almost want to volunteer for hell, just to make God feel better.
The reality is that’s not the answer, and hell isn’t even a creation of God. We create it. It’s within. There was joy and love until I came along like the rain cloud and crabbed at someone. I did it thinking I’d feel better, in the end I felt worse. I created my own hell….and spread it around.
So, I guess, maybe the answer to prevent pain for both me and God, can be found in the Buddhist idea of “come back to the breath.” As you open your mouth to retort, instead of letting words out, first, breathe in. At least it will take you a couple seconds longer to say something you’ll regret later. And who knows, you might even say something you won’t regret as much. I don’t imagine God expects miracles. He might actually smile to hear a few less insults thrown. You count your progress where you can…. 🙂
It’s interesting that Walter Winchell and Mother Teresa said something very similar even though the two were worlds apart. Winchell invented the gossip column and initially hung out with gangsters. Mother Teresa looked after the poor. But both understood something about real friendship I guess.
Winchell commented that a true friend walks in the door when everyone else walks out. I imagine he must have known that firsthand, given he spilled many a secret on many a celebrity. I expect he knew the value of a real friend, working in a world where what was real, was hard to tell.
Mother Teresa once commented that “If I ever become a Saint — I will surely be one of ‘darkness.’ I will continually be absent from Heaven — to light the light of those in darkness on earth.”
Her love for those she worked with here was such that the idea of leaving anyone behind while she went off to paradise, was not something she could abide. She lived in a world of looking after all of those the world walked out on. In life, it was Mother Teresa who walked in the door. In death, I expect she has probably found a way to continue to do that, if only as a cool breeze on the face of a sick person in the noon heat, a star glowing brighter than the others in the night sky, or one of those fleeting moments of hope during a day of total despair.
A true friend walks in, walks beside, can’t abide leaving someone behind. An odd couple, Walter Winchell and Mother Teresa.
“A real friend is one who walks in when the rest of the world walks out.”
Walter Winchell
“Don’t be impatient for the Lord to act! Keep traveling steadily along His pathway and in due season He will honor you with every blessing.”
Psalm 37:34
“Getting older means paring yourself down to an essential version of yourself…nothing extraneous…becoming new again. …As we get older…we discover our capacity to love and communicate and have intimacy–real intimacy, not the superficial intimacy we had in our youth. Strip away the bullsh–; be done with that. Ask yourself these two questions:
Did I learn to live wisely?
Did I love well?”
Jamie Lee Curtis speaking in an interview with AARP, May/June 2008
“Your care for others is the measure of your greatness.”
Luke 9:48
“It isn’t the things that happen to us in our lives that cause us to suffer, it’s how we relate to the things that happen to us that causes us to suffer.”
—Pema Chödrön
From her interview with Bill Moyers in the PBS special: Faith and Reason. If interested, click here for the transcript or here to watch the interview
Soul Mosaic 