You don't have a soul, you are a Soul.

Ladies, 2008 brought dancing.

You have taught me many things this year...
that love comes to those who still hope even though they’ve been disappointed, to those who still believe even when they’ve been betrayed, to those who still love even though they’ve been hurt before.

Thank you
x

"How do we befriend our inner enemies, lust and anger? By listening to what they are saying. They are saying "I have some unfulfilled needs" and "Who really loves me?". Insted of pushing our anger and lust away as unwelcomed guests, we can recognise that our anxious, driven hearts need some healing. Our restlessness calls us to look for the true inner rest where lust and anger can be converted into a deeper way of loving.There is a lot of unruly energy in lust and anger! When that energy can be directed towards loving well, we can transform not only ourselves but even those who might otherwise become the victims of our anger and lust. This takes patience, but it can be done."Elsewhere he also says that patience it is not waiting for something out of our control to happen, like waiting for it to rain, but "Patience asks us to live the moment to the fullest, to be completely present to the moment, to taste here and now, to be where we are. When we are impatient we try to get away from where we are. We act like as if the real thing will happen tomorrow, later or somewhere else. Let's be patient and trust that the treasure we look for is hidden in the ground on which we stand."

H. N.

There is a beautiful Haisidic story of a rabbi who always told his people that if they studied the Torah, it would put Scripture on their hearts. One of them asked, “Why on our hearts, and not in them?” The rabbi answered, “Only God can put Scripture inside. But reading sacred text can put it on your hearts, and when your hearts break, the holy words will fall inside.”
‘How strange that we should ordinarily feel compelled to hide our wounds when we are all wounded.’
M. Scott Peck, A Different Drum

"to become human implies two realities. It means to be someone, to have cultivated our gifts, and also to be open to others, to look at them not with a feeling of superiority but with eyes of respect. It means to become men and women with the wisdom of love. For this, we often need help. For many, as for myself, religion can be a gentle source of strength and love, as can a mentor or wise friend.
...the future of humanity is not just in the hands of politicians and of corporations but in our hands. Peace will come through dialogue, through trust and respect for others who are different, through inner strength and a spirituality of love, patience, humility, and forgiveness. Little by little, a culture of competition will be transformed into a culture of welcome and mutual respect. The crises that will come will then not just be moments of danger but opportunities for dialogue and unity, and solutions will emerge."
Jean Vanier

Absent Friend

‘The night lifted, leaving behind it a grayish light the colour of stagnant water. Soon there was only a tattered fragment of darkness, hanging in midair, the other side of the window. Fear caught my throat. The tattered fragment of darkness had a face. Looking at it, I understood, I understood the reason for my fear. The face was my own.’
(Elie Wiesel, Night)

Why is it so many find their own sadness intoxicating?
What seed is being watered in these feelings?
What are our eyes trying to say with their tears?

Some things just can’t be fixed this side of a much better place.
I have been offered perspective tonight.
I have been granted a glimpse of my own insignificance.

is our desire to be loved suffocating our desire to love?

I bruise you, you bruise me
We both bruise too easily
Too easily to let it show

Just as F is for Feathers
and Forgiving
and Fragile
Or as
N is for Naming
and Nest

for all that is tender
so here will i letter
the thing that
the birds know the best...

that though L is for Losing
it's also for Loosing
and Loving and Living and Leaves

just as B is for Broken
but also Beginnings
like Birthing and Blessed and
to Breathe...

LB

Carrie, simply stunning*

“He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose”
Jim Elliott

An ability to tap into the hearts of dysfunctional misfits and somehow bring them home is inspiring to me; a genius weaving a grace that brings meaning and hope into the broken, shattered and mundane world of the human.

…here is the opening page of Eleanor Rigby

‘I had always thought that a person born blind and given sight later on in life through the miracles of modern medicine would feel reborn. Just imagine looking at our world with brand new eyes, everything fresh, covered with dew and charged with beauty - pale skin and yellow daffodils, boiled lobsters and a full moon. And yet I’ve read books that tell me this isn’t the way newly created vision plays out in real life. Gifted with sight, previously blind patients become frightened and confused. They can’t make sense of shape or colour or depth. Everything shocks, and nothing brings solace. My brother, William, says, “Well think about it, Liz - kids lie in their cribs for nearly a year watching hand puppets and colourful toys come and go. They’re as dumb as planks, and it takes a long time to even twig to the notion of where they end and the world begins. Why should it be any different just because you’re older and technically wiser?”
In the end, those gifted with new eyesight tend to retreat into their own worlds. Some beg to be made blind again, yet when they consider it further, they hesitate, and realize they’re unable to surrender their sight. Bad visions are better than no visions.’

someday there will surely be someone

These days
whatever you have to say, leave the roots on, let them dangle
And the dirt
Just to make clear where they come from
- Charles Olson

THE PRIEST LOOKED up from the psalms on the lectern, cast his eyes over the hats bowed before him. Feathered, frilled, felt hats in rows like faces. One at the end of the row different. A head without hat. A cat without fur. A bird without wings. Won’t fly far.
Voices danced in song with the colours of the windows. Red light played along the aisle, blue over the white corsage of Mme Dewsbury, green on the pages of the Bible. Reflecting up on the face of the priest. He spoke to the young lady afterwards: ‘You must wear a hat and gloves in the House of God. It is not seemly otherwise.’
The lady flushed, raised her chin, strode out. ‘That’s the last we’ll see of her,’ said the organist.

The organ rang out, the priest raised his eyes to the rose window. He did not see the woman in hat and gloves advancing down the aisle as though she were a bride. The hat, enormous, such as one might wear to the races. Gloves, black lace, such as one might wear to meet a duchess. Shoes, high- heeled, such as one might wear on a catwalk in Paris.
And nothing else.
(By Judy Parker, from 100 NZ short stories, ed. Graeme Lay. Tandem Press. NZ, 1997)