And in the wee hours, when you are alone and viciously confronted by your past, by the choices that shame you and the acts you cannot change; do not turn against yourself.
For if our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and knoweth all things. (1 John 3:20)
Remember your goodness. Remember your talents. Remember your strength.
Tagged: bible, encouragement, shame
The central question of a warrior’s training is not how we avoid uncertainty and fear but how we relate to discomfort. How do we practice with difficulty, with our emotions, with the unpredictable encounters of an ordinary day?
Pema Chödrön, Comfortable with Uncertainty
photo credit: Fraochsidhe
Tagged: difficulty, discomfort, fear, Pema Chodron
Our culture of flagrant self-exaltation, hardwired in the American character, permits the humiliation of all those who oppose us. We believe, after all, that because we have the capacity to wage war we have a right to wage war. Those who lose deserve to be erased. Those who fail, those who are deemed ugly, ignorant or poor, should be belittled and mocked. Human beings are used and discarded like Styrofoam boxes that held junk food. And the numbers of superfluous human beings are swelling the unemployment offices, the prisons and the soup kitchens.
It is the cult of self that is killing the United States. This cult has within it the classic traits of psychopaths: superficial charm, grandiosity and self-importance; a need for constant stimulation; a penchant for lying, deception and manipulation; and the incapacity for remorse or guilt. Michael Jackson, from his phony marriages to the portraits of himself dressed as royalty to his insatiable hunger for new toys to his questionable relationships with young boys, had all these qualities. And this is also the ethic of unfettered capitalism. It is the misguided belief that personal style and personal advancement, mistaken for individualism, are the same as democratic equality. It is the nationwide celebration of image over substance, of illusion over truth. And it is why investment bankers blink in confusion when questioned about the morality of the billions in profits they made by selling worthless toxic assets to investors.
We have a right, in the cult of the self, to get whatever we desire. We can do anything, even belittle and destroy those around us, including our friends, to make money, to be happy and to become famous. Once fame and wealth are achieved, they become their own justification, their own morality. How one gets there is irrelevant. It is this perverted ethic that gave us investment houses like Goldman Sachs…that willfully trashed the global economy and stole money from tens of millions of small shareholders who had bought stock in these corporations for retirement or college. The heads of these corporations, like the winners on a reality television program who lied and manipulated others to succeed, walked away with hundreds of millions of dollars in bonuses and compensation. The ethic of Wall Street is the ethic of celebrity. It is fused into one bizarre, perverted belief system and it has banished the possibility of the country returning to a reality-based world of avoiding internal collapse. A society that cannot distinguish reality from illusion dies.
-Chris Hedges, Adbusters :: July/August 2010
A photo, quite identical to the one above, was featured in the Adbusters July/August issue, and as I looked at the worldly possessions of Mohandas Gandhi, a spiritual and political visionary that has inspired generations, I felt, well, guilty. As I am admittedly, a person of dramatic affect, my response was of no great surprise. But, what of it? Can I truly pare down my possessions to so much less than what it is now? I own less than I did at January 1 but obviously more than necessary, certainly more than I even want.
Many embrace minimalism for purely aesthetic reasons, but for me, there is certainly a spiritual aspect as well.
photo credit: via google images
Tagged: minimalism, possessions
My trip to the local landfill was complete confirmation that we should obsess about the things we own. Obsess about why we buy them, how we care for them and how we dispose of them. Acres of beautiful landscape dedicated to mashing our junk into the ground. Yuck.
photo credit: phyllisalyse
Tagged: minimalism, possessions
It has been said, “home is where the heart is” and this I believe is true. But, what could equally be claimed is that home is your very heart. Less a location to be found on a map or a structure of four walls but a spiritual state of heart. An essence that one carries with them that they can tap into at any given time. A center of peace and ‘rightness’ that can be touched, a source of comfort in any given moment, regardless of location. If that is the case, what do we then make of the address to which we claim our residence?
Tagged: home
And now, I leave you with a little romance… Have a wonderful weekend.
Tagged: love letters, romance, Sex and the City
I watched this video twice and marveled at how timely it was for me. Although, I must admit, I wasn’t thinking of enemies as much as I was thinking of friends. I thought of times when I was in a bad space or difficult transition and I was the one throwing the rocks. I also thought of people in my life that I feel are throwing rocks and I can’t understand why. A great reminder to forgive and be grateful to all of those who have forgiven you. Thanks to Eugene Cho for sharing.
Tagged: bridges, christianity, forgiveness, relationships
