By Dean Brackley, SJ
Have the courage to lose control.
Have the courage to feel useless.
Have the courage to listen.
Have the courage to receive.
Have the courage to let your heart be broken.
Have the courage to feel.
Have the courage to fall in love.
Have the courage to get ruined for life.
Have the courage to make a friend.
Dean Brackley was Jesuit priest, an educator, community organizer, author and social justice advocate who lived and worked in El Salvador starting in 1990.
By Rumi
The porter runs to the heavy load and takes it from others,
knowing burdens are the foundation of ease
and bitter things the forerunners of pleasure.
See the porters struggle over the load!
It’s the way of those who see the truth of things.
[Mathnawi II: 1834-6]
Reflection based on this text – “Struggling with Service” by Saimma Dyer.
By John O’Donohue
May the light of your soul guide you.
May the light of your soul bless the work
You do with the secret love and warmth of your heart. Continue reading
By Elie Wiesel
True, we are often too weak to stop injustices;
but the least we can do is protest against them.
True, we are too poor to eliminate hunger;
but in feeding one child, we protest against hunger.
By Roger Kamenetz
One voice in bitterness, one voice in joy.
One voice explaining, one voice complaining.
One voice in the ecstasy of having not.
This makes five. Continue reading
Elohai’n’shamah’shenatata’bi’t’horah’hi.
My God, the soul You gave me is pure.
You created it; You sculpted it; You breathed it inside of me; You protect it.
At some future time, You will draw it forth from me
And give it back in theWorld to Come. Continue reading
By Frederick Buechner
Listen to your life.
See it for the fathomless mystery it is.
In the boredom and pain of it, no less than in the excitement and gladness:
Touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it,
Because in the last analysis, all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace.
Frederick Buechner was an American author, Presbyterian minister, preacher, and theologian.
At the rising of the sun at its going down we remember them.
At the blowing of the wind and in the chill of the winter we remember them
At the opening of the buds and in the rebirth of spring we remember them.
At the blueness of the skies and in the warmth of summer we remember them. Continue reading
By Abraham Joshua Heschel
No religion is an island;
There is no monopoly on holiness.
We are companions of all who revere God
We all rejoice when we walk in God’s way.
No religion is an island;
We share the kinship of humanity,
The capacity for compassion. Continue reading
By Mary Oliver
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean—
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention,
how to fall down into the grass,
how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed,
how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
Mary Oliver was an American poet.