The reality is that most of us lived our first decades feeling welcome only when certain conditions applied: we felt safe and embraced only when the parental units were getting along, when we were on...
The pain does grow less acute, but the insidious palace lie that we will get over crushing losses means that our emotional GPS can never find true north, as it is based on maps that no longer mention...
The neck is where it all shows. Like the thighs of the head.
The movement of grace toward gratitude brings us from the package of self-obsessed madness to a spiritual awakening. Gratitude is peace.
The lesson here is that there is no fix. There is, however, forgiveness. To forgive yourselves and others constantly is necessary. Not only is everyone screwed up, but everyone screws up.
The harm is in the unwanted help or helping them when they need to figure things out for themselves. Help is the sunny side of control.
The good news is that God has such low standards, and reaches out to those of us who are often not lovable and offers us a chance to come back in from the storm of drama and toxic thoughts.
The ancient Chinese had a practice of embellishing the cracked parts of valued possessions with gold leaf, which says: We dishonor it if we pretend that it hadn't gotten broken. It says: We value this...
SHORE AND GROUND Keep walking, though there’s no place to get to. Don’t try to see through the distances. That’s not for human beings. Move within, but don’t move the way fear makes you move. Today, l...
Rumi: Where there is ruin, there is hope for a treasure.
Over and over I feel as if my characters know who they are, and what happens to them, and where they have been and where they will go, and what they are capable of doing, but they need me to write it...
Left to its own devices, my mind spends much of its time having conversations with people who aren’t there. I walk along defending myself to people, or exchanging repartee with them, or rationalizing...
Laughter is deliverance, bubbly salvation.
Jesus is busy with his own stuff, and is not going to get involved in your little tug-of-war. Plus, don't forget, he has his own mother to deal with. She's all he can handle, as far as mothers go.
It's always the same old problem: how to find ourselves in the great yammering of ego and tragedy and discomfort and obsession with everyone else's destinies.
It is funny how no one seems to want my always excellent advice.
In May 1992, I went to Ixtapa with my son, Sam, who was then two and a half. At the time, my best friend of twenty years, named Pammy, had been battling breast cancer for two years. I also had a boyfr...
I tried to cooperate with grace, which is to say, I did not turn on the TV.
I sat down in the sand, breathless with shame and failure. God, I thought, some defender of the weak. Some freedom fighter: Joan of Arc in sunscreen.
I pray not to be such a whiny, self-obsessed baby, and give thanks that I am not quite as bad as I used to be (talk about miracles). Then something comes up, and I overreact and blame and sulk, and it...