“Mistakes are the portals of discovery.” Leonardo Da Vinci
What have you discovered this way?
Discovery
Silence
“We need to find God, and God cannot be found in noise and restlessness. God is the friend of silence. See how nature – trees, flowers, grass – grows in silence; see the stars, the moon and the sun, how they move in silence. We need silence to be able to touch souls.” Teresa of Calcutta
What touches your soul?
Compassion
“…going down into the deep pain of another is like jumping into a bottomless abyss – not knowing if or where one will land. To grasp another’s pain means letting go of our own safety limb and falling down to an unknown place. In this place we maybe won’t have the answers that will help alleviate the pain or explain it. We have to be willing to admit, then and there, down in the pit, that we too are helpless and weak and powerless. And who wants to do that, or be there?” Henri Nouwen
How are you called to presence with?
Sometimes
Sometimes you need the ocean light and colors you’ve never seen before painted through the evening sky.
Sometimes you need your God to be a simple invitation… David Whyte
What invitation do you need?
The Cellist of Sarajevo
On May 27, 1992 a mortar killed 22 people waiting in front of a bakery in Sarajevo. Vedran Smailovic, the cellist of Sarajevo responded to the trauma by playing cello in public spaces for two years. When a reporter asked him, “Aren’t you crazy to be playing cello during the shelling?” Smailovic replied, “You ask me am I crazy for playing cello, why don’t you ask them if they are crazy to be shelling?”
What questions need to be turned around?
The growing edge
“Look well to the growing edge! … It is the extra breath from the exhausted lung, the one more thing to try when all else has failed, the upward reach of life when weariness closes in upon all endeavor. This is the basis of hope in moments of despair, the incentive to carry on when times are out of joint, the source of confidence when worlds crash and dreams whiten into ash. … Look well to the growing edge!” Howard Thurman
Where is your growing edge?
With the Eyes of the Heart 