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?

Solitude

“Let him who cannot be alone beware of community…Let him who is not in community be aware of being alone…Each by itself has profound pitfalls and perils. One who wants fellowship without solitude plunges into the void of words and feelings, and one who seeks solitude without fellowship perishes in the abyss of vanity, self-infatuation, and despair.” Dietrich Bonhoeffer

How do you seek solitude and community?

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?

Into the storm

“Each one of us has lived through some devastation, some loneliness, some weather superstorm or spiritual superstorm, when we look at each other we must say, I understand. I understand how you feel because I have been there myself. We must support each other and empathize with each other because each of us is more alike than we are unalike” Maya Angelou

What are you facing into?

Hedges

“When the wonder of creation and our place in it are lost to us, it’s often because we’ve lost sight of our true role as creatures – we have tried to do too much, pretending to be in such control of things that we are indispensable. It’s a hedge against mortality.” Kathleen Norris

Where is your hedge?

Soul work

“Grief work is soul work. It requires courage to face the world as it is and not turn away, to not burrow into a hole of comfort and anesthetization. Grief deepens our connection with soul, taking us into territories of vulnerability, exposing the truth of our need for others in times of loss and suffering.” Francis Weller, The Wild Edge of Sorrow