(This is my last memory verse for May. I love the promise of it and chose it because I feel like I'm finally really connecting with God again, and this is a verse that strengthens that!)
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"The degree to which we’ll be honest with Him about our deep messes, our brokenness and intense struggles (as if He isn’t already intimately acquainted with every detail), is the degree to which we’ll be healed. And the degree to which we’ll do what He tells us to do to trash the trash in our lives also holds some weight."
~Lindsee in this awesome post!
"You mistake my choice not to feel as a reflection of my not caring, while I assure you the truth is quite the opposite." ~Spock :)
The following are all quotes by Parker J. Palmer in his book Let Your Life Speak, the most recent book we read for class:
"The world still waits for the truth that will set us free... the truth that was seeded in the earth when each of us arrived here formed in the image of God. Cultivating that truth, I believe, is the authentic vocation of every human being."
"Authentic leaders in every setting - from families to nation-states - aim at LIBERATING THE HEART, their own and others', so that its powers can liberate the world." ~Parker J. Palmer
"I could feel nothing except the burden of my own life and the exhaustion, the apparent futility, of trying to sustain it. I understand why some depressed people kill themselves: they need the rest. But I do not understand why others are able to find new life in the midst of a living death, though I am one of them. I can tell you what I did to survive, and eventually, to thrive - but I cannot tell you why I was able to do those things before it was too late."
"It is important to speak one's truth to a depressed person... In depression, the built-in bunk detector that we all possess is not only turned on but is set on high. No one can fully experience another person's mystery... it was the empathetic attempt to identify with me that made me feel even more isolated, because it was overidentification. Disconnection may be hell, but it is better than false connections.""
"Depression is the ultimate state of disconnection, not only between people, and between mind and heart, but between one's self-image and public mask."
"One of the hardest things we must do sometimes is to be present to another person's pain without trying to 'fix' it, to simply stand respectfully at the edge of that person's mystery and misery. Standing there, we feel useless and powerless, which is exactly how a depressed person feels - and our unconscious need as Job's comforters is to reassure ourselves that we are not like the sad soul before us. In an effort to avoid those feelings, I give advice, which sets me, not you, free."
"One of the most painful discoveries I made in the midst of the dark woods of depression was that a part of me wanted to stay depressed. As long as I clung to this living death, life became easier; little was expected of me, certainly not serving others."
"The spiritual journey runs counter to the power of positive thinking. Why must we go in and down? Because as we do so, we will meet the darkness that we carry within ourselves - the ultimate source of the shadows that we project onto other people. If we do not understand that... we will find a thousand ways of making someone 'out there' into the enemy, becoming leaders who oppress rather than liberate others."
"When we are insecure about our own identities, we create settings that deprive other people of their identities as a way of buttressing our own. This happens all the time in families, where parents who do not like themselves give their children low self-esteem... Your sense of self is enhanced by leaders who know who they are."
"A second shadow inside many of us is the belief that the universe is a battleground, hostile to human interests... The spiritual truth that harmony is more fundamental than warfare in the nature of reality itself can transform this leadership shadow."
"Because they were not driven by their own fears, the fears that lead us either to 'fix' or abandon each other, they provided me with a lifeline to the human race. That lifeline constituted the most profound form of leadership I can imagine - leading a suffering person back to life from a living death."
"My delight in the autumn colors is always tinged with melancholy, a sense of impending loss that is only heightened by the beauty all around. I am drawn down by the prospect of death more than I am lifted up by the hope of new life... in the autumnal events of my own experience, I am rarely aware that seeds are being planted. I am easily fixated on surface appearances - on the decline of meaning, the decay of relationships, the death of work. And yet if I look more deeply, I may see the myriad of possibilities being planted to bear fruit in some season yet to come."
~Parker J. Palmer
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