Tag: growth

Me, a Saint?

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The Pope is in England for the start of the process of making John Henry Newman a “saint”. Newman was a good man and a very fine thinker, personalifying a gentle, open-minded search for truth. The school I went to in Ireland,  founded in 1867, was influenced by his principles of education. Most wisdom traditions hold up examples of people wo can act as an encouragement to us, such as the Bodhisattvas in the Buddhist tradition or the Saints in the Catholic and Orthodox history. Sometimes, however, the focus is on their extraordinary deeds which can lead us into thinking that full contentment is only to be found there. In this light, I like this quote from Thomas Merton:

For me to be a saint means to be myself.

Therefore the problem of sanctity and salvation is,  in fact,

the problem of finding our who I am and discovering my true self.

Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation

Encouragement

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I have always liked the person of Barnabas in the New Testament. He was known as the “Son of Encouragement”. I have always felt that I would love to be known like that, as one who encourages. We all need encouragement and know what it feels like when someone believes in us. Someone who sees us, not as we are, but as we have the potential to become. That gives us courage.

…… If I accept the other person as something fixed, already diagnosed and classified…then I am doing my part to confirm this limited hypothesis. If I accept him as a process of becoming, then I am doing what I can to confirm or make real his potential.

Carl Rogers

Sunday Quote

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There is a time for departure

even when there’s no certain place to go.

Tennessee Williams

A long conversation

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We sometimes mistakingly think that life will unfold magically in a flash, or that we will be born mature and fully developed, just as Athena sprung from the head of Zeus. It would be nice if we saw clearly, immediately, our path and role, but that would take away a lot of the lessons we gain from slowly finding out or from taking wrong turns. Life is, rather, a slow process, a long conversation and dialogue, where we do not often see clearly and are always searching,  as this beautiful Mary Oliver poem reminds us:

Another morning and I wake with thirst
for the goodness I do not have. I walk
out to the pond and all the way God has
given us such beautiful lessons. Oh Lord,
I was never a quick scholar but sulked
and hunched over my books past the hour
and the bell; grant me, in your mercy,
a little more time. Love for the earth
and love for you are having such a long
conversation in my heart. Who knows what
will finally happen or where I will be sent,
yet already I have given a great many things
away, expecting to be told to pack nothing,
except the prayers which, with this thirst,
I am slowly learning.

Mary Oliver, Thirst, Beacon Press, 2006

Sunday Quote : What is my path?

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Traveller,  your footprints
are the only road,

There is no path.

Paths are made by walking.

Antonio Machado

The monsters that scare us

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It is striking how much of our life is tinged with fear. We all have fears inside ourselves, monsters and dragons that raise their heads from time to time. When they show themselves we can default to a smaller, less competent version of ourselves and feel that we are not capable of achieving anything.

However, as Rilke’s extraordinary text tells us, when we turn towards our fears many of them dissolve. The things that frightens us can actually help us grow. Running from them ultimately is running from a place of real grace. That which is most alien will become our friend. The very difficulties become our path of growth.

We, however are not prisoners. No traps or snares are set about us, and there is nothing which should intimidate or worry us. We are set down in life as in the element to which we best correspond. We have no reason to mistrust our world, for it is not against us. Has it terrors, they are our terrors; has it abysses, those abysses belong to us; are dangers at hand, we must try to love them. And if we could only arrange our life according to that principle which counsels us that we must always hold to the difficult, then that which now seems to us the most alien will become what we most trust and find most faithful. How should we be able to forget those ancient myths that are at the beginning of all peoples, the myths about dragons that at the last moment turn into princesses; perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave. Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us.