“BLOSSOMING”: Brief Excerpts
“Sitting on the back porch eating breakfast. Finishing my cereal, leaning back, looking at the sun pushing through the clouds, peeping through the tree branches newly visible as winter approaches….I lean back and see the dark reds and deep grays, I hear the soft breeze, I smell the clean air, I see the light now pouring through the clouds and branches, and suddenly it all becomes clear: I need moments of beauty in my life. Moments of beauty. That’s what I need.”
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“My name exists in the womb of the universe. I’m called to live a life in which my name is slowly born out of that womb, born a little more every day, born by struggling to see the I am and the I am not, born by struggling to be someone who might screw things up but will never, never say anything but yes, I care, I will never stop caring, and nothing and nobody will ever convince me that it’s not the most important thing in the world to care about who I am and the work I was given to do.”
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“The dream observes events like a hawk floating high above the earth who can see to the horizon and beyond, yet also measures the flecks of dust on a pebble and counts the veins on a leaf….Do you see the love that lies behind the dream? The kind of love that throws us in the deep end and says: Swim. The kind of love that shows us what’s possible in our lives and says: Do it.”
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“The greatest tragedy is not the person who dies young, or fails miserably, or makes some terrible error of judgment and loses her way. The greatest tragedy is the person who’s so damaged, so afraid, that he throws in the towel before he even gets started. The person who’s unwilling to be crucified, and thus never knows resurrection. The person who doesn’t grow.”
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“Suddenly I was no longer looking at the mountains, the sky. I was looking at Love, embodied in the stuff of the world. Love was flowing out from every atom of creation. Love was everywhere, in everything. In me. But not contained, not limited to me, not limited in any way, just flowing, singing, vibrating, dancing, everywhere, in everything."
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“Being shredded by the horrors of life, and being filled up by the love that flows out of the very molecules we’re made of—as the saying goes, that’s life. That is life.”
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“When the wind sweeps down the valley, it sounds like a billion-year-old voice, whispering gently of cosmic dust slowly congealing, of mountains gradually rising, of unnamed oceans, of dinosaurs and trilobites. Every creature that ever lived, and ever will live, whispers in that wind. It sings of a vast nothingness, an emptiness inside an emptiness. And an all-embracing love that springs from the very dust beneath the feet. A fullness that touches each rock, each blade of grass, each particle of every atom of living matter. Let it continue to touch me.”
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"I’ve got to drink what’s in that grief vessel. Don’t let a drop spill out, drink it down, pour it into every cell of my body, the dark water that moistens the dark earth where the seeds of my making, my loving, my dying are waiting, silently, to grow.”
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“All those medieval theologians trying to prove the existence of God—what a ridiculous waste of time. They’d have been better off admiring a blade of grass or a grain of sand, or contemplating the bend of their own elbow as they ate their oatmeal or the contour of a single hair growing out of their thick skulls.”
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“The sunflower seed is wise enough to seek the nourishment it needs to grow into what it’s meant to become. Are we?”
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“I’m not here to ruminate about the next world. I’m here to be in this world. God, is that world terrifying! God, is that world beautiful! Give me more of it! All the pain and all the joy—give it to me! That is my prayer. May the pain and the joy open my eyes and give me life, O God of the universe! Life, life, and more life! Give me life!"