Steel Thyself

"The trouble with steeling yourself against the harshness of reality

is that the same steel that secures your life against being destroyed

secures your life also against being opened up and transformed

by the holy power that life itself comes from.

You can survive on your own.

You can grow strong on your own.

You can even prevail on your own.

But you cannot become human on your own."

- F. Buechner, The Sacred Journey

pay attention

"…And when Jesus comes along saying that the greatest command of all is

to love God and to love our neighbor, he too is asking us to pay attention.

If we are to love God, we must first stop, look, and listen for him

 in what is happening around us and inside us.

If we are to love our neighbors, before doing anything else

we must see our neighbors. With our imagination as well as our eyes,

that is to say like artists, we must see not just their faces

but the life behind and within their faces.

Here it is love that is the frame we see them in."

-Frederick Buechner, Whistling in the Dark

becoming human

“You can survive on your own;

you can grow strong on your own;

you can prevail on your own;

but you cannot become human on your own."

Frederick Buechner, The Sacred Journey

too many coats

"The original, shimmering self gets buried so deep

that most of us end up hardly living out of it at all.

Instead we live out of all the other selves,

which we are constantly putting on and taking off

like coats and hats against the world’s weather"

F. Buechner, Telling Secrets

and now that Spring has officially arrived,

what better time for a clearing out of those

"other selves"

whistle in the dark

“To whistle in the dark is more than just to try to convince yourself that dark is not all there is. It’s also to remind yourself that dark is not all there is, or the end of all there is, because even in the dark there is hope.

Even in the dark you have the power to whistle. And sometimes that seems more than just your own power because it’s powerful enough to hold the dark

back a little.

The tunes you whistle in the dark are the images you make of that hope, that power . . .” Frederick Buechner