At the end of your time here, the world will either be more or less kind, compassionate, generous, funny, creative, and loving because of your presence in it--and you alone get to choose. from Hope and Other Superpowers
The most basic and powerful way to connect to another person is to listen. Just listen. Perhaps the most important thing we ever give each other is our attention... A loving silence often has more power to heal and to connect than the most well-intentioned words.
If it [our framing story] tells us that the purpose of life is for individuals or nations to accumulate an abundance of possessions and to experience the maximum amount of pleasure during the maximum number of minutes of our short lives, then we will have little...
If the concept of God has any validity or any use, it can only be to make us larger, freer, and more loving. from Letter from a Region in My Mind
If we are serious about loving someone, we have to surrender all the desires within us to manipulate the relationship.
I look around and see so much fear, people getting more and more comfortable with their hate, more at ease being mean, more united in their division. And I think, NO. Not me. I will not get lost in this fearful world. I will not play with bullies. I will continue to...
We are confronted by God's loving claim upon us--the most intense intimacy a human being can experience. To know this intimacy we have only to let go. Instead of relying on our own initiative, where we are in control, we discover that we are participating in what God...
It seems to me that it is a minority that ever gets the true and full Gospel. We just keep worshiping Jesus and arguing over the exact right way to do it. The amazing thing is that Jesus never once says, "worship me!", but he often says, "follow me" (Matt.4:19)....
We are not what we do. We are not what we have. We are not what others think of us. Coming home is claiming the truth. I am the beloved child of a loving Creator. We no longer have to beg for permission from the world to exist.
It's funny, isn't it? You can preach a judgmental and vengeful and angry God and nobody will mind. But you start preaching a God that is too accepting, too loving, too forgiving, too merciful, too kind...and you are in trouble.