Darkness and Grace
/
"The tragic sense of life is not unbelief, pessimism, fatalism or cynicism. It is just ultimate and humiliating realism, which demands a lot of forgiveness for almost everything ... This is perhaps our major stumbling stone, the price we must pay to keep the human heart from closing down and to keep the soul open for something more."
~ Richard Rohr, Falling Upward
Years ago, one of my long-time mentors taught me that the hardest thing in the world is to engage and reckon with the bruising effects of life. Not by battling life, but by softening myself. And that softening would open up incredible potential within me, though it would ask me to examine every agitation, every judgment, every wound within, and ultimately, every belief I hold, in order to allow healing to find me. Then and only then, would I be able to embody the great virtues to which so many of us aspire. More challenging still would the need to forgive every one and every thing, over and over and over again.
To be broken open ... and available for life … which is an uncommon kind of Grace.
Related Posts