"Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life..."
Anne Lamott
from Bird By Bird
friendship as a mode of spiritual formation | instigating one another from alongside to follow Jesus
motifs
- Addiction
- Adventure
- Aesthetic
- Alan Roxburgh
- Arrogance
- Assurance
- Authenticity
- Authority
- Balance
- Beatitudes
- Beauty
- Becoming
- Behavior
- Belief
- Bible
- Blessing
- Brevity
- Buechner
- Burnettstories
- Calling
- Capacity
- Challenge
- Changing
- Character
- Chief Joseph
- Choices
- Christianity
- Church
- Clay
- Cognitive
- Commonsense
- Communication
- Communion
- Compassion
- Conceal
- Conflict
- Conformity
- Confucius
- Context
- conversation
- Corrie Ten Boom
- Counterintuitive
- Covenant
- Craig-Bob
- Creation
- Creator
- Culture
- Curiosity
- Dan Miller
- Decipher
- Deeds
- Delight
- Depth
- Despair
- Dignity
- Disillusionment
- Diversity
- Dream
- Einstein
- Emerson
- Emotional
- Encouragement
- Endurance
- Enemy
- Energy
- Entropy
- Equation
- Eucatastrophe
- Faith-Life
- Family
- Father
- Fearlessness
- Feeling
- Festivity
- Financial
- Flexibility
- Flow
- Follow-Through
- Forgiveness
- Fourfold Fitness
- Fragmentation
- Frangipane
- Frankl
- Freedom
- Friend
- Friendship
- Full Engagement
- Future
- Garden
- Generosity
- Gesture
- Gift
- Gladness
- God
- Goodness
- Gospel
- Grace
- Gratitude
- Guitar
- Habit
- Hardpan
- Havel
- Healing
- Heart
- Hell
- Henri Nouwen
- Hillman
- Holiness
- Holy Spirit
- Honesty
- Honor
- Hope
- Hospitality
- Hubert van Zeller
- Human
- Humility
- Humor
- Hunger
- Ignorance
- Illusion
- Image
- Impossible
- Improvisation
- Incarnate
- Incarnation
- Independence
- Individuation
- Innocence
- Inspiration
- Intention
- Intercession
- Interior
- Interruption
- James
- Jean-Luc Marion
- Jericho
- Jesus
- John Powell
- Joshua
- Joy
- Justice
- Kindness
- Kingdom
- Lamott
- Laughter
- Law
- Lewis
- Life
- Light
- Limits
- Listen
- Littleness
- Loss
- Love
- Map
- Maturity
- Meaning
- Miracle
- MLK
- Money
- Morality
- mortality
- Moses
- Movement
- Mundane
- Music
- Mystery
- Nakedness
- Nearness
- Negative Space
- Neighborliness
- Noise
- Nonviolence
- Obedience
- Openness
- Overcome
- Palm Sunday
- Palmer
- Paradox
- Pastor Miller
- Patience
- Paulo Freire
- Peace
- Person
- Perspective
- Physical
- Pivot-Point
- Place
- Playground
- Poetry
- Power
- Practices
- Praise
- Prayer
- Presence
- Prodigal
- Promise
- Prophecy
- Psalm
- Questioning
- Quiet
- Quotes
- Radiating
- Range of Motion
- Ray Mayhew
- Redemption
- Rejuvenation
- Relationality
- Relationships
- Responsibility
- Resurrection
- Rodney Clapp
- Sacrament
- Sadness
- Sanity
- Seed
- Seventies
- Silence
- Soil
- Solidarity
- Soul
- Speaking
- Sphere of Influence
- Spiritual
- Steere
- Stones
- Story
- Strength
- Stretching
- Suicide
- Symbol
- Teachable
- Theology
- Thomas Bandy
- Thomas Merton
- Thrill
- Time
- Tolkien
- Tongue
- Topography
- Touch
- Trajectory
- Transformation
- Trap
- Trinity
- Trust
- Truth
- Variety
- Water
- Well-Being
- Wendell Berry
- Wholeness
- Wild
- Wisdom
- Wonder
- Worship
- Yoga
5 comments:
..."My Grace is sufficient for you,for my power is made perfect in weakness" . There's that word grace again....
And more than a dash of paradox -- power perfected in weakness... When I try to peer inside of that, my soul goes tilt.
Hi Ted - nice to see you again!
From what I observe, you are doing well with the shift; just being aware of it is pretty huge, in and of itself.
As for weeds, it’s good to remember that Jesus advised us against trying to exterminate them ourselves. He said the wheat and the weeds would grow up together, and the Father would sort it all out in the end. Thoughts?
Well...as my mentor, the Rev. Blackie White once told me..."If you're gonna make the 'right' moves you gotta find your OWN groove."
We get all "oppressed for success" from listening to all those others... the folks around us who would demand their version of our 'perfectly acceptable' performance from our lives.
Ms. Lamott makes a pretty good point... although I did notice that when I saw her picture on a book jacket she had a small pimple on her left cheek...
Oh yes, Ms. Lamott is neurotically aware of her own imperfections, thus her authority on the subject. She is hilarious in her descriptions of the writing life (Bird By Bird) and the faith life (Traveling Mercies and Plan B). Highly recommended!
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