resident gifting

"We arrive in this world with birthright gifts -- then we spend the first half of our lives abandoning them or letting others disabuse us of them. As young people, we are surrounded by expectations that may have little to do with who we really are, expectations held by people who are not trying to discern our selfhood but to fit us into slots. In families, schools, workplaces, and religious communities, we are trained away from true self toward images of acceptability; under social pressures like racism and sexism our original shape is deformed beyond recognition; and we ourselves, driven by fear, too often betray true self to gain the approval of others.

We are disabused of original giftedness in the first half of our lives. Then -- if we are awake, aware, and able to admit our loss -- we spend the second half trying to recover and reclaim the gift we once possessed."


Parker J. Palmer
"Let Your Life Speak"

sadness and joy

"Our life is a short time in expectation, a time in which sadness and joy kiss each other at every moment… Joy and sadness are born at the same time; both arising from such deep places in your heart that you cannot find the words to capture your complex emotions."

Henri Nouwen

brevity | enormity

life is brief
and enormous
sweet, sad paradox