LIFE WITHOUT BORDERS

I’ll have dirt on my feet and stars in my eyes, I’ll be in the forest where the earth comes alive.

Why is it that countries which we call strong are so powerful in creating wars but are so weak in bringing peace? Why is it that giving guns is so easy, but giving books is so hard? Why is it that making tanks is so easy, but building schools is so hard?

Faith is the art of holding onto things in spite of your changing moods and circumstances.

I asked God to expand my capacity to love others, so He asked me to trade in my complacency for compassion, to replace my fear with curiosity, and to start making room for understanding instead of making excuses for ignorance.

You weren’t made for shallow waters.

And into the forest I go, to lose my self and find my soul.

Embrace uncertainty. Some of the most beautiful chapters in our lives won’t have a title until much later.

Be a child again. Flirt. Giggle. Dip your cookies in your milk. Take a nap. Say you’re sorry if you hurt someone. Chase a butterfly. Be a child again.

God is never as nervous about our future, or as concerned about our past, as we are.

Some periods of our growth are so confusing that we don’t even recognize that growth is happening. We may feel hostile or angry or weepy and hysterical, or we may feel depressed. It would never occur to us, unless we stumbled on a book or a person who explained to us, that we were in fact in the process of change, of actually becoming larger, spiritually, than we were before. Whenever we grow, we tend to feel it, as a young seed must feel the weight and inertia of the earth as it seeks to break out of its shell on its way to becoming a plant. Often the feeling is anything but pleasant. But what is most unpleasant is the not knowing what is happening. Those long periods when something inside ourselves seems to be waiting, holding its breath, unsure about what the next step should be, eventually become the periods we wait for, for it is in those periods that we realize that we are being prepared for the next phase of our life and that, in all probability, a new level of the personality is about to be revealed.

In these pages there is room for sacred doubting and holy tantrums because ultimately the love and grace of God permits us all that room.

I want to get more comfortable being uncomfortable. I want to get more confident being uncertain. I don’t want to shrink back just because something isn’t easy. I want to push back, and make more room in the area between I can’t and I can.