beautiful

If people spent half the time they spend on making their appearance beautiful on making their minds beautiful places, we would live in a different world entirely

Black Friday

A wonderful reminder that I already have all that I need and the thing I really want is just to want less.

pain

pain has an evolutionary effect:

our only choice is to respond

yet still we seek out comfort, stagnation and mediocrity

and wonder where God is when it hurts

when He couldn't be more present

learning

when you know what's there
you don't need to prove what's there
you can just learn to trust it

the language exists even if you haven't learnt to speak it yet

Grace again

An upside-down economy where the penniless not only have the riches, but know its value

Rational

When you're living the upside down life it's the contradictions that seem to make the most sense. And then you realise that less can be more and up can be down. Not that this can be the case, but that this is also what is most reasonable.

Audible

When there is clarity
You don't need volume

When you've heard the words
You can enjoy the beat

Grace

It's the righteous who are most angered by the endlessness of grace
A clash of divinities

Looking within

The undiscovered is closer than it appears and more compelling than fear's dissuasion.

not knowing is also knowing

Sometimes it possible to know more about something from the experience of not having had it.

Like the same way that rainfall proves evaporation.

Faith

I don't want to believe what I was going to believe anyway. Then I am happening to faith rather than it happening to me.

Lightness

Floating is almost unrecognizable when you've been on the ocean floor sucking air through a straw

the struggle

The struggle is never for definition. 

The struggle is always for identity. 

shadowlands

when the darkness overwhelms you
but takes only what it can
it also gives you the gift of knowing that even in darkness you can breathe
you realise that shadows were never your enemy
your enemy was believing you were in the sunshine

Space to breathe

Space to breathe 

Reasons to feel

He let the words loose 

Not knowing if they would find a place to rest

The hurt hurt 

Even when trying not to

The wounded remember more than anticipate 

Lonely, he let the words go. The memory more alive than a tomorrow not yet lived

A moment he would grasp if only he could. The torment to reach for something he could not hold

The desire not to is surpassed by the willingness to want to

Rain

It's like it's rainy in my soul

And though I can't see past the clouds

The wetness nourishes the deepest and thirstiest parts of me

Cracks

We all have them

Let's share them

Let's meet each other in our pain

I want your rain cloud to rain on me

Touching

Sometimes not touching is the most felt

Sometimes the silence is the loudest noise 

Sometimes the contradictions make the most sense 

Change

I sometimes wonder who I would be if I had learned to demand compassion from myself the same way I have learnt to demand perfection.

life is not a problem. life is a game.

When I was a lot younger than I am now, I used to often head over to my neighbor's house to play. We mostly played outside, but there was a time when they had the best best gaming console in the neighborhood, and we spent many an hour in front of their TV. The most popular game at the time was a game called Adventure Island. I remember many fun hours trying collect all the dinosaurs and knowing which egg to choose at the end of every stage.

I recently found a way to download these games onto my mac and I didn't hesitate to do this, hoping to relive the same moments and enjoy it again. I had a blast for the first 5 minutes before feeling an incredible urge to play the game perfectly. Perhaps I could download a cheat sheet that would show where all the bonus eggs were, and how to play each stage the best and accumulate the most points.

Playing the game was frustrating because I was not sure that I was playing it the best. And so I wanted to stop playing and start problem-solving. And really, how fun can following a set of instructions be anyway?

Joy diminishes when we stop playing life and start trying to solve life. It is probably a reason I don't write as much as before - because I want the post to be perfect - and achieve a top score with every post. And because I have started to believe that life is not a game, I forget to play like I played when I was a child.

We are all broken but....

The most broken are those who think they aren't 

Perspectives

Anyone who has only considered their own point of view is not worth listening to.