The call for today is to treat yourself and others as if we are all of great, precious value. This means holding our frailties with tenderness and acknowledging our capabilities, our innate strength and wisdom.
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Quaker and educator Parker Palmer writes in The Courage to Teach:
"I will always have fears, but I need not be my fears--for there are other places in my inner landscape from which I can think and act." He adds that in order to do this, it helps to consciously identify and name our strengths. This is not being egotistic or self-involved; instead, it gives you a firm, clear foundation from which to do your successful work in the world. Today, accept your fears with gentleness and kindness, while also knowing you have more powerful places from which to act. Name those strengths. Don't be afraid of fear. Instead, pause and feel the power of calm Love embracing your fear, right here and now.
Let go of your constant judgment of yourself, which is exhausting. Focus instead on resting inside of Love. Love supports our wholeness and integrity. This means that right now, Love is in the process of healing our wounds and melting any limiting beliefs that have grown from them. Love cracks open our sense of isolation and moves us toward connection: with ourselves, our community, our creativity, our work, our purposes, those we love. Love disconnects us from relationships, activities, thoughts. or beliefs that harm us. Feel the power of Love connecting and disconnecting.
Quaker and educator Parker Palmer writes in The Courage to Teach:
"The self is not infinitely elastic--it has potentials and it has limits. If the work we do lacks integrity for us, then we, the work, and the people we do it with will suffer . . . We learn experimentally that we thrive on some connections and wither with others, and that we enhance our integrity by choosing relationships that give us life and violate it by assenting to those that do not." Today, live with integrity. Accept and embrace your gifts. Don't feel shame for your limits or try to create a false persona to hide them. Nurture relationships that are healthy for you and gently release those that are not. This is not failure, but wisdom. My friend Sarah wrote me that she is holding to this thought: "God wants me to be."
Today, know that God wants you to be. Rest in that. Savor that message. Let the knowledge that Love wants you to exist counter the belief, or feeling, that you have to work harder or change yourself to earn approval or your place, that you are not wanted, needed, or valuable--or that it would be easier not to be. God wants you to be. God doesn't just want you - but wants you to be, just as you are. You are wanted into being. |
AuthorTarn Wilson is the author of the memoir The Slow Farm and numerous essays. You may read more of her work at tarnwilson.com. Archives
September 2020
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