To read the background on this 30 day project, click here.
I was talking to one of my best friends on the phone yesterday about some struggles I have been having lately and some of the poor choices I have made in the midst of these struggles. As we talked, she came to a point in the conversation where she said, “Sometimes we all just do stupid shit.” Isn’t that the truth? However, I have a habit of convincing myself that I live on a higher moral plane and that I am no longer susceptible to making stupid choices. Obviously, this is a lie. We are all susceptible but the road to redemption in not based so much in not making stupid choices but in how we respond; turning away from those choices and choosing another path – even in the face of that same stupid choice that we [often repeatedly] make.
{extra}ordinarybeauty Day 24: The words of this poem have resounding beauty each time I read them. While there is personal commentary I would love to add, sometimes it is just better not to.
“The dove descending breaks the air
With flame of incandescent terror
Of which the tongues declare
The one discharge from sin and error.
The only hope, or else despair
Lies in the choice of pyre or pyre-
To be redeemed from fire by fire.
Who then devised the torment? Love.
Love is the unfamiliar Name
Behind the hands that wove
The intolerable shirt of flame
Which human power cannot remove.
We only live, only suspire
Consumed by either fire or fire.”
― T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets
{trans}forminggratitude Day 24: Yesterday, as I was processing through some of my own shame I was reminded of the many times I sat with friends in the midst of their shame and spoke to them words of grace and life and love. I was thankful to be reminded of those words today so that I could speak them to myself.
Considering the Lily 