Healing
Contemplation and Compassion: The Second Gaze
Explores the importance of contemplative practice for fostering compassion, emphasizing the transition from self-centered reactions to a compassionate second gaze that aligns with divine intimacy and authentic action.
cac.org
“Everything changed for me when I realized that I could take the anxious, scared 11 year old version of myself up on the stage with me. I could take his hand, listen to his fears, and say: yeah, there’s a lot of people out there. yeah, it might be a bit scary to perform in front of them. yeah, we might mess up. but it’s all good. we’ll be okay. it’... See more
Isabel • on being ready
The basic insight is that compassion—which combines an awareness of suffering with a desire to alleviate it—can be applied to ourselves, just as it can be applied to people in the outside world. And compassion can be learned.
Dan Shipper / Superorganizers • You Grow from Your Edges
Your job is not to lock the doors and chisel at yourself like a marble statue in the darkness until you feel quantifiably worthy of the world outside. Your job, really, is to find people who love you for reasons you hardly understand, and to love them back, and to try as hard as you can to make it all easier for each other.
rayne fisher-quann • No Good Alone
Good Bones
poetryfoundation.org
I believe that Christianity as a religion has profound gifts to offer the world, but that can only happen when Christians are willing to be in a humble and open-hearted dialogue with everyone else. I am less interested in defending the Christian religion or some notion of Christendom than I am in allowing the truth of Christ’s message to penetrate ... See more
Rebekah Berndt • We are all cells in God's body
Even after a beautiful Mass, ritual, or retreat, we go right back to either/or, dualistic thinking. We go right back to being angry Republicans or Democrats, Protestants or Catholics, Black people or white people. It just never stops. But as we practice, contemplation becomes a way to touch upon reality, a way of penetrating illusion.
The Purpose of Contemplation
“I’m trying to encapsulate that feeling, a sort of ode to that feeling when Emma Thompson stands there and cries when she’s holding the CD in Love Actually . The lyrics are about the confirmation that my relationship was dead, and it’s the only song I’ve ever cried during the vocal take which has never happened before.”