Trade-offs

“For everything you have missed, you have gained something else, and for everything you gain, you lose something else.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

Gift Me

 GIFT ME

Gift me with your presence
Show up fully, but only when you really want to
Not out of obligation or fear of disappointing.

Gift me with your stories
Of joy and pain, for through them you grow
To love life and learn wisdom
And in hearing them from you, I deepen too.
Tell it all, every detail...
What was said, felt and discovered
And how it changed you

Gift me with honesty
Tell me when I hurt or disappoint you
When I make you proud or just that you love me.
Tell me the truth, as you see it,
In me, the world and life
As the unfolding Mystery


Gift me with forgiveness
An honest attempt to give
Not only me, but all you meet
The benefit of the doubt
That even in my faults and frailties
You see the inherent worth and Light of God
Most of all...

Gift me with a chosen silence
When it would be easier to judge
Or you feel you can't resist the urge
To share with another the latest amusing, confusing
Insane thing you saw me do...or refrain from
For time has a way, of bringing all things full circle

Gift me with a compassionate, listening ear
When I seek a witness to my life and experience
And open your heart even wider,
That it may take it ALL in
And love me even more when I most confuse you

Gift me with a place at your table
A phone call just because
An invitation to adventure
And the assurance that
Not a day goes by without a smile lifting your lips
In fondness for memories we have yet to create

Gift me with patience
As time slows my steps
And mind's edges dull
Allow me the dignity and freedom of which I am capable,
But if the time comes that I am not safe or sane enough,
Care for me, as I tried to do for you
when you still fit in my arms
And needed a shoulder to sleep on.

Valerie Wilkins Alder  

Image of God

"There is no need for any of us to be afraid of God because God is no judge and all our images of God as a judge and as being perfect and watching us so negatively are all projections of our own fear and have nothing at all to do with the incredible generosity and beauty and dignity of the Divine Presence around us."  John O' Donanhue

Reason

To love justice, to long for the right, to love mercy, to pity the
suffering, to assist the weak, to forget wrongs and remember benefits -- to
love the truth, to be sincere, to utter honest words, to love liberty, to
wage relentless war against slavery in all its forms, to love wife and
child and friend, to make a happy home, to love the beautiful; in art, in
nature, to cultivate the mind, to be familiar with the mighty thoughts that
genius has expressed, the noble deeds of all the world, to cultivate
courage and cheerfulness, to make others happy, to fill life with the
splendor of generous acts, the warmth of loving words, to discard error, to
destroy prejudice, to receive new truths with gladness, to cultivate hope,
to see the calm beyond the storm, the dawn beyond the night, to do the best
that can be done and then to be resigned -- this is the religion of reason,
the creed of science. This satisfies the brain and heart. --Robert G.
Ingersoll, The Foundations of Faith

Generosity

"You need to be generous to yourself in order to receive the love that surrounds you.   You can search long years in lonely places, far outside yourself.  Yet the whole time, this love is but a few inches away from you."  John O' Donahue