Hanneli's Wish

"May the integrity of Peace and Truth be celebrated.  May love and courage shine in your heart stronger than ever, and may you find within you the light of a thousand suns to blaze through whatever challenges you face in times ahead.

May you meet the suffering of the world with compassion, both for yourself and for others.

May you shatter your self-imposed limitations with fierce honesty and persistent love.

May you invite the demons to show their faces with the confidence of your inner strength, knowing there is no darkness you cannot face with love in your heart.   May you find yourself in many unexpected fields of wild flowers and circles of compassionate friends.  May you share laughter and tears with openness and freedom. 

May we recognize the heart of ourselves in the eyes of each we meet. 

May you follow your aspirations, your heart and your dreams more fully than ever before.   When you feel awkward, know you are walking your own edge and growth and healing are also present.  Deep breath....

Inspiration

God speaks to each of us as he makes us,
then walks with us silently out of the night.

These are the words we dimly hear:

You, sent out beyond your recall,
go to the limits of your longing.
Embody me.

Flare up like a flame
and make big shadows I can move in.

Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
Just keep going. No feeling is final.
Don't let yourself lose me.

Nearby is the country they call life.
You will know it by its seriousness.

Give me your hand.

Rilke
Book of Hours, I 59

"If you see yourself
as no one worth looking at;
if you believe you are
not worth listening to,
if they told you,
"That's not what you saw,
not what you heard,
not what you think
you cannot trust yourself"
You are lost.

Don't look to others to find you,
to love and take care of you now.
You'll suck them dry.

No one out there
is responsible.
Go back and find
your soul.
Be mother and father
to yourself,
Until the divine parents
arrive.

Christina Baldwin

Listening

"There is a way of relating to others such that one deliberately listens for the hidden beauty in them.   The place of their beauty is often the place of their greatest integrity.  When you listen, the integrity and wholeness in others moves closer.  Your attention strengthens it and makes it easier for them to hear it for themselves.  In your presence, they can more easily inhabit that in them which is beyond their limitations, a place of greater freedom and sanctuary.  Eventually they may be able to live there."  Rachel Naomi Remen

The Divine

"The Divine never wants to limit you.  And the Divine never sets limits.   Any limit that we feel between the Divine and ourselves are limits that we set.  There are never limits that the Divine sets."  John O' Donahue

Life and Limitations

"Exercising choice and intentionality does not necessarily lead to the outcomes we desire.   We are limited by our weaknesses, mistakes, ignorance, circumstances, physical limitations, illnesses and death.   But as we learn to make decisions in our daily lives, we become more enlightened about our strengths and limitations, and how we depend on others for what we cannot do ourselves."  Polly Young-Eisendrath

Honesty with Self

"Admitting who we are and what we want, recognizing our dependence and gratitude, puts us in a vulnerable position.   We learn that human strengths and abilities are always limited by weakness, tiredness, forgetfulness, bad habits and other imperfections.   These innate limitations awaken us to the ways we need others and compels us to appreciate how we are helped and sustained by our relationships.   Hiding from the truth leads only to the opposite; anxious self-protectiveness, isolation, fear and shame."  Polly Young-Eisendrath

Vision

"Everyone takes the limits of his own vision for the limits of the world."  Arthur Schopenhauer

Frontiers

"To recognize a frontier is already to have gone beyond it."   Heidegger

Dignity

"When you recognize your limits, but still embrace your life with affection and graciousness, the sense of inner dignity begins to grow.   You become freer and less dependent on the affirmation of outer voices and less troubled by the negativity of others."   John O' Donahue