Lasting Relationships

“Some of the biggest challenges in relationships come from the fact that most people enter a relationship in order to get something: they're trying to find someone who's going to make them feel good. In reality, the only way a relationship will last is if you see your relationship as a place that you go to give, and not a place that you go to take.” -Anthony Robbins

Reflection

The whole moon and the entire sky are reflected
in one dewdrop on the grass. ~ Dogen

"My God" by M.K. Gandhi

It matters not what we call our heavenly Father, what matters is that we find our path to Him. Sadly, more have been killed in the name of organized religion than anything else.

I love this quote.....

From: “My God” by M.K. Gandhi

Religions are different roads converging to the same point. What does it matter that we take different roads, so long as we reach the same goal? In reality, there are as many religions as there are individuals.

All faiths are a gift of God, but partake of human imperfection as they pass through the medium of humanity. God-given religion is beyond all speech. Imperfect men put it into such language as they can command, and their words are interpreted by other men equally imperfect.

Whose interpretation must be held to be the right one? Every one is right from his own standpoint, but it is not impossible that every one is wrong. Hence the necessity for tolerance, which does not mean indifference towards one’s own faith, but a more intelligent and purer love for it.

Tolerance gives us spiritual insight, which is as far from fanaticism as the north pole is from the south. True knowledge of religion breaks down the barriers between faith and faith and gives rise to tolerance. Cultivation of tolerance for other faiths will impart to us a truer understanding of our own.

I have said I do not disbelieve in idol-worship. An idol does not excite any feeling of veneration in me. But I think that idol-worship is part of human nature. We hanker after symbolism.

I am both an idolater and an iconoclast in what I conceive to be the true senses of the terms. I value the spirit behind idol worship. It plays a most important part in the uplift of the human race. And I would like to possess the ability to defend with my life the thousands of holy temples which sanctify this land of ours.

I am an iconoclast in the sense that I break down the subtle form of idolatry in the shape of fanaticism that refuses to see any virtue in any other form of worshipping the Deity save one’s own. This form of idolatry is more deadly for being more fine and evasive than the tangible and gross form of worship that identifies the Deity with a little bit of a stone or a golden image.

Bitter experience has taught me that all temples are not houses of God. They can be habitations of the devil. These places of worship have no value unless the keeper is a good man of God. Temples,mosques, churches are what man makes them to be.

Triumph in the Garden

A Garden

is always a series of losses
set against a few triumphs, like life itself...
- May Sarton

Learners and Non-Learners

“I don’t divide the world into the weak and the strong, or the successes and the failures... I divide the world into the learners and non-learners.”
- Benjamin Barber

For those who are thirsty to learn - the universe provides a plethora of knowledge and sources. Sadly, many people peak in high school and decline from there.

I encountered this quote by Benjamin Barber on

Inspiring Words blog.... if you love quotes like I do, please visit this site.

Loving Them Through Their Struggles

Photo by BostonBill click here to go to his Flickr area

These days, I often find myself stopped in my own tracks, wondering how my youngest will make his, wanting the best for him but am so unsure of which direction to point him.

Mothers.

Fathers

Parents

It's not a job that ends when they graduate and go off to conquer the world. I've found that is often when they need us the most. Sometimes it is only for us to be still and listen to them speak the words, their fears, out loud for the first time.

As my youngest has just dropped out of college and is desperately searching for which path to follow, thoughts of him consume my quiet moments. I dearly love him. It's not that I want to remove this painful time from his life, we all have to learn that pain moves us out of that place in one way or another. It's that I want him to know, really know, that sometimes we are being lead in a new direction.... one we may not clearly see for years.

In my own life, my life mentor was also my professional mentor. I hated him the instant I met him. He knew me better than I knew myself. He saw me for what a was, his project, and knew he had a job to do and that he would emerge the victor from having transformed me. It was a rough time for me. He was intense and demanding. Somewhere in the process, I realized he was there to mold me and that I would leave that internship as a reflection of him.

I grew to love him, dearly love him. I grew more that year than I ever thought possible.... and miss him even today, 32 years later. Perhaps my son is being moved towards such an individual. One thing I know for certain, he will be that sort of individual for someone else some day. It's the journey that is uncertain. I will love him through these times.....and the good times.

This quote spoke to me......

"Child, when do you think is the time to love somebody the most; when they done good and made things easy for everybody? Well then, you ain't through learning -- because that ain't the time at all. It's when he's at his lowest and can't believe in hisself 'cause the world done whipped him so. When you starts measuring somebody, measure him right child, measure him right. Make sure you done taken into account what hills and valleys he come through before he got to wherever he is."

~ From Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry