Jm Power Quotes

Colpo di fulmine. The thunderbolt, as Italians call it. When love strikes someone like lightning, so powerful and intense it can’t be denied. It’s beautiful and messy, cracking a chest open and spilling their soul out for the world to see. It turns a person inside out, and there’s no going back from it. Once the thunderbolt hits, your life is irrevocably changed.

Over the years, I have come to realize that the greatest trap in our life is not success, popularity, or power, but self-rejection. Success, popularity, and power can indeed present a great temptation, but their seductive quality often comes from the way they are part of the much larger temptation to self-rejection. When we have come to believe in the voices that call us worthless and unlovable, then success, popularity, and power are easily perceived as attractive solutions. The real trap, however, is self-rejection. As soon as someone accuses me or criticizes me, as soon as I am rejected, left alone, or abandoned, I find myself thinking, "Well, that proves once again that I am a nobody." ... [My dark side says,] I am no good... I deserve to be pushed aside, forgotten, rejected, and abandoned. Self-rejection is the greatest enemy of the spiritual life because it contradicts the sacred voice that calls us the "Beloved." Being the Beloved constitutes the core truth of our existence.

Jesus came to announce to us that an identity based on success, popularity and power is a false identity- an illusion! Loudly and clearly he says: 'You are not what the world makes you; but you are children of God.

First of all, you have to keep unmasking the world about you for what it is: manipulative, controlling, power-hungry, and, in the long run, destructive. The world tells you many lies about who you are, and you simply have to be realistic enough to remind yourself of this. Every time you feel hurt, offended, or rejected, you have to dare to say to yourself: 'These feelings, strong as they may be, are not telling me the truth about myself. The truth, even though I cannot feel it right now, is that I am the chosen child of God, precious in God's eyes, called the Beloved from all eternity, and held safe in an everlasting belief.

The farther I run away from the place where God dwells, the less I am able to hear the voice that calls me the Beloved, and the less I hear that voice, the more entangled I become in the manipulations and power games of the world.

If you want to make your dreams come true, the first thing you have to do is wake up.

Addiction" might be the best word to explain the lostness that so deeply permeates society. Our addiction make us cling to what the world proclaims as the keys to self-fulfillment: accumulation of wealth and power; attainment of status and admiration; lavish consumption of food and drink, and sexual gratification without distinguishing between lust and love. These addictions create expectations that cannot but fail to satisfy our deepest needs. As long as we live within the world's delusions, our addictions condemn us to futile quests in "the distant country," leaving us to face an endless series of disillusionments while our sense of self remains unfulfilled. In these days of increasing addictions, we have wandered far away from our Father's home. The addicted life can aptly be designated a life lived in "a distant country." It is from there that our cry for deliverance rises up.

At issue here is the question: "To whom do I belong? God or to the world?" Many of my daily preoccupations suggest that I belong more to the world than to God. A little criticism makes me angry, and a little rejection makes me depressed. A little praise raises my spirits, and a little success excites me. It takes very little to raise me up or thrust me down. Often I am like a small boat on the ocean, completely at the mercy of its waves. All the time and energy I spend in keeping some kind of balance and preventing myself from being tipped over and drowning shows that my life is mostly a struggle for survival: not a holy struggle, but an anxious struggle resulting from the mistaken idea that it is the world that defines me. As long as I keep running about asking: "Do you love me? Do you really love me?" I give all power to the voices of the world and put myself in bondage because the world is filled with "ifs." The world says: "Yes, I love you if you are good-looking, intelligent, and wealthy. I love you if you have a good education, a good job, and good connections. I love you if you produce much, sell much, and buy much." There are endless "ifs" hidden in the world's love. These "ifs" enslave me, since it is impossible to respond adequately to all of them. The world's love is and always will be conditional. As long as I keep looking for my true self in the world of conditional love, I will remain "hooked" to the world-trying, failing,and trying again. It is a world that fosters addictions because what it offers cannot satisfy the deepest craving of my heart.

For otherwise he would have lost faith in his power to fly, and the moment you doubt whether you can fly, you cease for ever to be able to do it.

To the degree that we embrace the truth that our identity is not rooted in our success, power, or popularity, but in God's infinite love, to that degree can we let go of our need to judge.

Sometimes secrets have the power to kill. The power to destroy. We each hold nuclear weapons inside of us.

When we start being too impressed by the results of our work, we slowly come to the erroneous conviction that life is one large scoreboard where someone is listing the points to measure our worth. And before we are fully aware of it, we have sold our soul to the many grade-givers. That means we are not only in the world, but also of the world. Then we become what the world makes us. We are intelligent because someone gives us a high grade. We are helpful because someone says thanks. We are likable because someone likes us. And we are important because someone considers us indispensable. In short, we are worthwhile because we have successes. And the more we allow our accomplishments — the results of our actions — to become the criteria of our self-esteem, the more we are going to walk on our mental and spiritual toes, never sure if we will be able to live up to the expectations which we created by our last successes. In many people’s lives, there is a nearly diabolic chain in which their anxieties grow according to their successes. This dark power has driven many of the greatest artists into self-destruction.

I remember kisses," said Slightly. "Let me see. Aye, that is a kiss. A powerful thing.

Solitude is the furnace of transformation. Without solitude we remain victims of our society and continue to be entangled in the illusions of the false self. Jesus himself entered into this furnace. There he was tempted with the three compulsions of the world: to be relevant ('turn stones into loaves'), to be spectacular ('throw yourself down'), and to be powerful ('I will give you all these kingdoms'). There he affirmed God as the only source of his identity ('You must worship the Lord your God and serve him alone'). Solitude is the place of the great struggle and the great encounter - the struggle against the compulsions of the false self, and the encounter with the loving God who offers himself as the substance of the new self.

~Love is a powerful force. It cannot be bought. It cannot be taken or stolen. Although sometimes it must be fought for, it must be given freely.~

Scapegoating worked in practice while it still had religious powers behind it. You loaded the sins of the city on to the goat’s back and drove it out, and the city was cleansed. It worked because everyone knew how to read the ritual, including the gods. Then the gods died, and all of a sudden you had to cleanse the city without divine help. Real actions were demanded instead of symbolism. The censor was born, in the Roman sense. Watchfulness became the watchword: the watchfulness of all over all. Purgation was replaced by the purge.

Just as words lose their power when they are not born out of silence, so openness loses its meaning when there is no ability to be closed.

To care means first of all to empty our own cup and to allow the other to come close to us. It means to take away the many barriers which prevent us from entering into communion with the other. When we dare to care, then we discover that nothing human is foreign to us, but that all the hatred and love, cruelty and compassion, fear and joy can be found in our own hearts. When we dare to care, we have to confess that when others kill, I could have killed too. When others torture, I could have done the same. When others heal, I could have healed too. And when others give life, I could have done the same. Then we experience that we can be present to the soldier who kills, to the guard who pesters, to the young man who plays as if life has no end, and to the old man who stopped playing out of fear for death. By the honest recognition and confession of our human sameness, we can participate in the care of God who came, not to the powerful but powerless, not to be different but the same, not to take our pain away but to share it. Through this participation we can open our hearts to each other and form a new community.

Many voices ask for our attention. There is a voice that says, 'Prove that you are a good person.' Another voice says, 'You’d better be ashamed of yourself.' There also is a voice that says, 'Nobody really cares about you,' and one that says, 'Be sure to become successful, popular, and powerful.' But underneath all these often very noisy voices is a still, small voice that says, 'You are my Beloved, my favor rests on you.' That’s the voice we need most of all to hear. To hear that voice, however, requires special effort; it requires solitude, silence, and a strong determination to listen. That’s what prayer is. It is listening to the voice that calls us 'my Beloved'.

A deep and powerful love is never quiet, never dormant but loud and fierce. ~ J.M. Walker

Someone having this kind of power over you is painful in a way, because it makes you aware of how they can shatter and destroy you like no one else ever could.

I can give you the power to fly to her house," the Queen said, "but I can't open the door for you.

It is a blessing that he did not know, for otherwise he would have lost faith in his power to fly, and the moment you doubt whether you can fly, you cease forever to be able to do it.

...all of the effort creates beauty, something so powerful that it combines all senses, all emotions, encouraging the mind and body to experience it simultaneously. Then the mind stores it all together like treasures to reopen throughout life, sometimes when you least expect it.

Remember what Mommy said about what to do when something scares you?” “Name it,” she whispered. “Exactly.” Her mother’s smile softened. “If you give the monster a name, it takes away its power, because we’re really just afraid of what we don’t know. If

If you give the monster a name, it takes away its power, because we’re really just afraid of what we don’t know. If you name it, if you know what it is, you can be stronger than it. So face your fears and wipe your tears, remember? Face your fears and wipe your tears.

What makes the temptation of power so seemingly irresistible? Maybe it is that power offers an easy substitute for the hard task of love.

Colpo di fulmine. The thunderbolt, as Italians call it. When love strikes someone like lightning, so powerful and intense it can’t be denied. It’s beautiful and messy, cracking a chest open and spilling their soul out for the world to see. It turns a person inside out, and there’s no going back from it. Once the thunderbolt hits, your life is irrevocably changed.

There is no comparison between the technology of a submarine going across and the unadorned submersible diving deep. This is because our world is firstly about power and only secondly about knowledge.

I realized that healing begins with our taking our pain out of its diabolic isolation and seeing that whatever we suffer, we suffer it in communion with all of humanity, and yes, all of creation. In so doing, we become participants in the great battle against the powers of darkness. Our little lives participate in something larger.

Constantly falling back into an old trap, before I am even fully aware of it, I find myself wondering why someone hurt me, rejected me, or didn't pay attention to me. Without realizing it, I find myself brooding about someone else's success, my own loneliness, and the way the world abuses me. Despite my conscious intentions, I often catch myself daydreaming about becoming rich, powerful, and very famous. All of these mental games reveal to me the fragility of my faith that I am the Beloved One on whom God's favor rests. I am so afraid of being disliked, blamed, put aside, passed over, ignored, persecuted, and killed that I am constantly developing strategies to defend myself and thereby assure myself of the love I think I need and deserve. And in so doing I move far away from my father's home and choose to dwell in a "distant country," (pp. 41 & 42).

Listening in the spiritual life is much more than a psychological strategy to help others discover themselves. In the spiritual life the listener is not the ego, which would like to speak but is trained to restrain itself, but the Spirit of God within us. When we are baptised in the Spirit - that is, when we have received the Spirit of Jesus as the breath of God breathing within us - that Spirit creates in us a sacred space where the other can be received and listened to. The Spirit of Jesus prays in us and listens in us to all who come to us with their sufferings and pains. When we dare to fully trust in the power of God's Spirit listening in us, we will see true healing occur.

The movement of God’s Spirit is very gentle, very soft – and hidden. It does not seek attention. But that movement is also very persistent, strong and deep. It changes our hearts radically. The faithful discipline of prayer reveals to you that you are the blessed one and gives you the power to bless others.

there are many other voices, voices that are loud, full of promises and very seductive. These voices say, “Go out and prove that you are worth something.” Soon after Jesus had heard the voice calling him the Beloved, he was led to the desert to hear those other voices. They told him to prove that he was worth love in being successful, popular, and powerful. Those same voices are not unfamiliar to me. They are always there and, always, they reach into those inner places where I question my own goodness and doubt my self-worth. They suggest that I am not going to be loved without my having earned it through determined efforts and hard work. They want me to prove to myself and others that I am worth being loved, and they keep pushing me to do everything possible to gain acceptance. They deny loudly that love is a totally free gift. I leave home every time I lose faith in the voice that calls me the Beloved and follow the voices that offer a great variety of ways to win the love I so much desire.

Spiritual fatherhood has nothing to do with power or control. It is a fatherhood of compassion. But the father of the prodigal son is not concerned about himself. His long-suffering life has emptied him of his desires to keep in control of things. Can I give without wanting anything in return, love without putting any conditions on my love?

Drinking the cup that Jesus drank is living a life in and with the spirit of Jesus, which is the spirit of unconditional love. The intimacy between Jesus and Abba, his Father, is an intimacy of complete trust, in which there are no power games, no mutually agreed upon promises, no advance guarantees. It is only love—pure, unrestrained, and unlimited love. Completely open, completely free. That intimacy gave Jesus the strength to drink his cup. That same intimacy Jesus wants to give us so that we can drink ours.

If you want to make your dreams come true, the first thing you have to do is wake up.

Novel writing is World Building & Word Weaving (Neil Postman's terms).

No weapon in my bag? No problem—my whole bag was a weapon. Grabbing it by the strap again, I swung it off my shoulder and through the air toward my assailant with as much force as I could muster.

These people care about bloodlines and rank and power and shit, but none of that matters to me. I’d never pursue a woman because of who her father is. Chances are I’d just hate her. In case you haven’t noticed, most of the women in the life are spoiled, uptight bitches who feel like people owe them. And I refuse to accept the fact that I owe anyone a thing . . . except you, maybe. So, no thanks.

Are we condemned to be passive victims of our moods? Must we simply say: 'I feel great today' or 'I feel awful today', and require others to live with our moods? Although it is very hard to control our moods, we can gradually overcome them by living a well-disciplined spiritual life. This can prevent us from acting out of our moods. We might not 'feel' like getting up in the morning because we 'feel' that life is not worth living, that nobody loves us, and that our work is boring. But if we get up anyhow, to spend some time reading the Gospels, praying the Psalms, and thanking God for a new day, our moods may lose their power on us.

they gave him power to fly was this: They all tickled him on the shoulder, and soon he felt a funny itching in that part and then up he rose higher and higher and flew away out of the Gardens and over the house-tops. It

When God looks at our world, God must weep. God must weep because the lust for power has entrapped and corrupted the human spirit. In the news and even in our families and ourselves we see that instead of gratitude there is resentment, instead of forgiveness there is revenge, instead of healing there is wounding, instead of compassion there is competition, instead of cooperation there is violence, and instead of love there is immense fear.

I watched Aaron collapse on the daybed, weeping into his palms. “But I don’t want to say goodbye.” “It’s the hardest thing for anyone to do,” she acknowledged. “Either in life or death, it doesn’t matter. Saying goodbye is the most difficult, yet most common unfinished business bestowed upon us ghosts. But, Rupert, once you cross through your door’s threshold, you’ll understand that there is no such thing as a ‘goodbye’. Though a powerful word, it is only just that: a word. I believe it was J.M. Barrie who had said it himself: ‘Never say goodbye because goodbye means going away and going away means forgetting.’ You and Aaron, even though you are parting ways now, it’s not really a goodbye, but merely a, ‘I’ll see you soon’.” I

Wir werden als abhängige Bürger geboren. Vom Moment unserer Geburt an sind wie Abhängige. Ein Zeichen dieser Abhängigkeit ist die Geburtsurkunde. [...] Entweder erhälst du die staatliche Urkunde [...], was dir zu einer Identität verhilft, die dem Staat während deines Lebens ermöglicht, dich zu identifizieren und im auge zu behalten (dich aufzuspüren); oder du kommst ohne eine Identität aus und verdammst dich selbst, wie ein Tier außerhalb des Staats zu leben (Tiere haben keine Personalausweise).

(After the lost boys left Neverland): It is sad to have to say that the power to fly gradually left them. [...] one of their diversions by day was to pretend to fall off buses; but by and by they [...] found that they hurt themselves when they let go of the bus.

She hadn’t come for any of that. She came for him. Twenty feet in front of her, leaning back against the waist-high bar, stood the man she’d spent all day tracking down—the infamous Dillon James. The man who would soon have the power to take away everything she held dear.

What I’ve come to realize I that I don’t like action for action’s sake. Mindless explosions, super close ups of combat and gore, and unnecessary effects make me zone out incredibly fast. What I do love is a fight that is well choreographed and in which I actually care about the outcome. And hopefully not riddled with cliches. Even more so, I have had a long, deep-seated appreciation for watching chicks kick ass. Watching some lone-wolf-type hero beat the crap out of the bad guys is okay, but watching a BAMF femme do it is 10000% times better.

Anger, resentment, jealousy, desire for revenge, lust, greed, antagonisms, and rivalries are the obvious signs that I have left home. And that happens quite easily. When I pay careful attention to what goes on in my mind from moment to moment, I come to the disconcerting discovery that there are very few moments during the day when I am really free from these dark emotions, passions and feelings. Constantly falling back into an old trap, before I am even fully aware of it, I find myself wondering why someone hurt me, rejected me, or didn't pay attention to me. Without realizing it, I find myself brooding about someone else's success, my own loneliness, and the way the world abuses me. Despite my conscious intentions, I often catch myself daydreaming about becoming rich, powerful, and very famous. All of these mental games reveal to me the fragility of my faith that I am the Beloved One on whom God's favor rests. I am so afraid of being disliked, blamed, put aside, passed over, ignored, persecuted, and killed, that I am constantly developing strategies to defend myself and thereby assure myself of the love I think I need and deserve. And in so doing I move far away from my father's home and choose to dwell in a "distant country.

Adam was sent to bring Good News to the world. It was his mission, as it was the mission of Jesus. Adam was—very simply, quietly, and uniquely—there! He was a person, who by his very life announced the marvelous mystery of our God: I am precious, beloved, whole, and born of God. Adam bore silent witness to this mystery, which has nothing to do with whether or not he could speak, walk, or express himself, whether or not he made money, had a job, was fashionable, famous, married or single. It had to do with his being. He was and is a beloved child of God. It is the same news that Jesus came to announce, and it is the news that all those who are poor keep proclaiming in and through their very weakness. Life is a gift. Each one of us is unique, known by name, and loved by the One who fashioned us. Unfortunately, there is a very loud, consistent, and powerful message coming to us from our world that leads us to believe that we must prove our belovedness by how we look, by what we have, and by what we can accomplish. We become preoccupied with “making it” in this life, and we are very slow to grasp the liberating truth of our origins and our finality. We need to hear the message announced and see the message embodied, over and over again. Only then do we find the courage to claim it and to live from it.

I love you.” The words tumbled from her lips easily, like they had rolled from her tongue hundreds of times. But they hadn’t. She had never said them before, but as she heard them in her own voice, every cell in her body knew they were true. She hadn’t known what love was, but she knew it now. Love was the fluttering in her tummy whenever Carmine was near, the twinkle in his eyes when he laughed, the heat in her body from his words. Love was happy. Love was safe. Love was green. Love was him—the beautifully flawed boy who made her glow. He stared at her, those words hanging in the air between them. “And I love you,” he said, his voice a whisper, but Haven felt it powerfully, deep down in her soul. “Per sempre.” “Sempre?” she asked. Cracking a smile, he brushed his pointer finger softly across her lips. “Always and forever.

If I were pressed to give my brand of political thought a label, I would call it pessimistic anarchistic quietism, or anarchistic quietistic pessimism or pessimistic quietistic anarchism: anarchism because experience tells me that what is wrong with politics is power itself; quietism because I have my doubts about the will to set about changing the world, a will infected with the drive to power; and pessimism because I am sceptical that, in a fundamental way, things can be changed.

I know, baby,” she said, “and it’s okay to be scared, but remember what we talked about? Remember what Mommy said about what to do when something scares you?” “Name it,” she whispered. “Exactly.” Her mother’s smile softened. “If you give the monster a name, it takes away its power, because we’re really just afraid of what we don’t know. If you name it, if you know what it is, you can be stronger than it. So face your fears and wipe your tears, remember? Face your fears and wipe your tears.

There are many elder sons and elder daughters who are lost while still at home. And it is this lostness—characterized by judgment and condemnation, anger and resentment, bitterness and jealousy—that is so pernicious and so damaging to the human heart. Often we think about lostness in terms of actions that are quite visible. The lostness of the elder son is much harder to identify. A dark power erupts in him and boils to the surface. Suddenly, there becomes glaringly visible a resentful, proud, unkind, selfish person.

When I arrived back at Intro to Basic Art again later that week, I thought for a moment we had a new student who didn’t know about the assigned seats. Sitting at my table was a girl in a long flowered dress, very vintage-hippie. She actually was wearing real flowers in her hair, and hardly any make up. I sat down, ready to explain to this poor lost soul that the seat was already taken, when I looked again and realized it was the same girl. I ended up not saying anything at all; I couldn’t think of anything that wouldn’t be rude or just plain stupid.

He fucks me. It’s powerful. Brutal. Hips slam into me from behind as he fills me deeply, over and over. Skin slapping noises echo through the room as he drives me into the table so hard it starts to move. I grip onto the edge of it, trying to hold on, trying to stay still, but he makes it impossible. Pain and pleasure merge inside of me, consuming me, and it doesn’t take long before I start to grow numb. Tingles encompass me. My mind blanks out. Nothing exists except his cock inside of me, him on top of me, slamming into me from behind. I cry out with every deep thrust, incoherent noises, like everything inside of me is being purged.

Yet why all this resistance? Why this powerful attraction to the darkness? Jesus says, “Everybody who does wrong hates the light and avoids it, to prevent his actions from being shown up; but whoever does the truth comes out into the light, so that what he is doing may plainly appear as done in God” (John 3:20–21). That is an answer to my question. I do often prefer my darkness to God’s light. I prefer to hang on to my sinful ways because they give me some satisfaction, some sense of self, some feeling of importance. I know quite well that moving into God’s light requires me to let go of all these limited pleasures and no longer to see my life as made by me, but as given by God. Living in the light means acknowledging joyfully the truth that all that is good, beautiful, and worthy of praise belongs to God. It is only a truly God-centered life that will pull me out of my depressions and give me hope. It is a clear path, but a very hard path as well.

These other voices make me constantly falling back into an old trap, before I am even fully aware of it, I find myself wondering why someone hurt me, rejected me, or didn’t pay attention to me. Without realizing it, I find myself brooding about someone else’s success, my own loneliness, and the way the world abuses me. Despite my conscious intentions, I often catch myself daydreaming about becoming rich, powerful, and very famous. All of these mental games reveal to me the fragility of my faith that I am the Beloved One on whom God’s favor rests. I am so afraid of being disliked, blamed, put aside, passed over, ignored, persecuted, and killed, that I am constantly developing strategies to defend myself and thereby assure myself of the love I think I need and deserve. And in so doing I move far away from my father’s home and choose to dwell in a “distant country.” Many of my daily preoccupations suggest that I belong more to the world than to God. A little criticism makes me angry, and a little rejection makes me depressed. A little praise raises my spirits, and a little success excites me. It takes very little to raise me up or thrust me down. Often I am like a small boat on the ocean, completely at the mercy of its waves.

You have to live through your pain gradually and thus deprive it of its power over you. Yes, you must go into the place of your pain, but only when you have gained some new ground. When you enter your pain simply to experience it in its rawness, it can pull you away from where you want to go. What is your pain? It is the experience of not receiving what you most need. It is a place of emptiness where you feel sharply the absence of the love you most desire. To go back to that place is hard, because you are confronted there with your wounds as well as with your powerlessness to heal yourself. You are so afraid of that place that you think of it as a place of death. Your instinct for survival makes you run away and go looking for something else that can give you a sense of at-homeness, even though you know full well that it can’t be found out in the world. You have to begin to trust that your experience of emptiness is not the final experience, that beyond it is a place where you are being held in love. As long as you do not trust that place beyond your emptiness, you cannot safely reenter the place of pain. So you have to go into the place of your pain with the knowledge in your heart that you have already found the new place. You have already tasted some of its fruits. The more roots you have in the new place, the more capable you are of mourning the loss of the old place and letting go of the pain that lies there. You cannot mourn something that has not died. Still, the old pains, attachments, and desires that once meant so much to you need to be buried. You have to weep over your lost pains so that they can gradually leave you and you can become free to live fully in the new place without melancholy or homesickness.

Deep spiritual formation is required, involving the whole person—body, mind, and heart. Formation in the mind of Christ, “who did not cling to power but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, who did not cling” (Phil. 2:6-8) is not what most seminaries are about. But to the degree that such formation is being sought after and realized, there is hope for the church of the twenty-first century.

When we wonder why the language of tradition Christianity has lost its liberation power for nuclear man, we have to realize that most Christian preaching is still based on the presupposition that man sees himself as meaningfully integrated with a history in which God came to us in the past, is living under us in the present, and will come to liberate us in the future. But when man's historical consciousness is broken, the whole Christian message seems like a lecture about the great pioneers to a boy on an acid trip.

The few times Harper had come down the mountain, Mercy always managed to find him to tag along with whatever he was doing. She’d developed a strange attachment to the scary soldier. One morning she’d opened the front door to walk outside and had to slam to a stop in surprise. Harper was sitting on the porch stairs and her daughter stood behind him, with her arms wrapped as far around his massive shoulders as she could reach. She looked ridiculously tiny compared to the former soldier with the shaved head, but the man didn’t move for several long seconds. Finally, he patted her little hands and sent her running to the playground. Lora thought she’d escaped his notice, but when he stood up he caught her eye in the doorway. “She’s worth her weight in gold,” he rumbled. “I will do everything in my power to keep her safe.” Lora nodded and watched as he disappeared into the woods, huge gun held in his arms like a baby. When she’d asked Mercy about the incident later, her daughter had shrugged. “He seemed sad so I gave him a hug.” Those words had humbled her. But

Oh, by the Traveller, power really does change you.” He laughed. “Oh well, ethics and all that. I’m sure someone will stop me if I go mad with power. And speaking of power.

The Burden of Judgment Imagine having no need at all to judge anybody. Imagine having no desire to decide whether someone is a good or bad person. Imagine being completely free from the feeling that you have to make up your mind about the morality of someone’s behavior. Imagine that you could say: “I am judging no one!” Imagine—Wouldn’t that be true inner freedom?…But we can only let go of the heavy burden of judging others when we don’t mind carrying the light burden of being judged! Can we free ourselves from the need to judge others? Yes, by claiming for ourselves the truth that we are the Beloved Daughters and Sons of God. As long as we continue to live as if we are what we do, what we have, and what other people think about us, we will remain filled with judgments, opinions, evaluations, and condemnations. We will remain addicted to the need to put people and things in their “right” place. To the degree that we embrace the truth that our identity is not rooted in our success, power, or popularity, we can let go of our need to judge. “Do not judge and you will not be judged; because the judgments you give are the judgments you will get” (Matthew 7:1–2,

Unleashing the power of love, one story at a time.

God does not require our success, popularity, or power in order to love us. Once we discern our identity and accept God’s unconditional love, we are free to live in the world without being owned by the world. We can forgive those who hurt or disappoint us without letting bitterness, jealousy, or resentment enter our hearts. The most beautiful fruit of claiming your belovedness is a joy that allows us to share God’s unconditional love with others. Strange as it may sound, we can become like God for others.

Spiritual fatherhood has nothing to do with power or control. It is a fatherhood of compassion.

Often we are preoccupied with the question “How can we be witnesses in the Name of Jesus? What are we supposed to say or do to make people accept the love that God offers them?” These questions are expressions more of our fear than of our love. Jesus shows us the way of being witnesses. He was so full of God’s love, so connected with God’s will, so burning with zeal for God’s Kingdom, that he couldn’t do other than witness. Wherever he went and whomever he met, a power went out from him that healed everyone who touched him (see Luke 6:19). If we want to be witnesses like Jesus, our only concern should be to be as alive with the love of God as Jesus was.

I breathe because I must, but I write to take your breath away.

But there are many other voices, voices that are loud, full of promises and very seductive. These voices say, “Go out and prove that you are worth something.” Soon after Jesus had heard the voice calling him the Beloved, he was led to the desert to hear those other voices. They told him to prove that he was worth love in being successful, popular, and powerful. Those same voices are not unfamiliar to me. They

The thought of Lora seeing him like this made him shudder in a different way. But maybe it was time. Needing to minimize the impact, he rolled the leg of the sweats back down over the leg. Flynn ducked out of the room and moved down the hallway. Chad listened to him go, and realized his breathing had changed. The thought of Lora coming in now put him on edge, for several different reasons. One, he didn’t think she realized he was missing a leg. He adjusted the prosthetic beside him, placing it at the exact corner of the bed. There was no doubting now. Two, he hadn’t let a woman see him without his leg for years. Granted, with the sweats on, she wouldn’t see anything that might gross her out, but this was damn near naked for him. Fuck, he’d rather be naked than show off his stump. Not having his leg on put him at a severe disadvantage, and he was curious what she would do with that power. Plus, he hadn’t put a T-shirt on yet either. The rough skin down his left side was on display. This was kind of the big test, whether she realized it or not. As he sat there, heart thudding and palms sweating, wondering if he had time to cover up, there was a knock at the door. “Come

I can give you the power to fly to her house," the Queen said, "but I can't open the door for you.

The irony is, she must have offspring all over the district who would be happy to share their homes with her. But it's not in their power to invite her. They are part of the furniture, part of the alarm system. They do us the honour of treating us like gods, and we respond by treating them like things.

AM: My father had arrived in New York all alone, from the middle of Poland, before his seventh birthday… He arrived in New York, his parents were too busy to pick him up at Castle Garden and sent his next eldest brother Abe, going on 10, to find him, get him through immigration and bring him home to Stanton Street and the tenement where in two rooms the eight of them lived and worked, sewing the great long, many-buttoned cloaks that were the fashion then. They sent him to school for about six months, figuring he had enough. He never learned how to spell, he never learned how to figure. Then he went right back into the shop. By the time he was 12 he was employing two other boys to sew sleeves on coats alongside him in some basement workshop. KM: He went on the road when he was about 16 I think… selling clothes at a wholesale level. AM: He ended up being the support of the entire family because he started the business in 1921 or something. The Miltex Coat Company, which turned out to be one of the largest manufacturers in this country. See we lived in Manhattan then, on 110th Street facing the Park. It was beautiful apartment up on the sixth floor. KM: We had a chauffeur driven car. The family was wealthy. AM: It was the twenties and I remember our mother and father going to a show every weekend. And coming back Sunday morning and she would be playing the sheet music of the musicals. JM: It was an arranged marriage. But a woman of her ability to be married off to a man who couldn’t read or write… I think Gussie taught him how to read and to sign his name. AM: She knew she was being wasted, I think. But she respected him a lot. And that made up for a little. Until he really crashed, economically. And then she got angry with him. First the chauffeur was let go, then the summer bungalow was discarded, the last of her jewellery had to be pawned or sold. And then another step down - the move to Brooklyn. Not just in the case of my father but every boy I knew. I used to pal around with half a dozen guys and all their fathers were simply blown out of the water. I could not avoid awareness of my mother’s anger at this waning of his powers. A certain sneering contempt for him that filtered through her voice. RM: So how did the way you saw your father change when he lost his money? AM: Terrible… pity for him. Because so much of his authority sprang from the fact that he was a very successful businessman. And he always knew what he as doing. And suddenly: nothin’. He didn’t know where he was. It was absolutely not his fault, it was the Great Crash of the ‘29, ‘30, ‘31 period. So from that I always, I think, contracted the idea that we’re very deeply immersed in political and economic life of the country, of the world. And that these forces end up in the bedroom and they end up in the father and son and father and daughter arrangements. In Death of a Salesman what I was interested in there was what his world and what his life had left him with. What that had done to him? Y’know a guy can’t make a living, he loses his dignity. He loses his male force. And so you tend to make up for it by telling him he's OK anyway. Or else you turn your back on him and leave. All of which helps create integrated plays, incidentally. Where you begin to look: well, its a personality here but what part is being played by impersonal forces?

Everything that is mine is now yours, love—my territory, my power, my heart, my body, my soul, yours forever,

In our solitude, our history no longer can remain a random collection of disconnected incidents and accidents but has to become a constant call for the change of heart and mind. There we can break through the fatalistic chain of cause and effect and listen with our inner senses to the deeper meaning of the actualities of everyday life. There the world no longer is diabolic, dividing us into “fors” and “againsts” but becomes symbolic, asking us to unite and reunite the outer with the inner events. There the killing of a president, the success of a moonshot, the destruction of cities by cruel bombing and the disintegration of a government by the lust for power, as well as the many personal disappointments and pains, no longer can be seen as unavoidable concomitants of our life, but all become urgent invitations to a response; that is, a personal engagement.

The truth, however, is that these are not vocations but temptations. Jesus asks, “Do you love me?” Jesus sends us out to be shepherds, and Jesus promises a life in which we increasingly have to stretch out our hands and be led to places where we would rather not go. He asks us to move from a concern for relevance to a life of prayer, from worries about popularity to communal and mutual ministry, and from a leadership built on power to a leadership in which we critically discern where God is leading us and our people.

Once, and not long ago, even the greatest of European monarchies could not carry out a census or create a unified internal market. Now, the state has a virtual monopoly of the main instruments of physical control. Even a hundred years ago, the police and armed forces of government unshaken by war or uncorrupted by sedition gave them a security; technology has only increased their near-certainty. New repressive techniques and weapons, though, are now only a small part of the story. State intervention in the economy through its power as consumer, investor or planner, and the improvement of mass communications in a form that leaves access to them highly centralized, all matter immensely. Hitler and Roosevelt made great use of radio (though for very different ends); and attempts to regulate economic life are as old as government itself.

We feel lonely, for example, and thereby look—sometimes desperately—for someone who can take away the pain: a husband, wife, friend. We are all too ready to conclude that someone or something can finally take away our neediness. In this way we come to expect too much from others. We become demanding, clingy, even violent. Relationships bend under a heavy weight because we lay exaggerated seriousness on them. We load our fellow human beings with immortal powers. In our worst moments, we make them objects to meet our expectations.

To live in the world without belonging to the world summarizes the essence of the spiritual life. The spiritual life keeps us aware that our true house is not the house of fear, in which the powers of hatred and violence rule, but the house of love, where God resides.

When we find ourselves able to continue to serve our fellow human beings even when our lives remain the same, even when few people offer us praise, and even when we have little or no power, we come to know ourselves as God knows us,

Strange how, as desire relaxes its grip on her body, she sees more and more clearly a universe read by desire. Haven't you read your Newton, she would like to say to the people in the dating agency (would like to say to Nietzsche too if she could get in touch with him)? Desire runs both ways. A pulls B because B pulls A, and vice versa: that is how you go about building a universe. Or if desire is still too rude a word, then what of appetency? Appetency and chance: a powerful duo, more than powerful enough to build a cosmology on, from the atoms and the little things with nonsense names that make up atoms to Alpha Centauri and Cassiopeia and the great dark back of beyond. The gods and ourselves, whirled helplessly around by the winds of chance, yet pulled equally towards each other, towards not only B and C and D but towards X and Y and Z and Omega too. Not the least thing, not the last thing but is called to by love.

Strange how, as desire relaxes its grip on her body, she sees more and more clearly a universe ruled by desire. Haven't you read your Newton, she would like to say to the people in the dating agency (would like to say to Nietzsche too if she could get in touch with him)? Desire runs both ways: A pulls B because B pulls A, and vice versa: that is how you go about building a universe. Or if desire is still too rude a word, then what of appetency? Appetency and chance: a powerful duo, more than powerful enough to build a cosmology on, from the atoms and the little things with nonsense names that make up atoms to Alpha Centauri and Cassiopeia and the great dark back of beyond. The gods and ourselves, whirled helplessly around by the winds of chance, yet pulled equally towards each other, towards not only B and C and D but towards X and Y and Z and Omega too. Not the least thing, not the last thing but is called to by love.

That at least she does not have to invent: this dumb, faithful body that has accompanied her every step of the way, this gentle, lumbering monster that has been given to her to look after, this shadow turned to flesh that stands on two feet like a bear and laves itself continually from the inside with blood. Not only is she in this body, this thing which not in a thousand years could she have dreamed up, so far beyond her powers would it be, she somehow is this body; and all around her on the square, on this beautiful morning, these people, somehow, are their bodies too.

The Peace Prayer Lord, make me an instrument of Thy peace; Where there is hatred, let me sow love; Where there is injury, pardon; Where there is error, the truth; Where there is doubt, the faith; Where there is despair, hope; Where there is darkness, light; And where there is sadness, joy. O Divine Master, Grant that I may not so much seek To be consoled, as to console; To be understood, as to understand; To be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive; It is in pardoning that we are pardoned; And it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen.

The spiritual task is not to escape your loneliness, not to let yourself drown in it, but to find its source. This is not so easy to do, but when you can somehow identify the place from which these feelings emerge, they will lose some of their power over you. This identification is not an intellectual task; it is a task of the heart. With your heart you must search for that place without fear.

Solitude is the furnace of transformation. Without solitude we remain victims of our society and continue to be entangled in the illusions of the false self. Jesus himself entered into this furnace. There he was tempted with the three compulsions of the world: to be relevant (“turn stones into loaves”), to be spectacular (“throw yourself down”), and to be powerful (“I will give you all these kingdoms”). There he affirmed God as the only source of his identity (“You must worship the Lord your God and serve him alone”). Solitude is the place of the great struggle and the great encounter — the struggle against the compulsions of the false self, and the encounter with the loving God who offers himself as the substance of the new self.

Without reading the word, silence becomes stale, and without silence, the word loses its re-creative power. The word leads to silence and silence to the word. The word is born in silence, and silence is the deepest response to the word.

Nuclear man is a man who has lost naïve faith in the possibilities of technology and is painfully aware that the same powers that enable man to create new life styles carry the potential for self-destruction.

The longer he spends in chastity, the stronger your feminine power will be.

There is suffering ahead of us, immense suffering, a suffering that will continue to tempt us to think that we have chosen the wrong road and that others were more shrewd than we were. But don't be surprised by pain. Be surprised by joy, be surprised by the little Flower that shows its Beauty in the midst of a barren desert, and be surprised by the immense healing power that keeps bursting forth like springs of fresh water from the depth of our pain.

There is a dreadful emptiness in the spiritual fatherhood. No power, no success, no popularity, no easy satisfaction. But that same dreadful emptiness is also the place of true freedom. It is the place where there is “nothing left to lose.” There I am free to receive the burdens of others without any need to evaluate, categorize, or analyze. There, in that completely non-judgmental state of being. I felt no desire to ask questions about the past or to speculate about the future. Each time we touch that sacred emptiness of non-demanding love, heaven and earth tremble and there is great “rejoicing among the angels of God.

Over the years, I have come to realize that the greatest trap in our life is not success, popularity, or power, but self-rejection. Success, popularity, and power can indeed present a great temptation, but their seductive quality often comes from the way they are part of the much larger temptation to self-rejection. When we have come to believe in the voices that call us worthless and unlovable, then success, popularity, and power are easily perceived as attractive solutions. The real trap, however, is self-rejection. As soon as someone accuses me or criticizes me, as soon as I am rejected, left alone, or abandoned, I find myself thinking, "Well, that proves once again that I am a nobody." ... [My dark side says,] I am no good... I deserve to be pushed aside, forgotten, rejected, and abandoned. Self-rejection is the greatest enemy of the spiritual life because it contradicts the sacred voice that calls us the "Beloved." Being the Beloved constitutes the core truth of our existence.

We need centers where people are trained in true discernment of the signs of the times. They cannot offer just an intellectual training. Deep spiritual formation is required, involving the whole person—body, mind, and heart. Formation in the mind of Christ, “who did not cling to power but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, who did not cling” (Phil. 2:6-8)