Jesus asked his disciples: ‘And why do you not judge for yourselves what is right? Thus, when you go with your accuser before a magistrate, on the way make an effort to settle the case, or you may be dragged before the judge, and the judge hand you over to the officer, and the officer throw you in prison. I tell you, you will never get out until you have paid the very last penny.’ (Luke 12:57-59)
Whether we are talking of warring couples or warring nations, it is an extraordinary challenge to move from blaming people, toward understanding patterns and our own part in them. It is a similarly huge challenge that our wish to understand the other party be as great as our wish to be understood. Because I watch some individuals and families meet this challenge in the most difficult of circumstances … I continue to maintain hope.
Harriet G. Lerner
As long as we are on earth, the love that unites us will bring us suffering by our very contact with one another, because this love is the resetting of a Body of broken bones. Even saints cannot live with saints on this earth without some anguish, without some pain at the differences that come between them. There are two things which [people] can do about the pain of disunion … They can love or they can hate. Hatred recoils from the sacrifice and the sorrow that are the pain of this resetting of bones. It refuses the pain of reunion. But love by the acceptance of the pain of reunion, begins to heal all wounds.
Thomas Merton
#40ways40days © Sanctuary, 2019. Photo by Chris Liverani on Unsplash.
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