My Lenten Beginning

2/17/2010
There are things which I know I believe.

1. All people after the age of reason have hurts and wounds, vices and flaws with which they struggle.
2. All people have love as a basic need. All people are inherently lovable.
3. We have a responsibility to love.
4. Faith essentially comes down to relationship. Because of that our whole lives revolve around learning how to give love and be loved in healthy interdependence-learning how to enter into and cultivate healthy relationships.
5. Suffering, while not to be sought and always to seek to be alleviated, teaches us compassion and if done well brings us wisdom through humility.
6. We are all connected. Those who live now, those who came before, those who will come.
7. Regrets come from what we leave undone or have done poorly in far greater measure than what we have done.
8. Beginning and beginning again is desperately important. Reinventing ourselves and allowing ourselves to be renewed in ongoing response to our world, our circumstances, and our failures is what allows us to grow.
9. There is no merit in self-deception. Without being open to seeing ourselves as we truly are, we can never become what we hope to be.
10. The road to sanctity is one which is long and arduous. It is the work of a lifetime.
11. Love never ends. The love we share ripples out into the world endlessly.