A Quote by Carolyn Parkhurst

How can it be, I wondered, that we can be lying in bed next to a person we love wholly and helplessly, a person we love more than our own breath, and still ache to think of the one who caused us pain all those years ago? It's the betrayal of this second heart of ours, its flesh tied off like a fingertip twined tightly round with a single hair, blue-tinged from lack of blood. The shameful squeeze of it.
I suspect that many of us, if given the chance to make one person in our lives love us more, would have no trouble in choosing where to point a finger. We are all needy, all vulnerable, all terrified that perhaps that person has an excellent reason to withhold affection. We shape our purposes to make ourselves worthy and often do not see until much later how it was love-or perhaps the lack of it-that both picked us up and dropped us off at crossroads.
It's a complicated thing, knowing how much pain my father caused in my life and the lives of others whom I love, yet still holding love for him in my heart. No matter what he did, he was my father. He helped create the person I am.
In today's world, people experience two types of poverty: the poverty caused by lack of food, clothing and shelter, and the poverty caused by lack of love and compassion. Of these two, the second type needs to be considered first because if we have love and compassion in our hearts, then we will wholeheartedly serve those who suffer from lack of food, clothing and shelter.
The mark of Cain is stamped upon our foreheads. Across the centuries, our brother Abel was lain in blood which we drew, and shed tears we caused by forgetting Thy love. Forgive us, Lord, for the curse we falsely attributed to their name as Jews. Forgive us for crucifying Thee a second time in their flesh. For we knew not what we did.
If I were a person of color in Florida, I would pick up a brick and start walking toward that courthouse in Sanford. Those that do not, those that hold the pain and betrayal inside and somehow manage to resist violence - these citizens are testament to a stoic tolerance that is more than the rest of us deserve. I confess, their patience and patriotism is well beyond my own.
One cannot be honest even at the end of one's life, for no one is wholly alone. We are bound to those we love, or to those who love us, and to those who need us to be brave, or content, or even happy enough to allow them not to worry about us. So we must refrain from giving pain, as our last gift to our fellows.
Have you ever experienced a pain so sharp in your heart that it's all you can do to take a breath? It's a pain you wouldn't wish on your worst enemy; you wouldn't want to pass it on to anyone else for fear he or she might not be able to bear it. It's the pain of being betrayed by a person with whom you've fallen in love. It's not as serious as death, but it feels a whole lot like it, and as I've come to learn, pain is pain any way you slice it.
People say, "I have heart disease," not "I am heart disease." Somehow the presumption of a person's individuality is not compromised by those diagnostic labels. All the labels tell us is that the person has a specific challenge with which he or she struggles in a highly diverse life. But call someone "a schizophrenic" or "a borderline" and the shorthand has a way of closing the chapter on the person. It reduces a multifaceted human being to a diagnosis and lulls us into a false sense that those words tell us who the person is, rather than only telling us how the person suffers.
No love is Love that subjugates the Lover. No love is Love that feeds on flesh and blood. No love is Love that draws a woman to a man only to breed more women and men and thus perpetuate their bondage to the flesh.
We'll squeeze every second that we can from our lives, because we're young, and we have plenty of years to grow. We'll grow until we're braver. We'll grow until our bones ache and our skin wrinkles and our hair goes white, and until our hearts decide, at last, that it's time to stop.
We're taught to expect unconditional love from our parents, but I think it is more the gift our children give us. It's they who love us helplessly, no matter what or who we are.
Night of Sleepless Love The night above. We two. Full moon. I started to weep, you laughed. Your scorn was a god, my laments moments and doves in a chain. The night below. We two. Crystal of pain. You wept over great distances. My ache was a clutch of agonies over your sickly heart of sand. Dawn married us on the bed, our mouths to the frozen spout of unstaunched blood. The sun came through the shuttered balcony and the coral of life opened its branches over my shrouded heart.
I had never thought I could love another person this much. I also never thought I’d live in such fear of losing another person. Was this how everyone in love felt? Did they all cling tightly to their beloved and wake up terrified in the middle of the night, afraid of being alone? Was that an inevitable way of life when you loved so deeply? Or was it just those of us who walked on a precipice who lived in such panic?
Nothing helps us build our perspective more than developing compassion for others. Compassion is a sympathetic feeling. It involves the willingness to put yourself in someone else's shoes, to take the focus off yourself and to imagine what it's like to be in someone else's predicament, and simultaneously, to feel love for that person. It's the recognition that other people's problems, their pain and frustrations, are every bit as real as our own-often far worse. In recognizing this fact and trying to offer some assistance, we open our own hearts and greatly enhance our sense of gratitude.
Who can describe the bond of God's love? Who is able to explain the majesty of its beauty? The height to which love leads is indescribable. ... In love the master received us, Jesus Christ our Lord, in accordance with God's will gave his blood for us, and his flesh for our flesh, and his life for our lives.
Jesus wanted to show us his heart as the heart that loved so deeply. For this reason we have this commemoration today, especially of God's love. God loved us, he loved us with such great love. I am thinking of what St Ignatius told us.... He pointed out two criteria on love. The first: love is expressed more clearly in actions than in words. The second: there is greater love in giving than in receiving.
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