Dig up those skeletons and watch the bones scatter.

Lift up heavy carpets and see the heavenly light.

Families who don’t deal, feel the tension of unresolved issues, even down through the next generation. Young people will instinctively know not to speak to Aunt Jane or Uncle Bob, but they won’t know why. They’ll simply follow the unwritten rules set down by the ones that came before.

Relationships that might make all the difference are not even allowed to flourish. Why? Because Aunt Jane couldn’t come to Cousin Jennie’s party, or Bob and his brother were estranged after some childhood squabble.

If families won’t work things out, then why should nations?

One must be willing to jump out of the comfortable place that was padded in battle so long ago. One must look under the carpets where every sooty speck of conflict has been swept and stockpiled.

It’s not a simple task. Perhaps no one else will want to share this kind-hearted attempt at more sanitary conditions and much needed sanity. Perhaps it’s taken far too long and now the pile is so high that even an industrial strength vacuum cleaner couldn’t make a dent in the dirt.

What if, just for argument’s sake, one person started from ground zero?

Oh, but for that one brave soul who makes the difficult decision to step up and say, “I’m willing to break all boundaries. I’m willing to believe.”

……Wendy Schmidt

have you ever met the perfect family, only to understand their idiosyncrasies later? isn’t it more beautiful to honor the flaws rather than to pretend there aren’t any? to hold our humanness gracefully is the balm to deep hurts and careless trajectories…..

I have learned that for me to feel fully alive, I need to be giving and receiving love. It is the very process of life itself. Giving and receiving are like night and day- you need one to have the other. You need one to understand the other, but the seasons balance it all out. If our lives are in balance, it happens naturally. I recall Amrit Desai’s words, “Does a flower make an effort to spread its fragrance?” It is an effortless happening. So, too, is giving and receiving love. There are many barriers to the balancing though and they all come from concepts that attempt to defy the natural way of being. In a healthy relationship, we accept responsibility for the way in which we create and maintain the relationship. Often we don’t know the answers. We can only feel the pain. These are often hard places to be. We get very tempted to start doing and trying to know or taking the seemingly easier option of running away. When the mind is engaged in its unique version of righteousness it is difficult to disengage from it long enough to check in with one’s spirit. “Don’t react. Just listen with love. All will be well if you stay non-reactive and listen.”……Michael Lee

to know we can always choose love

Love is the condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own…….Robert Heinlein