Some of us have to go through a “Dark Night of the Soul” experience.

Losing everything.

Being stripped to the bone. Then out of that nothing,

when our defenses and masks are broken,

an experience of our long forgotten essence can arise.

And the beginning of freedom is born.

~Erik Jenson

what is mine to hold?

inquiry for today~ and how will it be now?

when I leave myself behind…

Hope . . . is a gift.

Like life, it is a gift from God,

total, unexpected, incomprehensible, undeserved.

It springs out of nothingness, completely free.

But to meet it, we have to descend into nothingness.

And there we meet hope most perfectly,

when we are stripped of our own confidence,

our own strength, when we almost no longer exist.

~Thomas Merton