I receive your “Ouch” with openness and curiosity.
I receive your “Oops” with acceptance and empathy.
I offer my “Ouch” with hope and trust.
I offer my “Oops” with humility and courage.
I release my “Ouch” with immeasurable faith.
I release my “Oops” with purpose.
I release your “Ouch” with promise.
I release your “Oops” with my eyes and heart open.
-Atena O. Danner, from Incantations for Rest
How do you practice making and receiving apologies?
I’ve always loved visualizations of deep time — those huge timelines that remind us that all of human existence on this planet is contained in a tiny speck at the end of time as we can imagine it. Reminders our smallness in the scope of time offer a kind of nourishing humility; it doesn’t mean that what I do during my own time here doesn’t matter, but it helps to counteract the toxic human-centrism of our culture. This world isn’t and has never been primarily about us, and carrying the humility of that can offer us so much wisdom, grace, and relief. -Rose Gallogly (CLF)
What helps you to feel your humble and right-sized place in the full scope of existence?
“Today, transcending boundaries is hard work. For one thing, I’ve created more of them since I was young, and I’ve built them higher and stronger than they once were. For another thing, I’m much more self-righteous and much less humble than I was then. Sometimes, when I am at my best, I remember that the “other” I distinguish myself from could be me in another time, another place, another circumstance.” -From “Transcending Boundaries,” by Yvonne Seon
How do you do the work of transcending boundaries?
“The concern which I lay bare before God today is my need to be better:
I want to be better than I am in my most ordinary day-by-day contacts:
With my friends—
With my family—
With my casual contacts—
With my business relations—
With my associates in work and play.
I want to be better than I am in the responsibilities that are mine….” -Howard Thurman
How do you want to be better?
“We light this flame
For the art of sacred unknowing.
Humbled by all that we cannot fathom in this time,
We come into the presence of what we do know,
Perhaps the only thing we can ever know:
That Love is now and forever
The only answer to everything
And everyone
In every moment.”
-A chalice lighting by Amy Carol Webb
How do you practice the art of sacred unknowing?
