We live in a broken world... with broken bodies, broken relationships and broken spirits.
When we feel stuck or without passion, we are broken. When we betray our own heart, we are broken. When we live only to "fit in," and censor our own voice, we are broken. When we are enamored by diversion and avoid our own company, we are broken. When we believe that we are only the sum total of our achievements, we are broken.
Sometimes we feel it. Sometimes we don't. Even so, it takes a toll.
And my confession is this; in the end, all I was, was afraid. And not just afraid of God. Or eternal damnation. I was afraid of being found out. As a fake. I was afraid of facing the reality that my performance for appearance sake, and some hunt for perfection, were booby prizes.
What I needed, was the permission to simply be human.
I needed the permission to know that the Divine kiss of Grace kiss still works.
I needed the permission, to be, just Terry.
Or, as my friend Jinks invites, “What about if we don’t try not to panic, but rather recognize that God is in the panic saying ‘come here, Sweetheart?’”
Here’s the deal my friends: because we are beloved of God, we can dare to embrace and befriend our own brokenness; and in befriending, to really look at it: "Yes, I am hurting. Yes, I am wounded. Yes, it is painful. And... I no longer need be afraid."
In my mind I’m back on my grandmother's porch swing. Grace personified. In the flesh. There, I never had to deliberate or explain or worry regardless of the weight I carried. The swing--my grandmother's presence--existed without conditions.
And I am here today, because the Divine kiss of Grace kiss still works.
"Grace strikes us when we are in great pain and restlessness.
It strikes us when we walk through the dark valley of a meaningless and empty life.
It strikes us when, year after year, the longed-for perfection does not appear, when the old compulsions reign within us as they have for decades, when despair destroys all joy and courage.
Sometime at that moment a wave of light breaks into our darkness, and it is as though a voice were saying, "You are accepted. You are accepted, accepted by that which is greater than you, and the name of which you do not know.
Do not ask for the name now; perhaps you will find it later.
Do not try to do anything now; perhaps later you will do much.
Do not seek for anything, do not perform anything, do not intend anything.
Simply accept the fact that you are accepted.
If that happens to us, we experience grace."
Paul Tillich
Prayer for our week...
Above all, trust in the slow work of God.
We are quite naturally impatient in everything
to reach the end without delay.
We should like to skip the intermediate stages.
We are impatient of being on the way to something
unknown, something new.
And yet it is the law of all progress
that it is made by passing through
some stages of instability —
and that it may take a very long time.
And so I think it is with you;
your ideas mature gradually — let them grow,
let them shape themselves, without undue haste.
Don’t try to force them on,
as though you could be today what time
(that is to say, grace and circumstances
acting on your own good will)
will make of you tomorrow.
Only God could say what this new spirit
gradually forming within you will be.
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
Photo... "Hi Terry. I wonder how many of us have a Kintsugi story?
(I’ll bet you’ll find out this week.) My husband and I returned from our first post-Covid cross-country trip to find our admired Buddha garden ornament broken. (I wonder what the universe was trying to tell us?) We were very sad about it, but only temporarily. My sweet husband did the research & went about repairing it… aren’t we all fixers? Now it hangs again in our peaceful garden retreat… with another chapter to its story, just as we added to ours. Deep gratitude to you for your work." Linda Bevan (Vancouver Island, BC)... Thank you Linda... I'm so very grateful for your photos, please send them to tdh@terryhershey.com
Events -- July 21 - 23, St. Mary and Joseph, Rancho Palos Verdes, CA. The Gift of Spiritual Hydration
New Book--Stand Still: finding balance when the world turns upside down.
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I am so very grateful.
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