Lessons

It's hard to see the stars when you are out in the heart of a city of blinding lights. To look with a pilgrims eyes and dream with my heart to see what really matters is a journey i want to make....i don't know where it will lead me, but it's a journey i must undertake if i am ever to find out who i should and possibly could become...as pip says, the beautiful human i am becoming.

I have been thinking about brokenness of late, and i am starting to see the beauty from within its heart. I think it was Kierkegaard who said that those who He (and She) would use, he (she) first reduces to nothing, i suppose meaning that we need to be broken before we can be mended - if we are to truly mourn with those who mourn we need to have suffered first ourselves. Adversities do not make a weak person, they reveal what strength they have...

Liverpool, England has been in the media spotlight of late. the BBC have been filming the L'Arche Community for a programme on how friendship can help the spiritual life of people with learning disabilities. The programme asks if the example of L'Arche can offer other people lessons about their own religious communities and how inclusive they are. I get the feeling that when we are truly inclusive (regardless of race, colour, creed, gender etc etc) we find real lasting beauty in places this world dictates beauty shouldn't belong.

An openness to the weak and those in need helps us to open our hearts to all humanity. Jean Vanier suggests that we should be 'helping people to break free of the egotism inherent in us all and to grow towards greater maturity and inner freedom...to discover our common humanity, allowing us to be ourselves, intertwined with each other, receiving and giving life from one another.'

We all share ther same sky, and we all belong to God whether disabled or not in some way...the man of sorrows revealed a new kind of beauty. He did show us that it is possible to accept our limits and our handicaps and allow us to see that they may just be our gifts...we should never cover up our weaknesses, rather allow our own shadow areas to inform our life decisions because they are the directions for the road of compassion...the pathway of suffering with others and seeing beauty from within that.

'We are simply human beings, enfolded in weakness and in hope, called together to change our world one heart at a time.'
(Jean Vanier)