Parenting lessons

When we choose to entertain lies because somehow we feel that they help our children, we do nothing else but teach our children that lying is the way to get through life. We underestimate our children if we think they cannot tell, even at young ages, that their parents are unhappy, that their relationship is loveless, that they (the kids) are a burden. Fake smiles, fat wallets and no boundaries are harmful wannabe blindfolds. They only teach one lesson: when lying to yourself gets too hard to bear, you can numb your feelings with these.

control is not a heart word

Any failure throws me in a vortex of such despair that I can’t even bear the thought of it. Perfection is still my dance and, in all of the work I have done with myself over the past decades, I have peeled only the outside layers of the onion: the middle, probably the stinkiest and hottest part of it, is still there, untouched, disguised as a quality that fools me into thinking I am helpful.

Inner teacher

When we think, hear or understand something that is deeply true for us, our inner teachers rise in us as a delicious, lucid resonance. When we grasp truth, any truth, from the correct solution to a math problem, to the capacity for love, all of our ways of knowing align.

Snapshots of the past and one whisper of hope for the future

When you grow up with no education around the concept of divinity, but you hear of a God mentioned in certain circles and language expressions, you make your own representation. “Our Father who art in Heaven” must be like … my father. So God became someone to fear. Someone to please. Someone whose whims could never really be anticipated but had to if you wanted to be safe. Someone who struck you when you were wrong – and you prayed for just the thunder and not the beating.

Easter

“It is easy to love a flawless God, with no stain and no mistake, the way He is. What is much harder is to love your fellow human, with all their habits and flaws. There is no wisdom without love. We cannot truly love Him or know Him until we learn to love Allah’s children.” (The Forty Laws of Love, Elif Shafak, pg. 120)

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