When Giving is All We Have – Alberto Rios

                                                    One river gives

                                                    Its journey to the next.

We give because someone gave to us.

We give because nobody gave to us.

We give because giving has changed us.

We give because giving could have changed us.

We have been better for it.

We have been wounded by it-

Giving has many faces: It is loud and quiet,

Big, though small, diamond in wood-nails.

Its story is old, the plot worn and the pages too,

But we read this book, anyway, over and again:

Giving is, first and every time, hand to hand,

Mine to yours, yours to mine.

You gave me blue and I gave you yellow.

Together we are simple green. You gave me

What you did not have, and I gave you

What I had to give-together, we made

Something greater from the difference.

Reflective Writing Prompt: We give because…

Uncertain times indeed! A time when institutions seem to be wearing out but with nothing new to replace them. We’ve been here before.

_________

You’re invited to read and respond to these two offerings from 1919 and Ecclesiastes 1. You will find “there is nothing new under the sun.”

On Healing and Repair

“Healing wasn’t always the best. Sometimes a hole was better left open. Sometimes it healed to thick and too well and left separate pieces fused and incompetent. And it was harder to reopen after that.”

– Ann Brahares

“If you desire healing,

let yourself fall ill

let yourself fall ill.”

― Rumi

“Un-winged and naked, sorrow surrenders its crown to a throne called grace.”

– Aberjani

“Time didn’t heal, but it anesthetized. The human body could feel only so much.

– P.D. James

Believing the lie that time will heal all wounds is just a nice way of saying that time deadens us.

– Jonathan Nolan

“Time heals all wounds. And if it doesn’t, you name them something other than wounds and agree to let them stay.”

― Emma Forrest

“In time, in time they tell me, I’ll not feel so bad. I don’t want time to heal me. There’s a reason I’m like this. I want time to set me ugly and knotted with loss of you, marking me. I won’t smooth you away. I can’t say goodbye.”

― China Miéville

“To recognize one’s own insanity is, of course, the arising of sanity, the beginning of healing and transcendence.”
― Eckhart Tolle

“A daily dose of daydreaming heals the heart, soothes the soul, and strengthens the imagination.”

― Richelle E. Goodrich

“We heal up through being loved, and through loving others. We don’t heal by forming a secret society of one – by assessing about the only other ‘one’ we might admit, and being doomed to disappointment.”

― Jeanette Winterson

“The wounds that never heal can only be mourned alone.”

― James Frey

Reflective Writing Prompt: Write about being healed, or, write about a time you practiced Kintsugi in your life.

On Reconciliation

“Moments of kindness and reconciliation are worth having, even if the parting has to come sooner or later.” – Alice Munro

“Zen doesn’t believe in the reconciliation of opposites because from the point of view of Zen, there is no point of view.” – Frederick Lenz

“The world is not dialectic – it is sworn to extremes, not to equilibrium, sworn to radical antagonism, not to reconciliation or synthesis. This is also the principle of evil.” – Jean Baudrillard

“You cannot disown what is yours. Flung out, there is always the return, the reckoning, the revenge, perhaps the reconciliation. There is always the return.” – Jeannette Winterson

“True reconciliation does not consist in merely forgetting the past.” – Nelson Mandella

”Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself. I am large. I contain multitudes.” – Walt Whitman

“If there is to be reconciliation, first there must be truth.”- Tim B. Tyson

“The astonishment of life is the absence of any appearances of reconciliation between the theory and the practice of life.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Art is both a vengeance against reality and a reconciliation with it.” – Francine du Plessix Gray

“Architecture is the art of reconciliation between ourselves and the world, and this mediation takes place through the senses.” – Juhani Pallasmaa

“It was like any other relationship, there was jealousy on both sides, there were split-ups and reconciliations. There were also fragmented moments of great peace and beauty. I often tried to get away from her and she tried to get away from me but it was difficult: Cupid, in his strange way, was really there.” – Charles Bukowski

Reflective writing prompt: Write or construct a graphic meme about reconciliation