"Change is not a miracle. Change doesn't just happen. We have to make it happen. We have to work at it - but it is not always difficult. In fact, sometimes it is so easy that we don't believe that it's possible, we don't believe that we can change. The Buddha is supposed to have said that change is as easy as flipping a coin to the other side. What I believe is that if you want to change, you will change.
Maybe you are a little skeptical, and you feel like the wife and mother who went on a weekend workshop retreat and came back and told her family, "I had such a great weekend. I had breakthrough experiences. I gained all these wonderful insights." Then, looking at her family, she said, "But what's the use? None of you have changed."
If you really do experience change, trust that your family will change toward you, and if you truly embody the change, the world will change with you." ~ Paul Coutinho, SJ in How Big Is Your God?
Thursday, July 17, 2008
It Is Not Always Difficult
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4 comments:
Hi Hope,
Your quotes and links to books are always so helpful and healing!
Thank you!
As much as I resented being forced (more than once) to watch John Bradshaw "On the Family", I have to give him credit for explaining one thing very well: a family is like a mobile -each of the individual parts are directly connected to each other, and one part cannot change without causing change in every other part.
You're welcome Opal!
Tex - I saw that Bradshaw video, too. His stuff has really helped me - in particular his stuff on shame.
I'm gonna have to check out your book. Great quotes! In the beginning, our newly found addition of Christ was but one more weapon in the arsenal for my wife and I; and I'd pray "God, change her!" Somewhere along the way I woke up and the request becomes "God, change ME that I can be less the trouble in this relationship." While conversion is sometimes a drastic deliverance, change is a walk with Him....
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