"The people who help us grow toward true self offer unconditional love, neither judging us to be deficient nor trying to force us to change but accepting us exactly as we are. And yet this unconditional love does not lead us to rest on our laurels. Instead, it surrounds us with a charged force field that makes us want to grow from the inside out - a force field that is safe enough to take the risks and endure the failures that growth requires."
~Parker J. Palmer in A Hidden Wholeness
Saturday, July 19, 2008
Safe Enough
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7 comments:
I love this quote!
Read your response on Under There's blog. Made me really think because I have tried to help people over there years, though I never thought I made them feel like a project, but perhaps I did in some way. You raised some valuable things to keep in mind .
I have been on the other end of that scenario too during some much needed pastoral counseling I was beginning to feel a little bit like a case study. I did not like it one bit. I felt like I was being probed and prodded and watched all the time. When I became conscious of it I told the person how I felt and she understood, but I could not break free of it. The feeling of being studied put me in a box that I have since broken free of. Praise the Lord.
Perhaps I was a little paranoid now looking back, due to my upbringing and abuse in my life. I came to the Lord at the age of 37 with a very cynical attitude and world view.
Today things look better, but I am still a work in progress.
I've been fortunate to have a few of those people in my life. The older I get, the more I appreciate them and understand what a blessing they are in my life.
"the failure growth requires..."
I'm going to chew on that one for a while.
Love this. Thanks.
I like the sentiment this quote brings forth, but wonder if it is possible for anyone other than God to possess "unconditional love"? Maybe we can "possess" it, but in "expressing" it, we stumble therein as we do with everything else. I wrote a song once (I am NOT talented in such area) when someone asked me what love was. Thinking hard on that one, I wrote that it is "a knot inside that God Himself has tied"; and I do believe that to so connect with anyone, His hand has to be in the arrangement. It take us through the stumble...
Beauty, Hope.
I doubt that human beings can express unconditional love....I do agree that in those fleeting moments when it seems to have happened it is only because of the grace of God in the midst of it.
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