On Something We Cannot Control

"Our self worth should never be given away or depend on something that we cannot control. It should rest in ourhands and our hearts. When we choose a life and the rituals that have us feeling amazing, we will naturally attract great love. The trick, is to not then give our heart away, but rather, share it."

Mark Groves

Benevolent Witness

"There's no pain on earth that doesn't crave a benevolent witness."

Sue Monk Kidd, The Invention of Wings

Love is an Art

“Love is a decision, it is a judgment, it is a promise. If love were only a feeling, there would be no basis for the promise to love each other forever. A feeling comes and it may go. How can I judge that it will stay forever, when my act does not involve judgment and decision.” 

"Falling in love is chemical...but to stay in love is an art. And like any art it requires understanding its theory, and then mastering its application."


― Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving

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Love After Love

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

Derek Walcott

A Sunday Kind of Love

"I want to be with someone, who dreams of doing everything in life, and nothing, on a rainy Sunday afternoon."

Atticus

Great Hopes

"My great hope is to laugh as much as I cry; to get my work done and try to love somebody and have the courage to accept the love in return."

-Maya Angelou

Grace and Love

"Grace is when you aren't striving or controlling or trying to change or manipulate or make something happen. Grace is when you find yourself carried along, when all that's left to do is receive. Grace is when you know you're loved, exactly as you are. Grace is an entirely different way of experiencing life. Another word for grace is gift."

-Rob Bell, The Zimzum of Love

Infinite Distances

"...once the realization is accepted that even between the closest people infinite distances exist, a marvelous living side-by-side can grow up for them, if they succeed in loving expanse between them, which gives them the possibility of always seeing each other as a whole and before an immense sky."

-Rilke

Transcendent Love

"By synthesis of all the colors, men can make whiteness, they cannot make light. By synthesis of all the virtues, men can make virtue, they cannot make Love. How then are we to have this transcendent living whole conveyed into our souls? We brace our wills to secure it. We try to copy those who have it. We lay down rules about it. we watch. We pray. But these things alone will not bring Love into our nature. Love is an effect And only as we fulfill the right condition can we have the effect produced. Shall I tell you what the cause is?

Because He first loved us."

-Henry Drummond | The Greatest Thing in the World (1870)

Francis of Assisi Prayer

Lord, make me a channel of thy peace,
that where there is hatred, I may bring love;
that where there is wrong,
 I may bring the spirit of forgiveness;
that where there is discord, I may bring harmony;
that where there is error, I may bring truth;
that where there is doubt, I may bring faith;
that where there is despair, I may bring hope;
that where there are shadows, I may bring light;
that where there is sadness, I may bring joy.
Lord, grant that I may seek rather to
comfort than to be comforted;
to understand, than to be understood;
to love, than to be loved.
For it is by self-forgetting that one finds.
It is by forgiving that one is forgiven.
It is by dying that one awakens to Eternal Life.

#Truth #Preach

"I fell in love the way I fall asleep: slowly, while reliving every embarrassing thing I've ever done & worrying about things I can't control."

@emerylord

Say Yes

"Love is a place and through this place of love move (with brightness of peace)
all places
yes is world and in this world of yes live (skillfully curled)
all worlds"

ee cummings

I fell in love the way....

"I fell in love the way I fall asleep: slowly, while reliving every embarrassing thing I've ever done and worrying about things I can't control."

-Emery Lord

Face of God

"And when she wanted to see the face of God, she didn't look up and away; she looked into the eyes of the person sitting next to her. Which is harder. Better."

-Glennon Doyle Melton, Love Warrior

Gilmore Wisdom

"That's all any of us wants; to find someone nice to hang out with us till we drop dead. Not a lot to ask for."

-Gilmore Girls

Do it First

"We're all waiting for someone else to do it first. To choose us, love us, share first, be vulnerable first. We operate from 'I'm closed but you should be open.' See how that's backwards? If you always go first, you always win. Because your love isn't dependent on others, it's dependent on yourself. It feels scary, right? That's because most of us believe we're lovable if someone else loves us. Can you love you? Perfect. Can you show up, love all out and be ready not to be loved back? When we give unconditional love, we invite it."

-Mark Groves @createthelove

To Love

"Of course I'll hurt you. Of course you'll hurt me. Of course we will hurt each other. But this is the very condition of existence. To become spring means accepting the risk of winter. To become presence, means accepting the risk of absence."

-Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Fearfully and Wonderfully Made

"I love myself as I am- for I am
fearfully and wonderfully made.
I am beautiful, right no, jut
the way I am. I am more than
my body, the clothes in my closet,
or the style of my hair, for
I am strong and do hard things.
I am worth loving. I hold myself
to a standard of grace not perfection,
and I refuse to put myself down.
I am a beautiful being, a daughter
of God, and I love myself as I am.

-The Small Seed #choosingtolovemyself movement