Category: Meditations

“On the girl’s brown legs there were many small white scars. I was thinking: Do those scars cover the whole of you, like the stars and the moons on your dress? I thought that would be pretty too, and I ask you right here please to agree with me that a scar is never ugly. That is what the scar makers want us to think. But you and I, we must make an agreement to defy them. We must see all scars as beauty. Okay? This will be our secret. Because take it from me, a scar does not form on the dying. A scar means, I survived.”
―Chris Cleave, Little Bee

What scars do you have that are as beautiful to you as stars?

Isn’t that just how it is? Most of the time the view is obscured, the light not very good, and you can’t quite see where you’re going. And then the path opens up, the light comes in, and you can see it all so clearly. Until you move a few steps further down the path.

What is the light like on your personal path at the moment?

Sure, there are those annoying people at work or in our families or on social media with whom we are always butting heads in an endless stream of pointless controversy or contradiction. But the position, head to head, is not so different than the much more constructive “putting our heads together.”

What would it take to move a relationship in your life from “butting heads” to “putting your heads together”?

Blueberries are perhaps the most delicious of the “superfoods,” foods that are supposed to have extraordinary nutritional value, that are particularly beneficial for your health. Certain activities, like meditation, yoga and prayer, have the same reputation as spiritual “superfoods,” things that are particularly good at nurturing for your spiritual life.

What are your spiritual “superfoods”?

Each year the World Health Organization focuses on a topic for World Health Day—this year is food safety. Which is great. But it would also be great if today each of us thought about any one thing we could do to bring a little bit of health and vibrance to our own lives, or to our community.

What is one thing you do to foster health?