personal development on Having it All-Together

One Ash Wednesday a decade ago, when I was new to Anglicanism, I knelt at a rail as Fr. Thomas, my priest, smeared a black cross on each forehead. “Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall ret...

I became interested in the subject of transition outer changes around 1970 when I was going through some difficult inner and outer changes. Although I gave up my teaching career because of those chang...

None of us can be made whole till we are made whole together.

Give me all of you!!! I don’t want so much of your time, so much of your talents and money, and so much of your work. I want YOU!!! ALL OF YOU!! I have not come to torment or frustrate the natural man...

Wholeness is brokenness owned and thereby healed.

Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much. While they were saying among themselves it cannot be done, it was done.

In this excerpt, musician and author Ginny Owens shares a childhood exercise that only makes specific what all of us as human beings struggle with, the desire for wholeness: I wish you could know my ...

Like me, you may struggle deeply with what it means to live well. We are all seeking to take these scattered moments of meaning and weave them together into a beautiful whole.

Without exception … all try their hardest to reach the same goal, that is, joy.

You've got to admit you're broken before you can be made whole.

For all our time and attention, no matter how carefully we curate our stuff or how much we might enjoy ourselves along the way, we’re all merely stocking and staging someone else’s opportunity for bar...

Presence is experienced as a unitary whole. Think, for example, about the experience of sitting on the top of a hill, far from the polluting lights of a city, gazing at a dark, starry sky. Unless you ...

The educator Parker Palmer writes, “Wholeness doesn’t mean perfection: It means embracing brokenness as an integral part of life.” When Palmer speaks of wholeness, he doesn’t mean a perfectly function...

None of us is as smart as all of us.

We are each other's harvest; we are each other's business; we are each other's magnitude and bond.

The present moment (‘whenever’) somehow holds together the one-off past event (‘the Lord’s death’) and the great future when God’s world will be remade under Jesus’ loving rule (‘until he comes’).

It is not good to be too free. It is not good to have all one needs.

All joy emphasizes our pilgrim status; always reminds, beckons, awakens desire. Our best havings are wantings.

Imagination “completes the picture” by transcending the actual memories and provable facts.

The webbing together of God, humans, and all creation in justice, fulfillment, and delight is what the Hebrew prophets call shalom. We call it peace, but it means far more than mere peace of mind or a...

I remember playing a game as a child in which we would bend one knee and grab our foot behind us and then try to race—limping, stumbling and falling over as we struggled across the grass toward a fini...

You've got to think about big things while you're doing small things, so that all the small things go in the right direction.

Christ, the One who was, and is, and is to come, welcomes you to this place. As one body, with one voice, we honor and glorify the giver of wisdom, counsel, knowledge, and joy. Amen. So be it.

We long to see our lives whole and to know that they matter. We wonder whether our many activities might ever come together in a way of life that is good for ourselves and others. Are we really living...

At crucial moments of choice, most of the business of choosing is already over.

Live to the point of tears.

“There is a place called heaven where the good here unfinished is made complete; and where the stories unwritten and hopes unfulfilled are continued. We shall laugh together yet.”

If you're not gonna go all the way, why go at all?

We do not segment our lives, giving some time to God, some to our business or schooling, while keeping parts to ourselves. The idea is to live all of our lives in the presence of God, under the author...

Lucy says to Charlie Brown: ‘You know what the whole trouble with you is, Charlie Brown?’ ‘No; and I don’t want to know! Leave me alone!’ ‘The whole trouble with you is you won’t listen to w...