Can happiness be bought? Get your showbag at @everythingcanbebought.com

 

Can happiness be bought?

Can our needs be placated if we just find the right products?

Can we go to the www. and find answers to all that ails us?

Is there a tangible answer for all our intangible questions?

Can mystery, imagination, wonderment, love, spirituality, self-esteem, creativity, purpose, meaning, contentment, self-fulfilment, honesty, integrity, respect, et cetera, be bought and put in a shopping bag?

I wonder if we have become so focused on the attainment of "things" and "stuff" that we have little time left over for listening to what our "inner selves" need. Do you find it hard to sit still and just ponder?  Every moment when you have to wait; doctors surgery, bus stop, train station, restaurant, standing in-line, traffic lights and so on; do you play-with/use your mobile/cell phone/ipad?

Do you ever turn off everything and just listen to the world you live in? Do you ever just still yourself and wait for your "soul" to catch up?

To our ancestors the world and universe was viewed as huge and there were many mysteries "out there". Today we are investigating if life is possible on Mars since our own planet is getting cramped.

With the help of science and technology we have "progressed" in leaps and bounds; one by one mysteries are solved and the distance between us and "the unknown" is continuously shrinking.

Strangely enough though, paradoxically even, more and more of us are becoming alienated and lonely.

We have invented thingy's that makes it possible for us to always stay in contact with someone 24/7; but is the interface(any kind of screen, big or small) becoming the actual "face" we communicate with?

According to some statistics more and more people are suffering with some form of social anxiety i.e.; feeling uncomfortable, self-conscious and fearful in and of social interactions; which can make communicating/speaking with people face to face fraught with feelings of insecurity and anxiousness.

I recently spoke with someone who told me that he is socially anxious and that he avoids people in general because he doesn't trust them and he feels judged by them. Although, he explained, he feels at ease chatting with total strangers on the net and finds no problem with being honest or open there.

In real life, he has no friends, siblings or co-workers to socialise with, and that's the way he likes it.

I guess for some of us, it is easier to go out and buy an "ithingy" than strike up a conversation, mingle and chit-chat, or join in, but I can't help but wonder if a thing really can replace face to face inter action in the long run? Once we have bought that new car, house, TV, play station, ithingy, and so on, how long does that sense of fulfilment and "happiness" last?

If we are to believe advertising and marketing, then all our needs can be satisfied with a product of some kind, and if our needs still aren't fulfilled, its because we haven't bought the "right" product.

So where do we buy "stuff" to satisfy these human needs(assuming our need for shelter and food and water is taken care of):

Certainty, love/connection/closeness, belonging, meaning and purpose, contribution(a sense of helping others)respect, self-esteem/integrity to mention a few.

Certainty= you can buy a religious/ or any other Text, read it, and then deem it "The Truth", Love/connection/closeness= you can buy a real size "living doll", you can visit a sex worker

Belonging= you can buy a membership in a club

Meaning and purpose= you can buy a membership to a gym

Contribution= you can donate(buy a sense of a contribution) to charity

Respect= you can buy a big house, luxury car, boat, business and some will respect you for having such things

Self-esteem and integrity= hmmmm?

Seems as if it is possible to "buy" things to fulfil those needs.....that is if one ignores the many people who have bought all these and yet do not feel happy. Not to mention all the people who deem them selves as "happy" without having bought any of these "things".

There are people who are happy because they are certain that all will be okay(optimists), that they are loved and love, they belong with their families and friends, they know what the meaning and purpose is in their lives, they help others because they want to, they show respect and is respected in return, they have a healthy self-esteem because they have a positive self-regard and know what they stand for.

"Happiness is when what you say, what you think, and what you do is in harmony."

(Mahatma Gandhi)

"Our greatest happiness does not depend on the condition of life in which chance has placed us, but is always the result of good conscience, good health, occupation, and freedom in all just pursuits."

(Thomas Jefferson)

Without even knowing each other, I believe there exists a common beat between all hearts, and if we still ourselves and just listen, we may be able to connect with

our shared humanity.

Right in the head? What does it mean?

"What do you mean, not right in the head? she asked.

"Well, he just doesn't behave like, um, normal people," he answered.

"I guess at times his behaviour may seem a bit odd to some of us, but perhaps to him it is normal? she answered.

Here is a scary word, well two actually: Mental illness.

According to some stats, one in four people will experience some form of mental illness/disorder in their lives.

So what is it? Like many illnesses such a gallstones, cancer, diabetes, etc., mental illness is a medical condition, and those who have mental disorders struggle to cope with everyday life because of their symptoms just like a diabetic, or epileptic may struggle with theirs.

The most common mental illnesses are anxiety and depressive disorders.

Most of us go through times when we feel stressed out, tensed to the max, down in the dumps, anxious for the future, our kids, friends, loved ones and so on, that is just part of being a human, but when the feelings become so strong that they overwhelm us and we can no longer function properly i.e., we find ourselves unable to cope, then something more serious may be going on.

Depression is not the same as feeling a bit sad occasionally, anxiety disorder is not the same as being a bit worried, PTSD(post traumatic stress disorder) is not the same as having bad memories, bi-polar disorder is not the same as having good and bad days, schizophrenia is not the same as feeling paranoid about your boss finding out about you skiving.

Mental illness is neither a sign or caused by personal weakness; the causes can be genetic, biological, social or environmental in origin, in other words it is not a character flaw.

People with a mental illness can get better with the appropriate treatment and live productive and satisfying lives.

Just like a diabetic can learn to manage his/her illness with proper medication, so can people with a mental illness.

However, in many societies, there is a stigma attached to mental illness. Someone with a broken leg for instance, often receives more sympathy than someone with a "broken" mind.

Why does mental illness scare so many of us?

May I suggest that we are scared of it because there is still so much to learn about it, not to mention overcoming the stereotyping that often goes along with the term, and although we are getting better at understanding and dealing with it, much about it still hovers in the "unknown".

Hollywood may have to change their portrayal of people with mental illnesses to help us lose the very scary image of people with mental health disorders they have immortalised on the big screen.

(Halloween, American Horror story: Asylum, Silence of the Lambs, et cetera.)

On the positive side:

Some suggest that Winston Churchill, Vincent van Gogh, Ludwig van Beethoven, suffered with bi-polar disorder, Abraham Lincoln, Charles Dickens, Edward Munch, suffered with depression, but we all know about their great contributions inspite of their illnesses.

Most of us humans desire certainty and control, predictability and stability, and people suffering with mental illnesses at times may defy all the above, and this may scare us because we don't know how to deal with it. My son suffers with bi-polar disorder and there has been many times when I have felt absolutely clueless as to how to help or understand him. How does one splint a "broken" mind?

My conclusion: education, knowledge and understanding. Toss blame and denial, and go with being supportive, understanding and patient.

 

“Our society tends to regard as a sickness any mode of thought or behaviour that is inconvenient for the system and this is plausible because when an individual doesn't fit into the system it causes pain to the individual as well as problems for the system. Thus the manipulation of an individual to adjust him to the system is seen as a cure for a sickness and therefore as good.”  

(Theodore Kaczynski)

"The perilous highs, and desperate lows, and extravagant flurries of mood are not always symptoms of a broken mind, but signs of a beating heart." (Terri Cheney)

 

Perhaps it time for us to drag the stigma attached to mental illness out of the shadow and have an "enlightened" look at it?

 

Any decent society must generate a feeling of community. Community offsets loneliness. It gives people a vitally necessary sense of belonging. Yet today the institutions on which community depends are crumbling in all the techno-societies. The result is a spreading plague of loneliness
Read more at http://www.notable-quotes.com/s/society_quotes.html#yX3WUBsOzG0zrXSl.99

Any decent society must generate a feeling of community. Community offsets loneliness. It gives people a vitally necessary sense of belonging. Yet today the institutions on which community depends are crumbling in all the techno-societies. The result is a spreading plague of loneliness
Read more at http://www.notable-quotes.com/s/society_quotes.html#yX3WUBsOzG0zrXSl.99

Any decent society must generate a feeling of community. Community offsets loneliness. It gives people a vitally necessary sense of belonging. Yet today the institutions on which community depends are crumbling in all the techno-societies. The result is a spreading plague of loneliness
Read more at http://www.notable-quotes.com/s/society_quotes.html#yX3WUBsOzG0zrXSl.99

Soft touch? Nah, just tolerant........

I asked my son for a subject to write about and without any hesitation he suggested: Tolerance.

This is a painting of a pope, hanging on to a symbol which for many may represent love, charity, tolerance, faith and hope. Yet for others, it perhaps represent oppression, control, backward thinking, and so on. There are many other symbols perhaps that are equally or better fitting, so if this image in any way is a misrepresentation in your view, disregard the image and just stick with the words.

A definition of tolerance: "The capacity for or the practise of recognising and respecting the beliefs or practises of others", or "willingness to accept feelings, habits, or beliefs that are different from your own", or "interest in and concern for ideas, opinions, practises, etc., foreign to ones own; a liberal, undogmatic viewpoint".

Why do we so often find it hard to be tolerant of others beliefs and practises, behaviours and expressions of emotions? May I suggest a few options: We often experience fear when we don't understand that which seems unfamiliar to us. We often feel uncertain how to conduct ourselves with unfamiliarity in general, and with the feelings of uncertainty we may experience a sense of insecurity.

It can be hard to be tolerant of others who differ from us if we are convinced that we are "Right", and that there is only "one" right way and that is our way.

Why is tolerance important? Tolerance is important for a peaceful co-existence of mankind, for furthering our understanding of the many different interpretations and perceptions us humans have of the world we live in. "Tolerance is giving to every other human being the rights you claim for yourself", Robert Green Ingersoll.

For some of us perhaps being tolerant may seem as a lack of commitment to our own beliefs, but as John F Kennedy pointed out: "Tolerance in no way implies a lack of commitment to ones own beliefs. Rather it condemns the oppression or persecution of others."

Often we make snap judgements of people by the way they dress, their hair styles, their choice of music, the friends they choose, the language they speak, and so on, only to discover when we get to know them better that we have a lot in common and have many similar views and opinions.

The goth kid who turns out to be very educated and polite, the person "born with a silver spoon" who turns out to be very humble and down to earth, the "foreigner" speaking a very broken English turns out to be a highly educated professional, the drunk who once was a stock broker, the drug addict who once was a doctor, and so on.

Perhaps making snap judgements at some subconscious level can be viewed as some form of self protection, (a potential threat to us) but they also prevent us from getting to know and understand "new" people. When I first came to Australia asking for a "latte" instead of just coffee, or salami rather than sausage, Swiss cheese rather than cheddar, going for a walk on the beach rather than going down the pub, was viewed as very peculiar behaviour. Now, even the smallest corner shop sells salami and Swiss cheese.

As our population on this planet expands and people move about more and more, most societies find themselves needing to deal with multiculturalism; i.e. cultural diversity. Some may argue that learning from other cultures we learn to be more tolerant and understanding, others perhaps view it as fragmenting the existing culture. Personally, I am well pleased of the influx of the variety of cuisine from other countries; fish and chips occasionally is nice, but now there is Thai, Chinese, Japanese, Italian, Spanish, Turkish, Greek, Moroccan, Algerian, African, Cuban, etc. etc.

By rejecting that which seem unfamiliar to us, we also miss out on wonderful new experiences.

(At some point or another, we decide to have a go...otherwise wouldn't we still be crawling and not walking?)

Each society has laws to determine what behaviours are acceptable(tolerable) or not, on an individual level though, we make up our own "laws", which often include our biases. ("Bias means that a person prefers an idea and possibly does not give equal chance to a different idea.")

Our biases are often so interwoven in our consciousness that we don't really see them as such, they seem like "that's the way it is", but I have found that asking oneself the question "why do I see things this way?" often lead me to ask "is this really my own view, and is it fair?"

Tolerance, it seems to me, begins with an open mind and seeking greater understanding.

"How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving and tolerant of the weak and strong. Because someday in your life you will have been all of these". (George Washington Carver)

Who loves ya? Life does....hang in there

                               "As you read this, these lines on a screen

none of our faces,

our expressions

 can be seen.

Yet at this very moment

we are both here

communicating of sorts

in this virtual sphere.

Though I don't know your name

 or where you live,

right now this very moment

my full attention I give.

I want you to know

that you are very loved,

by all that's alive

below and above.

 Regardless of where you are

when you read these lines,

I want you to know

there's purpose to your life.

We all need to be,

known and to know,

to matter to someone

where ever we go,

survive though we may

when we go it alone,

it's through loving

and caring

we come into our own."

til next we meet again

many kind regards,

Citizen X

Do they call you strange?

"Why do you call me strange?, he asked. "Well, you dress funny for one thing and you talk about strange things", she answered.

"For you, strange is bad?, he asked.

Being called "strange" is something I have had to deal with most of my life, but what does it mean exactly?

According to a few different definitions on the Net: unusual or surprising; difficult to understand or explain, differing from the normal, out of the ordinary.

So, what is the definition of "normal" then? >"Conforming to a standard; usual, typical, or expected".

 From the Latin normālis;  made according to a carpenter's square, rule, pattern".

So the term began as carpenter's tool to now be a commonly used "tool" for society to evaluate,

well, ...... a whole lot of things. 

Of course what's considered normal in one society may not be viewed as normal in another and so on....perhaps when say normal we mean: "expected" behaviour, response, outcome.

It's often considered normal to cry, to be sombre at a funeral, rather than falling over with laughter. Unless......(insert here reasons for why x was laughing)

It is often considered normal to laugh when watching something funny, rather than curling up in a foetal position crying.

Unless......(insert here why x was crying)

If there are no two humans with identical fingerprints, could it not be plausible to speculate that "normal" perhaps is a catch phrase for the most common/expected response/behaviour, rather than a template for how everyone have to/ought to, respond/behave?

In my family, keeping in touch regularly is an expression of love and concern, for others it may be viewed as an intrusion, as controlling behaviour. For some of us dressing in black clothes may be a fashion statement, for others it may be viewed as pretentious. For some of us going to bed at 10:00 pm during a work week is normal, for others it may be the time of day when we work the best. For some of us pop, rock, metal, jazz and so on music, may be viewed as noise rather than music, yet for others it may be the music that inspires.

When my son became a Goth in his last years of high school, I realised that I needed to expand my understanding of many things. So I began by asking questions, not in order to correct but in order to understand. "What is it about Panthera that you like? What is it about wearing all black clothes that you like? What is it about black nail polish you like?" and so forth. Fortunately for me, my son was willing to answer my many questions and so what at first seemed very strange to me, became "an expression of the search for ones individuality/identity", a very "normal" behaviour for a teenager.

Have you heard of the Bell Curve? I have a feeling it has a lot to do with how we experience what is normal or not.

"A normal distribution (or "a bell curve") is a statistical grouping of scores wherein the majority of people have scores in the middle and there is a smooth curve toward fewer scores at the extreme ends. It is often called a "bell curve" because the shape of the graph resembles a bell."

(If we view "normal" as in: living free of excessive discomfort/problems,  and "strange/abnormal" as in feeling or acting significantly distressed; then destroying a village in wartime and not experiencing anything afterward would be normal, and experiencing something for a long time thereafter; abnormal/strange.)

Personally, I rather toss the Bell curve, I think its more of a zig-zag curve....we are all different, and sometimes we say and do things that surprises even ourselves..

9-5 may be our normal until we get a shift job, a glass of wine/beer after work may be our normal until we are told we have liver problems, "easy-street" may be our normal until we find out our child has autism, keeping our cards close to the chest may be our normal until our spouse asks for a divorce, and so on.

Trying to live our lives according to a fictionalised notion of what normalcy is, may turn us into emotional "pretzels", leaving us feeling stumped when life throws us a "curve" ball.

"Instead of using the term strange, could not "different" be used?, he asked. Are we not all unique human beings but with some things and aspects in common? If someone insults you and you feel hurt, you may chose to respond with insulting back; would you view that as a normal response? If someone else chooses to respond to an insult with a kind word would you then view that as an abnormal, a strange response? Is not what we call normal, normal according to what we ourselves deem normal rather than a fixed position?"

"See, that's what I mean, you're strange, ofcourse normal is a fixed position," she responded.

"Would a normal person spend hours on end for years painting, or writing, or inventing, or experimenting, or calculating, or observing, or exploring, or thinking, although being told by others "you are a fool"? asked the man.

"No, a normal person would listen to what others say", the woman answered.

"Well, if Van Gogh, Shakespeare, Da Vinci, The Wright Brothers, Louis Pasteur, Einstein, Galileo, Marco Polo, Freud, had not ignored what others told them, where would we be today? Because we are all different we all have something different to contribute to our societies. A "new" thought that suddenly occur to us may seem strange at first, but once processed and digested; it often transforms into "normal", he continued.

"Different sounds too uncertain to me, "normal" sounds much more certain and stable," she quietly responded.

"Uncertainty is one of the main aspects of the human condition, it is a constant but if we can find a way to embrace it rather than resist it then we may be able to become more tolerant, accepting, and more compassionate toward people, ideas, and cultures that differ from ours", said the man.

“There is an anaesthetic of familiarity, a sedative of ordinariness which dulls the senses and hides the wonder of existence. For those of us not gifted in poetry, it is at least worth while from time to time making an effort to shake off the anaesthetic. What is the best way of countering the sluggish habituation brought about by our gradual crawl from babyhood? We can't actually fly to another planet. But we can recapture that sense of having just tumbled out to life on a new world by looking at our own world in unfamiliar ways.”   (Richard Dawkins)

If people call you "strange" then ask them to define "normal", if they can't, then perhaps they are strange....:)

Peace is the answer......

8:15 am. The day has just begun. Standing on the tarmac are young soldiers. On their shoulders duffle bags, on their minds; will I return?

"An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind" said Mahatma Gandhi.

"It's an unfortunate fact that we can secure peace only by preparing for war" said John F Kennedy.

"We must all make peace so that we can all live in peace" said Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

A photographer, braving the early hour and dismal weather, directs his powerful lens toward the soldiers waiting in line to get on the transport plane. Suddenly one of them turns his head, and looks straight into the eyes of the photographer and for a split second, they connect. Click! The intensity of the expression in the young soldier's eyes unsettles the photographer so much that he lowers his camera, no more pictures are needed.

With an almighty roar the plane takes off and the photographer with camera in hand walks back to his car.

In the car driving back to his studio, he can't stop thinking about the young soldier. As soon as he is back in the studio he flips through the shots he took until he finds the one...the one he knows he can get published, the one with the piercing gaze, the one he knows he can never forget.

It did get published, although the back story of the image comes from my own imagination but the young man is a soldier and he is being deployed. 

"Peace is a stress-free state of security and calmness that comes when there's no fighting or war, everything coexisting in perfect harmony and freedom" is one definition of peace, there are others.

Interesting to me is that the words compassion, understanding, tolerance and acceptance don't get much of a mention in regards to peace. "Peace can not be kept by force, it can only be achieved by understanding" so said Einstein.

During the worst of the fighting and unrest in Ireland, a man by the name of Danaan Parry had an idea that if people could connect and understand each other, peace may be possible. He managed to gather people from opposing sides into a large hall with a painted, thick white line in the middle of the hall.  Considering that the trouble had been going for many years, with many lives lost on both sides, ...the hall was a powder keg. With the warring parties staring at each other from opposite sides of the hall, Danaan asked all the people who had lost a parent due to the conflict to take a step forward.....next, all those who had lost a child, then those who had lost a sibling, a friend, a neighbour, any kind of relative, a work mate, and so on......

By the time he had finished asking, all the people were standing in the middle, on the white line, face to face, and they realised that they had ALL lost somebody they cared for, and this they all had in common. Their pain. A beginning of understanding, a beginning of compassion, the beginnings of peace.

Peace is a daily, a weekly, a monthly process, gradually changing opinions, slowly eroding old barriers, quietly building new structures.
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/j/johnfkenn135037.html#p7h3KFf1wHy3hICE.99

"Peace is a daily, a weekly, a monthly process, gradually changing opinions, slowly eroding barriers, quietly building new structures". (John F Kennedy)

"If civilisation is to survive, we must cultivate the science of human relationships - the ability of all peoples, of all kinds, to live together, in the same world at peace". (Franklin D Roosevelt)

Perhaps at times one may be tempted to think that its "about economy and economics" rather than about peoples. That it's about power and domain, rather than individual human beings. Peace, some may say, hinges on the balancing act between those in power and those who seek to have it.

For some, war is an "opportunity",.... for a greater income, for mobility, for procurement", et cetera.

To me, basically war has always seem a bit like "We want what you have, and if you don't give it to us, we are going to take it anyway" or "you're not thinking the right way, so now we are going to make you think our way/the right way, hook or by crook".

"Peace", on the other hand, "cannot be achieved through violence, it can only be attained through understanding"  so said Ralph Waldo Emerson.

"The day the power of love overrules the love of power, the world will know peace". (Gandhi)

Perhaps if we begin with being at peace with ourselves, we may find it easier to be at peace with others? And if we can learn to love ourselves, we may also find it easier to love others...

In the words of John Lennon..."Give peace a chance, and why not add....... love and understanding. For a moment, just imagine walking in someone else's shoes; enemy, opponent or competitor....

P E A C E

Feeling broken? Take a time-out to proccess...

Before I tell you what  I have painted here, let your imagination run free for a spell.....

(Some see a bird, others see modern architecture, others have suggested some crafts from outer space....whatever you see, you are right....:)

What I did use as a model was some broken pieces of glass. Out on my morning walk I noticed some shards from a broken beer bottle as they lay sparkling in the sun and I thought they looked amazing. I took a photo, then used it as a model for the painting.

I recently watched a movie titled "Broken City" and it left me deep in thought.

I have heard the term "feeling broken" but I have never really spent much time pondering it, but after watching the movie, the thought of "feeling broken" has stayed with me.

Ernest Hemingway says this: "The world breakes everyone, and afterwards, some are strong in the broken places". "The reason the world lacks unity, and lies broken and in heaps, is, because man is disunited with himself" suggests Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Most of us have probably had out hearts broken at some point or another, for a myriad of reasons.

Of course, our hearts don't really break, but it can sure feel like it when your hero turns out to be a villain, your lover becomes an enemy, your child a stranger, your friend a traitor, and your town/village/city rather than feeling like home now scares you.

Living is risky business, and the chances are that most of us will have our hearts broken at some point or another. Some wise folks even suggest that having our hearts broken is pretty much guaranteed, that it is part of the human experience. What we do after, how we piece it all back together again, is the thing.

Perhaps at times we rush too quickly to try and fix what's broken rather than allowing ourselves the time to feel and heal. (If we want to fix a broken vase/thing we need to use the right kind of "glue" or it will come undone again where the cracks(weaknesses) are.) Sometimes rushing to fix/solve something before we have a clear mind about what happened, we may inadvertently run straight into our next heart brake.

Taking time to breathe, to think, to acknowledge how we feel, giving ourselves a chance to catch up with our emotions can be very helpful for healing. Due to our "mirror-neurons", many of us find it hard to see others in pain and we want to "fix" it, find solutions, but often, the most helpful thing we can do is to be present, to listen, and to be lovingly patient while the other finds his/her way.

Perhaps at times it can be more considerate to ask the person in pain what you can do to help rather than "this is what you should do..." or "this is what I would do". As an artist there are many, many people who tell me what I should, ought, need, etc. to do to sell my art, to become more successful commercially and so on....and I understand that they are trying to be supportive, but at times, it does become somewhat tiring, which has lead me to understand that timing is very important when it comes to "helping" or fixing/solving. We can't change or understand what we don't acknowledge, we need to process the "broken pieces" before we try to put them together again, and we often need time to do so. At times when we feel broken we may feel tempted to view "everything" as broken, and we perhaps find ourselves questioning if we will ever feel whole again.

But we will. When we go through really difficult emotional experiences, we are also given an opportunity to learn, to grow, to change, to find new understandings of love.

Although, it does require that we eventually let go of the pain, resentment, anger, et cetera and look forward. Even though feeling broken is painful, sometimes it can feel more "comfortable" than opening oneself up for another potential "heart brake".

( Example: sometimes broken bones don't set right and have to be broken again in order to heal properly,... much to the consternation of the person with the broken bone.)

‎"Broken does not mean non-functioning, or incapacitated, it does however mean ready for repair." 

(Shawn Boreta)

“It will be foolish not to get your heart broken, even once.

For having a broken heart makes you realise the immense capability it possesses to mend and heal itself and to love far more intensely,with every affixed piece of it that was once broken and torn apart..”  
(Sanhita Baruah)

"The more you have loved and have allowed yourself to suffer because of your love, the more you will be able to let your heart grow wider and deeper. When your love is truly giving and receiving, those whom you love will not leave your heart even when they depart from you. The pain of rejection, absence, and death can become fruitful. Yes, as you love deeply the ground of your heart will be broken more and more, but you will rejoice in the abundance of the fruit it will bear."

(Henri Nouwen)

 

Have you ever seen a stained glass window? There are many amazingly beautiful ones... they are made from innumerable broken pieces of glass, arranged together and held in place with strips of soft lead to make one breathtaking piece of art.

Are we humans not a bit like that? Lots of broken pieces to make one amazing whole, held together by hope.