Quotes about Resilience

Failure and suffering are the great equalizers and levelers among humans. Success is just the opposite. Communities and commitment can form around suffering much more than around how wonderful or superior we are.

It is no surprise that the first and always unwelcome message of male initiation rites is LIFE — IS — HARD.

We do not handle suffering. Suffering handles us.

you are often most gifted to heal others precisely where you yourself were wounded, or wounded others.

With the exception of Leviticus and Numbers, written by the priestly classes, most of the Bible is written by or about people who are occupied, enslaved, poor or disenfranchised in some way!

The tragic sense of life is ironically not tragic at all, at least in the Big Picture. Living in such deep time, connected to past and future, prepares us for necessary suffering, keeps us from despair about our own failure and loss, and ironically offers us a way through it all. We are merely joining the great parade of humanity that has walked ahead of us and will follow after us. The tragic sense of life is not unbelief, pessimism, fatalism, or cynicism.

Love is always stronger than death, and unto that love you have now returned.

It is the things that you cannot do anything about and the things that you cannot do anything with that do something with you.

God tries to first create a joyous yes inside of you, far more than any kind of no . . . Just saying no is resentful dieting, whereas finding your deeper yes, and eating from that table, is always a spiritual banquet.

If we do not transform our pain, we will most assuredly transmit it.

Do not get rid of your hurts until you have learned all that they have to teach you.

It is the struggle with darkness and grief that educates the male soul.