Quotes about Resilience

Jesus praised faith and trust — even more than love. It takes a foundational trust to fall, or to fail, and not to fall apart.

In terms of soul work, we dare not get rid of the pain before we have learned what it has to teach us.

There must be, and, if we are honest, there always will be at least one situation in our lives that we cannot fix, control, explain, change, or even understand. For Jesus and for his followers, the crucifixion became the dramatic symbol of that necessary and absurd stumbling stone.

It is not that suffering or failure might happen, or that it will only happen to you if you are bad (which is what religious people often think), or that it will happen to the unfortunate, or to a few in other places, or that you can somehow by cleverness or righteousness avoid it. No, it will happen, and to you! Losing, failing, falling, sin, and the suffering that comes from those experiences—all of this is a necessary and even good part of the human journey.

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.