Quotes ~ April 17th

Love and grief are our oceans. They aren’t opposites. The grief is an ebb and flow that continues through our lives. It comes up, and if we dam that ocean off, we shut love out too. We need to go through it, all the f*cked up tears and anger—all of it—to get to the love. I had a few tears as I realized this, but left hopeful. I loved all of Seane’s stories about her dad and his illness and passing. It was beautiful to witness the other participants in their various stages of grief.

But this is is what I kept, and what left me full of hope, “Love is always where we end up.” We don’t wade through all the sh*t of anger, sadness and grief to just be empty. We get through it to allow the love in.
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There is more wisdom in your body than in your deepest philosophy.
~ Friedrich Nietzsche
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There are cracks. There are cracks in everything. That’s how the light gets in.
~ Leonard Cohen
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The closest thing we have to flawlessness is nature. The Grand Canyon, for example, is one of the most majestic creations in the world, and what is it? A giant crack.

People visit this giant crack every day from all over the world to marvel at this vast gaping hole in the Earth. It is possibly the greatest flawed perfection human eyes have ever witnessed. If the water and wind had never pulsed through the rock, we would not know it as the Grand Canyon. Without your cracks, you wouldn't be. The erosion of life lived etches uniqueness into our skin all the way through, to our hearts.

We would not be human; we would not know this existence without our wrinkles, lines, holes, cuts and scars. We would not know love without the punctures of resentment and hate. We would not know pure joy without the pit of sorrow. We would not appreciate health without the fractures of sickness.We would not know happiness without the searing slice of suffering.

We learn how to live within the cracks. The cracks are where we find ourselves. Our cracks absorb and radiate light. They are the peep hole to the inside, so we can see our spirit. Our cracks lead the way, guiding others to see in, to see us.

The light creeps in and we journey right back to where we start, exactly the same and completely different. Exactly the same, we are who we are, nothing changes. We are fated as we are, cracks and all. Completely different, because we understand that there is absolutely nothing to cover.

I sit here with the scars on my body, the laugh lines on my face, the breaks in my heart, the broken dishwasher at home, the crayon doodles on my couch, and the moth hole in my shirt. Today, I acknowledge I am perfectly cracked; I have nothing to cover anymore.
~ Rebecca Lammersen
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