THOUGHTS FOR THE DAY from Nina Naomi

Berthe Morisot, Bath (Bain) (1894)

Life isn't about finding yourself.  Life is about creating yourself.  This is wonderfully reassuring if we're at 6s and 7s.  We're not hidden.  We can start fresh, as often as we want.

Hope is stronger than fear.   And love is stronger than death.   These truths are Easter truths, whether we are Christian or not.  Love makes us brave.  The few times (only time?) I have been brave, love has been the catalyst. 

You can miss something without wanting it back.  Our youth, our children's infancy, a house we lived in, an old romance . . . . Not perhaps profound, but helpful.  It makes missing a more welcome part of our lives.

Relax.  You are enough.  You have enough.  You do enough.  Of course, this may not actually be true if we are sluggards and shirking duties right and left.  But absent that (and maybe even then)--WE ARE ENOUGH.

God is not remote from us.  He is at the point of our pen, our paint brush, our trowel, our vision.  The classroom, the operating room, the desk where we write, the closet where we cry, the chair where we sit, the bed where we lie, the path we walk.  He is there.  Oh, embrace.

When someone dies know this:  God loves that person even more than you or I do, more than you or I can.  God created this person.  He or she or they may be your child, someone you love or even you yourself.  So do not despair; never despair.  

If death is sudden and unexpected the same is true:  we are not ready but God is.  God is right there ready.  The person who dies does not have one second of disorientation.  God is right there. 

Self-knowledge is part of spiritual growth.  Self-knowledge is not self-absorption.  We cannot face life's difficulties without being tender with ourselves.   

God holds our soul between His palms.

Begin each day anew.  That is the point of a sunrise.  Blunders, mistakes, griefs, wounds--leave them behind.  Start fresh each day.  Each day is a gift.  That's why we go to bed and wake.  To begin anew.