To be what we are, and to become what we are capable of becoming is the only end of life.
--Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) Scottish author
This quote reminds me of advice author Brennan Manning gave in his classic "The Ragamuffin Gospel"...
One of the wonderful results of my consciousness of God's staggering love for me as I am is a freedom not to be who I should be or who others want me to be. I can be who I really am.
When I get honest, I admit I am is a bundle of paradoxes. I believe and doubt, I hope and get discouraged, I love and I hate, I feel bad about feeling good, I feel guilty about not feeling guilty. I am trusting and suspicious. I am honest and I still play games. Aristotle said I am a rational animal; I say I am an angel with an incredible capacity for beer.
It is the real me that God loves. I don't have to be anyone else. For 20 years I tried to be brother Teresa. I tried to be Francis of Assisi. I had to be a carbon copy of a great saint rather than the original God intended me to be. My 70-year-old spiritual director, Larry Hine, gave me a word from the Lord that he heard once from a black, evangelical preacher in Georgia. "Be who you is, because if you ain't who you is, you is who you ain't."
--Brennan Manning
Above: A tree near Aunt Willie's Wildflowers, Sullivan County, TN
--Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) Scottish author
This quote reminds me of advice author Brennan Manning gave in his classic "The Ragamuffin Gospel"...
One of the wonderful results of my consciousness of God's staggering love for me as I am is a freedom not to be who I should be or who others want me to be. I can be who I really am.
When I get honest, I admit I am is a bundle of paradoxes. I believe and doubt, I hope and get discouraged, I love and I hate, I feel bad about feeling good, I feel guilty about not feeling guilty. I am trusting and suspicious. I am honest and I still play games. Aristotle said I am a rational animal; I say I am an angel with an incredible capacity for beer.
It is the real me that God loves. I don't have to be anyone else. For 20 years I tried to be brother Teresa. I tried to be Francis of Assisi. I had to be a carbon copy of a great saint rather than the original God intended me to be. My 70-year-old spiritual director, Larry Hine, gave me a word from the Lord that he heard once from a black, evangelical preacher in Georgia. "Be who you is, because if you ain't who you is, you is who you ain't."
--Brennan Manning
Above: A tree near Aunt Willie's Wildflowers, Sullivan County, TN
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