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Your fridge may be full of nourishment for the body, but it’s possible that the outside of the door holds some food for the soul.
Does your fridge door, like mine, collect sayings that become little teachings fastened by magnets?
And do those teachings increase to find space in other parts of the house?
I’d like to share with you, some of my favourites, although not all of them have the name of an author.
This was written by an anonymous 15th century monk: “Find thyself, tis half the path to God. Then lose thyself, and the rest of the way is trod.”
By my desk, is a much-repeated prayer: “O God, take from me everything except my emptiness and your grace.”
A desert author who still speaks to my heart, is Carlo Carretto.
These words are on the notice board: “Do not worry about what you ought to do. Worry about loving. Do not interrogate heaven repeatedly and uselessly saying, ’What course of action should I pursue?’ Instead, concentrate on loving.”
This mini fridge homily can be a comment on consolation and desolation: “Happiness and unhappiness are the high and low tides on the edge of a great sea of contentment.”
Sometimes I need to read that.
Another fridge homily: “Soul-making requires that you die to one story in order to be reborn to another story, The wounding of the soul is an invitation to new growth.”
Carl Jung offers this reminder: “We cannot live the afternoon of life according to the programme of life’s morning.”
Finally, here is a beautiful Christmas reflection that comes from Anthony de Mello S. J. It has been shared many times on retreats and has given much gentle healing.
The events of history were controlled for my coming into this world
no less than the coming of the Saviour.
The time has to be ripe, the place just right,
the circumstance ready,
before I could be born.
God chose the parents of his Son
and endowed them with the personality they needed
for the child that would be born.
I speak to God about the man and woman
that he chose to be my parents
until I see that they had to be
the kind of human beings they were,
if I was to become what God meant me to be.
The Christ-child came, like every other child,
to give the world a message.
What message have I come to give?
I seek guidance from the Lord to express it
In a word or an image.
Christ came into this world
to walk a certain path, fulfil a certain destiny.
He consciously fulfilled what had been ‘written’ for him.
As I look back I see in wonder what has been “written” and has been thus far been fulfilled in my own life,
and for each part of the script, I say, “Thanks, to make it holy with my gratitude.
I look with expectation and surrender
on all that is to come, and, like the Christ,
I say, “Yes, Let it be done…”
Finally, I recall the song the angels sang
when Christ was born.
They sang of the peace and the joy
that give God glory.
Have I ever heard the song the angels sang
when I was born?
- Joy Cowley is a wife, mother, grandmother, great-grandmother and retreat facilitator.
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