Thoughts From Rev. Sandi

To lick your wounds, to smack your lips over grievances long past,

to roll over your tongue the prospect of bitter confrontations still to come,

to savor to the last toothsome morsel both the pain you are given and the pain

you are giving back—

in many ways, it is a feast fit for a king.

The chief drawback is that what you are wolfing down is yourself. The skeleton

at the end of the feast is you. Frederick Buechner

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart.

And try to love the questions themselves.

Do not seek the answers that cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them.

And the point is to live everything.

Live the questions now.

Perhaps you will then gradually without noticing it,

Live along some distant day into the answer. Rainer Maria Rilke

Let me not pray to be sheltered from dangers,

but to be fearless in facing them.

Let me not beg for the stilling of my pain but for the heart to conquer it.

Let me not look for allies in life’s battlefield, but to my own strength.

Let me not crave in anxious fear to be saved,

but hope for the patience to win my freedom.

Grant me that I may not be a coward, feeling your mercy in my success alone;

but let me find the grasp of your hand in my failure. Tagore