This week’s quote is one of my own.  You can’t get life right. But, if you allow, life may get you right. Given the guidance we receive from Rilke and Frankl, we may find enough ego adjustment to allow life to get us right. If we don’t follow their suggestions, it is likely that we will reduce life to an endless series of projects. The goal then is to summon enough ambition in order to attempt to successfully get each project right. This project orientation only guarantees to keep us busy and living with extreme pressure to deliver appropriately.

This week’s quote is from Sheldon Kopp. “I no longer hope to achieve good character, so long as that implies in any way that my Buddhahood is not already at hand. My aim is not improve my Self but only to know it all more clearly and to learn to celebrate all that I am.” Kopp is saying that he refuses to have his interest in personal development suggest that he is now unacceptable. He is advocating a radical paradigm shift, where improvement is not the driving force of growth and development.

I am typically very thankful when a quote comes my way, immediately touching and moving me to adopt its meaning.  My favorable response indicates that more information has just been added to my road map. A writer willing to get honest about life inevitably helps me to not only get more honest, but also to live life more on life’s terms.

I will blog a quote per week for the next five weeks, offering some suggestions about how to understand the quote. The first quote is from Rainer Maria Rilke, a Bohemian-Austrian poet, December 4^th, 1875 – December 29^th, 1926. Rilke’s quote is: “Our task is to be defeated by ever larger things.”

As religion may have disappointed and

disillusioned you,  you may forgot that

a religion’s shadow does not dismiss the

sacred. The sacred demands recognition,

even if it must wait for your reactions to

  the contemptible to wane..

The ancients remind us to understand the

sacred as “confirming what truly matters.”

Shed all naiveté! This confirming business

is not written somewhere. You’ll find only

suggestions and you are asked to stay in the

movement of confirming and not arriving.

You are asked to exercise enough courage

We don’t talk much about mercy anymore.

See if you can find a place for mercy in your

life, maybe, initially as a small gesture to

someone, most obviously deserving. Mercy

is in need of a renewed welcome,  and a

reverence much deserved.

Mercy offers many gifts. It defies reducing

forgiveness to a cavalier consideration.

The anti-forgiveness attitudes become

more lucid. The righteous energizers

of revenge and punishment become more

transparent, shedding  their camouflage.

Mercy is the herald of forgiveness.

I don’t know how to die with you.

There are so many ways we have

not yet begun. Thrown together

as mother and son. Never my intent

to have my uniqueness become

something so frightening for you to know.

In the beginning, I decided that your

fear meant there was something wrong

with me. That gradually shifted to there

must be something wrong with you.

Over time I made peace with the stranger

you called son.

What matters now, is the sorrow of a

There’s so much waiting for you.

Let yourself stir gently. You’re

moving from one world to another.

There’s no rush. Let your departure

from sleep be held in grace. You’re

at the threshold, birthing new eyes.

You are greeting a new light, a

soft light of dawn that welcomes you.

Do not turn your back upon the

darkness from which you came,

for it was the gestation of your

new eyes. Darkness prepared you.

You have moved away from a glittering

There is a cultural phenomenon deserving our attention. That is, the increased appearance of families committed to looking good. We’ll examine some of the actual dynamics in a looking good family and attempt to name what drives parents to create such a system. We’ll conclude with some suggestions to support healing for survivors of a looking good family. 

Characteristics of The Looking Good Family

*A LGF (Looking Good Family) is externally referenced. This means that the values, beliefs and familial rituals and protocols are adopted from the larger culture, based upon what is deemed socially commendatory.

There are many life questions.

Some will lead you to find sustenance;

some, where to work, where to live,

and some where to grow old.

Your soul continues to live one

question, even when there’s no

apparent way to get your attention:

Where are my People?

For millennia upon millennia,

a sensibility to your survival kept

you close to this soulful question.

Living the question: Where are my

People? helped you to hold the faith

that your tomorrow was more likely

We come to believe in a personal morality or a personal spirituality that will guide our decisions and choices. Our times, characterized by confusion, complexity and rhetoric are calling us to also adopt a personal epistemology. Episte means “knowledge”, and epistemology is our best understanding and exploration of how we want to go about knowing. Let’s begin to construct a possible epistemology employing a quote from the poet, Rainer Maria Rilke. “Live your questions now, and perhaps even without knowing it, you will live along some distant day into your answers.”