“. . . mental illness categories are just temporary names or frameworks to help us understand patterns of behavior that cause suffering.”
Source: Nobody's Normal: How Culture Created the Stigma of Mental Illness
“Nobody is comforted in his sufferings by the thought we are all mortals, nor does anybody who suffers really find comfort in the past or present suffering of others.”
Source: On the Heights of Despair
“We are all the same, our skin and our feet and our hands. Pain is universal; it does not lower itself for titles or wealth.”
Source: The Sisters of Versailles
“The problems of life are real, not imaginary. Eastern meditation starts with the presupposition that pain in this world is illusory, but the gospel tells us that we don't have to pretend that what hurts does not, or should not. Life does hurt. Yet the gospel doesn't leave us there. Rest with God grows our ability to say, "I know God, and I know he will deliver me." It enables us to face problems with both honesty and hope.”
Source: The Art of Rest: Faith to Hit Pause in a World that Never Stops
“This is the reason why atheists protest the “God” gene and religious will hate and
protest religion as a virus. They were blindfolded at an early age, and their psychological issues were
the blindfold. The facts are often used as weapons rather than information to convey truth.”
Source: Religion: The Ultimate STD: Living a Spiritual Life without Dogmatics or Cultural Destruction
“I personally would like a lot more stuff around here to make sense. But when something ghastly happens, it is not helpful to many people if you say that it's all part of God's perfect plan, or that it's for the highest good of every person in the drama, or that more will be revealed, even if that is all true. Because at least for me, if someone's cute position minimizes the crucifixion, it's bullshit. Which I say with love.
To use just one Christian example: Christ really did suffer, as the innocent of the earth really do suffer. It's the ongoing tragedy of humans. Our lives and humanity are untidy: disorganized and careworn. Life on earth is often a raunchy and violent experience. It can be agony just to get through the day.
And yet, I do believe there is ultimately meaning in the chaos, and also in the doldrums. What I resist is not the truth but when people put a pretty bow on scary things instead of saying, 'This is a nightmare. I hate everything. I'm going to go hide in the garage.'...
My understanding of incarnation is that we are not served by getting away from the grubbiness of suffering...
It would be great if we could shop, sleep or date our way out of this. Sometimes we think we can, but it feels that way only for a while. To heal, it seems we have to stand in the middle of the horror, at the foot of the cross, and wait out another's suffering where that person can see us.”
Source: Stitches: A Handbook on Meaning, Hope and Repair by Anne Lamott
“Physicists say there is an Event Horizon beyond which there is no escaping falling into a Blackhole. Little did I know that there is no Event Horizon in love which is itself a Blackhole. The moment you fall in love, it pulls you in and there is no chance of pulling yourself back”
“She talked in flat tones, keeping her mouth half-closed so that the words came out in a mutter without changing the lines of her face. Margaret had suffered much hardship and degradation of body and was unwilling now to offer the world anything superfluous.”
Source: Morality Play
“No sorrows are so bitter as those without a trace of nobility.”
Source: Burmese Days
“The value of any diagnosis is what it has to offer the sufferer.”
Source: Nobody's Normal: How Culture Created the Stigma of Mental Illness