The Mystery

"The mystery of the dance is that it's movements are discovered in the mourning.  To heal is to let the Holy Spirit call me to dance, to believe again, even amid my pain, that God will orchestrate and guide my life.  

We tend, however, to divide our past into good things to remember with gratitude and painful things to accept or forget.  This way of thinking, which at first seems quite natural, prevents us from allowing our whole past to be the source from which we live our future...

Gratitude in its deepest sense means to live life as a gift to be received thankfully  And true gratitude embraces all of life: the good and the bad, the joyful and the painful, the holy and the not-so-holy.  We do this because we become aware of God's life, God's presence in the middle of all that happens."

~ Henri Nouwen, Turn My Mourning Into Dancing