I Would Fail Abraham's Test

Rachel Held-Evans, via her blog

Maybe the real test isn’t in whether you drive the knife through the heart. Maybe the real test is in whether you refuse.

Life After Life

by Kate Atkinson

Frieda, on a prompt from Eva, did a twirl and laughed. She was the molten core at the center of Ursula's heart, the better part of everything she did or thought. Ursula would be willing to walk on knives for the rest of her life if it would protect Frieda. Burn in the flames of hell to save her. Drown in the deepest of waters if it would buoy her up. (She had explored many extreme scenarios. Best to be prepared.) She had had no idea (Sylvie gave no indication) that maternal love could be so gut-achingly, painfully physical.

"Oh yes," Pamaela said, as if it were the most casual thing in the world, "It turns you into a regular she-wolf."

You Are A Swan

from a Spirit Animal quiz

Swans are idealistic, open-minded, and passionate. Your good nature often leads people to think they can take advantage of you, but they should be careful—beneath that serenity lies a fighting spirit. Your love is fierce and unconditional, fueled by the certainty that it should last forever.

Saturday

by Sydney Poulton
via the daybook

There is something terrible that comes with parenthood. Tied up within the absolutely heart-bursting goodness that is, for instance, observing your little boy digging through his dad's wrench set while singing a high pitched rendition of, You are So Beautiful, is the buried awareness of exactly what there is to lose.

We Were Liars

by E. Lockheart

I wanted to touch him like he was a bunny, a kitten, something so special and soft your fingertips can't leave it alone. The universe was good because he was in it.

Real Talk

by Jill Scott

Nothing is simple when you love someone this much. Nothing is neat when you’re this needed. Life doesn’t stop because you’ve given birth. A new life begins and you own it and make it yours.

Bird by Bird

by Anne Lamott

Is it okay with you that you blow off your writing, or whatever your creative/spiritual calling, because your priority is to go to the gym or do yoga five days a week? Would you give us one of those days back, to play or study poetry? To have an awakening? Have you asked yourself lately, "How alive am I willing to be?" It's all going very quickly. It's mid-May, for God's sake. Who knew. I thought it was late February.

Oh my God, what if you wake up some day, and you're 65, or 75, and you never got your memoir or novel written; or you didn't go swimming in warm pools and oceans all those years because your thighs were jiggly and you had a nice big comfortable tummy; or you were just so strung out on perfectionism and people-pleasing that you forgot to have a big juicy creative life, of imagination and radical silliness and staring off into space like when you were a kid? It's going to break your heart. Don't let this happen.

untitled

by Rumi

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I’ll meet you there.

Catching Fire

by Suzanne Collins

My nightmares are usually about losing you. I'm okay once I realize you're here.

Five Years Later

by Rachel Denbow

It's okay to be sad for as long as you need to be and then it's okay to not be so sad.

Orphan Train

by Christina Baker Kline

Molly learned long ago that a lot of the heartbreak and betrayal that other people fear their entire lives, she has already faced. And still she breathes and sleeps and grows taller. She wakes up every morning and puts on clothes. So when she says it's okay, what she means is that she knows she can survive just about anything.

Shift

by Hugh Howey

He remembered speaking with a doctor who knew the truth, and having a sense of wonder that anyone could cope with such knowledge. And now he saw that it wasn't that the pain grew tolerable or the confusion went away. Instead, it simply became a part of you.

East

by Edith Pattou

The joy I feel is immense; it burns inside me as though I have swallowed a piece of the sun.

Ask a Conditionalist (Q&A)

Response by Edward Fudge

We are specifically forbidden to judge the final destiny of others. That makes very good sense because we do not know their hearts or their circumstances, and we lack the ability either to save or destroy.

How Not To Be Alone

by Jonathan Safran Foer

We live in a world made up more of story than stuff. We are creatures of memory more than reminders, of love more than likes. Being attentive to the needs of others might not be the point of life, but it is the work of life. It can be messy, and painful, and almost impossibly difficult. But it is not something we give. It is what we get in exchange for having to die.

Delirium

by Lauren Oliver

[It is] the condemner and the condemned. The executioner; the blade; the last-minute reprieve; the gasping breath and the rolling sky and the thank you, thank you, thank you, God.

Love: It will kill you and save you, both.

Preschool Gems

"I don't need you to save me, I'm already saved!"

Color of the Year : 2013 : Yellow

by Bridget Pilloud

When you feel lost, feel where you are. Draw a line from the center of your belly up through your head, up into the heavens, and another line from the center of your belly down through your feet. Feel yourself standing between heaven and earth, being part of both.

Mother and Fawn

by Angie Yingst

It all makes me feel old and brand new, like a fawn, spots like code across my back, and my legs not quite strong enough to hold my own weight and yet hours away from running.

The Salt God's Daughter

by Ilie Ruby

It was as possible to miss someone in front of you as it was to miss someone who had left. It was also possible to miss someone who had not yet been born. This I had learned.