judging

When you judge yourself harshly,
you also judge me harshly.


"Judge not, that ye be not ^bjudged.

  For with what ^ajudgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what ^bmeasure ye mete, it shall be ^cmeasured to you again."      

 (St. Matthew 7:1-2)

You are loved no matter who you are.  No matter how good or bad, righteous or wicked, stinky or "desireable".  If you are the worst person you have ever known, YOU ARE LOVED!

Know this, and love yourself as well, for when you do not love yourself, you prevent yourself from loving others.  Love not only yourself for who you are, but for who you might be if you slipped and messed up.  Do not go around thinking your lovability is somehow even remotely connected to your thoughts and actions.  Your happiness and joy, perhaps, but NOT your lovability.  You are lovable no matter what.  Love yourself no matter what.

"Hook was not his true name. 

but as those who read between the lines must have already have guessed, he had been at a famous public school;  and its traditions still clung to him like garments, with which indeed they are largely concerned.

But above all he retained the passion for good form.

Good form!  However much he may have degenerated, he still knew that this is all that really matters.

Most disquieting reflection of all, was it not bad form to think about good form?"

My favorite quote in James M. Barrie's Peter Pan

 

(free on kindle)

My other favorite quote:

"He gave the pirate a hand to help him up.

It was then that Hook bit him.
Not the pain of this but its unfairness was what dazed Peter. It made him quite helpless. He could only stare, horrified. Every child is affected thus the first time he is treated unfairly. All he thinks he has a right to when he comes to you to be yours is fairness. After you have been unfair to him he will love you again, but will never afterwards be quite the same boy. No one ever gets over the first unfairness; no one except Peter. He often met it, but he always forgot it. I suppose that was the real difference between him and all the rest.
So when he met it now it was like the first time; and he could just stare, helpless. "

Dear Mommy,

Once I found myself in a situation so conflicting that I no longer cared for my own happiness.  The most tempting decision to make would have hurt me, but I no longer cared.  But I knew that it would hurt you to know that I had hurt myself.  Despite not caring about anything else in my agony, I could not bring myself to hurt you in that way.  I knew that you loved me. 


All the times you have bemoaned not being a good disciplinary parent, all the times that you have thought that if you had only been a little stricter I would have done the dishes, all the times when you've cringed as I told exaggerated stories about how we never did any work when you bribed us, and you would give us the cookies anyway...  Well, all those times, the underlying message you clearly gave me, was that you loved me.  Consistency in discipline techniques could only have hindered, what your heart naturally told me without any book of tricks to tell you how to raise me.