Inspiraton

Mental Health

1. “In any given moment, we have two options: to step forward into growth or to step back into safety.” – Abraham Maslow
2. “Mental health is not a destination, but a process. It’s about how you drive, not where you’re going.” – Noam Shpancer
3. “If we start being honest about our pain, our anger, and our shortcomings instead of pretending they don’t exist, then, may be, we’ll leave the world a better place than we found it.” – Russell Wilson
4. “Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves” ― Henry David Thoreau
5. “Don’t let your struggle become your identity.” – Unknown
6. “A child’s mental health is just as important as their physical health and deserves the same quality of support.” – Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge
7. “It is not the bruises on the body that hurt. It is the wounds of the heart and the scars on the mind.” – Aisha Mirza
8. “If you are broken, you do not have to stay broken.” — Selena Gomez
9. “Being able to be your true self is one of the strongest components of good mental health.” —  Dr Lauren Fogel Mersy
10. “Change what you can, manage what you can’t.” ― Raymond McCauley
11. “I knew that one could fracture one’s legs and arms and recover, but I did not know that you could fracture your brain and recover from that too.” ― Vincent van Gogh
12. “If there is no struggle, there is no progress.” — Fredrick Douglass

To subscribe to the magazine, click Subscribe

Spiritual Direction: What Great Teachers Say

To receive spiritual direction is to recognize that God does not solve our problems or answer all our questions, but leads us closer to the mystery of our existence where all questions cease.
– Henri Nouwen

It is easier to find someone to tell you what to do, than someone to be with you in a discerning, prayerful companionship as you work it out yourself. This is what spiritual direction is.
– Eugene H. Peterson

Spiritual direction involves a process through which one person helps another person understand what God is doing and saying.
– Richard J. Foster

The whole purpose of spiritual direction is to penetrate beneath the surface, to get behind the façade which one presents to the world, and to bring out one’s inner spiritual freedom and inmost truth.
– Thomas Merton

In spiritual direction there is absolutely no domination or control.
– Richard J. Foster

Henri Nouwen once asked Mother Teresa for spiritual direction. “Spend one hour each day in adoration of your Lord,” she said, “And never do anything you know is wrong. Follow this, and you’ll be fine.”
– John Eldredge

“When I have learnt to love God better than my earthly dearest, I shall love my earthly dearest better than I do now. When first things are put first, second things are not suppressed but increased.”
– C. S. Lewis

“Spiritual direction is a very simple process of putting out what you really want and most deeply desire, and having someone to respond to that, and help you live from what you really want.”
– Sr Mary Ann Scofield

“A total spiritual direction given to the whole life and the whole nature can alone lift humanity beyond itself.”
– Sri Aurobindo

“If you are driven by the right WHY, God will lead you to the right WHAT.”
– Anonymous

To subscribe to the magazine, click Subscribe

”The good physician treats the disease; the great physician treats the patient who has the disease.” (William Osler)

“The doctor sees all the weakness of mankind; the lawyer all the wickedness, the theologian all the stupidity.” (Arthur Schopenhauer)

“In nothing do men more nearly approach the gods than in giving health to people.” (Cicero, 106-43 B.C.)

“We [doctors] have the opportunity to do more good in one day than most people have in a month.” (Dr Suneel Dhand)

“In an emergency, what treatment is given by ear? Words of Comfort.” (Dr Abraham Verghese, MD)

“When you are a nurse, you know that everyday you will touch a life or a life will touch yours.” (Unknown)

“Constant attention by a good nurse may be just as important as a major operation by a surgeon.” (Dag Hammarskjold)

“Nurses dispense comfort, compassion and caring without even a prescription.” (Val Stainsbury)

PARENTING: TOUGH, BEAUTIFUL AND DEEPLY INFLUENTIAL

“One of the most demanding spiritual practices is to raise a child.” (Philosopher Sam Keen)

“Children learn more from what you ARE than from what you TEACH.” (W E B Dubois)

“Never complain about what your parents could not give you. It is probably all they had.” (Anonymous)

“Motherhood is a choice you make every day to put someone else’s happiness ahead of your own.”

“We never know the love of a parent until we become a parent ourselves.” (Henry Ward Beecher)

“In the English language, we have ‘orphans’ and ‘widows’; but we have no word for the parent who loses a child.” (Anonymous)

“The best feeling in the world is to know that your parents are smiling because of you.”

“Parents act so strong for us, that we forget how fragile they are.”

“There are two times when parenting is most difficult: When the baby first arrives at home, and when the adult first leaves home.” (Jennifer Quinn)

“Daily family prayer and Bible reading will build a security and a bonding that will prepare your family to face challenges today and always.” (Tom Perry)

“The best security blanket a child can have is parents who love and respect each other.” (Jane Blaustone)

To subscribe to the magazine, click Subscribe

“When we stop learning, we start dying.” (Albert Einstein)

“Education is the most powerful tool to change the world.” (Nelson Mandela)

“Knowledge is learning something new every day. Wisdom is letting go of something every day.” (Zen Proverb)

“Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all.” (Aristotle)

“The purpose of education is to replace an empty mind with an open mind.” (Malcolm Forbes)

“If you are unwilling to learn, no one can help you. If you are determined to learn, no one can stop you.” (Zig Ziglar)

“Develop a passion for learning. If you do, you will never cease to grow.” (Anthony J. D’Angelo)

“Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.” (William Butler Yeats)

“If you can’t explain it simply, you do not know it well enough.” (Albert Einstein)

To subscribe to the magazine, click Subscribe

Thomas à Kempis (1380-1471)

Born in Kempen, Germany in 1380, he joined a group called the Brethren of the Common Life, which included both clergy and lay persons, and lived a simple life, supporting themselves through their own work. Later, he joined an Augustinian monastery, and was ordained a priest. He wrote what became the most influential Christian spiritual book outside of the Bible—The Imitation of Christ. Thomas held that we are all called to imitate Christ—not in his external deeds, but more in his internal attitudes. He believed, too, that everyone is called to holiness.The main obstacle on this path was not one’s external situation, but one’s self-attachment. Reacting against unnecessary academic complications, he insisted on leading a good life rather than on talking about such a life. He wrote simply, avoiding intellectual jargon or complicated theories. No wonder the book has appealed to so many—and also been criticized by some as being anti-intellectual. Its impact is undeniable.

Thomas died on May 1, 1471 at the age of ninety-two. Here are some quotes from his famous and simple masterpiece.

“God regards the greatness of the love that prompts a person, rather than the greatness of his/her achievement.”

 “A humble knowledge of oneself is a surer way to God than a deep searching of the sciences.”

“I would rather feel contrition than be able to define it.”

“On the Day of Judgement, we shall not be asked what we have read, but what we have done.”

“Be not angry that you cannot make others as you wish them to be, since you cannot make yourself as you wish to be.”

“If God were our one and only desire, we would not be so easily upset when our opinions do not find outside acceptance.”

“The Lord bestows his blessings there, where he finds the vessels empty.”

“A wise lover values not so much the gift of the lover as the love of the giver.”

 

To subscribe to the magazine, click Subscribe

“Migration is an expression of the human aspiration for dignity, safety and a better future. It is part of the social fabric, part of our very make-up as a human family.” (Ban Ki moon)