• Overeating makes people logy in a different way from the apathy induced by too little nourishment, but I feel sure that it takes the edge off perception. Many of us are literally weighed down.

    The House by the Sea: A Journal
    May Sarton

  • this is all inside me, this grief, and I can’t explain it, nor do I want to, to anyone.

    The House by the Sea: A Journal
    May Sarton

  • As soon as she does anything wrong, everybody must know it. Yesterday, not meaning to do so, she tore off a small piece of wallpaper. She wanted to tell her Father immediately, and you would have pitied her to see her anxiety. When he returned four hours later and everybody had forgotten about it, she ran at once to Marie, saying: ‘Marie, hurry and tell Papa I tore the paper.’

    Story of a Soul: The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux

  • Someone with absolutely nothing to prove, to yourself or to anyone else, and doesn’t require others’ admiration. Someone who has come clean with God in your transgressions and who is, in fact constantly coming clean with him. Transparent to God, you have broken the shackles of self-justification, constantly trying to rationalize your sins. You have attained the humility of accepting God’s love and forgiveness. Your goal is not to impress or to blame, and certainly not to judge anyone. That’s the freedom attained through humility and repentance.

    How to Be a Sinner
    Peter Bouteneff

  • So we have to discern this concept of self-acceptance thoughtfully as well. Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh said, in one of his informal talks to his parish, “Accept yourself, as a stone given to a sculptor. Accept how you are and that you need work to reveal the statue, i.e. what you truly can be.” In other words, reconcile yourself to being you, a beautiful creature but a work in progress. Accept also that you must give yourself over to God’s sculpting. Because there are elements that need refining and others that need excision to reveal the genuine you.

    How to Be a Sinner
    Peter Bouteneff

  • So the messages we hear, exhorting us to build up our self-esteem, are correct, but they go astray when they tell us to do so through an unbridled self-pampering, especially through unchecked consumerism.

    How to Be a Sinner
    Peter Bouteneff

  • And then of course there is the damage to oneself. On the milder level, consider the person who is unaware of what she is truly capable of achieving, and is held back all his or her life by low self-esteem.

    How to Be a Sinner
    Peter Bouteneff

  • People with poor self-worth make the rest of the world suffer for it.

    How to Be a Sinner
    Peter Bouteneff

  • O Lord, in your time and as you will, open to me the mystery of my innermost self, created in your Holy Image. Teach me too about the tendencies in me that distort that self.

    How to Be a Sinner
    Peter Bouteneff

  • Imminent death sharpens Markel’s self-understanding, before God and the world. He acutely perceives the fall of humanity and his own particular place within this total picture. In this, Markel also perceives the deep interconnectivity of all people and things. The dividing line between himself and “the other” is being erased. In this way, his perception of his deep fallenness brings him neither maudlin wailing, nor pathos, nor self-loathing. Instead he experiences joy, compassion, and love. Having come to this awareness, he can’t comprehend how he ever lost his temper with anyone.

    How to Be a Sinner
    Peter Bouteneff