no subject

[firecat]

gwynyth, your journal is full of food for thought lately. I am copying the comment I just made there into my regular journal:

I am often very aware that anything could happen at any time. But this year I have been hyperaware of it because of things happening in my personal life.

A few weeks before this happened, I read Stephen Mitchell's Meetings with the Archangel which included the following passage:

The main problem with the figure of the guardian angel is that it trivializes the idea of safety. Everyone wants to feel safe, of course. But in this life of ours, the feeling that we can be protected by anything -- by feathery guardians or by our own goodness or faith or wisdom -- is an illusion. Any event can happen to us. Any difficulty, pain, grief, or loss can visit us at any moment. [...] As the great French-Jewish theologian Simone Weil wrote, "Every time we say 'Thy will be done,' we should have in mind all possible misfortunes added together." There is no safety, except the ultimate safety: to let go of life and death and realize that there was never anything to let go of.