“Souls on fire with the quest to become super men and women may even fail to notice and appreciate treasure in such ordinary vessels. It is our culture’s incessant and infantile desire to withhold love until we find the perfect body, the perfect mind, the perfect mood, the perfect mate, or until we possess the perfect ‘me-ness’…which renders us vulnerable to the same old seduction that began long ago in a Garden called Eden. To the degree that we are all striving, in one way or another, to become something, we are missing out on the privilege of being nothing. Yet ‘it is the Father’s good pleasure to give (us) the kingdom.’ What is the blindness and grasping that leaves us in search of something that will make us worthy of what can only be given as gift? Like the first Apostles, ‘we do not understand about the loaves.’ We still choke on the apple of self-sufficiency, a fatal mistake. The simple fact is God-esteem is infinitely more life-giving than self-esteem and infinitely rarer. The road of love begins where I end.” (Stephen Muse, Being Bread, pp. 65-66)
Fraternized 