The Prodigal Son

  • Even if we sever basic bonds, throw away our gifts, lose our way, and destroy much of the life that is within us, it is still not too late.
  • A first step is memory, beginning to recall at least a glimpse of something deeper within us. More than a looking to the past, memory is a touching what is deepest within.
  • Another may be the one who recalls us to our deepest self, beneath all wounds.
  • Our sacredness is deeper than all brokenness and wrongness.
  • At the heart of reality is a life-giving trustworthiness, a power of forgiveness, healing, and new life, deeper and more encompassing than all lostness, brokenness, wrongness, betrayal.
  • There always remains the gift and call to bring something to life in self, others, and world, even out of the many deaths in the midst of life (as in The Old Man and His Grandson).
  • No matter how far we stray, how lost we become, no matter how dead we are inside, we remain a beloved daughter or son. There is an intrinsic worth that nothing or no one can take away.
  • And there is always the possibility of new life beneath all our lands of despair, our thorns, and our Lazarus tombs.