Egos Anonymous Reflections — Egos Anonymous

"To pray you open your whole self To sky, to earth, to sun, to moon To one whole voice that is you." — Joy Harjo, Eagle Poem This image of prayer asks almost nothing of the intellect and everything of presence. There is no corr

Wendy Etter 4/10/26 Wendy Etter 4/10/26

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"come celebrate with me that everyday something has tried to kill me and has failed."  — Lucille Clifton, won't you celebrate with me Clifton wrote this poem knowing its full weight. The "something" she describes is not abstr

Wendy Etter 4/9/26 Wendy Etter 4/9/26

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"The human heart is never completely born. It is being birthed in every experience of your life." — John O'Donohue, Anam Cara There can be an assumption, usually unspoken, that we should already be finished. That a grown person o

Wendy Etter 4/8/26 Wendy Etter 4/8/26

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"There are a thousand thousand reasons to live this life, every one of them sufficient." — Marilynne Robinson, Gilead These words are spoken by a dying man writing to his young son—someone who knows he won't be there to see much

Wendy Etter 4/7/26 Wendy Etter 4/7/26

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"Above all, trust in the slow work of God." — Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, from a letter, 1961 The full letter from which this comes was written to a young woman navigating a period of uncertainty. What Teilhard describes is not pat

Wendy Etter 4/6/26 Wendy Etter 4/6/26

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"I have spent my days stringing and unstringing my instrument, while the song I came to sing remains unsung." — Rabindranath Tagore, Gitanjali There is something quietly familiar in this image. The constant preparing—the adjustin

Wendy Etter 4/5/26 Wendy Etter 4/5/26

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"In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert's mind there are few." — Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind The ego often prizes expertise. Knowing things, understanding what to expect, not being ca

Wendy Etter 4/4/26 Wendy Etter 4/4/26

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"Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way." — Viktor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning Frankl wrote this f

Wendy Etter 4/3/26 Wendy Etter 4/3/26

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"Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside, you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing." — Naomi Shihab Nye, Kindness Kindness, in this framing, is not a disposition we cultivate or a habit we practice into plac

Wendy Etter 4/2/26 Wendy Etter 4/2/26

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"Love doesn't just sit there, like a stone; it has to be made, like bread, remade all the time, made new." — Ursula K. Le Guin, The Lathe of Heaven There may be a wish, sometimes, that love — once found — would simply remain. Tha

Wendy Etter 4/1/26 Wendy Etter 4/1/26

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"Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out." — Václav Havel, Disturbing the Peace Most of us were trained to hope for outcomes. To h

Wendy Etter 3/31/26 Wendy Etter 3/31/26

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"Before I can tell my life what I want to do with it, I must listen to my life telling me who I am." — Parker Palmer, Let Your Life Speak Self-will tends to move in the opposite direction — toward deciding, planning, shaping. The

Wendy Etter 3/30/26 Wendy Etter 3/30/26

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"All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well." — Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love Julian wrote these words in the fourteenth century while seriously ill, during a series of visions

Wendy Etter 3/28/26 Wendy Etter 3/28/26

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"We have all known the long loneliness and we have learned that the only solution is love and that love comes with community." — Dorothy Day, The Long Loneliness The loneliness Dorothy Day describes isn't simply the ache of being

Wendy Etter 3/27/26 Wendy Etter 3/27/26

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"I have learned things in the dark that I could never have learned in the light, things that have saved my life over and over again." — Barbara Brown Taylor, Learning to Walk in the Dark We are often trained to move toward the br

Wendy Etter 3/26/26 Wendy Etter 3/26/26

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"There are years that ask questions and years that answer." — Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God Not every season moves forward visibly. Some stretches feel suspended — unclear, unresolved, neither gaining nor losin

Wendy Etter 3/25/26 Wendy Etter 3/25/26

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"For all that has been—thanks. For all that shall be—yes." — Dag Hammarskjöld, Markings Two short lines. Two directions. Neither comes easily when self-will is running things. Looking back, there may be regret, or a wish that thi

Wendy Etter 3/24/26 Wendy Etter 3/24/26

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"The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet." — Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking Much of our effort can go toward figuring out what we should be doing — what role to fill

Wendy Etter 3/23/26 Wendy Etter 3/23/26

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“The cure for loneliness is solitude.” — May Sarton, Journal of a Solitude Loneliness and solitude are not the same. Loneliness often carries the ache of disconnection—the feeling that something essential is missing. Self-will ca

Wendy Etter 3/22/26 Wendy Etter 3/22/26

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“Ring the bells that still can ring.” — Leonard Cohen, Anthem Self-will often waits for perfect conditions. When we feel uncertain, flawed, or incomplete, we may hesitate to act at all. The impulse is to improve first. To fix wha

Wendy Etter 3/21/26 Wendy Etter 3/21/26

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