Best Car Repair in San Antonio

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Kastis Automotive Repair in San Antonio

Nick Vujicic - A Life Without Limbs

I don't know if any of you remember a short film I posted a few months ago called "The Butterfly Circus" - it is one of the most moving, artful pieces of story I have ever seen. I highly recommend taking the 15-20 minutes it takes to watch. It is so uplifting and redemptive.

My friend from high school, Jackie, just posted a short video of the actor featured in the film giving a motivational speech - I was so excited because I had meant to do some research on him and the impulse got lost in the flow of life. His name is Nick Vujicic and he is a motivational speaker in Australia. He runs a ministry called "Life without Limbs". He's talking here to a group of high school students about body image, self worth and beauty. It's so beautiful to see the kids respond to his words. Watch the movie first and then come back and watch this clip - you will have invested about 30 minutes you will not regret, I promise!



You can find his DVD on Amazon - No Arms, No Legs, No Worries! - and he has a new book coming out in October - Life Without Limits.

Update on Nicola

Some of you may remember my friend Nicola - she of the riding elephant and brave travel adventure.

She just posted an update on the University blog that tracks her whereabouts and how she has spent the past few month. I just can't say enough about how much I love this girl - her courage and zest for life is extraordinary - so excited she's headed back east in the fall.

Nicola Gladwell - There and Back Again

No expectations

"When you are interiorly free you call others to freedom, whether you know it or not. Freedom attracts wherever it appears. A free man or a free woman creates a space where others feel safe and want to dwell. Our world is so full of conditions, demands, requirements, and obligations that we often wonder what is expected of us. But when we meet a truly free person, there are no expectations, only an invitation to reach into ourselves and discover there our own freedom.

Where true inner freedom is, there is God. And where God is, there we want to be."

Henri Nouwen

Finding Rebirth

Strangely enough, as anguish rises up in us, a new freedom comes to birth. We discover more deeply the small, innocent, trusting child within us; we discover new life.

- Jean Vanier, Seeing Beyond Depression, p. 69

Clear a decent shelter

You must be able to bear your sorrow; even if it seems to crush you, you will be able to stand up again, for human beings are so strong, and your sorrow must become an integral part of yourself, part of your body and your soul, you mustn't run away from it, but bear it like an adult.... Give your sorrow all the space and shelter in yourself that is its due, for if everyone bears his grief honestly and courageously, the sorrow that now fills the world will abate.

But if you do not clear a decent shelter for your sorrow, and instead reserve most of the space inside you for hatred and thoughts of revenge--from which new sorrows will be born for others--then sorrow will never cease in this world and will multiply. And if you have given sorrow the space its gentle origins demand, then you may truly say: life is beautiful and so rich. So beautiful and so rich that it makes you want to believe in God.

Source: Etty Hillesum, An Interrupted Life

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A new language

"During these years the Church has fought for self-preservation as though it were an end in itself, and has thereby lost its chance to speak a word of reconciliation to mankind and the world at large. So our traditional language must perforce become powerless and remain silent, and our Christianity today will be confined to praying and doing right by our fellow men.

Christian thinking, speaking and organization must be reborn out of this praying and action ... It will be a new language, the language of a new righteousness and truth, which proclaims the peace of God with humankind and the advent of his kingdom," - Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

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Here's your Easter Sunrise Matt