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Wednesday, October 17, 2007
Dragons and Princesses
Here is a quote to live and breathe:

"Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are only princesses waiting for us to act, just once with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love." - Rainer Maria Rilke

Isn't that what God does in the incarnation? In the stripping away of pretense and the acceptance of everything about us. God with us, the seeing through our scales with welcome before we ever let go of that which hinders our free-leaping in Love's Way. What Good News!

And if we condemn something helpless in a fellow dragon-princess, is it because we've already condemned the helpless part of us that hides behind scales, wanting our acceptance, our love?

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posted by Jemila Kwon at 11:23 AM ¤ Permalink ¤


5 Comments:


  • At 10/17/2007 09:59:00 PM, Blogger Nancy

    There's an old adage about what bugs us most in the people around us is the very same flaw or flaws we will find in ourselves. I have found this to stand up in my own experience. And even apart from this, I'd still have to answer that last question of yours "Yes". Whether we are responding to "like wound" or just out of some other wound to the woundedness in another, it is all the same. The remedy to fear is Love.

     
  • At 10/17/2007 10:00:00 PM, Blogger Amy

    Jemila, what a terrific image.

     
  • At 10/17/2007 11:13:00 PM, Blogger Sara

    Rilke is always excellent.

     
  • At 10/20/2007 12:41:00 AM, Blogger Happy

    Jemila, I can't tell you how much I needed to hear this tonight. True - and deeply convicting. Thank you.

    Spoken with grace and kindness, and great wisdom - as usual. :)

    side-note - this reminded me of C.S. Lewis' story, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader - the chapter where Eustace gets un-dragoned. An image I come back to often.

     
  • At 10/21/2007 04:05:00 PM, Blogger Jemila Kwon

    Yes, I remember that story of the dragon and love it!