“To be fully seen by somebody, then, and to be loved anyhow–this is a human offering that can border on the miraculous.

With all respect to the Buddha and to the early Christian celibates, I sometimes wonder if all this teaching about nonattachment and the spiritual importance of monastic solitude might be denying us something quite vital. Maybe all that renunciation of intimacy denies us the opportunity to ever experience that very earthbound, domesticated, dirt-under-the-fingernails gift of difficult, long-term, daily forgiveness…

Maybe creating a big enough space within your consciousness to hold and accept someone’s contradictions–someone’s idiocies, even–is a kind of divine act. Perhaps transcendence can be found not only on solitary mountaintops or in monastic settings, but also at your own kitchen table, in the daily acceptance of your partner’s most tiresome, irritating faults.”

-Elizabeth Gilbert, Committed

This passage gets me every. single. time. There really is nothing more raw, more human, and, at times, more difficult than forgiveness. And not just the forgiveness that comes after a significant {emotional} injury but the day-to-day forgiveness. It truly is a divine act–the ability to wholly accept another, day in and day out, and to love someone, to choose to love someone, despite all their faults and flaws.

xo-Kristine