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Mortification—literally, ‘making death’—is what life is all about, a slow discovery of the mortality of all that is created so that we can appreciate its beauty without clinging to it as if it were a lasting possession. Our lives can indeed be seen as a process of becoming familiar with death, as a school in the art of dying. I do not mean this in a morbid way. On the contrary, when we see life constantly relativized by death, we can enjoy it for what it is: a free gift. --Henri Nouwen, A Letter of Consolation
A small mercy, a glimpse of redemption, to ponder that the pain of death, of goodbye, of change, of loss, even though representing wrongness in our world, can become a way God loosens our grip on the temporary and fills our hearts with a longing for the eternal.
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