There's a part of every living thing that wants to become itself: the tadpole into the frog, the chrysalis into the butterfly, a damaged human being into a whole one.That is spirituality.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the intrinsic desire for growth and transformation present in all living beings.
Ellen Bass highlights the fundamental drive within every living creature to evolve into its true self, drawing parallels between the natural transformations seen in tadpoles becoming frogs and caterpillars becoming butterflies. This journey towards wholeness is described as a spiritual quest, suggesting that spirituality is rooted in the innate need for personal and transformative growth.
In practice
In a speech about personal development, you could say, 'As Ellen Bass reminds us, every living thing has a part that wishes to become itself.'
So often survivors have had their experiences denied, trivialized, or distorted. Writing is an important avenue for healing because it gives you the opportunity to define your own reality. You can say: This did happen to me. It was that bad. It was the fault & responsibility of the adult. I was—and am—innocent.” The Courage to Heal by Ellen Bass & Laura Davis
If you want your own way, God will let you have it. Hell is the enjoyment of one's own way forever.
It is to this silence [contemplative prayer] that we all are called.
Religious ideas and practices take root not because they are promoted by forceful theologians, nor because they can be shown to have a sound historical or rational basis, but because they are found in practice to give the faithful a sense of sacred transcendence.
Our houses are such unwieldy property that we are often imprisoned rather than housed by them.
We are snared into doing things for which we get called names, and things for which we get hanged, and yet the spirit may well survive - survive the condemnations, survive the halter, by Jove! And there are things - they look small enough sometimes too - by which some of us are totally and completely undone.
The explorer who will not come back or send back his ships to tell his tale is not an explorer, only an adventurer; and his sons are born in exile.
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