Laughter lifts us over high ridges and lights up dark valleys in a way that makes life so much easier. It is a priceless gem, a gift of release and healing direct from Heaven.
If poverty is a disease that infects the entire community in the form of unemployment and violence, failing schools and broken homes, then we can't just treat those symptoms in isolation . We have to heal that entire community.
But the healing of the mind is something totally different. That healing gradually takes place if you are with nature, with that orange on the tree, and the blade of grass that pushes through the cement, and the hills covered, hidden, by the clouds.
...but this is the real objection to that torrent of modern talk about treating crime as disease, about making prison merely a hygienic environment like a hospital, of healing sin by slow scientific methods. The fallacy of the whole thing is that evil is a matter of active choice whereas disease is not.
My sweetheart! When I think of you, it's as if I'm holding some healing balm to my sick soul, and although i suffer for you, i find that even suffering for you is easy.
I believe that the basic nature of human beings is gentle and compassionate. It is therefore in our own interest to encourage that nature, to make it live within us, to leave room for it to develop. If on the contrary we use violence, it is as if we voluntarily obstruct the positive side of human nature and prevent its evolution.
Let us labor for an inward stillness-- An inward stillness and an inward healing. That perfect silence where the lips and heart Are still, and we no longer entertain Our own imperfect thoughts and vain opinions, But God alone speaks to us and we wait In singleness of heart that we may know His will, and in the silence of our spirits, That we may do His will and do that only