We will outstretch the hand if you unclench your fist.

One hand I extend into myself, the other toward others.

Your hand opens and closes, opens and closes. If it were always a fist or always stretched open, you would be paralysed. Your deepest presence is in every small contracting and expanding, the two as beautifully balanced and coordinated as birds' wings.

Guide Thou my hand within that hand of Thine —
Thy wounded hand! — until its tremblings take
Strength from Thy touch.

Condemn none: if you can stretch out a helping hand, do so. If you cannot, fold your hands, bless your brothers, and let them go their own way.

To hold, you must first open your hand. Let go

I will trust you — I will extend my hand to you — despite the risk of betrayal, because it is possible, through trust, to bring out the best in you, and perhaps in me. So,

Thou hast spread Thy arms to embrace far too many,
Flinging Thy hands out till they reach the ends of the crossbeam.

Reach for it, you know. Go push yourself as far as you can.

If you open your hand, you may receive everything.

Keep stretching beyond the comfort zone.

Your grief for what you've lost lifts a mirror up to where you're bravely working.

Expecting the worst, you look, and instead, here's the joyful face you've been wanting to see.

Your hand opens and closes and opens and closes.
If it were always a fist or always stretched open, you would be paralyzed.

Your deepest presence is in every small contracting and expanding, the two as beautifully balanced and coordinated as bird wings.

I am alive, I live, I breathe, I put my hand out, unfolded, into the sunlight.

Slowly he lifted his hands in the darkness and held them in mid-air, the fingers spread weakly open. If he reached out with his hands, and if his hands were electric wires, and if his heart were a battery giving life and fire to those hands, and if he reached out with his hands and touched other people, reached out through these stone walls and felt other hands connected with other hearts -- if he did that, would there be a reply, a shock?