3 of Swords: a collection

opening & opening & opening

Here’s another collection of quotes that I’ve been gathering and organizing from many years’ worth of practice. You can check out the Fool and Knight of Cups if you haven’t already. I pull cards as I voraciously read. It’s the best way I’ve found to learn about the Tarot: let the cards tell you who they are. So, for each of these quotes here, I’ve drawn 3 of Swords. This card is one of my favorites. Through this practice, I’ve come to see this card as heart opening, far more than heart breaking. Many of these quotes speak of God/Jesus/Christianity, and while I do firmly believe that 3 of Swords is a deeply spiritual card, please know that I am not evangelizing for anything. I am very aware that for some of y’all, Christianity/Jesus is an enormous trigger, and for good reason. I hope you can still find value in this collection, and mentally substitute the language that suits your spiritual life now.

I’ve given some commentary in italics.

The virtue of hope, with great irony, is the fruit of a learned capacity to suffer wisely, calmly, and generously. –Richard Rohr

We will lose everything we love, including our lives–so we might as well love without fear, for to fear a certainty is wasted energy that siphons life of aliveness. –Maria Popova

There are tears at the heart of things. –Seamus Heaney

Why don’t you sit in your powerlessness, breath by breath? –James Finley

This quote from Finley I really appreciate, because I think it gives us an ‘action step’. I always like to find a practical way to embody each card, and a breathing meditation that centers attention at the heart space is a great one for 3 of Swords. So often, our heart center is locked down, and our breath will ‘bypass’ our chests entirely, moving straight to our bellies–we’re just trying to avoid waking up the pain and grief. But, of course, that leaves us numb to joy as well. So using this card as an invitation to intentionally breathe into that area is really helpful–and requires a lot of courage.

One cannot hope to acquire any significant knowledge of the self if one does not experience a cleansing of what poet and visionary William Blake called the ‘doors of perception’. –Douglas E. Christie

Receive your sight; your faith has saved you. –Luke 18:42

He would not look away. Everywhere, even in the blackest abyss, he believed one might witness the divine. –Eowyn Ivey*

I know that no change of heart happens without a change of mind, and no change of mind happens without a change of heart. –Richard Rohr

I am awakening. –journal

The light [is] turning like a key in the lock of me. –James Crews

I like all these references to sight/seeing and opening the mind. Think of 3 of Swords within the story of the suit, coming after the 2 of Swords. In the 2, we are closed off, eyes shut. That can be a helpful and healthful position for deep listening and discernment, and it can be avoidant and stagnant. The 3 of Swords is the illumination that comes into the 2’s darkness, that breaks us open. Truth can be painful. Coming out into the light can hurt your eyes. This lens on the 3 doesn’t deny the pain of this card.

I did not know what love was until I encountered one that kept opening and opening and opening. –Christian Wiman

Photo by Sunder Muthukumaran on Unsplash

Love is the extremely difficult realization that something other than oneself is real. –Iris Murdoch

We will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows. –Promis #7 of the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous

We must love one another or die. –W.H. Auden

3 of Swords is under the umbrella of the Empress, the Major Arcana 3. I think all 3s teach us to be in community, as the Empress is an archetype of Gaia, the Earth itself, the soil that makes us all and sustains us all. We learn to be siblings, in the 3s. 3 of Swords in particular is about empathy and compassion. We must be open to our own suffering to be open to another’s, and let it motivate us to solidarity.

The feeling remains that God is on the journey, too. –St Teresa of Avila

I choose to believe that You love me. –journal

What is special about us is God’s incredible solidarity with our ordinary lives and with our sense of failure, futility, getting nowhere spiritually, and our lack of inner resources to cope with our particular difficulties. –Thomas Keating

Jesus’ ministry of healing and his death in solidarity with the crucified of history forever tell us that God is found wherever the pain is. –Richard Rohr

O sweet burn!/ O delicious wound!/ O tender hand! O gentle touch/ That savors of eternal life,/ And pays every debt!/ in slaying You have changed death into life. –John of the Cross

How do I deepen my relationship with You? –my journal

What does it look like to be in relationship with Christ? –my journal

I want to teach my children that they are loved by You. –my journal

How should a Christian live? –my journal

Jesus was cautioning [his disciples], ‘If you decide to give yourselves to what truly counts in this life, it will cost you. You will feel these teachings to be burdensome at times, like the weight of a cross. –Joyce Rupp

In order to pray a man must struggle to his last breath. –from ‘Sayings of the Desert Fathers’ found in ‘Teachings of the Christian Mystics’

UGH, I don’t know about you, but I want ‘spirituality’ to feel good. I want to lessen pain and increase peace and joy. And I also suspect that there’s a lot of denial, immaturity, and prosperity gospel bullshit influencing the idea that the spiritual journey is a road away from our suffering. 3 of Swords teaches us that it is not ‘even here’ that the divine is found, but especially here. These quotes also highlight how painful it is to ‘admit’ that we are loved by God, which feels weird to say, but damn if it isn’t true. If we are loved by God, it means reconciling the parts of ourselves we are ashamed of, that we want to hide. That illumination of this card exposes us. It says ‘all of this is true AND’. And you are loved, unconditionally.

A single card prompt for you today:

This pain is a portal

*this is from the book ‘To the Bright Edge of the World’, which I cannot recommend enough. Also, her book ‘The Snow Child’. I wish I could read both of these for the first time again.

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