Giving sense to the idea of praising God

To love ourselves means to live a life of this deep gratitude for being, and it gives sense to the idea of praising God. I don’t think we can praise God unless we have learnt to love ourselves. To hate ourselves, on the other hand, is to hate God. Whatever pious image we may have of God, if we are not capable of loving ourselves, we really hate God; and we will express it usually by the way we treat each other. The reality that we face as we learn to love ourselves, the reality that we face in stillness, can be hard, but seeing it heals us.