Author: ppadmin

Those who believe they believe in God but without passion in the heart, without anguish of mind, without uncertainty, without doubt, and even at times without despair, believe only in the idea of God and not in God himself. — Madeleine l’Engle

The spiritual life is not a peculiar form of piety. It is, on the contrary, that full and real life for which humanity is made. . . . Still less does the spiritual life mean a mere cultivation of one’s own soul, poking about our interior premises with an electric torch. Even though in its earlier stages it may, and generally does, involve dealing with ourselves, and that in a drastic way, and therefore requires personal effort and personal choice, it is also intensely social. . . . You remember how Dante says that directly a soul ceases to say “mine,” and says “ours,” it makes the transition from the narrow, constricted, individual life to the truly free, truly personal, truly creative spiritual life, in which all are linked together in one single response to God. — Evelyn Underhill

If we read the Bible, we will discover that we humans do not own the world or any part of it. . . . We will discover that God made not only the parts of Creation that we humans understand and approve of, but all of it. We will discover that God found the world, as he made it, to be good; that he made it for his pleasure and that he continues to love it and find it worthy, despite its reduction and corruption by us. . . . We will discover that, for these reasons our destruction of nature is not just bad stewardship, or stupid economics, or a betrayal of family responsibility: it is the most horrid blasphemy. It is flinging God’s gifts into his face, as of no worth beyond that assigned to them by our destruction of them. In Dante, “Despising Nature and her Gifts” was a violence against God. . . . We have the right to use the gifts of nature, but not to ruin or waste them. We have the right to use what we need, but no more. — Wendell Berry

I’m working toward a world in which it will be easier for people to behave decently. — Dorothy Day

I am reluctant to talk about God and what God thinks and how God acts. . . . I go there, but when I do, I’m reminded of Robert Capon saying we’re like oysters trying to explain ballerinas. — Barbara Brown Taylor

Grief is the tax we pay on loving people. — Thomas Lynch

I appreciate the spiritual search of the non-churched, non-synagogued people as being full of imagination, discovery, and satisfaction for the individual. But I once saw a bumper sticker that said, “Spirituality doesn’t make hospice calls.” Spirituality remains, normally, individualistic. You may gather for a retreat, and then you disperse. You may gather at the coffee shop or the bookstore, and then you disperse. The people who are handling the homeless and dealing with addiction and trying to improve senior care and who care about the training of the young—they have to bond together. If they don’t do it in old-fashioned churches, they’ll do it in new-fashioned churches. But I don’t think it adds up to much unless there is some development of community, some bonding. — Martin Marty

We are punished by our sins, not for them. — Elbert Hubbard

The riches and beauty of the spiritual landscape are not disclosed to us in order that we may sit in the sun parlour, be grateful for the excellent hospitality, and contemplate the glorious view. Some people suppose that the spiritual life mainly consists in doing that. God provides the spectacle. We gaze with reverent appreciation from our comfortable seats, and call this proceeding to worship. . . . [T]he prevalent notion that spirituality and politics have nothing to do with one another is the exact opposite of the truth. Once it is accepted in a realistic sense, the spiritual life has everything to do with politics. It means that certain convictions about God and the world become the moral and spiritual imperatives of our life; and this must be decisive for the way we choose to behave about that bit of the world over which we have been given a limited control. — Evelyn Underhill

In a series of talks in the ‘60s, Thomas Merton spoke of how hollow the language of faith had become. “To say ‘God is love,’ he commented, ‘is like saying, ‘Eat Wheaties’. . . . There’s no difference, except . . . that people know they are supposed to look pious when God is mentioned, but not when cereal is." — Kathleen Norris