Quotes

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

The unexamined life may not be worth living, but the examined life is no bowl of cherries either. — Peter De Vries

I am reminded of the remark made by William Temple, an early 20th century Archbishop of Canterbury, about how “it is a great mistake to think that God is chiefly interested in religion." — Peter Laarman

Stop worrying about whose name gets in the paper and start doing something about rats, and day care and low wages. . . . We must try to take our task more seriously and ourselves more lightly. — Dorothy I. Height, 98, a founding matriarch of the American civil rights movement whose crusade for racial justice and gender equality spanned more than six decades.