Quotes

To journey without being changed is to be a nomad To change without a journey is to be a chameleon To journey and be transfomed by the journey is to be a pilgrim — Mark Nepo

The Gospel is handed down from generation to generation but it must reach each one of us brand new, or not at all. If it is merely "tradition" and not news, it has not been preached or not heard—it is not Gospel. . . . If there is no risk in revelation, if there is no fear in it, if there is no challenge in it, if it is not a word which creates whole new worlds, and new beings, if it does not call into existence a new creature, our new self, then religion is dead and God is dead. — Thomas Merton

Spirituality is not to be learned by flight from the world, or by running away from things, or by turning solitary and going apart from the world. Rather, we must learn an inner solitude wherever or with whomsoever we may be. We must learn to penetrate things and find God there. — Meister Eckhart

Promise me you'll always remember: You're braver than you believe, and stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think. — Christopher Robin to Winnie the Pooh, A.A. Milne

We are surrounded by a way of life in which betterment is understood as expansion, as acquisition, as fame. Everyone wants to get more – to be on top – no matter what it is the top of that’s admired. There’s nothing recent about the temptation. It’s the oldest sin in the book. The one that got Adam tossed out of the garden and Lucifer tossed out of heaven. What is new about it is the general admiration and approval it receives. — Eugene Peterson

It’s interesting that the root of the Hebrew word salvation, yasha, literally means to be wide, to be open. There’s a wideness in God’s mercy, in those streams of mercy never ceasing that call for songs of loudest praise. — Stan Dotson

Let each of you rival the others only in uncorrupted love, free from prejudice. Let each of you strive to show the power of [your religion]. Come to the aid of this power in gentleness, with heartfelt tolerance, in charity, with sincerest submission to God. — Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

I am always glad to hear of a soldier being a Christian; I am always sorry to hear of a Christian being a soldier. Whenever I hear of a man who is in the profession of farms being converted I rejoice; but whenever I hear of a converted man taking up the profession of arms I mourn. If there be anything clear in Scripture it does seem to me that it is for a Christian to have nothing to do with carnal weapons, and how it is that the great mass of Christendom do not see this I cannot understand; surely it must be through the blinding influences of the society in which the Christian church is cast. But [George] Fox’s singularly clear, mental vision could see that o buckle on the carnal sword was virtually to be disobedient. . . . May the day come when war shall be regarded as the most atrocious of all crimes, and when for a Christian man, either directly or indirectly, to take part in it shall be considered as an abjuration of his principles. The day may be far distant, but it shall come, when men shall learn war no more; a right view of the true character of way may hasten that happy era. — Charles H. Spurgeon

Poetry is the language of what it is not possible to say. — Rubem Alves

Let us plant dates even though those who plant them will never eat them. We must live by the love of what we will never see. . . . Such disciplined love is what has given prophets, revolutionaries, and saints the courage to die for the future they envisaged. They make their own bodies the seed of their highest hope. — Rubem Alves