Quotes

The secret essence of the soul that knows the truth is calling out to God: Beloved . . . strip me of the consolations of my complacent spirituality. Plunge me into the darkness where I cannot rely on any of my old tricks for maintaining my separation. Let me give up on trying to convince myself that my own spiritual deeds are bound to be pleasing to you. Take all my juicy spiritual feelings, Beloved, and dry them up, and then please light them on fire. Take my lofty spiritual concepts and plunge them into darkness, and then burn them. Let me only love you, Beloved. Let me quietly and with unutterable simplicity just love you. — Mirabai Starr

I don't gather that God wants us to pretend our fear doesn’t exist, to deny it, or eviscerate it. Fear is a reminder that we are creatures—fragile, vulnerable, totally dependent on God. But fear shouldn’t dominate or control or define us. Rather, it should submit to faith and love. Otherwise, fear can make us unbelieving, slavish, and inhuman. I have seen that struggle: containing my fear, rejecting its rule, recognizing that it saw only appearances, while faith and love saw substance, saw reality, saw God’s bailiwick, so to speak: “Take courage, it is I. Do not be afraid!” — Philip Berrigan

Why am I drawn to desert and mountain fierceness? What impels me to its unmitigated honesty, its dreadful capacity to strip bare, its long, compelling silence? It’s the frail hope that in finding myself brought to the edge…I may hear a word whispered in its loneliness. The word is ‘love,’ spoken pointedly and undeniably to me. It may have been uttered many times in the past but I’m fully able to hear it only in that silence — Belden Lane

If you can't fly, run. If you can't run, walk. If you can't walk, crawl. But by all means, keep moving. — Martin Luther King Jr.

We may ignore, but we can nowhere evade, the presence of God. The world is crowded with God. God walks everywhere incognito. And the incognito is not always hard to penetrate. The real labor is to remember, to attend. In fact, to come awake. Still more, to remain awake. — C.S. Lewis

Only by love can people see me, and know me, and come unto me. Those who work for me, who love me, whose End Supreme I am, free from attachment to all things, and with love for all creation, they in truth come to me. — Bhagavad Gita

Jack Rogers rightly reminds us that an important test of our theology and our ethics is to ask the question: “Who bleeds?” — Kent Blevins

I ask you to ensure that humanity is served by wealth and not ruled by it. — Pope Francis, World Economic Forum, Davos, Switzerland, Tuesday, 21 January 2014

Dennis is sitting in “time out” corner, his parents, soaking wet, looking very perturbed. Dennis says: “You guys bought the ‘super-soaker’ for me. Did you seriously think I wouldn’t use it?” — Dennis the Menace cartoon, by Hank Ketcham

Through violence you may murder a murderer but you can’t murder murder. Through violence you may murder a liar but you can’t establish truth. Through violence you may murder a hater, but you can’t murder hate. Darkness cannot put out darkness. Only light can do that. — Martin Luther King Jr.