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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 peace we can aspire to is not a harmonious peace of the grave, nor a submissive peace of the slave, but a hardworking peace of the brave. — William Ury

Prayer is more than something I do. The longer I practice prayer, the more I think it is something that is always happening, like a radio wave that carries music through the air whether I tune in to it or not. — Barbara Brown Taylor

[P]ain is a small price to pay for freedom from self-deception. — David Steindl-Rast

Whether we and our politicians know it or not, Nature is party to all our deals and decisions, and she has more votes, a longer memory, and a sterner sense of justice than we do. — Wendell Berry