We enter the land of silence by the silence of surrender, and there is no map of the silence that is surrender. . . . The practice of silence . . . cannot be reduced to a spiritual technique. Techniques are all the rage today. They suggest a certain control that aims to determine a certain outcome. They clearly have their place. But this is not what contemplative practice does. . . . A spiritual practice simply disposes us to allow something to take place. For example, a gardener does not actually grow plants. A gardener practices certain gardening skills that facilitate growth that is beyond the gardener’s direct control. — Martin Laird
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Mother Teresa
Do not think that love, in order to be genuine, has to be extraordinary. What we need is to love without getting tired. How does a lamp burn? Through the continuous input of small drops of oil. If the drops of oil run out, the light of the lamp will cease, and the bridegroom will say, “I do not know you” (Matt. 25:12). What are these drops of oil in our lamps? They are the small things of daily life: faithfulness, small words of kindness, a thought for others, our way of being silent, of looking, of speaking, and of acting. These are the true drops of love that keep your religious life burning like a living flame. — Mother Teresa
Rumi
Don’t do daily prayers like a bird pecking, moving its head up and down. Prayer is an egg. Hatch out the total helplessness inside. — Rumi
Christoph Friedrich Blumhardt
I beg you, wait for God quietly, and don’t be so religious. To have nothing to show for yourself and to wait for God is better than to be polishing your piety. You shall not become godless by waiting for God. On the contrary, the truth of God’s cause will grow in your heart, and that is all that matters. A true word once in ten years is dearer to God than a daily sermon. It is your genuineness that matters. . . . A single genuine moment has much greater consequences in God’s kingdom than a thousand religious practices.
Matthew Arnold
. . . the world, which seems To lie before us like a land of dreams, So various, so beautiful, so new, Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain; And we are here as on a darkling plain Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, Where ignorant armies clash by night. — Matthew Arnold
Howard Thurman
Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive — Howard Thurman
Frank Stagg
We love to sing, “I have decided to follow Jesus,” but we don't bother looking to see which way he went. — Frank Stagg
Friedrich Nietzsche
Of all that is written, I love only what a person has written with his own blood. — Friedrich Nietzsche
Henri Nouwen
The resurrection does not solve our problems about dying and death. It is not the happy ending to our life’s struggle, nor is it the big surprise that God has kept in store for us. No, the resurrection is the expression of God’s faithfulness…. The resurrection is God’s way of revealing to us that nothing that belongs to God will ever go to waste. What belongs to God will never get lost. — Henri Nouwen
Thomas Merton
In the old days, on Easter night, the Russian peasants used to carry the blest fire home from church. The light would scatter and travel in all directions through the darkness, and the desolation of the night would be pierced and dispelled as lamps came on in the windows of the farm houses, one by one. Even so the glory of God sleeps everywhere, ready to blaze out unexpectedly in created things. Even so his peace and his order lie hidden in the world, even the world of today, ready to reestablish themselves in his way, in his own good time: but never without the instrumentality of free options made by free people. — Thomas Merton