Sabbath quote

“Sabbath observance invites us to stop. It invites us to rest. It asks us to notice that while we rest, the world continues without our help. It invites us to delight in the world’s beauty and abundance.”

― Wendell Berry

Ghandi on forgiveness

Planting in the soul

“Every moment and every event of every person’s life on earth plants something in her or his soul.  For just as the wind carries thousands of winged seeds, so each moment brings with it germs of spiritual vitality that come to rest imperceptibly in the minds and wills of men and women.  Most of these unnumbered seeds perish and are lost, for such seeds as these cannot spring up anywhere except in the good soil of freedom, spontaneity and love.”

Thomas Merton

Goodness

Each person has inside a basic decency and goodness. If he listens to it and acts on it, he is giving a great deal of what it is the world needs most. It is not complicated but it takes courage. It takes courage for a person to listen to his own goodness and act on it.

-Pablo Cascals 1876-1973

Strange trinity

(Nathan Nettleton) “The God whose voice thunders across the chaos in creation, whose very word is enough to bring into being that which was not before, is the same God who sits weeping on a donkey sobbing, “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, if only you would have let me love you like a mother hen loves her chicks.”

I still do not want to die

“Lord, I believe, but help thou my unbelief, because I still do not want to die. I believe Jesus has power to raise the dead, only I do not want him practicing on me. I want a God who will cut my losses and cushion my failures, a God who will grant me a life free from pain. I want a God who will rescue me from death, who will delete it from the human experience and find another way to operate.

What I, what all of us, have instead is a God who resurrects us from the dead, putting an end to it by working through it instead of around it--creating life in the midst of grief, creating love in the midst of loss, creating faith in the midst of despair--resurrecting us from our big and little deaths, showing us by his own example that the only road to Easter morning runs smack through Good Friday.”

Barbara Brown Taylor

beyond-ness

“[I believe] there is nothing more needed by humanity today …

than the recovery of a sense of “beyond-ness”

in the whole of life to revive the springs of wonder and adoration.”  John. V Taylor

Children are not the future

“The children are not the future. The living truth is the future. Time and people do not make the future… Fifty million children growing up purposeless, with no purpose save the attainment of their own individual desires, these are not the future, they are only a disintegration of the past. The future is in living, growing truth.” D. H. Lawrence

The basic message

“ The collateral implications of this basic message are radical and comprehensive. Anticipation displaces dread. Regret gives way to equanimity. Cynicism vanishes before joy. Self-control conquers addiction. Purpose usurps futility. Reconciliation overtakes estrangement. Inner peace calms disquiet and distraction. Creativity banishes boredom. Death will give way to life, darkness to light, fear to confidence, anxiety to calm, and despair to hope. These collateral implications are something like the fulfillment of your deepest desires, your wildest dreams, your fondest hopes, and your secret wishes, only in this scenario your hopes, dreams, desires and wishes originate from the heart of God rather than from the human heart curved in on itself.”

Dan Clendenin

you are a fire always burning ...

You are a fire always burning but never consuming; you are a fire consuming in your heat all the soul's selfish love; you are a fire lifting all chill and giving light. In your
light you have made me know your truth: You are that light beyond all light who gives the mind's eye supernatural light in such fullness and perfection that you bring clarity even to the light of faith. In that faith I see that my soul has life, and in that light receives you who are Light.
Catherine of Siena

we plant seeds

" This is what we are about: we plant seeds that one day will grow. We water seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise. We lay foundations that will need further development. We provide yeast that produces effects beyond our capabilities.
   We cannot do everything and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that. This enables us to do something, and to do it very well. It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for God's grace to enter and do the rest. We may never see the end results, but that is the difference between the master builder and the worker. We are workers, not master builders, ministers, not messiahs. We are prophets of a future not our own."
-attributed to Oscar Romero 1917-1980

defining family

Moltmann quote

"The Trinity is a unity of a special kind. It is a unity that is sought by humans in their community with each other. It is anticipated and foreshadowed in their love towards one another. It is experienced in the ecstasy of joy and gratitude and in moments of mystical unity."
"God wills to recognise and reflect the Divine Self in human community"

Let nothing trouble you

Let nothing trouble you.
Let nothing scare you.
All is fleeting.
God alone is unchanging.
Patience
Everything obtains.
Who possesses God
Nothing wants.
God alone suffices.

Teresa of Avila

My lovely distant god ...

My God, my God, he cried, If he is quoted right .... Somehow that moan is comforting To us, alone at night, Who tremble, daring dawn, That He, so wise and strong, Should weep and ask for aid. Somehow, my lovely distant god, It makes me less afraid. Miriam Kessler

The best way ...

"The best way to know God
is to love many things."
Vincent Van Gogh