The kingdom of self

Many people not only lose the benefit, but are even
the worse for their mortifications [i.e., sacrifices,
abstensions]. It is because they mistake the whole
nature and worth of them. They practice them for their
own sakes, as things good in themselves; they think them
to be real parts of holiness, and so rest in them, and
look no further, but grow full of a self-esteem, and
self-admiration for their own progress in them. This
makes them self-sufficient, morose, severe judges of all
those that fall short of their mortifications. And thus
their self-denials do only that for them, which indulgences
do for other people--they withstand and hinder the
operation of God upon their souls; and instead of being
really self-denials, they strengthen and keep up the
kingdom of self.
- William Law (1686-1761), "The Spirit of Prayer"

A secret communion

Constantly practice the habit of inwardly gazing upon God.
You know that something inside your heart sees God. Even
when you are compelled to withdraw your conscious attention
in order to engage in earthly affairs, there is within you
a secret communion always going on.
- A. W. Tozer (1897-1963), "The Pursuit of God"

Importance of Solitude

"As soon as y0u notice the slightest sign of indifference, the moment you become aware of the loss of a certain seriousness, of longing, of enthusiasm and zest, take it as a warning. Your soul suffers if you live superficially. People need times in which to concentrate, when they can search their innermost selves. It is tragic that most men have not achieved this feeling of self-awareness. And finally, when they hear the inner voice, they do not want to listen anymore. They carry on as before so as not to be constantly reminded of what they have lost. But as for you, resolve to keep a quiet time both in your homes and here within these peaceful walls when the bells ring out of Sundays. Then your souls can speak to you without being drowned out by the hustle and bustle of everyday life."

~Albert Schweitzer

The Ocean of God

"Very high, very grand, and very wise is the ocean of God, the Water of Life. You went after the form and were led astray. How can you see it? You abandoned the truth. Sometimes it is named 'tree', sometimes 'sun', sometimes 'ocean', sometimes 'cloud', one thing from which scores of discoveries arise, its slightest definition and everlasting life."

~Rumi

More Than Anything

"more than anything

i want to trust a journey

that i don't understand."

~terri st cloud

Beauty

"Let the beauty we love be what we do."

~Rumi

Joy

"The true source of joy is love -- love of God, love of beauty, love of wisdom, love of another human being, it does not matter which. It is all one love: a joyful awareness of dissolving boundaries of our ordinary narrow self, of being one with the reality beyond, of being made whole."

~Irma Zaleski

Open To Life

"I thought that my voyage had come to its end at the last limit of my power -- that the path before me was closed, that provisions were exhausted and the time come to take shelter in silent obscurity. But I find that Thy will knows no end in me. And when old words die out on the tongue, new molodies break forth from the heart; and where the old tracks are lost, new country is revealed with its wonders."

~Rabindranath Tagore


"You have to strive every minute to get rid of the life that you have planned in order to have the life that's waiting to be be yours. Move. Move. Move into the transcendent. That's the whole sense of adventure, I think."

~Joseph Campbell, An Open Life

The light burden of Yeshua

What then are we afraid of? Can we have too much
of God? ... Is it a misfortune to be freed from
the heavy yoke of the world, and to bear the light
burden of Jesus Christ? Do we fear to be too happy,
too much delivered from ourselves, from the caprices
of our pride, the violence of our passions, and the
tyranny of a deceitful world?
- François Fénelon (1651-1715), "Pious Reflections
for Every Day in the Month"

Joyful conformity

Prayer is not so much the means whereby God's will is
bent to our human desires, as it is that whereby our
will is bent to God's desires... The real end of prayer
is not so much to get this or that single desire granted,
as to put human life into full and joyful conformity with
the will of God.
- Charles H. Brent (1862-1929), "With God in the World"

This You Shall Do

"This is what you shall do; Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off you hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body."

~Walt Whitman, from the preface of Leaves of Grass

Christianity is a witness

The Gospel is not presented to mankind as an argument
about religious principles. Nor is it offered as a
philosophy of life. Christianity is a witness to
certain facts--to events that have happened, to hopes
that have been fulfilled, to realities that have been
experienced, to a Person who has lived and died and been
raised from the dead to reign for ever.
- Massey H. Shepherd, Jr. (1913-1990), "Far and Near"

More perceptive kind of unity

Thank God, our Christian chance is not permanently
gone from us [in world affairs]. Ecclesiastics seems
for the most part to have failed, failed both humanity
and God; but God has not failed, Jesus has not failed.
The God-man still remains the only leader into cooperation
whose wisdom is sufficient for a permanent, competent,
and free Society. The dictators and would-be dictators will
not do. They overreach themselves. Eventually they will
destroy one another, and kill off most of us. But even
that disaster will not eradicate the desire of men and
women to lay down lives for that which is more than
themselves. People will continue to demand not the freedom
from that degree of unity for which the dictatorships
stand, but rather a finer, more noble, more perceptive kind of
unity: a human solidarity which is not nationalistic but
world-embracing, a human integration which in aim and purpose
is not secularist but spiritual. What the world unwittingly
is groping after is allegiance to the eternal, the
compassionate, the completely integrating Christ.
- Bernard Iddings Bell (1886-1958), "Still Shine the Stars"