Solomon Ibn Gabirol: “Man is wise only while in search of wisdom; when he imagines he has attained it, he is a fool.”
Abraham Joshua Heschel: “Our goal should be to live life in radical amazement… Get up in the morning and look at the world in a way that takes nothing for granted. Everything is phenomenal; everything is incredible; never treat life casually. To be spiritual is to be amazed.”
From A Theology of Liberation, Gustavo Gutiérrez
“If there is no friendship with them [the poor] and no sharing of the life of the poor, then there is no authentic commitment to liberation, because love exists only among equals.”
Gustavo Gutiérrez Merino, OP is a Peruvian philosopher, Catholic theologian, and Dominican priest, regarded as one of the founders of Latin American liberation theology.
By Sue Monk Kidd
When I was six years old someone asked me, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” At that age, living in a small Georgia town in the 1950s, I could only think of four careers for women—they were the only stories I knew: teacher, nurse, secretary, and housewife. By some process of elimination, I picked nurse. From that moment on, I began to get little nurse kits for my birthdays.
“One amongst His Teachings is this, that love and good faith must so dominate the human heart that men will regard the stranger as a familiar friend, the malefactor as one of their own, the alien even as a loved one, the enemy as a companion dear and close.”
Derived from Parks, Big Questions, Worthy Dreams (Pages 34-35), Sharon Daloz
Reflecting on the political cynicism of American society and the ironic detachment that characterizes many in his generation, twenty-four-year-old Jedediah Purdy writes: “We doubt the possibility of being at home in the world, yet we desire that home above all else.”
Fr. Memo: “Spirituality is a place. It is a place of connection. It is a place of who we are and who we are to become. From a theological perspective, that ‘place’ is where the spirit is.”
Ronald Rolheiser:
“Whatever the expression, everyone is ultimately talking about the same thing – an unquenchable fire, a restlessness, a longing, a disquiet, a hunger, a loneliness, a gnawing nostalgia, a wildness that cannot be tamed, a congenital all-embracing ache that lies at the center of human experience and is the ultimate force that drives everything else. This dis-ease is universal. Desire gives no exemptions.”
“What we do with our longings, both in terms of handling the pain and the hope they bring us, that is our spirituality. Spirituality is what we do with the madness of life. It is what we do with the fire that burns within us. What shapes our actions is our spirituality. Spirituality concerns what we do with desire.”
From Qur’an 4:135 (Islamic sacred text)
“O ye who believe! Stand out firmly for justice, as witnesses to God, even as against yourselves, or your parents, or your kin, and whether it be (against) rich or poor: for God can best protect both. Follow not your personal inclination, lest you not be just, and if you distort (justice) or decline to do justice, verily God is well-acquainted with all that you do.”
From Matthew 25:35-40 (Christian scripture)
“For I was hungry and you gave me food; I was thirsty and you gave me drink; I was a stranger and you made me welcome; naked and you clothed me; sick and you visited me; in prison and you came to see me. . . . I tell you solemnly, in so far as you did this to one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did it to me.”
From Dhammapada 1:5 (Collected sayings of the Buddha/Buddhist Scripture)
“In this world, hate never dispelled hate. Only love dispels hate. This is the law, ancient and inexhaustible.”
From Tao-te-ching 13:4 (Classical Chinese text)
“Love the whole world as if it were yourself; then you will truly care for all things.”