By Anne Lamott
“Prayer is talking to something or anything with which we seek union, even if we are bitter or insane or broken. (In fact, these are probably the best possible conditions under which to pray.) Prayer is taking a chance that against all odds and past history, we are loved and chosen, and do not have to get it together before we show up. The opposite may be true: We may not be able to get it together until after we show up in such miserable shape. Continue reading
Rabbi Hillel: “If not now, when?”
Rabbi Yaakov Meyer: “Even the seemingly insignificant act is significant when it is part of many cumulative acts. Great people aren’t made from one great action; rather they become great via consistently good ‘small acts.'” Continue reading
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.” Continue reading
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. Continue reading
Baha’i Tradition of Service (Abdu’l-Baha, Selections from the Writings of Abdu’l-Baha)
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 Sharon Daloz Parks, Big Questions, Worthy Dreams (Pages 34-35)
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.” Continue reading
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 the 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.” Continue reading
The corporal works of mercy (flowing from the Gospel, especially Matthew 25: 31-46) are to feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, cloth the naked, visit the imprisoned, shelter the homeless, visit the sick and bury the dead. The spiritual works of mercy, also rooted in the Christian scripture, are to counsel the doubtful, instruct the ignorant, admonish sinners, comfort the afflicted, forgive offenses, bear wrongs patiently, and pray for the living and dead. Continue reading
“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.” -Matthew 25:35-40 (Christian scripture)
“In this world, hate never dispelled hate. Only love dispels hate. This is the law, ancient and inexhaustible.” -Dhammapada 1:5 (Collected sayings of the Buddha/Buddhist Scripture)