Quotes

Quotes

Quote of the Week:

"God has fallen out of containment in religion and into human hearts—God is incarnating. Our whole unconscious is in an uproar from the God Who wants to know and to be known." ~C. G. Jung

All People "Saved" in the End....

"There are some cases where we cannot easily make up. I thank my God for the faith that there is a time coming when every conscience will become awake, when everyone who has done wrong to another will be able to say to him, 'I am sorry.' I have faith in the Infinite One from whom I came. . . . I believe His Spirit will reach every heart; it may be thousands of years before it all happens, yet the words will come, 'I am sorry; forgive me.' " George MacDonald, Lecture on Dante, 1887

"As long as there is any hate in us we are not ready for heaven, not as long as we're shutting the golden doors on anyone else...the heavenly banquet cannot begin until we are all there, and I can greet with love...everybody who has caused me pain, and call out a welcome to them all. The heavenly banquet cannot begin until all those whom I have hurt are ready to welcome me, in all my flawed and contradictory humanness...

"Belief in hell is lack of faith because it attributes more power to Satan than to God...but it is God who has the last word!

"God is not going to abandon creation, nor the people up for trial in criminal court, nor the Shiites, nor the communists, or the warmongers, nor the greedy and corrupt people in high places, nor the dope pushers, nor you, nor me. Bitter tears of repentance may be shed before we can join the celebration, but it won't be complete until we are all there."

Madeleine L'Engle

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Earth is crammed with heaven,
and every common bush afire with God,
but only he who sees
takes off his shoes.

--Elizabeth Barrett Browning

The Opposite of Love is....?

"Where love rules, there is no will to power; and where power predominates, there love is lacking. The one is the shadow of the other." ~ Carl Jung

"The Opposite of Love is not hate, but power" --C.S. Lewis

Toward A More Inclusive Spirituality:

"Do not say, I follow the one true path of the Spirit, but rather, I have found the Spirit walking on my path. For the Spirit walks on all paths. by Khalil Gibran "

How Far Does the Love and Salvation of God Reach?

"The cross of Christ means that the salvation of God goes deeper down than the deepest depths of iniquity man can commit. No person can get beyond the reach of Jesus; He made a way back to the throne of God from the very heart of hell by His tremendous atonement" Oswald Chambers, the Essay, It is Finished

Inexorable Love

' ........Nothing is inexorable but love. Love which will yield to prayer is imperfect and poor. Nor is it then the love that yields, but its alloy. . . . For love loves unto purity. Love has ever in view the absolute loveliness of that which it beholds. Where loveliness is incomplete, and love cannot love its fill of loving, it spends itself to make more lovely, that it may love more; it strives for perfection, even that itself may be perfected--not in itself, but in the object. . . . Therefore all that is not beautiful in the beloved, all that comes between and is not of love's kind, must be destroyed. And our God is a consuming fire..........' quoted in the C S Lewis 'Anthology' from George Macdonald's Unspoken Sermons, Volume 1 - 'The Consuming Fire'. Full text can be read at, http://www.johannesen.com/SermonsSeriesI.htm

Redemptive Sleep

"It may be said of sleep as well as in regard of death, It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power....'' No one can deny the power of the wearied body to paralyse the soul; but I have a correlate theory which I love, and which I expect to find true that, while the body wearies the mind, it is the mind that restores vigour to the body, and then, like the man who has built him a stately palace, rejoices to dwell in it. I believe that, if there be a living, conscious love at the heart of the universe, the mind, in the quiescence of it's consciousness in sleep,comes into a less disturbed contact with it's origin, the heart of creation; whence gifted with calmness and strength for itself, it grows able to impart comfort to the weary frame. The cessation of labour affords but the necessary occasion; makes it possible as it were, for the occupant of an outlying station of the wilderness to return to his Father's house for fresh supplies.... The child-soul goes home at night, and returns in the morning to the labours of the school." --George MacDonald

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Christianity seems at first to be all about morality, all about duties and rules and guilt and virtue, yet it leads you on, out of all that, into something beyond. One has a glimpse of a country where they do not talk of those things, except perhaps as a joke. Every one there is filled full with what we should call goodness as a mirror is filled with light. But they do not call it goodness. They do not call it anything. They are not thinking of it. They are too busy looking at the source from which it comes. ........C S Lewis -- Mere Christianity

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"First you leap, then you grow wings" (William Sloane Coffin, referring to "faith")

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"My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going, I do not see the road ahead of me, I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore, I will trust you always, though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone."

Thomas Merton--Thoughts in Solitude

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"That God is one is more profound than that there is one God" (Thomas Cahill)

“There is within us a fundamental dis-ease, an unquenchable fire that renders us incapable, in this life, of ever coming to full peace. This desire lies at the center of our lives, in the marrow of our bones, and in the deep recesses of the soul. At the heart of all great literature, poetry, art, philosophy, psychology, and religion lies the naming and analyzing of this desire. Spirituality is, ultimately, about what we do with that desire. What we do with our longings, both in terms of handling the pain and the hope they bring us, that is our spirituality . . . Augustine says: ‘You have made us for yourself, Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.’ Spirituality is about what we do with our unrest.”

The Holy Longing, Ronald Rolheiser

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"To say I am made in the image of God is to say that love is the reason for my existence, for God is love" --Thomas a Kempis

"Have you been asking God what he is going to do? He will never tell you. God does not tell you what He is going to do; He reveals to you who He is" --Oswald Chambers.

"At the end of the game, both the king and the pawn go into the same box"--Italian saying

"People who think of God as a warrior may become warriors themselves, whether in a Christian crusade, a Muslim jihad, or an apocalyptically oriented militia. People who think of God as righteous are likely to emphasize righteousness themselves, just as those who think of God as compassionate are likely to emphasize compassion. People who think God is angry at the world are likely to be angry at the world themselves." Marcus Borg, The God We Never Knew

".........And I smiled to think God's greatness flowed around our incompleteness Round our restlessness His rest." [Elizabeth Barrett Browning - 1806-1861]

Though you can fashion everything From nothing every day, and teach The morning stars to sing, You have lacked articulate speech To tell Your simplest want, and known, Wailing upon a woman's knee, All of that worst ignominy Of flesh and bone... (From "A Prayer for My Son" WB Yeats)

"Great improvisers are like priests... they are thinking only of their God" --Stephane Grappelli

A Key to Forgiveness

"If we could only read the secret history of our enemies, we would find in each man's life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility"--Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

No Escape?

"Where was my heart to flee for refuge from my heart? Whither was I to fly, where I would not follow? In what place should I not be prey to myself?" The Confessions of St. Augustine Book Four, Chapter VII

Sleep Teaching

"Thank God for the night and darkness and sleep in which good things draw nigh like God's thieves, and steal themselves in --- water into wells, and peace and hope and courage into the minds of men" (excerpt from: ''St. Michael and St. George'' by George MacDonald

Fairy Tales:

"If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales." (Albert Einstein)

"Deeper meaning resides in the fairy tales told me in my childhood than in any truth that is taught in life." (Johann Schiller)

"The fairy tale journey may look like an outward trek across plains and mountains, through castles and forests, but the actual movement is inward, into the lands of the soul." ( Terri Windling)

"In a utilitarian age, of all other times, it is a matter of grave importance that fairy tales should be respected". (Charles Dickens)

--Alberta Ballet season series, Fairy Tales

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One who not merely beholds the outward shows of things, but catches a glimpse of the soul that looks out of them, whose garment and revelation they are--if he be such, I say, he will stand, for more than a moment, speechless with something akin to that which made the morning stars sing together. - George MacDonald "What's Mine's Mine"

"He is no fool to give what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose." Jim Elliott

"When two great forces collide, the victory will go to the one that knows how to yield"--Taoist saying

"Accident happens throughout the universe except, perhaps, in the chamber of the human heart." Nels Gunnderssen, Snow Falling on Cedars.

C S Lewis, in 'The Problem of Pain' wrote, "God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks to us in our conscience, but shouts in our pain: It is the megaphone to rouse a deaf world"...

Along this line, George MacDonald wrote,

"For this, deep waters whelm the fruitful lea,
Wars ravage, famine wastes, plague withers, nor
Shall cease till men have chosen the better part."
(Diary of an Old Soul, June 3)

"Difficulty on the way to victory is opportunity for God to work". Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

"There is a major shift in basic spirituality from dealing with life and God as a problem to be solved and with life and God as a mystery to be entered" Eugene Peterson, letter 1/29/99.

Truth as Heresy: "A man may be an heretic in the truth, and if he believes things only because his pastor says so, or the assembly so determines, without knowing other reasons, though his belief be true, yet the very truth he holds becomes his heresy." (F.W. Farrar, History of Interpretation, xvi)

Milton says, "Who overcomes by force hath overcome but half his foe,"

"I've always loved numbers. They have taken me from the mathematical to the metaphysical to the delusional, and back again. It is only in the mysterious equations of love that reason is found." And, nodding to his wife in the audience Nash concluded, "you are my reason." John Nash, A Beautiful Mind

Einstein when asked what question he would desire the answer to most before dying replied: "The Universe, is it friendly?"

We are in Him and He within us. For in God "we live and move and have our being" -St. Paul

Usually people mad at God are simply mad at a false god projected by the fundamentalist part of the church...the two faced god who tortures his enemies forever in "hell" (while asking us to forgive ours).

The Existence of God: Two physicists at the University of California Berkeley, studying in the realm of theoretical physics concluded: "The fundamental processes of the universe occur outside space and time." This indicates a spiritual reality beyond our known dimensions…

"The more holy the heart, the less the outward eye can detect it" Jean-Pierre De Caussade (no more phony displays of humility; the thought of judging another person becomes preposterous).

Line from Episcopal hymn #49: "He rose, the prince of life and peace, and stamped the day forever his…"

Line from Episcopal hymn #535: "God rules on high almighty to save, and still he is nigh: his presence we have…"

"It's the impeded stream that sings"-Wendall Berry

Daisetz Suzuki (1870-1966), the Zen-master who brought Zen to America, when asked, "What is Zen" replied: "Infinite Gratitude to all things Past. Infinite service to all things Present, and infinite responsibility to all things future."

Christians, Jews and Muslims claim to "own" God (though not all members of these religions make this claim). Native Americans, though, seem not to have this sense of ownership of God and the earth. Rather, they tend to feel "owned" by God, even as they "owe" the earth for their existence. Two widely divergent worldviews.

"Does truth prevail more if we are not on speaking terms with those whose view of truth differs from ours?" C.H. Dodd

The superlative language of religious devotion is expressed by John Hicks as, "The poetry of devotion and the hyperbole of the heart."

The Christian Houston Smith's primary Hindu Teacher observed: "Christianity is one blazing pathway of love. Nothing in religious history can rival this pathway of love."

The decisive revelation of God is found, to Christians in Jesus; to Muslims, in the Quran; to Jews in the Torah. Four ways to God in Hinduism: Knowledge, Love, Service, Meditation.

"I am an emptiness for Thee to fill; my soul a cavern for Thy sea"-George MacDonald.

"Hearken O Israel: YHWH our God, YHWH is One!' The great formula is not that there is one God but that "God is One" (Thomas Cahill, The Gifts of the Jews).

"True solitude is deeply aware of the world's needs. It does not hold the world at arm's length" Thomas Merton wrote. The actual Christian task involves "accepting ourselves as we are in our confusion, infidelity, disruption, ferment, and even desperation."

"Commands and prohibitions are not for observance, but to demonstrate our weakness, that we may see our own weakness and thereby recognize and confess God's power" -Islamic poet/mystic Rumi

"No wild beasts are so cruel as the Christians in their dealings with each other" -Ammianus Marcellinus (c. AD 330-95)

Just because many idolatrous images of God clamber from some churches incessantly, it doesn't necessarily follow that therefore no deity exists worthy of our worship.

"God is everywhere that the eyes of our soul want to see...." Karen, one week in AA

Martin Luther said, "The curses of the ungodly are more pleasing to God's ears than the hallelujahs of the pious"

George MacDonald articulated a hope about our departed animal friends. Referring to animals and pets, he commented, "Their immortality is no new faith with me, but as old as my childhood." Again, he argued for the animals when he said, "I know of no reason why I should not look for the animals to rise again, in the same sense in which I hope myself to rise again--which is, to reappear, clothed with another and better form of life than before. If the Father will raise his children, why should he not also raise those whom he has taught his little ones to love?"
(Life Essential: The Hope of the Universe, George MacDonald).

"I wish it (Christianity) were more productive of good works ... I mean real good works ... not holy day keeping, sermon-hearing ... or making long prayers, filled with flatteries and compliments despised by wise men, and much less capable of pleasing the Deity." - Benjamin Franklin

"Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: What! You too? I thought I was the only one." CS Lewis

"Is it not a serving of Satan to flatter their pride by making them conquerors of the armies of their nation instead of their own evils?" George MacDonald, Unspoken Sermons.

May the road rise up to meet you, May the wind be always at your back, May the sun shine warm upon your face, And the rain fall soft upon your fields, And until we meet again, May God hold you In the palm of his hand. --Irish Blessing

Between the Extremes: "The real question is whether we can learn anything from our experiences upon which we may grow and help others to grow in the likeness and image of God. We know that if we rebel against doing that which is reasonably possible for us, then we will be penalized. And we will be equally penalized if we presume in ourselves a perfection that simply is not there. Apparently, the course of relative humility and progress will have to lie somewhere between these extremes. In our slow progress away from rebellion, true perfection is doubtless several millennia away" -Bill W. in a letter, 1959

"When Christianity came to be interpreted by the straightforward, dull, unspiritual legal mind of Rome, the Gospel went into a fearful eclipse. When the Greek thought of Christ gave way to the Latin, a night came upon the Christian world that has extended to the present day. Then were born all those half-views, distorted views, and false views of Christian doctrine and Christian life that have perverted the Gospel, puzzled the human intellect and grieved the human heart through all the long centuries from that day to this" -Rev. S. Crane, The Universalist Quarterly, January 1878

The work of God: "The only basis on which to work for God is an esteemed appreciation of his deliverance." (Oswald Chambers, The Pilgrims Songbook)