Thomas Merton said:

"Do not be too quick to condemn the man who no longer believes in God: for it is perhaps your own coldness and avarice and mediocrity and materialism and selfishness that have chilled his faith." - Thomas Merton

Meditation

"Learn how to meditate on paper. Drawing and writing are forms of meditation. Learn how to contemplate works of art. Learn how to pray in the streets or in the country. Know how to meditate not only when you have a book in your hand but when you are waiting for a bus or riding in a train." - Thomas Merton

Where value lies

"Let me say this before rain becomes a utility that they can plan and distribute for money. By "they" I mean the people who cannot understand that rain is a festival, who do not appreciate its gratuity, who think that what has no price has no value, that what cannot be sold is not real, so that the only way to make something actual is to place it on the market. The time will come when they will sell you even your rain. At the moment it is still free, and I am in it. I celebrate its gratuity and its meaninglessness." - Thomas Merton

Father Greg Boyle

"I want to be prophetic and take stands and stand with those on the margins, and I want to laugh as much as I can." - Greg Boyle

The Silence of Surrender

We enter the land of silence by the silence of surrender, and there is no map of the silence that is surrender…. The practice of silence…cannot be reduced to a spiritual technique. Techniques are all the rage today. They suggest a certain control that aims to determine a certain outcome. They clearly have their place. But this is not what contemplative practice does…. A spiritual practice simply disposes us to allow something to take place. For example, a gardener does not actually grow plants. A gardener practices certain gardening skills that facilitate growth that is beyond the gardener’s direct control.
-Father Martin Laird

Nine Requisites for Contented Living

Health enough to make work a pleasure. Wealth enough to support your needs. Strength to battle with difficulties and overcome them. Grace enough to confess your sins and forsake them. Patience enough to toil until some good is accomplished. Charity enough to see some good in your neighbor. Love enough to move you to be useful and helpful to others. Faith enough to make real the things of God. Hope enough to remove all anxious fears concerning the future. 
-Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Rumi Again

"... Move beyond any attachment to names." Every war and every conflict between human beings has happened because of some disagreement about names. It's such an unnecessary foolishness, because just beyond the arguing there's a long table of companionship, set and waiting for us to sit down.

What is praised is one, so the praise is one too, many jugs being poured into a huge basin. All religions, all this singing, one song. The differences are just illusion and vanity. Sunlight looks slightly different
on this wall than it does on that wall and a lot different on this other one, but it is still one light. We have borrowed these clothes, these time-and-space personalities, from a light, and when we praise, we pour them back in.

mevlana Jalaluddin Rumi - 13th century
Translation by Coleman Bark

Importance Of Small Efforts

"People say, what is the sense of our small effort? They cannot see that we must lay one brick at a time, take one step at a time. A pebble cast into a pond causes ripples that spread in all directions. Each one of our thoughts, words, and deeds is like that. No one has a right to sit down and feel hopeless. There is too much work to do." - Dorothy Day

"Worry is an old man with bended head, carrying a load of feathers which he thinks are lead." - Corrie Ten Boom

Prophets of a Future Not Our Own

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.
~ Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero ~
(murdered on March 24, 1980)

A Little Gem

"Don't cry because it's over. Smile because it happened." - Dr. Seuss

Judy Cannato - Receiving Love

Receiving love brings us to a place of vulnerability. That is why it is so difficult. So often we live in the illusion that it is much easier to love than to be loved. We may think we can exercise a bit of control in loving another, but there is no control in being loved. The ones who truly love us walk into our hearts, often unnoticed, unannounced, and then reveal to us how genuinely lovable we are. And nothing feels more vulnerable than that.

Compassion - Frederick Buechner

Compassion is sometimes the fatal capacity for feeling what it is like to live inside somebody else's skin. It is the knowledge that there can never really be any peace and joy for me until there is peace and joy finally for you too.

Realizing God's Presence - Frederick Buechner

What deadens us most to God's presence within us, I think, is the inner dialogue that we are continually engaged in with ourselves, the endless chatter of human thought.

Doubts - Frederick Buechner

"Doubts are the ants in the pants of faith. They keep it awake and moving." 

God's Grace - Frederick Buechner

The grace of God means something like: Here is your life. You might never have been, but you are because the party wouldn't have been complete without you. Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid. I am with you. Nothing can ever separate us. It's for you I created the universe. I love you. There's only one catch. Like any other gift, the gift of grace can be yours only if you'll reach out and take it. Maybe being able to reach out and take it is a gift too.

A Confession From Me, "R. B."

I am all too quick to blame others for my failures. It seems that I can better live with my failed dreams if I can blame someone else for the failure. I can then be the righteous victim and better live with the anger...but I know better than that. Anger is lethal in so many ways and I am not a victim of anything except when I want to be. Looking too closely at what I want, insisting on my way, denigrating others, are all ways that I live.

"I am not worthy to gather the crumbs from under your table but say the word and I shall receive."
____________________________________________________________________________________

The great gift that a person has - Frederick Buechner

"Whatever you do with your life-whatever you end up achieving or not achieving the great gift you have in you to give to the world is the gift of who you alone are; your way of seeing things, and saying things, and feeling about things, that is like nobody else’s. If so much as a single one of you were missing, there would be an empty place at the great feast of life that nobody else in all creation could fill.

Wise Observation - Dalai Lama

Man surprised me most about humanity. Because he sacrifices his health in order to make money. Then he sacrifices money to recuperate his health. And then he is so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present; the result being that he does not live in the present or the future; he lives as if he is never going to die, and then dies having never really lived. 

from T. J. Grey

To laugh is to risk appearing the fool.

To cry is to risk appearing weak and sentimental.

To reach out to others is to risk being rejected.

To show feelings is to risk exposing our humanity.

To risk nothing is

DEATH.

- T. J. Grey

George Elliot observation

It is never too late, no matter how old you get because anytime or at any point in your life you can always have a chance to make a difference. You can always make a change for the better no matter what background you derived from. You can always do your best and be all that you can be because you will always be uniquely you. It is why it is always wise to listen to your eternal heart, your eternal instincts, and what it had always strove for and/or to do because really anybody can make a difference not only in their own lives but in the lives of others. It is never too late to shine; never.

St. Augustine said:

“So anyone who thinks he has understood the divine scriptures or any part of them, but cannot by his understanding build up this double love of God and neighbor, has not yet succeeded in understanding them.” (On Christian Teaching 1:86)

Thomas Merton Says:

"Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. That is not our business and, in fact, it is nobody's business. What we are asked to do is to love, and this love itself will render both ourselves and our neighbors worthy."