Much violence is based on the illusion that life is a property to be defended and not to be shared.
In God’s eyes the most significant is often the most hidden.
We cannot make it rain but we can see to it that the rain falls on prepared soil.
Life is not a possession to be defended, but a gift to be shared.
As we read spiritually about spiritual things, we open our hearts to God’s voice. Sometimes we must be willing to put down the book we are reading and just listen to what God is saying to us through our words.
True Hospitality is welcoming the stranger on her own terms. This kind of hospitality can only be offered by those who’ve found the center of their lives in their own hearts.
It’s an incredible mystery of God’s love that the more you know how deeply you are loved, the more you will see how deeply your sisters and your brothers in the human family are loved.
The joy that compassion brings is one of the best-kept secrets of humanity. It is a secret known only to a very few people, a secret that has to be rediscovered over and over again.
As long as we relate to the trees, the rivers, the mountains, the fields and the oceans as properties which we can manipulate according to our real or fabricated needs, nature remains opaque, and does not reveal to us its true being.
The real enemies of our life are the ‘oughts’ and the ‘ifs.’ They pull us backward into the unalterable past and forward into the unpredictable future. But real life takes place in the here and now.
There is nothing so important in the family as the sacred quality of the meal.
Our brokenness has no other beauty but the beauty that comes from the compassion that surrounds it.
Friendship and love are impossible without a mutual vulnerability.
When we become aware that we do not have to escape our pains, but that we can mobilize them into a common search for life, those very pains are transformed from expressions of despair into signs of hope.
Forgiveness changes the way we remember.
Christian community is the place where we keep the flame of hope alive among us and take it seriously so that it can grow and become stronger in us.
When we keep claiming the light, we will find ourselves becoming more and more radiant.
Be surprised by joy, be surprised by the little flower that shows its beauty in the midst of a barren desert, and be surprised by the immense healing power that keeps bursting forth like springs of fresh water from the depth of our pain.
In our own woundedness, we can become sources of life for others.
A waiting person is a patient person. The word patience means the willingness to stay where we are and live the situation out to the full in the belief that something hidden there will manifest itself to us.