Temptations are part of life, part of growing up. We grapple with them often – in some instances for our lifetime – before we come to realize that it is not so much the victory as it is the struggle that is holy.
Real failure comes when we consider ourselves good enough at something to be able to repeat it rather than to develop it. “Success is dangerous,” the painter Pablo Picasso said. “One begins to copy oneself, and to copy oneself is more dangerous than to copy others. It leads to sterility.”
Learning to celebrate joy is one of the great practices of the spiritual life.
Getting to know ourselves and learning to control ourselves are the two great tasks of life. Don’t make up strange and exotic ‘penances.’ Simply say no to yourself once a day, and you will be on the road to sanctity for the rest of your life.
To be a presence of perpetual thanksgiving may be the ultimate goal of life. The thankful person is the one for whom life is simply one long exercise in the sacred.
To be contemplative we must become converted to the consciousness that makes us one with the universe, in tune with the cosmic voice of God.
Hope is what sits by the window and waits for one more dawn, despite the fact that there isn’t an ounce of proof in tonight’s black, black sky that it can possibly come.
Benedictine spirituality is a consistent one: live life normally, live life thouhtfully, live life profouncly, live life well. Never neglect and never exaggerate. It is a lesson that a world full of cults and fads and workaholics and short courses in difficult subjects needs dearly to learn.
Awareness of the sacred in life is what holds our world together, and the lack of awareness of the sacred is what is tearing it apart.
If anything diminishes a person, it is the cancer of constant complaining.
Hospitality is the key to new ideas, new friends, new possibilities. What we take into our lives changes us. Without new people and new ideas, we are imprisoned inside ourselves.
Indifference is the acid of life. It erodes all the spirit that’s in us and makes us useless to anyone else. We all have to stand for something, or our souls cease to breathe.
Try saying this silently to everyone and everything you see for thirty days and see what happens to your own soul: I wish you happiness now and whatever will bring happiness to you in the future.
Life is the ability to start over again.
If life is really for the living, then the trick to living well is to learn to live it fully, to soak it up, to revel in it.
Living well has something to do with the spirituality of wholeheartedness, of seeing life more as a grace than as a penance, as time to be lived with eager expectation of its goodness, not in dread of its challenges.
To insist on living until we die may be one of life’s greatest virtues.
Old age tells us that we ourselves have failed often, have never really done anything completely right, have never truly been perfect – anad that is completely all right. We are who we are – and so is everyone else.
Persistence may not solve everything – at least in our lifetime – but it is truer to the meaning of life for us to wait for another plowing, another seeding, another harvest, then not.
In scripture God brings the animals to the human for naming. In that simple act the human is brought to recognize the particular personality and worth of each living creature. Too bad we forget so often.