A good teacher teaches people how to see, not what to see.
The most amazing fact about Jesus, unlike almost any other religious founder, is that he found God in disorder and imperfection – and told us that we must do the same or we would never be content on this earth.
Once God and grace move us to the second half of life, religion becomes a mystical matter, rather than a moral matter.
If unconditional love, loyalty, and obedience are the tickets to an eternal life, then my black Labrador, Venus, will surely be there long before me, along with all the dear animals in nature who care for their young at great cost to themselves and have suffered so much at the hands of humans.
If our love of God does not directly influence, and even change, how we engage in the issues of our time on this earth, I wonder what good religion is.
Let’s state it clearly: One great idea of the biblical revelation is that God is manifest in the ordinary, in the actual, in the daily, in the now, in the concrete incarnations of life, and not through purity codes and moral achievement contests, which are seldom achieved anyway.
The two Virtues of Equanimity and Compassion become more available to the person whose ego-shell has been smashed-either by great suffering or by great love-or by both.
The people who know God well – mystics, hermits, prayerful people, those who risk everything to find God – always meet a lover, not a dictator.
The cross solved our problem by first revealing our real problem, our universal pattern of scapegoating and sacrificing others. The cross exposes forever the scene of our crime.
Maturity is the ability to joyfully live in an imperfect world.
When you haven’t found inner meaning, you will always substitute outer performance. It’s the only way to fill that void, that sense of significance – that I am significant. So almost the degree of outer performance can, in many cases, mirror the lack of inner alignment.
The great and merciful surprise is that we come to God, not by doing it right, but by doing it wrong.
Faith is not for overcoming obstacles; it is for experiencing them – all the way through!
If God is Trinity and Jesus is the face of God, then it is a benevolent universe. God is not someone to be afraid of, but is the Ground of Being and on our side.
Our job as conscious humans is to bring the beauty and goodness of everything to full consciousness, to full delight, to full awareness.
Worship of Jesus is rather harmless and risk-free; actually following Jesus changes everything.
The human ego prefers anything, just about anything, to falling, or changing, or dying. The ego is that part of you that loves the status quo – even when it’s not working. It attaches to past and present and fears the future.
Pain that is not transformed is transmitted.
The true mystic is always both humble and compassionate, for she knows that she does not know.
Most of us were taught that God would love us if and when we change. In fact, God loves you so that you can change. What empowers change, what makes you desirous of change is the experience of love. It is that inherent experience of love that becomes the engine of change.