The art of life is to stay wide open and be vulnerable, yet at the same time to sit with the mystery and the awe and with the unbearable pain – to just be with it all.
Within the spiritual journey you understand that suffering becomes something that has been given to you to show you where your mind is still stuck. It’s a vehicle to help you go to work. That’s why it’s called grace.
Compassion refers to the arising in the heart of the desire to relieve the suffering of all beings.
Suffering only shows where you are attached. That is why, to those on the path, suffering is grace.
Compassion and pity are very different. Whereas compassion reflects the yearning of the heart to merge and take on some of the suffering, pity is a controlled set of thoughts designed to assure separateness. Compassion is the spontaneous response of love; pity, the involuntary reflex of fear.
The deepest level of worship is praising God despite pain, trusting Him during a trial, surrendering while suffering, and loving Him when He seems distant.
Don’t turn away. Keep your gaze on the bandaged place. That’s where the light enters you.
These pains you feel are messengers. Listen to them.
Don’t suffer fools or you’ll become one.
Jesus Christ did not suffer so that you would not suffer. He suffered so that when you suffer, you’ll become more like him. The gospel does not promise you better life circumstances; it promises you a better life.
God is so committed to your ultimate joy that he was willing to plunge into the greatest depths of suffering himself for you.
If there is meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering. Suffering is an ineradicable part of life, even as fate and death. Without suffering and death human life cannot be complete.
Just as a small fire is extinguished by the storm whereas a large fire is enhanced by it – likewise a weak faith is weakened by predicament and catastrophes whereas a strong faith is strengthened by them.
Despair is suffering without meaning.
There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power. They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. They are the messengers of overwhelming grief, of deep contrition, and of unspeakable love.
The person who risks nothing, does nothing, has nothing, is nothing. He may avoid suffering and sorrow, but he cannot learn, feel change, grow or live...
No pain, no palm; no thorns, no throne; no gall, no glory; no cross, no crown.
Life’s hard, then you die.
How many deaths will it take ’till we know that too many people have died?
The world has kissed my Soul with its pain, asking for its return in Songs.