It is a pathetic moment in the history of the human condition when the outside world tells us who and what we are - and we start to believe it ourselves. Then, bent over from the weight of the negativity, we start to wither on the outside.
Acceptance is the universal currency of real friendship. . . . It does not warp or shape or wrench a person to be anything other than what they are.
Anger is not bad. Anger can be a very positive thing, the thing that moves us beyond the acceptance of evil.
Solitude is not a way of running away from life. . . from our feelings. On the contrary. This is the time we sort them out, air them, get over them, and go on without the burden of yesterday.
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.
We must learn to pray out of our weaknesses so that God can become our strength.
I do not believe that just because you're opposed to abortion, that that makes you pro-life. In fact, I think in many cases, your morality is deeply lacking if all you want is a child born but not a child fed, not a child educated, not a child housed. And why would I think that you don't? Because you don't want any tax money to go there. That's not pro-life. That's pro-birth. We need a much broader conversation on what the morality of pro-life is.
I begin to understand as never before that holiness is made of dailiness, of living life as it comes to me, not as I insist it be.
Why do people think the spiritual life demands withdrawal from the ordinary? Because they've been taught, at least by implication, that the physical is a block to the spiritual. When we assume that the spiritual, unlike the physical, is impervious to corrosion, then we assume that all things material are not to be honored. But the fact of the matter is, the material is the vehicle of the spiritual.
Life is the ability to start over again.
Life is an exercise in the development of feeling. When we repress feelings, we become sour and judgmental. When we live awash in great feeling over small things, we become jaded long before we have even begun to enjoy. When feelings are in balance they sweeten long days and great distances with gratitude and hope.
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.
Life always comes out of death. The present rises from the ashes of the past. The future is always possible for those who are willing to re-create it.
We don't change as we get older - we just get to be more of what we've always been.
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.
Everything we do seeds the future. No action is an empty one.
The Christmas season is a gift in itself. It releases us from the priorities of ordinary time and gives us the right to party more and pray more and love more.
Hope grows in us, despite our moments of darkness, regardless of our regular bouts of depression.
We need a much broader conversation on what the morality of pro-life is
The moment a woman comes home to herself, the moment she knows that she has become a person of influence, an artist of her life, a sculptor of her universe, a person with rights and responsibilities who is respected and recognized, the resurrection of the world begins.