faith

"The Christian should work as if all depended upon him, and pray as if it all depended upon God."

"How do we remain faithful to our own spiritual imagination and not betray what we know in our own bodies? The world is holy. We are holy. All life is holy."

"All the world is made of faith, and trust, and pixie dust."

"When your only regret is if anyone thinks you regret anything - that is the definition of conviction."

"We take it for granted that Jesus was not interested in political life: his mission was purely religious. Indeed we have witnessed . . . the 'iconization' of the life of Jesus: 'This is a Jesus of hieratic, stereotyped gestures, all representing theological themes. In this way, the life of Jesus is no longer a human life, submerged in history, but a theological life -- an icon."

"Are you aware of who you really are in relationship to the very God who created the Universe, who scattered the stars and aligned the planets? Only to those who remember and realize that they are literally spirit children of a God who knows and loves them, can the fire of refinement be welcome. Otherwise, pain and adversity are just that, pain and adversity. Fire doesn’t purify; it only burns."

"...the ongoing suspicion that scientific discoveries or rigorous biblical scholarship will undermine faith is a tacit admission that faith is threatened by knowledge, because it is ultimately constructed on weak or faulty assumptions and, like the proverbial house of cards, needs to be "protected"from collapsing. (p. 21)"

"Oh what a wonderful soul so bright inside you. Got power to heal the sun’s broken heart, power to restore the moon’s vision too."

"Surely we cannot take an open question like the supernatural and shut it with a bang, turning the key of the madhouse on all the mystics of history. You cannot take the region of the unknown and calmly say that, though you know nothing about it, you know all the gates are locked. We do not know enough about the unknown to know that it is unknowable."

"If humor and rumor are needed more than faith and truth, then it tells me something about the kind of world we live today."

"Do not ask directions from the people around you. Ask directions from the person who called you."

"After every storm, there is a rainbow. If you have eyes, you will find it. If you have wisdom, you will create it. If you have love for yourself and others, you won’t need it."

"When has faith ever been about feelings?"

"Faith and love are apt to be spasmodic in the best minds. Men live the brink of mysteries and harmonies into which they never enter, and with their hands on the door-latch they die outside."

"Faith is only as good as the one in whom it's invested."

"Satisfaction in life doesn't jump on you, you work for it, you earn it. You will not sit in a place, fold your hands and expect to be satisfied with life."

"Everyone would like to have stronger faith. By themselves, the scriptures may not strengthen your faith, but being faithful to what they teach, does. In other words, faith cannot be separated from faithfulness."

"God is so immense that if he were 'too visible,' people would give forced compliance without expressing their heart. So God made it possible, in enormous love, for us to live as if he were not there."

"I honestly do not know if love vanquishes death as our traditional faiths teach but I do know that our vulnerabilities trump our ideologies and that love leavens the purity and logic of our beliefs propelling us to connect as the fiercely gracious human beings we are."

"When all is said and done, the life of faith is nothing if not an unending struggle of the spirit with every available weapon against the flesh."