Before I can tell my life what I want to do with it, I must listen to my life telling me who I am.
Science requires an engagement with the world, a live encounter between the knower and the known.
How easily we get trapped in that which is not essential – in looking good, winning at competition, gathering power and wealth – when simply being alive is the gift beyond measure.
The door that closed kept us from entering a room, but what now lies before us is the rest of reality.
You seem to look upon depression as the hand of an enemy trying to crush you…Do you think you could see it instead as the hand of a friend, pressing you down to the ground on which it is safe to stand?
By standing respectfully and faithfully at the borders of another’s solitude, we may mediate the love of God to a person who needs something deeper than any human being can give.
We listen for guidance everywhere except from within.
We are whiplashed between an arrogant overestimation of ourselves and a servile underestimation of ourselves.
Our problem as Americans — at least, among my race and gender — is that we resist the very idea of limits, regarding limits of all sorts as temporary and regrettable impositions on our lives.
Vocation at its deepest level is, ‘This is something I can’t not do, for reasons I’m unable to explain to anyone else and don’t fully understand myself but that are nonetheless compelling.
I am blessed to live in a democracy, not a totalitarian state. But the democracy I cherish is constantly threatened by a brand of politics that clothes avarice and the arrogance of power in patriotic and religious garb.
Solitude does not necessarily mean living apart from others; rather, it means never living apart from one’s self.A Hidden Wholeness: The Journey Toward an Undivided Life
We are exploring together. We are cultivating a garden together, backs to the sun. The question is a hoe in our hands and we are digging beneath the hard and crusty surface to the rich humus of our lives.
Our strongest gifts are usually those we are barely aware of possessing. They are a part of our God-given nature, with us from the moment we drew first breath, and we are no more conscious of having them them than we are of breathing.