$3 Worth of God

Wilbur Rees

I would like to buy $3 worth of God, please, not enough to explode my soul or disturb my sleep, but just enough to equal a cup of warm milk or a snooze in the sunshine. I don’t want enough of God to make me love a person on the fringes or pick beets with a migrant. I want ecstasy, not transformation; I want warmth of the womb, not a new birth. I want a pound of the Eternal in a paper sack. I would like to buy $3 worth of God, please.

Source: Leadership, Vol. 4, No. 1

An Easy Substitute

Henri J. M. Nouwen

What makes the temptation of power so seemingly irresistible? Maybe it is that power offers an easy substitute for the hard task of love. It seems easier to be God than to love God, easier to control people than to love people, easier to own life than to love life…. The long painful history of the Church is the history of people ever and again tempted to choose power over love, control over the cross, being a leader over being led…. Much Christian leadership is exercised by people who do not know how to develop healthy, intimate relationships and have opted for power and control instead. Many Christian empire-builders have been people unable to give and receive love.

Source: In the Name of Jesus

Attending Wholly to God

Thomas a Kempis

We must not rely too much upon ourselves, for grace and understanding are often lacking in us. We have but little inborn light, and this we quickly lose through negligence. Often we are not aware that we are so blind in heart. Meanwhile we do wrong, and then do worse in excusing it. We take others to task for small mistakes, and overlook greater ones in ourselves. We are quick enough to feel and brood over the things we suffer from others, but we think nothing of how much others suffer from us. If a person would weigh his/her own deeds fully and rightly, they would find little cause to pass severe judgment on others.

You will never be devout of heart unless you are thus silent about the affairs of others and pay particular attention to yourself. If you attend wholly to God and yourself, you will be little disturbed by what you see about you.

Source: The Imitation of Christ

No Escape

Thomas Merton

The truth that many people never understand, until it is too late, is that the more you try to avoid suffering the more you suffer because smaller and more insignificant things begin to torture you in proportion to your fear of being hurt.
Source: unknown

Who You Are

Frederick Buechner

When you wake up in the morning … if you want to know who you are, watch your feet. Because where your feet take you, that is who you are.

Source: unknown

The One Journey That Matters

N. Gordon Cosby

The one journey that ultimately matters is the journey into the place of stillness deep within one’s self. To reach that place is to be at home; to fail to reach it is to be forever restless. At the place of ‘central silence,’ one’s own life and spirit are united with the life and Spirit of God. There the fire of God’s presence is experienced. The soul is immersed in love. The divine birth happens. We hear at last the living Word.

Source: Foreword to Search for Silence by Elizabeth O’Connor

How We Use Our Lives

Cesar Chavez

If we are really honest with ourselves, we must admit that our lives are all that really belong to us, so it is how we use our lives that determines what kind of persons we are. And it is my deepest belief that only by giving our lives do we find life. I am convinced that the truest act of courage, the strongest act of humanity is to sacrifice ourselves for something higher – that which we believe in and love deeply.

Source: Unknown 

Becoming Aware

Eugene Peterson

The assumption of spirituality is that always God is doing something before I know it. So the task is not to get God to do something I think needs to be done, but to become aware of what God is doing so that I can respond to it and participate and take delight in it.

Source: The Contemplative Pastor

Sowing Hope

Wendell Berry

In the dark of the moon,
In the flying snow,
In the dead of winter,
War spreading,
Families dying,
The world in danger,
I walk the rocky hillside
Sowing clover.

Source: “February 2, 1968″

Entering Community

Jean Vanier

When people enter community, especially from a place of loneliness in a big city or from a place of aggression and rejection, they find the warmth and the love exhilarating. This permits them to start lifting their masks and barriers and to become vulnerable. They may enter into a time of communion and great joy.

But then too, as they lift their masks and become vulnerable, they discover that community can be a terrible place, because it is a place of relationship; it is the revelation of our wounded emotions and of how painful it can be to live with others, especially with some people. It is so much easier to live with books and objects, television, or dogs and cats! It is so much easier to live alone and just do things for others, when one feels like it.

Source: Community and Growth