Marianne Williamson: it's my choice

Happiness is the choice I make today. 

It does not rest on my circumstances, but on my frame of mind. I surrender to God any emotional habits that lead me down the path of unhappiness, and pray for guidance in shifting my thoughts. 

In cultivating the habits of happiness, I attract the people and situations that match its frequency. I smile more often, give praise more often, give thanks more often, and am glad more often. 

For such is my choice today.

Thomas Merton: born to love

Love is our true destiny. 

We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone – we find it with another. 

We do not discover the secret of our lives merely by study and calculation in our own isolated meditations. 

The meaning of our life is a secret that has to be revealed to us in love, by the one we love. 

And if this love is unreal, the secret will not be found, the meaning will never reveal itself, the message will never be decoded. At best, we will receive a scrambled and partial message, one that will deceive and confuse us. 

We will never be fully real until we let ourselves fall in love – either with another human person or with God.

Love and Living

Thomas Merton: we are one organism

Only when we see ourselves in our true human context, as members of a race which is intended to be one organism and ‘one body,’ will we begin to understand the positive importance not only of the successes but of the failures and accidents in our lives. 

My successes are not my own. The way to them was prepared by others. 

The fruit of my labours is not my own: for I am preparing the way for the achievements of another. 

Nor are my failures my own. They may spring from failure of another, but they are also compensated for by another’s achievement. 

Therefore the meaning of my life is not to be looked for merely in the sum total of my own achievements. It is seen only in the complete integration of my achievements and failures with the achievements and failures of my own generation, and society, and time.

No Man is an Island

Mohandas Gandhi: the kingdom of God is within you

The Kingdom of God is within us and that we can realise it not by saying, "Lord, Lord," but by doing God's will and work. Therefore if we wait for the Kingdom to come, as something coming from outside, we shall be sadly mistaken.

Do you know that there are thousands of villages where people are starving and which are on the brink of ruin? If we would listen to the voice of God, I assure you we would hear God say that we are taking God's name in vain if we do not think of the poor and help them. If you cannot render the help that they need, it is no use talking of service of God and service of the poor. Try to identify yourselves with the poor by actually helping them.

Thérèse de Lisieux: the kingdom is within you

I understand and I know from experience that: The kingdom of God is within you. 

Jesus has no need of books or teachers to instruct souls; He teaches without the noise of words. 

Never have I heard Him speak, but I feel that He is within me at each moment; He is guiding and inspiring me with what I must say and do. 

I find just when I need them certain lights that I had not seen until then, and it isn't most frequently during my hours of prayer that these are most abundant but rather in the midst of my daily occupations. 

The Story of a Soul

CS Lewis: longings

We want something else which can hardly be put into words – to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it. At present we are on the outside of the world, the wrong side of the door. We discern the freshness and purity of morning, but it does not make us fresh and pure. We cannot mingle with the splendours we see.

But all the leaves of the New Testament are rustling with the rumour that it will not always be so. Someday, God willing, we shall get in. When human souls have become as perfect in voluntary obedience as an inanimate creation is in its lifeless obedience, then we will put on its glory, or rather that greater glory of which Nature is only the first sketch.

For you must not think that I am putting forward any heathen fancy of being absorbed into Nature. Nature is mortal; we shall outlive her. When all the suns and nebulae have passed away, each one of you will still be alive. Nature is only the image, the symbol; but it is the symbol Scripture invites me to use. We are summoned to pass in through Nature, beyond her, into that splendour which she fitfully reflects.

Annie Dillard: are you really ready for Mass?

On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside of the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke?… It is madness to wear ladies hats straw hat and velvet hats to church; we should be wearing crash helmet! Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to the pews.

Teaching a Stone to Talk

Thérèse de Lisieux: little flowers

If a little flower could speak, it seems to me that it would tell us quite simply all that God has done for it, without hiding any of its gifts. It would not, under the pretext of humility, say that it was not pretty, or that it had not a sweet scent, that the sun had withered its petals, or the storm bruised its stem, if it knew that such were not the case.

... 

I understood that every flower created by Him is beautiful, that the brilliance of the rose and the whiteness of the lily do not lessen the perfume of the violet or the sweet simplicity of the daisy. I understood that if all the lowly flowers wished to be roses, nature would no longer be enamelled with lovely hues. And so it is in the world of souls, Our Lord's living garden.

Story of a Soul: The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux

Marianne Williamson: you must shine

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. 

We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?’ 

Actually, who are you not to be? 

You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. 

We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. 

And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

A Return to Love 

Henri Nouwen: chosen

First of all, you have to keep unmasking the world about you for what it is: manipulative, controlling, power-hungry, and, in the long run, destructive. The world tells you many lies about who you are, and you simply have to be realistic enough to remind yourself of this. 

Every time you feel hurt, offended, or rejected, you have to dare to say to yourself: "These feelings, strong as they may be, are not telling me the truth about myself. The truth, even though I cannot feel it right now, is that I am the chosen child of God, precious in God's eyes, called the Beloved from all eternity, and held safe in an everlasting belief."

Life of the Beloved: Spiritual Living in a Secular World

Bernadette Roberts: faith

Christianity is very mystical, and our most mystical gift, our most mystical experience is Faith. The truth is unbelievable, that is why we need faith.

Faith leads to understanding; understanding does not lead to faith."

... from a talk given at the Essence of Christian Mysticism retreat

Daniel O'Leary: the grace of our lives

Theologian Karl Rahner hears God whispering to us on the night before Christmas. "I am your life. I am your time.Tell that to everything that exists, everything that you are. Say only that one thing, and then it is Christmas for you. Say only 'You are here'. That is enough."

And like metal to a magnet it is this sacramental vision that is already drawing the world to the world of Pope Francis. And why is this? It is because with confident hands he is once again parting the veils of  the Temple for us, and we glimpse the miracle of what reality is and who we ourselves are, flawed but immortal diamonds reflecting the beauty of God.

in Tui Motu December 2014

Anthony De Mello: unintended consequences

The Ministry of Agriculture decreed that sparrows were a menace to crops and should be exterminated.

When this was done, hoards of insects that the sparrows would have eaten descended on the harvest and began to ravage the crops, whereupon the Ministry of Agriculture came up with the idea of costly pesticides.

The pesticides made the food expensive. They also made it a hazard to health. Too late it was discovered that it was the sparrows who, through feeding on the crops, managed to keep the food wholesome and inexpensive.

Heart of the Enlightened

Bernadette Roberts: grace

The way it goes is that God takes something from us and then waits for our reaction.  Usually He takes something we never even knew we had to give and this is because God works at the unconscious level, while we can only work at the conscious level or with what we know about ourselves.  So God's work is really undercover, for which reason we need absolute faith and trust in what we do not know or cannot see - ourselves or God.   

This is what the doctrine of Grace is all about; it affirms God's continuous work in us, a work we cannot see with the conscious mind and rarely experience.  This is why what can be done on the conscious level is nothing compared to God's work (Grace) on a wholly unconscious level. 

Altogether this means that what we give is not of great consequence; it is what God takes or consumes that is important.  So we have to be content with where we are NOW.  When we realize that God wants to take something from us (first on the unconscious level), then we cooperate by surrendering it, by letting it go. 

A Passage Through Self

Auguste Renoir: beauty remains

Ever since he was young, the painter Henri Matisse used to visit the great Renoir at his atelier every week. When Renoir was crippled with arthritis, Matisse began to visit him daily, taking food, paintbrushes and paint, always trying to convince the master that he worked too hard. He needed to rest a little.

One day, noting that each brush stroke made Renoir groan of pain, Matisse couldn’t stay silent: “Great master, your work is already vast and important. Why continue to torture yourself that way?”

“Very simple,” Renoir answered. “Beauty remains; pain ends up passing.”

Bernadette Roberts: common sense

We must always keep a distance or some doubt regarding our belief systems, and even all our divine experiences. We do this by remaining absolutely true, scathingly true, to what we honestly know and experience ourselves. We have to walk totally alone and follow only the inner guide, which guide is akin to common sense. My own mother felt that common sense was man's most divine faculty.

The temptation is to see our experiences in the light of those who have gone before – those on top of the pile, of course – but in this way the same errors are just passed down from one generation to another.

Personal Letter, 1987

Fred McFeely Rogers: the helpers

When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, 'Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping,' she once said. To this day, especially in times of disaster, I remember my mother's words and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers - so many caring people in this world.

Fred McFeely Rogers (Children's TV presenter "Mr. Rogers")

Paulo Coelho: do you feel useful?

Ask a flower in the field: ‘Do you feel useful? After all, you do nothing but produce the same flowers over and over?’
And the flower will answer: ‘I am beautiful, and beauty is my reason for living.’

Ask the river: ‘Do you feel useful, given that all you do is to keep flowing in the same direction?’
And the river will answer: ‘I’m not trying to be useful, I’m trying to be a river.’

Nothing in this world is useless in the eyes of God. Not a leaf from a tree falls, not a hair from your head, not even an insect dies because it was of no use. Everything has a reason to exist.

Even you, the person asking the question. ‘I’m useless’ is the answer you give yourself.

Soon that answer will poison you and you will die while still alive, even though you still walk, eat, sleep and try to have a little fun whenever possible.

Don’t try to be useful. Try to be yourself: that is enough, and that makes all the difference.

from Manuscript Found in Accra

Thomas Merton: at our center

At the centre of our being is a point of nothingness which is untouched by sin and by illusion, a point of pure truth, a point or spark which belongs entirely to God, which is never at our disposal, from which God disposes of our lives, which is inaccessible to the fantasies of our own mind or the brutalities of our own will. 

This little point of nothingness and of absolute poverty is the pure glory of God in us. It is so to speak His name written in us, as our poverty, as our indigence, as our dependence, as our sonship. It is like a pure diamond, blazing with the invisible light of heaven. It is in everybody, and if we could see it we would see these billions of points of light coming together in the face and blaze of a sun that would make all the darkness and cruelty of life vanish completely ... I have no programme for this seeing. It is only given. But the gate of heaven is everywhere.

Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander