Time and tide…
· 31 December 2005
Time and tide wait for no man. A pompous and self-satisfied proverb, and was true for a billion years; but in our day of electric wires and water-ballast we turn it around: Man waits not for time nor tide.
Quotes for December 2005
He did not say…
· 28 December 2005
He did not say: You will not be assailed, you will not be belabored, you will not be disquieted, but he did said: You will not be overcome.
Crucified with Christ…
· 27 December 2005
Two criminals were crucified with Christ. One was saved; do not despair. One was not; do not presume.
Grace touches nature…
· 26 December 2005
Sacraments, like the Incarnation itself, constitute physical points at which the eternal touches time, or the unseen touches the seen, or grace touches nature.
So this is Christmas…
· 25 December 2005
So this is Christmas, and what have you done?
Another year over, a new one just begun…
The Christmas heart is a giving heart…
· 24 December 2005
Let us remember that the Christmas heart is a giving heart, a wide open heart that thinks of others first. The birth of the baby Jesus stands as the most significant event in all history, because it has meant the pouring into a sick world of the healing medicine of love which has transformed all manner of hearts for almost two thousand years… Underneath all the bulging bundles is this beating Christmas heart.
Love your neighbor…
· 23 December 2005
“Love your Neighbor as Yourself” is a Trinitarian ethic. In the Holy Trinity, neighbor is self.
What you are…
· 22 December 2005
What you are is God’s gift to you. What you make of it is your gift to God.
But don’t let that stress you out too much. He’ll love you no matter what you give Him.
Gift…
· 21 December 2005
All is gift. Your next breath is gift. Reading this sentence is gift. Your next thought is gift. What you feel in your heart at this very moment, whether it is happiness or sadness or some thing else, is gift. You are a gift. So, are you going to keep the gift, or give it to someone?
We look for visions of heaven…
· 20 December 2005
We look for visions of heaven and we never dream that all the time God is in the commonplace things and people around us.
Find your own mountain…
· 19 December 2005
The key then is to find your own mountain, otherwise you will be competing with people who are not even in your event, and running up against the ‘shoulds’ and ‘oughts’ of that world, and the inevitable frustration and depression and feelings of failure. A person can be complete or incomplete, but one thing is sure, he cannot be someone else.
By which existence is transmitted…
· 18 December 2005
…So it is with human beings, with the man and the woman who use the sexual urge in sexual intercourse and enter as it were into the cosmic stream by which existence is transmitted.
It happened to my brother…
· 17 December 2005
She won’t be coming down here with the spray. She’ll be coming down here with a shovel. It happened to my brother. Split him right down the middle. Now I have two half-brothers.
It is not happiness that makes us grateful…
· 16 December 2005
In our daily lives, we must see that it is not happiness that makes us grateful, but gratefulness that makes us happy.
« πλ | Joy, Thanksgiving »
The lifetime assigned to us is…
· 15 December 2005
The lifetime assigned to us is the short moment in which what is meant to be comes to be.
Happiness is the way…
· 14 December 2005
There is no way to happiness. Happiness is the way.
Wisdom is ofttimes…
· 13 December 2005
Wisdom is ofttimes nearer when we stoop, than when we soar.
Point of spiritual practice is not…
· 12 December 2005
The important point of spiritual practice is not to try to escape your life, but to face it—exactly and completely.
« πλ | Identity, Spirituality »
Like a piece of gold…
· 11 December 2005
We each have a self—an image developed over time. It is a mysterious fusion of ego, personality, and memory that everyone amasses between infancy and early childhood. Being completely personal, your ‘self’ is also completely isolated and separate from every other ‘self’. Yet, if you saw yourself truly, you would no longer identify with this haphazard, ramshackle thing, your self. In truth, every person is like a piece of gold. If you were a gold ring, you could say “I am a ring”, but this is a temporary shape (your self-image). In truth you are just gold - that is your essence, no matter how the shape changes.
The trouble with Westerners…
· 10 December 2005
The trouble with Westerners is that they want to witness their own enlightenment.
« πλ | Observation »
Keep your eyes to the…
· 8 December 2005
Keep your eyes to the sunshine and you cannot see the shadows.
The miracle of a sunrise…
· 7 December 2005
We can only appreciate the miracle of a sunrise if we have waited in the darkness.
Love is existential, experiential…
· 6 December 2005
[Jesus] asks us to come, little by little, inviting us to come closer. It is fraught with failure and we experience it in our human relations. Love is existential, experiential, you can’t learn it from a definition from a book, even Scripture. It has to be made concrete, in the harshness of saying ‘yes’ amid the chaos, as Mary and John did at the foot of the Cross. A relationship with God is not behavioral, moral in the sense of “I’m a good person”. It is relational, an invitation and beckoning to come nearer.
Human nature to be threatened by…
· 5 December 2005
It is human nature to be threatened by holiness since we have constructed a world and are comfortable with it as it is.
Is the Internet real fellowship?
· 4 December 2005
Kneeling, on a kneeler made of oak, in front of a priest with trembling hands handing you the very Body and Blood of Christ which you taste and touch and smell is different than mouse-clicking your way through reality… Is [the Internet] real fellowship? No, I don’t think so. I view it more as [a tool for] co-laboring.
Tradition may be defined as…
· 3 December 2005
Tradition may be defined as an extension of the franchise. Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about.
Between the stream and the rock…
· 2 December 2005
In the confrontation between the stream and the rock, the stream always wins, not through strength, but through persistence.
« πλ | Character, Motivation »
![[Jerusalem Cross with Heart]](http://cowpi.com/journal/grafiks/jerusalem-cross-heart.gif "Jerusalem Cross with Heart")