“In a world so torn apart by rivalry, anger, and hatred, we have the privileged vocation to be living signs of a love that can bridge all divisions and heal all wounds” (Henri Nouwen, Bread for the Journey).

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“For Christians, love is a universal obligation. We practice it toward all, believers and nonbelievers. Love as a social ethic puts into common practice what is right, just, and noble. It upholds freedom, dignity, and life as inalienable rights. Love is “as love does”(Rose Marie Berger in Sojourners, September-October, 2018).

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“There will come one day a personal and direct touch from God when every tear and perplexity, every oppression and distress, every suffering and pain, and wrong and justice will have a complete and ample and overwhelming explanation” (Oswald Chambers in My Utmost for  His Highest).  Recommended by Barbara Nyland.

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“I do believe that deep down somewhere in the center of ourselves we long to command our life from a place of radical simplicity. We hunger for a life that’s free of mixed motives and competing desires, we want to act and speak from a single, solitary place, from some subterranean aquifer of strength. The unencumbered life is not isolation and deprivation. It’s singleness and right stewardship. It’s a holy stewardship” (Jonathan Bailey in jonathanrbailey.com).

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[Everyone has] “an unquenchable fire, a restlessness, a longing, a disquiet, a hunger, a loneliness, a gnawing nostalgia, a wildness that cannot be tamed, a congenital all-encompassing ache that lies at the center of human experience and is the ultimate force that drives everything else . . . Spirituality is, ultimately, about what we do with that desire, What we do with our longings, both in terms of handling the pain and the hope they bring us, that is our spirituality. . . . Augustine says “you have make us for yourself, Lord and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.”  Spirituality is what we do with our unrest” (Ronald Rolheiser in The Holy Longing pgs. 4-5).

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“The sinful worship of Mammon does not consist in eating and drinking and wearing clothes, nor in looking for a way to make a living and working at it; for the needs of this life and of the body make food and clothing a requirement. But the sin consists in being concerned about it and making it the reliance and confidence of your heart. Concern does not stick to clothing or to food, but directly to the heart, which cannot let a thing go and has to hang on to it. . . .  Thus “being concerned” means clinging to it with your heart. I am not concerned about anything that my heart does not think about, but I must have a heart for anything about which I am concerned” (Martin Luther, quoted in Spiritual Classics, edited by Richard Foster and Emilie Griffin).