Quotes about Transcendence

Your life is something opaque, not transparent, as long as you look at it in an ordinary human way. But if you hold it up against the light of God's goodness, it shines and turns transparent, radiant and bright. And then you ask yourself in amazement: Is this really my own life I see before me?

We are more than just flesh and bones. There's a certain spiritual nature and something of the mind that we can't measure. We can't find it. With all our sophisticated equipment, we cannot monitor or define it, and yet it's there.

Every natural fact is a symbol of some spiritual fact.

What we think of man and God, of sin and salvation, is partly prompted by the comparative comforts or discomforts in which we live. It is a very sobering reflection on the lack of transcendence of the human spirit over the flux of historical change.

Metaphor is the only possible language available to religion because it alone is honest about Mystery.

God for us, God alongside us, God within us.

You know after any truly initiating experience that you are part of a much bigger whole. Life is not about you henceforward, but you are about life.

The New Testament called it salvation or enlightenment, the Twelve Step Program called it recovery. The trouble is that most Christians pushed this great liberation off into the next world, and many Twelve Steppers settled for mere sobriety from a substance instead of a real transformation of the self. We have all been the losers, as a result—waiting around for "enlightenment at gunpoint" (death) instead of enjoying God's banquet much earlier in life.

When I am not king, then THE Kingdom has its best chance of breaking through.

All Mature Spirituality Is About Letting Go

That is true for both liberals and conservatives: the liberals deny the vertical arm of the cross (transcendence and tradition); the conservatives deny the horizontal (breadth and inclusivity).

In response to their question "When will the Kingdom come?" he tells them that Ultimate Reality is "not here and not there," taking us away from our typical attachment to time. "For the Ultimate Reality is 'within you'!" (Luke 17:21).