Quotes about Understanding

We find a place where people give one another grace.

Relate to people as a conqueror and they will hide their real nature from you. Violence is the brother and distrust the sister of this way of life.

If you see in me more than my function or job, then I can slowly communicate to you on a deeper level. I can become a person to you.

Pain suffered alone feels very different from pain suffered alongside another. Even when the pain stays, we know how great the difference if another draws close, if another shares with us in it.

Spiritual direction as Henri understood it can be defined as a relationship initiated by a spiritual seeker who finds a mature person of faith willing to pray and respond with wisdom and understanding to his or her questions about how to live spiritually in a world of ambiguity and distraction.

The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing... not healing, not curing... that is a friend who cares.

When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives means the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand.

We tend to be compassionate to the extent that we have suffered the Passion in our own lives.

Forgiveness is the name of love practiced among people who love poorly.

Most people carrying heavy loads begin to doubt themselves & their own worth. We lighten their loads as we are patient with their weaknesses & celebrate whatever goodness we can see in them. The Lord does that.

Friends... they cherish one another's hopes. They are kind to one another's dreams.

Books must be read as deliberately and reservedly as they were written.