Quotes about Understanding

What Richard does is more like what Jesus did when he spoke in parables: He takes you to see from one angle, and then backs up and brings you to see from another angle, and then another, and then another, until a whole new way of seeing begins to dawn on you.

God never intended most human beings to become philosophers or theologians, but God does want all humans to represent the very Sympathy and Empathy of God.

Just the existence of a single mentally challenged or mentally ill person should make us change any of our theories about the necessity of some kind of correct thinking as the definition of "salvation." Yet we have a history of excluding and torturing people who do not "think" right.

God never intended most human beings to become philosophers or theologians, but God does want all humans to represent the very Sympathy and Empathy of God. And it's okay if it takes a while to get there.

God, however, forgives even immature religion, and those who know God learn to do the same.

Just because you do not have the right word for God does not mean you are not having the right experience.

For Scotus, as for Bonaventure, the Trinity is the absolute beginning point—and ending point too. Outpouring Love is the inherent shape of the universe, and when we love, only then do we fully exist in this universe. We do not need to "understand" what is happening, or who God is, before we can live in love. The will to love precedes any need to fully understand what we are doing, the Franciscan School would say.

The great commandment is not thou shalt be right. The great commandment is to be in love.

pride. If there's too much "I know," it will lead to illusion and ignorance. Isn't that ironic? Jesus says, "The person who says 'I know,' is precisely the blind one" (John 9:41).

And to be fully honest, I think your heart needs to be broken, and broken open, at least once to have a heart at all or to have a heart for others.

mystery isn't something that you cannot understand -- it is something that you can endlessly understand!

But it takes us much longer to discover "the task within the task," as I like to call it: what we are really doing when we are doing what we are doing.