Quotes about Growth

Whereas discipline without discipleship leads to rigid formalism, discipleship without discipline ends in sentimental romanticism.

Those you have deeply loved become part of you. The longer you live, there will always be more people to be loved by you and to become part of your inner community. The wider your inner community becomes, the more easily you will recognize your own brothers and sisters in the strangers around you.

Jesus promises a life in which we increasingly have to stretch out our hands and be led into places where we would rather not go.

Thus, our brokenness can become a gateway to new life.

The world says, "When you were young you were dependent and could not go where you wanted, but when you grow old you will be able to make your own decisions, go your own way, and control your own destiny." But Jesus has a different vision of maturity: It is the ability and willingness to be led where you would rather not go.

I reached a healthy place in which I was able to stop projecting my needs on another human being. We both came to understand that each of us is limited in our capacity to be for another what is needed, and learned to forgive each other for not being God.

A spiritual life without discipline is impossible. Discipline is the other side of discipleship. The practice of a spiritual discipline makes us more sensitive to the small, gentle voice of God.

Grateful people learn to celebrate even amid life's hard and harrowing memories because they know that pruning is no mere punishment, but preparation.

Community as discipline is the effort to create a free and empty space among people where together we can practice true obedience.

The main problem of service is to be the way without being "in the way." And if there are any tools, techniques and skills to be learned they are primarily to plow the field, to cut the weeds and to clip the branches, that is, to take away the obstacles for real growth and development.

she said, Whether you are the younger son or the elder son, you have to realize that you are called to become the father.

Friendship and love cannot develop in the form of an anxious clinging to each other.