Quotes about Growth

It is not that suffering or failure might happen, or that it will only happen to you if you are bad (which is what religious people often think), or that it will happen to the unfortunate, or to a few in other places, or that you can somehow by cleverness or righteousness avoid it. No, it will happen, and to you! Losing, failing, falling, sin, and the suffering that comes from those experiences—all of this is a necessary and even good part of the human journey.

If you try to assert wisdom before people have themselves walked it, be prepared for much resistance, denial, push-back, and verbal debate.

God brings us—through failure—from unconsciousness to ever-deeper consciousness and conscience.

The bottom line of the Gospel is that most of us have to hit some kind of bottom before we even start the real spiritual journey.

It is no surprise that the first and always unwelcome message of male initiation rites is LIFE — IS — HARD.

We do not handle suffering. Suffering handles us.

We do not think ourselves into a new way of living. We live ourselves into new ways of thinking.

Frankly, Jesus came to show us how to be human much more than how to be spiritual, and the process still seems to be in its early stages.

People who have been initiated broke through in what felt like breaking down.

St. Bonaventure (1221—1274) taught that to work up to loving God, start by loving the very humblest and simplest things, and then move up from there.

Human maturity is neither offensive nor defensive; it is finally able to accept that reality is what it is.

If there is such a thing as human perfection, it seems to emerge precisely from how we handle the imperfection that is everywhere, especially our own. What a clever place for God to hide holiness, so that only the humble and earnest will find it! A "perfect" person ends up being one who can consciously forgive and include imperfection rather than one who thinks he or she is totally above and beyond imperfection.