Quotes about Connection

I felt that in my strange new friends and in certain new books, I was meeting my other half. Some people wanted to get rich or famous, but my friends and I wanted to get real. We wanted to get deep. (Also, I suppose, we wanted to get laid.) I devoured books like a person taking vitamins, afraid that otherwise I would remain this gelatinous narcissist, with no possibility of ever becoming thoughtful, of ever being taken seriously.

As the mystics would have us believe, "As above, so below, as within, so without, as the universe, so the soul.

It turns out that welcome is solidarity. We're glad you're here, and we're with you. This whole project called you being alive, you finding joy? Well, we're in on that.

Whether it's Mount Sinai, a pasture, a library, the creek down the road, aliveness (or whatever you want to call it) the song is above us, around us, within us. We transcend the incessant and wearying yammer of bullshit. Transcendence means you go from judgment, separation from life and yourself, to feeling at one-ish with the universe. We hook into something bigger than we are, truer than the self-serving stories we make up about life and ourselves.

Hello, Dearest. I'm so glad it's you!" I've come to believe that this is how God feels when I pray, even at my least attractive.

All good teachers know that inside a remote or angry person is a soul, way deep down, capable of a full human life--a person with hope of a better story, who has allies, and can read... To me, teaching is a holy calling, especially with students less likely to succeed. It's the gift not only of not giving up on people, but of even figuring out where to begin.

So I practice the fifth Get: I get in touch with others. I tell my partner the truth about how crunchy I feel inside, how unevolved or vindictive. Or I pick up the three-hundred-pound phone and tell a close friend. Or I get in the car and head to where one of my precious communities has gathered. This might be a park, my church, my Sunday school room; with hikers, sober people, townsfolk.

How come you can hear a chord, and then another chord, and then your heart breaks open?

We religious types, even those who detest organized religion, pray for deeper faith and a greater sense of oneness with God.

Look around and see whom you can serve. This will fill you.

We won't love you if you're perfect.

Leaders lead when they take positions, when they connect with their tribes, and when they help the tribe connect to itself.