Quotes about Transformation

If I can recognize that all suffering and crucifixion (divine, planetary, human, animal) is "one body" and will one day be transmuted into the "one body" of cosmic resurrection (Philippians 3:21), I can at least live without going crazy or being permanently depressed.

Salvation is not sin perfectly avoided, as the ego would prefer; but in fact, salvation is sin turned on its head and used in our favor.

There is no straight line to Goodness, to Love, or to God. And thank God, Grace is always retroactive.

We become what we are willing to see.

The reason we do anything one more time is because the last time did not really satisfy us deeply. As English poet W.H. Auden put it in "Apropos of Many Things": "We would rather be ruined than changed. We would rather die in our dread than climb the cross of the present and let our illusions die.

God resists our evil and conquers it with good, or how could God ask the same of us?! Think about that. God shocks and stuns us into love. God does not love us if we change, God loves us so that we can change. Only love effects true inner transformation, not duress, guilt, shunning, or social pressure. Love is not love unless it is totally free. Grace is not grace unless it is totally free. You would think Christian people would know that by now, but it is still a secret of the soul.

Only love effects true inner transformation, not duress, guilt, shunning, or social pressure.

Before transformation, sin is any kind of moral mistake; afterward, sin is a mistake about who you are and whose you are.

This marvelous anthology of books and letters called the Bible is all for the sake of astonishment! It's for divine transformation (theosis), not intellectual or "small-self" coziness.

As Bill Plotkin, a wise guide, puts it, many of us learn to do our "survival dance," but we never get to our actual "sacred dance.

A.A. is the only group I know that is willing and honest enough to just tell people up front, "You are damn selfish!" Or, "Until you get beyond your massive narcissism you are never going to grow up.

The Crucified and Risen Christ uses the mistakes of the past to create a positive future, a future of redemption instead of retribution. He does not eliminate or punish the mistakes. He uses them for transformative purposes.