Quotes about Reflection

Our first task is to dispel this vague, murky feeling of discontent and to look critically at how we are living our lives. This requires honesty, courage, and trust. We must honestly unmask and courageously confront our many self-deceptive games. We must trust that our honesty and courage will lead us not to despair, but to a new heaven and a new earth.

Gazing is probably the best word to touch the core of Eastern spirituality. Whereas St. Benedict, who has set the tone for the spirituality of the West, calls us first of all to listen, the Byzantine fathers focus on gazing.

On the one hand the younger son realizes that he has lost the dignity of his sonship, but at the same time that sense of lost dignity makes him also aware that he is indeed the son who had dignity to lose, (pp. 49).

In and through solitude we do not move away from people. On the contrary, we move closer to them through compassionate ministry.

To love and work for the glory of God cannot remain an idea about which we think once in a while. It must become an interior, unceasing doxology.

In solitude we become aware that our worth is not the same as our usefulness." - Out of Solitude

For a Christian is only a Christian when he unceasingly asks critical questions of the society in which he lives and continuously stresses the necessity for conversion, not only of the individual but also of the world.

Becoming the Beloved means letting the truth of our Belovedness become enfleshed in everything we think, say or do.

"Praying at all times" has come to mean "dwelling in the house of God all the days of our lives."

Your whole life is filled with losses, endless losses. And every time there are losses there are choices to be made. You choose to live your losses as passages to anger, blame, hatred, depression, and resentment, or you choose to let these losses be passages to something new, something wider, and deeper. The question is not how to avoid loss and make it not happen, but how to choose it as a passage, as an exodus to greater life and freedom.

The great challenge is living your wounds through instead of thinking them through. It is better to cry than to worry, better to feel your wounds deeply than to understand them, better to let them enter into your silence than to talk about them.

People who read your ideas tend to think that your writings reflect your life.