Quotes about Reflection

There is a deeper voice of God, which you must learn to hear and obey in the second half of life.

Just do it better yourself and don't waste any time criticizing others or the past! This, in fact, purifies your own commitment and motivation.

One of the great surprises is that humans come to full consciousness precisely by shadowboxing, facing their own contradictions, and making friends with their own mistakes and failings. People who have had no inner struggles are invariably both superficial and uninteresting.

We cannot heal what we do not first acknowledge.

The ability to stand back and calmly observe my inner dramas, without rushing to judgment, is foundational for spiritual seeing.

Am I willing to walk into the wilds of my interior life without knowing what I'll find?

JULIAN OF NORWICH AND THE FIRST

We need to hold together all of the stages of life, and for some strange, wonderful reason, it all becomes quite "simple" as we approach our later years.

To stay on the surface of anything is invariably to miss its message—even the surface meaning of our sinfulness.

To keep the mind space open, we need some form of contemplative or meditation practice. This has been the most neglected in recent centuries, substituting the mere reciting and "saying" of prayers, which is not the same as a contemplative mind, and often merely confirms us in our superior or fear-based system.

Before you speak of peace, you must first have it in your heart. —St. Francis of Assisi13

Of course, to be honest and consistent, one must ask if "church family" is not also a family that one has to eventually "hate" in this very same way, and with the same scandal involved as hating the natural family.