Quotes about Reflection

The late Dag Hammarskjöld, once the secretary general of the United Nations, suggested that we have become adept at exploring outer space, but we have not developed similar skills in exploring our own personal inner spaces. He wrote, "The longest journey of any person is the journey inward."4 Most of us feel much more equipped to manipulate objects, control situations, and "do" things than to take that very long journey inward. Painful Honesty

As the wise, old Abbot Moses said when a brother came to him for a good word, "Go, sit in your cell [a monk's room], and your cell will teach you everything.

If the opening chapters of Genesis portray God as a creative artist, then it only stands to reason that the people he made in his image will also be artists. Art is an imaginative activity, and in the act of creating, we reflect the mind of our Maker.

Life's pretty funny when you're objectively on the outside looking at it.

Faith means believing in advance what will only make sense in reverse.

If prayer stands as the place where God and human beings meet, then I must learn about prayer. Most of my struggles in the Christian life circle around the same two themes: why God doesn't act the way we want God to, and why I don't act the way God wants me to. Prayer is the precise point where those themes converge.

It is while you are patiently toiling at the little tasks of life that the meaning and shape of the great whole of life dawn on you.

The true way to be humble is not to stoop until you are smaller than yourself, but to stand at your real height against some higher nature that will show you what the real smallness of your greatness is.

If man is man and God is God, to live without prayer is not merely an awful thing: it is an infinitely foolish thing.

Each of us has an inner room where we can visit to be cleansed of fear-based thoughts and feelings. This room, the holy of holies, is a sanctuary of light.

Art is often defined as a famous masterpiece in a gallery, and we are meant to visit the work and view it to appreciate it. But that is not all there is.

Writing about joyful experiences for just three days can improve people's moods and decrease their visits to health centers a full three months later.