Quotes about Openness

God is always bigger than the boxes we build for God, so we should not waste too much time protecting the boxes.

Don't ever come to church without coming as though it were the first time, as though it could be the best time, and as though it could be the last time.

The effort to see things without distortion takes something like courage and this courage is essential to the artist, who has to look at everything as though he saw it for the first time.

Certainty is missing the point entirely.

Gorgeous, amazing things come into our lives when we are paying attention: mangoes, grandnieces, Bach, ponds. This happens more often when we have as little expectation as possible. If you say, Well, that's pretty much what I thought I'd see, you are in trouble. At that point you have to ask yourself why you are even here. [...] Astonishing material and revelation appear in our lives all the time. Let it be. Unto us, so much is given. We just have to be open for business.

One of the immutable laws of being human is that the people who show up are the right people.

Astonishing material and revelation appear in our lives all the time. Let it be. Unto us, so much is given. We just have to be open for business.

As far as I can recall, none of the adults in my life ever once remembered to say, "Some people have a thick skin and you don't. Your heart is really open and that is going to cause pain, but that is an appropriate response to this world. The cost is high, but the blessing of being compassionate is beyond your wildest dreams. However, you're not going to feel that a lot in seventh grade. Just hang on.

We have to make ourselves available to one another, or we can't experience goodness. It's not so much us seeking God, tracking Her down with a butterfly net; it's agreeing to be found. The Old Girl reaches out to everyone and wants to include us in this beautiful, weird, sometimes anguished life. All people: go figure.

My true religion is kindness. That is a great moral position - practicing kindness, keeping one's heart open in the presence of suffering.

Rilke wrote: "I am not saying that we should love death, but rather that we should love life so generously, without picking and choosing, that we automatically include it (life's other half) in our love. This is what actually happens in the great expansiveness of love, which cannot be stopped or constricted. It is only because we exclude it that death becomes more and more foreign to us and

There is so much mercy around us and in us, so much available to us if we just have the eyes and intention to see it.