Quotes from Roland Merullo

If Christ's message could be distilled down to one line, that line would have to do with kindness and inclusiveness, not rules and divisiveness.

It doesn't take a majority to change a society, or a faith. Only a small minority that yells, threatens, kills, that is willing to do anything to prove to themselves that they're right.

A strange thing, he thought, the way the human mind could form false systems of belief and cling to them in the face of the laws of love and the certainty of death.

that girl was not treated well, and when anyone is hurt like that - especially a child - the hurt burrows down inside and makes a kind of museum there, with images of the bad times displayed on every wall. Some people try to forget the museum exits and keep their mind occupied with drink or drugs or food, or by staying busy with work or they chase one kind of excitement after another, while memories fester there in the dark.

to me, enlightenment is a big shift inside your eyes, a different way to use your mind so you can understand some of God, some of Jesus. But it is maybe not one shift, but many small shifts. You change your spiritual condition - by prayer, by meditation, by the way you live, the way you decide to think, by the lessons you learn in living this life with a good intention - and then, when this happens, after a long times or a short times, the way you see the world changes.

What difference makes what you believe? What happens will happen anyway, exactly the same, no matter what you believe. What you do makes the important part. What you do.

All difficulties in this life, every moment of difficulty, come from the distance between what is and what we want to be.

that if she clears her mind down to the deepest level then three things will happen: she'll never be afraid; it will be easier to love people; and it will be easier to die.

What difference makes what you believe? What happens will happen anyway, exactly same, no matter what you believe. What you do makes the important part, what you do." "But

It's like the difference between a kid who goes to school and learns and a kid who goes to school and learns and comes home to parents who are reading to her and talking to her about the world, showing her things, teaching by their actions.

I came to be emulated. That's what people didn't get. Followed, as in being an example, as in making your interior world resemble mine.

some point you had to risk the ridicule of the mob, of your own internalized voices, and try to see clearly what had been set in front of you in this life, and try to act on that as bravely and honestly as you could, no matter what kind of rules you'd previously been living by.

Without really intending to, without really thinking about where it might lead, I said, "How does one get one's mind clean?" That is the very best question, my friend. The answer is a simple answer, but very hard also: Live a good life. Help people. Meditate. Live another good life. Meditate some more. Don't hurt. Don't hurt. Don't hurt.

The real work was the identification of those aspects of yourself that led to what he called "the negative emotions"—anger, envy, bitterness, greed, cynicism, hatred and the like—things that poured hurt into an already overfull world.

Though we do not wholly believe it yet, the interior life is a real life, and the intangible dreams of people have a tangible effect on the world. —James Baldwin

Svakoga dana", re?e, "nudi vam se izbor ho?ete li i?i ovim ili onim putem. Možete se ljutiti ili ne morate. Možete biti pohlepni i ne morate. Možete nekoga mrziti i ne morate. Možete birati ho?ete li previše jesti ili ne?ete, ho?ete li pretjerati u vo?enju ljubavi ili ne?ete. Uvijek postoji izbor.

Because to live without the cup means you must feel the world as the world really is. People make the armor from their smartness, or their anger, or their quiet, or their fear, or their being busy, or their being nice. Some people make it from a big show, always talking. Some make it by being very important. Many people do not make it, though, and those people can begin to see the world as it is.

Now, at a point when the entire world seems mired in violence and cynicism, when the Church is shrinking, the environment being poisoned, when good souls are giving up hope, when greed and bitterness seem to be gaining at the expense of kindness and compassion - now, I believe, we have been given a divine help.

There's about six original people in the world. The rest of everybody else are copycats. When it comes to religion and politics, ninety percent of people do what their parents did and think they made up their minds for themselves. They watch the news to see what the latest trends are.

it was the nature of war to ruin the earth and to separate people, to keep their fates unknown to the ones who loved them, and to fill the minds of the living with various kinds of fear, regret, shame, and anger, and deprive them of all but the most fleeting moments of peace.

Casa Ministieri in the North End and presenting me with the entire collected works of Dostoevsky, a rare edition, which I kept on a shelf at the office but hadn't had a chance to look into yet….

I like that kind of thing. I like warmth and uncalled-for kindness, the small unnoticed generosities that speckle the meanness of the world.

un conforto scintillante

There is...a golden alpine field within each of you, a place where you are bathed in approval, not because of anything particular you have done, but simply because of your own sacred nature. If you had a president who could show you the route to that place, what a difference it would make in your lives, and in the culture of the world!