Quotes from Ernest Kurtz

CLASSIC American axiom warns: "Don't try to think yourself into a new way of acting: Act yourself into a new way of thinking.

The problem with organized religions, Bill Wilson once explained, "is their claim how confoundedly right all of them are.

Without imperfection [...] there would be no story.

But somewhere along the way our ability to tell (and to listen to) stories was lost. As life speeded up, as the possibility of both communication and annihilation became ever more instantaneous, people came to have less tolerance for that which comes only over time. The demand for perfection and the craving for ever more control over a world that paradoxically seemed ever more out of control eventually bred impatience with story.

The difference between a "winner" and a "whiner" is the sound of the "I." ANONYMOUS

Life hurts—where is there growth without suffering?

Listen! Listen to stories! For spirituality itself is conveyed by stories, which use words in ways that go beyond words to speak the language of the heart. Especially in a spirituality of imperfection, a spirituality of not having all the answers, stories convey the mystery and the miracle - and the adventure - of being alive.

Seek God in and through meetings with others and the world. Seek the other as unique and different, as "other," for behind the other as human partner stands the eternal and transcendent other, the eternal Thou, God.

Once we accept the common denominator of our own imperfection, once we begin to put into practice the belief that imperfection is the reality we have most in common with all other people, then the defenses that deceive us begin to fall away, and we can begin to see ourselves and others as we all really are.

When we accept ourselves in all our weakness, flaws, and failings, we can begin to fulfill an even more challenging responsibility: accepting the weakness, limitations, and mixed-up-ed-ness of those we love and respect. Then and only then, it seems, do we become able to accept the weakness, defects, and shortcomings of those we find it difficult to love.

[A] journey becomes a pilgrimage as we discover, day by day, that the distance traveled is less important than the experience gained.