Quotes from Ruth Haley Barton

The struggle is real because the danger is real. It is the danger of living the whole of our life as one long defense against the reality of our condition.

Discernment is first of all a habit, a way of seeing that eventually permeates our whole life. It is the journey from spiritual blindness (not seeing God anywhere or seeing him only where we expect to see him) to spiritual sight (finding God everywhere, especially where we least expect it).

The purpose of journeying together in spiritual friendship and spiritual community (whether there are just two of you or whether you are in a small group) is to listen to one another's desire for God, to nurture that desire in each other and to support one another in seeking a way of life that is consistent with that desire.

One thing we can know for sure is that when we are confessing our sin to God but not to the people around us in ordinary, nitty-gritty life, there is not much real spiritual transformation going on

Most of us are more tired than we know at the soul level. We are teetering on the brink of dangerous exhaustion, and we cannot do anything else until we have gotten some rest...we can't really engage [any spiritual disciplines] until solitude becomes a place of rest for us rather than another place for human striving and hard work.

We are starved for quiet, to hear the sound of sheer silence that is the presence of God himself.

Psalm 46: 10 tells us there is a kind of knowing that comes in silence and not in words-but first we must be still. The Hebrew word translated "Be still" literally means "Let go of your grip.

Parker Palmer observes, "A leader is a person who must take special responsibility for what's going on inside him or her self, inside his or her consciousness, lest the act of leadership create more harm than good.

As Robert Mulholland says: "Our cross is the point of our unlikeness to the image of Christ, where we must die to self in order to be raised to God into the wholeness of life in the image of Christ. . . . So the process of being conformed to the image of Christ takes place right there at that point of our unlikeness to Christ.

The great illusion of leadership is to think that man can be led out of the desert by someone who has never been there.

Because we do not rest we lose our way.... Poisoned by the hypnotic belief that good things come only through unceasing determination and tireless effort, we can never truly rest. And for want of rest our lives are in danger.

We bind ourselves to each other in times of strength so that in moments of weakness we do not become unbound.

being angry is not the same thing as being called.

Only those who have been brave enough to ride their own monsters of anger and greed, jealousy and narcissism, fear and violence all the way down to the bottom will find a truer energy with which to lead.

Heal our inner sight, O God, that we may know the difference between good and evil. Open our eyes that we may see what is true and what is false. Restore us to wisdom that we may be well in our souls, Restore us to wisdom that we and our world may be well.[2]

This self is freer, because it knows itself to be finally and ultimately held safely in a Love that is unchangeable and real.

True love consists in this, that two solitudes protect and border and salute each other.

Sabbath keeping is the primary discipline that helps us live within the limits of our humanity and to honor God as our Creator. It is the key to a life lived in sync with the rhythms that God himself built into our world.

So—why do we need a covenant? Because a written covenant makes our commitment real on a level that mere conversation does not. It provides a way for the group to claim shared ownership for their behavior because it contains detailed guidelines that help the group function together in agreed-upon ways.

And as Donald Capps so aptly points out, "Since our churches have taken on many of the characteristics of bureaucracies, it is not surprising that clergy are sometimes rewarded, not punished for their narcissistic behaviors.

God, gather me5 to be with you as you are with me. Keep me in touch with myself, with my needs, my anxieties, my angers, my pains, my corruptions, that I may claim them as my own rather than blame them on someone else. O Lord, deepen my wounds into wisdom; shape my weaknesses into compassion; gentle my envy into enjoyment, my fear into trust, my guilt into honesty. O God, gather me to be with you as you are with me.

Truly, the best thing any of us have to bring to leadership is our own transforming selves.

Holy One, there is something I wanted to tell you, but there have been errands to run, bills to pay, meetings to attend, washing to do ... and I forget what it is I wanted to say to you, and forget what I am about or why. Oh God, don't forget me please, for the sake of Jesus Christ.

good. Over time, as we surrender ourselves to new life rhythms, they help us to surrender old behaviors, attitudes and practices so that we can be shaped by new ones.