Quotes from David Steindl-Rast

At a certain pitch of religious experience, the heart just wants to sing; it breaks into song. Paradoxically, you could say when the silence finds its fullness, it comes to word.

After all, how could I be a person if Ultimate Reality were impersonal?

Now think of a situation in which something becomes meaningful to you. What is there to grasp? What is there to keep under control? That is not the idea. You will find yourself using expressions in which you are perfectly passive or at least more passive. "Responsive" is really the word, but you are more passive than in a situation in which you are accomplishing a purpose. You will say, "This really did something to me.

"The Holy Spirit . . . wants to flow through us and realize all these wonderful possibilities in the world - if we only open ourselves and allow it to happen."

Gratefulness is not just saying "thank you." It's acting. It is being yourself. A mother is grateful, shows gratefulness by mothering, a scientist by doing science.

Gratefulness is the inner gesture of giving meaning to our life by receiving life as gift.

If you learn to respond as if it's the first day in your life and the very last day, then you will have spent this day very well.

What brings fulfillment is gratefulness, the simple response of our heart to this life in all its fullness.

Gratefulness is the great task, the how of our spiritual work, because, rightly understood, it re-roots us.

Wherever we may come alive, that is the area in which we are spiritual.

The artist ought to know that a thousand painful deaths always lead into greater life.

There's opportunity upon opportunity to be grateful; that's what life is.

Only gratefulness, in the form of limitless openness for surprise, lays hold of the fullness of life in hope.

Grateful living makes life meaningful and full of joy.

The root of joy is gratefulness...It is not joy that makes us grateful; it is gratitude that makes us joyful.

The greatest gift one can give is thanksgiving. In giving gifts, we give what we can spare, but in giving thanks we give ourselves.

The challenge is to learn to respond immediately to whatever it is time for. Not to wonder whether you have time for it or whether you like it, but simply to respond when it is time.

Gratefulness is that fullness of life for which we are all thirsting.

At any moment the fully present mind can shatter time and burst into Now.

Through people that I did know or through things that I did touch, I am connected with everything that ever was and everything that ever will be. Everything hangs together with everything.

Love is saying yes to belonging.

Gratefulness has the courage to trust and so overcomes fear.

Everything is a gift. The degree to which we are awake to this truth is a measure of our gratefullness, and gratefullness is a measure of our aliveness.

The experience of love and the experience of death destroy the illusion of our self-sufficiency. The two are closely connected, and to become fully human we must experience both of them.