Quotes About Unity

When you are concerned with either attacking or defending, manipulating or resisting, pushing or pulling, you cannot be contemplative. When you are preoccupied with enemies, you are always dualistic. You can take that as axiomatic: in most cases, you become a mirror image of both what you oppose and what you love (see Ephesians 5:14).

Over time, we move beyond a dualistic view of God being "up there" while we are "down here" to a vision where God is up there, down here, in others, and within ourselves, all at the same time. "We are all en Cristo" (page 43). In taking this view, we start to see that all things are sacred, including the masks we wear, the shadows we seek to hide, the wounds we carry, and the parts of ourselves we consider profane. Every thing is sacred.

A true believer is eating what he or she is afraid to see and afraid to accept: The universe is the Body of God, both in its essence and in its suffering.

Isn't that ironic? The point of the Christian life is not to distinguish oneself from the ungodly, but to stand in radical solidarity with everyone and everything else. This is the full, final, and intended effect of the Incarnation—symbolized by its finality in the cross, which is God's great act of solidarity instead of judgment.

Even with all the best intentions in the world, given our different temperaments, backgrounds, and the way we process our data and information, we are going to step on one another's toes. Two people with absolutely good will can deeply hurt one another. Good people hurt one another because we all come at reality in different ways. That's why, for Jesus, the only way to achieve union is through forgiveness, not through making sin impossible.

This new coherence, a unified field inclusive of the paradoxes, is precisely what gradually characterizes a second-half-of-life person. It feels like a return to simplicity after having learned from all the complexity. Finally, at last, one has lived long enough to see that "everything belongs,"4 even the sad, absurd, and futile parts.

Begin with a concrete moment of encounter, based in this physical world, and the soul universalizes from there, so that what is true here becomes true everywhere else too.

What we all desire and need from one another, of course, is that life energy called eros! It always draws, creates, and connects things.

God as a Trinity of persons, available at cacradicalgrace.org.

And it points forward, urging us toward the realization that this hint and taste of union might actually be true. It guides us like an inner compass or a "homing" device.

Truly enlightened people see oneness because they look out from oneness, instead of labeling everything as superior and inferior, in or out. If you think you are privately "saved" or enlightened, then you are neither saved nor enlightened, it seems to me!

Just as the Spirit always makes one out of two, so the evil one invariably makes two out of one!

God is not in competition with reality, but in full cooperation with it.

Don't start by trying to love god, or even people. Love rocks and elements first. Move to trees, then animals, and then humans… It might be the only way to love, because how you do anything, is how you do everything.

The nuclear family has far too often been the enemy of the global family and mature spiritual seeking.

Yes, I am saying: That the way things work and Christ are one and the same. This is not a religion to be either fervently joined or angrily rejected. It is a train ride already in motion. The tracks are visible everywhere. You can be a willing and happy traveler, or not.

A mature Christian sees Christ in everything and everyone else.

Practice is standing in the flow, whereas theory and analysis observe the flow from a position of separation.

There is only Christ. He is everything and he is in everything" (Colossians 3:11). If I were to write that today, people would call me a pantheist (the universe is God), whereas I am really a panentheist (God lies within all things, but also transcends them), exactly like both Jesus and Paul.

All of us, without exception, are living inside of a cosmic identity, already in place, that is driving and guiding us forward. We are all en Cristo, willingly or unwillingly, happily or unhappily, consciously or unconsciously.

Mutual perfect faith would be heaven!

All of us, without exception, are living inside of a common identity, already in place, that is driving and guiding us forward. Paul calls this bigger Divine identity the "mystery of his purpose, the hidden plan he so kindly made en Cristo from the very beginning" (Ephesians 1:9).

Everything is the "child of God." No exceptions. When you think of it, what else could anything be? All creatures must in some way carry the divine DNA of their Creator.

Everything finally belongs, and you are a part of it. This knowing and this enjoying are a good description of salvation.