Quotes About Contemplation

that absolute commitment to God involves a deep and sustained wrestling with God.

The silence that is part of all God-talk is not the silence of banality, indifference or ignorance but one that stands in awe of God. This does not necessitate an absolute 'silencing', whereby we give up speaking of God, but rather involves a recognition that our language concerning the divine remains silent in its speech.

As Marion writes, 'The silence suitable to God requires knowing how to remain silent, not out of agnosticism (the polite surname of impossible atheism) or out of humiliation, but simply out of respect.'50 Or as Gregory Palamas writes, '[The] super-essential nature of God is not a subject for speech or thought or even contemplation, for it is far removed from all that exists … [it is] incomprehensible and ineffable to all for ever.

Each of us needs an opportunity to be alone and silent, or even, indeed, to find space in the day or in the week, just to reflect and to listen to the voice of God that speaks deep within us. . . . In fact, our search for God is only our response to his search for us. He knocks at our door, but for many people, their lives are too preoccupied for them to be able to hear. — Cardinal Basil Hume

Solitude is the practice of being absent from people and things to attend to God.

taking care of the tasks of life. We know we have found our balance when we are so deeply rooted in God that our activity is marked by the peaceful, joyful, rich quality of our contemplation.

the activity of my life ("doing" for Jesus) began to eclipse the contemplative dimension of my life ("being" with Jesus).

The essence of being in God's image is our ability, like God, to stop. We imitate God by stopping our work and resting.

Get in a comfortable position and still yourself. Recall you are in the presence of God, inviting the Holy Spirit to guide you as you review the events of your day. Walk through the events in your day (or yesterday's events if it is morning). Imagine yourself watching your day on a fast-forwarded DVD with Jesus. Let Jesus stop the DVD at any part of the day so you might reflect on it.

4. Contemplate The final quality of a biblical Sabbath is, of course, the contemplation of God. The Sabbath is always "holy to the LORD" (Exodus 31:15). Pondering the love of God remains the central focus of our Sabbaths.

In a culture as frenetic and inattentive as ours, a "slowed down" Christian who is a contemplative presence to God and others is an extraordinary gift.

most of our human problems come because we don't know how to sit still in our room for an hour. — Leighton Ford

The disciple of philosophy must present itself, first as a way of thinking and then as a way of life.

with the basic tenet of Marxism: where there was contemplation, there should now be mobilization. The abiding catastrophe of now-impure theory began with the introduction of militancy before the March 1848 revolution and its presupposition of civil war in philosophy.

right man to prepare the citizens of his country, who were facing disempowerment, for the benefits of the vita contemplativa. The transition to reflective existence was worth an error in reasoning: Cicero unhesitatingly created a lofty nimbus for the future Roman spectator by portraying Pythagoras making the many in the stadium into the few in study.

How much truth is contained in something can be best determined by making it thoroughly laughable and then watching to see how much joking around it can take. For truth is a matter that can withstand mockery, that is freshened by any ironic gesture directed at it. Whatever cannot withstand satire is false.

It is not sufficient, he emphasized, to colour (colorare) the mind with wisdom; it must be pickled (macerare) in it, as it were, soaked in it (inficere), and entirely transformed by it.

Mit den Wochen und Monaten wurde das Nachdenken weniger, und sie lernte, einfach nur da zu sein, in einem Zustand aufmerksamer Gleichgültigkeit.

If you're going to be a prisoner of your own mind, the least you can do is make sure it's well furnished.

shack-dwelling

They know God exists already that's old. I think now they're trying to figure what to do with It." "What to do with God." "Maybe worship. Maybe disinfect.

What's the survival value of obsessing on a sunset?

I had got this far, and was thinking of what to say next, and as my habit is, I was pricking the paper idly with my pen. And I thought how, between one dip of the pen and the next, time goes on, and I hurry, drive myself, and speed toward death. We are always dying. I while I write, you while you read, and others while they listen or stop their ears, they are all dying.

Hürriyete ve mes'uliyete inanan bir adam?n asla filozof olam?yaca??n? Ferit ilk defa o anda dü?ündü.