Quotes About Renewal

I will never be any older than I am right now. I am no older now than I was a few years ago. I know more now than I did then, but I'm not any older. My hair may become grayer and I may get a few more wrinkles, but the real me will never become old. For the inward man is renewed day by day.

If your spirit were healed, you would still have the same spirit, too, except it would just be healed. But no, blessed be God, Second Corinthians 5:17 tells us, "Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a NEW creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become NEW." Not half of them—all of them. Every bit of them.

Love slays what we have been, That we may be what we were not.

Love slays what we have been, That we may be what we were not. from "The Dragon and the Unicorn

I renounced what I considered to be my Christian faith at around age seventeen, not without fear and trembling. I found the idea of using God as a crutch totally distasteful. I preferred to be on my own. In hindsight I now see that my apparent abandonment of "faith" has actually paved the way for real faith. Sometimes, it is necessary to tear down the old so that the new can be built.

When was the last time you noticed the beauty of a cool breeze or the wonder of a starry sky or the vibrancy of a wild flower on the roadside? I used to have the ability to instantly appreciate the beauty of all these when I was a child, but by the time I was twenty it was almost lost. (It took a lot of Zen practice for me to regain it.) The world has not changed that much; there are still summer breezes, night skies, and wild flowers. But where has the perception gone?

The other day, in the course of one of those more or less clandestine visits to the city on the Clyde I make from time to time, I was walking down Buchanan Street when I came smack up against something I'd never seen before: that sculpture of a big bird struggling into flight called Concept of Kentigern. Maybe Glasgow is about ready to leave its status as industrial mastadon of the Western world and fly over into other dimensions. Maybe there's a good time coming.

The cool wind blew in my face and all at once I felt as if I had shed dullness from myself. Before me lay a long gray line with a black mark down the center. The birds were singing. It was spring.

Thank goodness for the first snow, it was a reminder--no matter how old you became and how much you'd seen, things could still be new if you were willing to believe they still mattered.

The history of art is the history of revivals.

When I returned from the Moon, I fell into a series of depressions and bouts with alcohol because I had great difficulty finding something meaningful to do. After you have done what no human beings have done in all of history ... it is hard to get excited about a "normal" job or a mundane military career. So for a while, I experienced a roller coaster of emotions, and it wasn't until I returned to what I was passionate about -- space exploration -- that I truly found my equilibrium again.

Our spring has come at last with the soft laughter of April suns and shadow of April showers.

The sun has come out... and the air is vivid with spring light.

Glory, like the phoenix 'midst her fires, Exhales her odours, blazes, and expires.

The living spirit grows and even outgrows its earlier forms of expression; it freely chooses the human beings who proclaim it and in which it lives. This living spirit is eternally renewed and pursues its goal in manifold and inconceivable ways throughout the history of humankind. Measured against it, the names and forms which men have given it mean very little: They are only the changing leaves and blossoms on the stem of the eternal tree.

I think that we are like stars. Something happens to burst us open; but when we burst open and think we are dying; we're actually turning into a supernova. And then when we look at ourselves again, we see that we're suddenly more beautiful than we ever were before!

No, this is not the beginning of a new chapter in my life; this is the beginning of a new book! That first book is already closed, ended, and tossed into the seas; this new book is newly opened, has just begun! Look, it is the first page! And it is a beautiful one!

Relying on God has to begin all over again every day as if nothing had yet been done.

You are never too old to dream a new dream or set another goal.

Consider, if you will, the morning boner. What a metaphor of hope and renewal! How can anyone give way to despair when one's groin greets each day with such a gala spectacle of physical optimism?

The secret is that only that which can destroy itself is truly alive.

Every individual needs revolution, inner division, overthrow of the existing order, and renewal, but not by forcing them upon his neighbors under the hypocritical cloak of Christian love or the sense of social responsibility or any of the other beautiful euphemisms for unconscious urges to personal power.

In fact, whenever a human being genuinely turns to the inner world and tries to know himself—not by ruminating about his subjective thoughts and feelings, but by following the expressions of his own objective nature such as dreams and genuine fantasies—then sooner or later the Self emerges. The ego will then find an inner power that contains all the possibilities of renewal.

The living spirit grows and even outgrows its earlier forms of expression; it freely chooses the men in whom it lives and who proclaim it. This living spirit is eternally renewed and pursues its goal in manifold and inconceivable ways throughout the history of mankind. Measured against it, the names and forms which men have given it mean little enough; they are only the changing leaves and blossoms on the stem of the eternal tree.