Quotes About Reality

But if anybody says he can think about quantum problems without getting giddy, that only shows that he has not understood the first thing about them. - Niels Bohr

One great idea of the biblical revelation is that God is manifest in the ordinary, in the actual, in the daily, in the now, in the concrete incarnations of life, and not through purity codes and moral achievement contests, which are seldom achieved anyway… We do not think ourselves into new ways of living, we live ourselves into new ways of thinking… The most courageous thing we will ever do is to bear humbly the mystery of our own reality.

Most people confuse their life situation with their actual life, which is an underlying flow beneath the everyday events.

Truth is not always about pragmatic problem solving and making things "work," but about reconciling contradictions. Just because something might have some dire effects does not mean it is not true or even good. Just because something pleases people does not make it true either.

If the mystery of the Trinity is the template of all reality, what we have in the Trinitarian God is the perfect balance between union and differentiation, autonomy and mutuality, identity and community.

Human maturity is neither offensive nor defensive; it is finally able to accept that reality is what it is.

Religion is best when it points beyond itself, like Isaiah or John the Baptist. It is worst when it gives you just enough of the forms to inoculate you against the substance, when it substitutes rituals for reality, the container for the contents, the wineskins for the ecstatic wine.

It is hard to hear God, but it is even harder not to hear God. The pain one brings upon oneself by living outside of evident reality is a greater and longer-lasting pain than the brief pain of facing it head on.

We've turned faith into a right to certitude when, in fact, this Trinitarian mystery is whispering quite the opposite: we have to live in exquisite, terrible humility before reality.

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882), the great American essayist, said "nothing great is ever achieved without enthusiasm." What a deconstructed culture lacks, because of its deep cynicism and pessimism about reality, is a basic confidence and enthusiasm that is necessary to start almost anything.

most people do not see things as they are, they see things as they are!

In response to their question "When will the Kingdom come?" he tells them that Ultimate Reality is "not here and not there," taking us away from our typical attachment to time. "For the Ultimate Reality is 'within you'!" (Luke 17:21).

The most courageous thing we will ever do is to bear humbly the mystery of our own reality.

True baptism allows us to reframe, and contain, the reality of evil, without needing to blame anyone else, without any need for shame or vengeance. We are all in this together, and our common wound shows itself in different ways.

Stinking thinking" is the universal addiction. Substance addictions like alcohol and drugs are merely the most visible form of addiction, but actually we are all addicted to our own habitual way of doing anything, our own defenses, and most especially, our patterned way of thinking, or how we process our reality.

A heaven you created by yourself will never be heaven for long.

They look like the oppressors, but have no doubt they are really the oppressed.

Faith in any religion is always somehow saying that God is one and God is good, and if so, then all of reality must be that simple and beautiful too.

God's greatest ally is reality itself. God's greatest revelation is what is (see Romans 1:20)—not what we want it to be, and not even what it should be—not abstract theories but concrete encounters.

true biblical faith leaves you very vulnerable to reality, because now there is no place to hide. No wonder we prefer abstractions over the actual! We can hide behind abstractions, but Incarnation leaves you both utterly exposed and constantly invited.   incorporation

The unprayerful heart will always twist reality to its own liking.

Both Christianity and Buddhism are saying that the pattern of transformation, the pattern that connects, the life that Reality offers us is not death avoided, but always death transformed. In other words, the only trustworthy pattern of spiritual transformation is death and resurrection.

Remember, "God" is just a word for Reality—with a Face! And occasionally Interface (which some call "prayer" or "love").

Reality, creation, nature itself, what I call the "the First Body of Christ," has no choice in the matter of necessary suffering. It lives the message without saying yes or no to it. It holds and resolves all the foundational forces, all the elementary principles and particles within itself—willingly it seems.