Quotes About Change

The loss and renewal pattern is so constant and ubiquitous that it should hardly be called a secret at all.

No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it." I

God does not change, but our readiness for such a God takes a long time to change.

Once you can get "out of the house," your "castle" and comfort zone, much of the journey has a life—and death—of its own.

That is the rub of any conversion experience: We only realize how much we needed it when we are on the other side! That is why we need the tenacity of faith and hope to carry us across to most transformational experiences. When we can let others actually influence us and change us, our heart space is open.

We do not want to embark on a further journey if it feels like going down, especially after we have put so much sound and fury into going up. This is surely the first and primary reason why many people never get to the fullness of their own lives. The supposed achievements of the first half of life have to fall apart and show themselves to be wanting in some way, or we will not move further. Why would we?

Such a down-and-then-up perspective does not fit into our Western philosophy of progress, nor into our desire for upward mobility, nor into our religious notions of perfection or holiness.

Francis of Assisi was a master of making room for the new and letting go of that which was tired or empty.

humans tend to live themselves into new ways of thinking more than think themselves into new ways of living.

you never think yourself into a new way of living. You invariably live yourself into a new way of thinking.

Privatized salvation never accumulates into corporate change because it attracts and legitimates individualists to begin with.

It is often when the ego is most deconstructed that we can hear things anew and begin some honest reconstruction, even if it is only half heard and halfhearted.

One cannot live the afternoon of life according to the program of life's morning; for what was great in the morning will be of little importance in the evening, and what in the morning was true will at evening have become a lie. —CARL JUNG, THE STRUCTURE AND DYNAMICS OF THE PSYCHE

In times of great change [which is always], learners inherit the earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped for a world that no longer exists." Faith

Jesus the Christ, in his crucifixion and resurrection, "recapitulated all things in himself, everything in heaven and everything on earth" (Ephesians 1:10). This one verse is the summary of Franciscan Christology. Jesus agreed to carry the mystery of universal suffering. He allowed it to change him ("Resurrection") and—it is to be hoped—us, so that we would be freed from the endless cycle of projecting our pain elsewhere or remaining trapped inside of it.

Courthouses are good and necessary first half of life institutes. In the second half, you try instead to influence events, work for change, quietly persuade, change your own attitude, pray or forgive instead of taking things to court.

Contemplation is really the change that changes everything—especially, first of all, the seer.

He did not come to change God's mind about us. It did not need changing. Jesus came to change our minds about God—and about ourselves—and about where goodness and evil really lie.

Faith is simply to trust the real, and to trust that God is found within it—even before we change it.

If you realize that there is a further journey, you might do the warm-up act quite differently, which would better prepare you for what follows.

wisely put it years ago, " Tradition is the living faith of the dead. Traditionalism is the dead faith of the living, and I suppose I should add, it is traditionalism that gives Tradition such a bad name."1

As Jaroslav Pelikan so wisely put it years ago, " Tradition is the living faith of the dead. Traditionalism is the dead faith of the living, and I suppose I should add, it is traditionalism that gives Tradition such a bad name."1

Faith is simply to trust the real, and to trust that God is found within it—even before we change it. This is perhaps our major stumbling stone

Without an evolutionary worldview, Christianity does not really understand, much less foster, growth or change. Nor does it know how to respect and support where history is heading.