Quotes About Change

A person who has found his or her True Self has learned how to live in the big picture, as a part of deep time and all of history. This change of frame and venue is called living in "the kingdom of God" by Jesus, and it is indeed a major about-face.

Far too many people just keep doing repair work on the container itself and never "throw their nets into the deep" (John 21:6)

So God, life, and destiny have to loosen the loyal soldier's grasp on your soul, which up to now has felt like the only "you" that you know and the only authority that there is. Our loyal solider normally begins to be discharged somewhere between the ages of thirty-five and fifty-five, if it happens at all; before that it is usually mere rebellion or iconoclasm.

Eric Hoffer, the street philosopher, put it this way: "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.

Falling upward is a "secret" of the soul, known not by thinking about it or proving it but only by risking it—at least once.

Yearning for a new way will not produce it. Only ending the old way can do that.

If you don't walk into the seond half of your own life, it is you who does not want it.

God shocks and stuns us into love. God does not love us if we change, God loves us so that we can change.

We are a "first-half-of-life culture," largely concerned about surviving successfully. Probably most cultures and individuals across history have been situated in the first half of their own development up to now

the Greek word meta-noia, which literally means to move "beyond the mind," is usually translated "repentance" and no longer points to its much deeper meaning.

Endless theorizing, the taking of sides, and opinions about which we could be right or wrong, trumped and toppled the universally available gift of the Divine Indwelling, the real "incarnation" which still has the power to change the world.

It seems we are not that free to be honest, or even aware, because most of our garbage is buried in the unconscious. So, it is absolutely essential that we find a spirituality that reaches to that hidden level. If not, nothing really changes.

If change and growth are not programmed into your spirituality, if there are not serious warnings about the blinding nature of fear and fanaticism, your religion will always end up worshiping the status quo and protecting your present ego position and personal advantage—as if it were God!

People actually seemed to enjoy recalling that on a Saturday afternoon forty years ago Empire Avenue was bustling with people and cars and commerce, whereas now, of course, you could strafe it with automatic weapons and not harm a soul.

Slow, tick decides. Thinks happen slow. she isn't quite sure why this understanding of the world's movement should be important, but she thinks it is. ...Take her parents- At the time, their separation had seemed a bolt from the blue, though she now realizes it had been a slow process, rooted in dissatisfaction and need....Mybe

Most Americans want it to be 1959, with the addition of cappuccino and cable TV.

Hell, at twenty, he'd been ready to junk everything and start over too. But now, at sixty, he was less willing to throw things away that could be patched together and kept running for a few more months. He wanted to keep going forward, not stop and turn around and analyze the validity of decisions made and courses charted long ago.

One of the odd things about middle age, he concluded, was the strange decisions a man discovers he's made by not really making them, like allowing friends to drift away through simple neglect.

No, most adults are like her father, whose fear, if he feels any, has been replaced by a kind of melancholy.

Lincoln couldn't help wondering if what had happened at Rockers was best viewed as an isolated incident or as part of a long-established pattern, one that could be summed up as Teddy's life not, to borrow Coffin's term, working out . Even back at Minerva, Teddy had seemed resigned to the likelihood that it wouldn't. Which begged a question: Had Teddy meekly accepted what he saw as the invisible trajectory of his life, or had he courageously accepted what he couldn't possibly change?

Really? When? Had all his material become threadbare? After thirty years of marriage, were you supposed to come up with new stuff all the time?

I also think it's possible for us to be better people tomorrow than we are today." He had no idea, of course, whether any of these things were true, in whole or in part. Still, what possible good could come of believing otherwise? —

Ah, fuck the past, right?" And when Miles offered no opinion on whether this was either possible or advisable, his eyes narrowed. "My boy Zack's

Was this what we wanted from our oldest friends? Reassurance that the world we remember so fondly still exists? That it hasn't been replaced by a reality we're less fully committed to?