Quotes About Spirituality

For me, God is the one who calls me the Beloved, and I have a desire to express to others how I try to become more fully who I already am.

When we are alone with God, the Spirit prays in us. The challenge is to develop a simple discipline or spiritual practice to embrace some empty time and empty space every day.

I can only be healed from above, from where God reaches down. What is impossible for me is possible for God. "With God, everything is possible.

The paradox of prayer is that it asks for a serious effort while it can only be received as a gift. We cannot plan, organize or manipulate God; but without a careful discipline, we cannot receive him either.

By inviting God into our difficulties we ground life—even its sad moments—in joy and hope. When we stop grasping our lives we can finally be given more than we could ever grab for ourselves. And we learn the way to a deeper love for others.

Prayer for others, therefore, cannot be seen as an extraordinary exercise that must be practiced from time to time. Rather, it is the very beat of the compassionate heart.

When we keep claiming the light, we will find ourselves becoming more and more radiant.

People we meet, some great in the eyes of the world and some almost invisible to the larger society, are often conduits of God's wisdom.

Silence is the discipline that helps us to go beyond the entertainment quality of our lives.

Your way of being present to your community may require times of absence, prayer, writing, or solitude. These too are times for your community.

From that heart come the words, "Do you love me?" Knowing the heart of Jesus and loving him are the same thing. The knowledge of Jesus' heart is a knowledge of the heart.

I am beginning now to see how radically the character of my spiritual journey will change when I no longer think of God as hiding out and making it as difficult as possible for me to find him, but, instead, as the one who is looking for me while I am doing the hiding.

The loud, boisterous noises of the world make us deaf to the soft, gentle, and loving voice of God.

When we face death with hope, we can live life with generosity.

A spiritual life without discipline is impossible. Discipline is the other side of discipleship. The practice of a spiritual discipline makes us more sensitive to the small, gentle voice of God.

Every time you feel hurt, offended, or rejected, you have to dare to say to yourself: "These feelings, strong as they may be, are not telling me the truth about myself. The truth, even though I cannot feel it right now, is that I am the chosen child of God, precious in God's eyes, called the Beloved from all eternity, and held safe in an everlasting embrace.

We might be competent in many subjects, but we cannot become an expert in the things of God. God is greater than our minds and cannot be caught within the boundaries of our finite concepts. Thus, spiritual formation leads not to a proud understanding of divinity, but to docta ignorantia, an "articulate not-knowing.

humility is in reality the opposite of self-deprecation. It is the grateful recognition that we are precious in God's eyes and that all we are is pure gift.

God should be sought, but we cannot find God. We can only be found by him.

With a friend we don't have to say or do something special. With a friend we can be still and know that God is there with both of us.

The world is evil only when you become its slave. The world has a lot to offer—just as Egypt did for the children of Jacob—as long as you don't feel bound to obey it. The great struggle facing you is not to leave the world, to reject your ambitions and aspirations, or to despise money, prestige, or success, but to claim your spiritual truth and to live in the world as someone who doesn't belong to it.

The real mystery of marriage is not that husband and wife love each other so much that they can recognize God in each other's lives, but more because God loves them so much that they can discover each other more and more as living reminder's of God's presence.

Spiritual greatness has nothing to do with being greater than others. It has everything to do with being as great as each of us can be. True sanctity is precisely drinking our own cup and trusting that by thus fully claiming our own, irreplaceable journey, we can become a source of hope for many.

The movement from loneliness to solitude should lead to a gradual conversion from an anxious reaction to a loving response. — Henri J. M. Nouwen, Reaching Out: The Three Movements of the Spiritual Life ( Doubleday, 1975)