Quotes About Growth

We emerge into the light not by denying our pain, but by walking out through it.

How can rape, murder, war, and illness be loving acts? [...] all events happen for the greater good, that nothing is accidental or without the capacity to spur our evolution as loving co-creators with God.

Patience is peace. Learning to be patient is a continual practice that takes years to ripen. Let it unfold, day by day, and be gentle with yourself in the learning.

Our life purpose has both a general and a specific aspect. The first has nothing to do with our work in the world and everything to do with learning how to give and receive love.

The further we go on the spiritual path, the more we realize what beginners we really are.

A strong intention is the single most important requirement to bring about growth and change, because intention provides the energy that motivates our continuing efforts.

Today is a cross-quarter day, halfway between the winter solstice and the spring equinox. The sun is becoming an ever greater presence; the days are growing longer.

Our mind is like a field in which many seeds germinate.

One of the most insidious forms of spiritual materialism is attachment to intellectual attainment.

Likewise may I begin to see new growth in myself as I approach old fears with greater courage and the faith that all situations, seen rightly, are an opportunity for growth in love and wisdom.

The modern proverb "Use it or lose it" is very wise. If we don't exercise our muscles, they waste away. If we don't exercise our minds, they begin to close.

The tendency to judge people in an either/or way—enlightened or not, saint or sinner—makes it difficult to learn from the people we meet, whether or not we consider them "teachers." If we broaden our point of view to consider every person a potential teacher, every encounter will prompt the question "What can I learn from this person?

The days are growing ever longer in June, and the Medicine Wheel of the seasons will open fully to the South on the summer solstice, June 21.

In this way we will restore our place in the Great Web of Life that we may treat the earth and all her children with the greatest respect and love. February is the perfect time for the flowering of compassion. Listen to the voices of the Ancient Ones as they penetrate the winter stillness: The seeds are beginning to stir in the dark womb of the Earth Mother. Days grow longer and Brother Bear stretches in his den.

We emerge into the light not by denying our pain, but by walking through it.

Prayer that is regular confounds both self-importance and the wiles of the world. It is so easy for good people to confuse their own work with the work of creation. It is so easy to come to believe that what we do is so much more important than what we are. It is so easy to simply get too busy to grow.

We fail to move beyond what is safe, we abandon our dreams in favor of what is sure rather than strive for what is best for us.

nothing is more insidious than spiritual pride; nothing is more impervious to identification. No, the monastic mind0set says, spiritual development is not an event. Spiritual development is a process of continuing conversion. "What do you do in the monastery?" an ancient tale asks. "Oh, we fall and we get up. We fall and we get up," the old monastic answers. In monastic spirituality, we never arrive; we are always arriving.

Darkness deserves gratitude. It is the alleluia point at which we learn to understand that all growth does not take place in the sunlight.

I began to trust the questions themselves to lead me beyond answers to understanding, beyond practice to faith

The liturgical year is the year that sets out to attune the life of the Christian to the life of Jesus, the Christ. It proposes, year after year, to immerse us over and over again into the sense and substance of the Christian life until, eventually, we become what we say we are -- followers of Jesus all the way to the heart of God. The liturgical year is an adventure in human growth, an exercise in spiritual ripening.

Show me a person who has never made a mistake and I'll show you someone who has never achieved much.

Making each day a mini lifetime - to achieve something and to enjoy something.

Conquering fears, whatever they may be, opens life up—and this life should be as full of different experiences as we can make it. Too many women build fences around themselves, especially as they grow older. They limit themselves, or feel that life has limited them.