Gary Jansen > Quotes

“All of creation is ever present in God. You. Me. That annoying person at your job. That waffle you ate this morning. The coffee cup you just threw away. Everything. Many of us may already think this, but the trick is not just perceiving grace in the brain, but feeling it in the heart. It’s about having the experience.”
― Gary Jansen, The 15-Minute Prayer Solution: How One Percent of Your Day Can Transform Your Life

“All prayer essentially is a chiropractic tool for the soul, a way of popping things into alignment”
― Gary Jansen, Holy Ghosts: Or, How a (Not So) Good Catholic Boy Became a Believer in Things That Go Bump in the Night

“Not to mention that God speaks in a language more difficult than Portuguese or Mandarin or HTML; He speaks in silence. I remember saying ‘bullshit’ the first time someone told me that, but I’ve come to realize that if you are still enough you can listen to silence like listening to music, you can read silence like reading a book. Moreover, if more than 80 percent of the way humans communicate is nonverbal, couldn't that mean that the majority of communication with the Divine is nonverbal as well? Prayer, meditation, listening - each was a tool for reading God's body language.”
― Gary Jansen, Holy Ghosts: Or, How a (Not So) Good Catholic Boy Became a Believer in Things That Go Bump in the Night

“Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. He prays. Jesus, betrayed by Judas, is arrested. He is calm. Jesus is condemned by the Sanhedrin. He is steadfast. Jesus is denied by Peter. He accepts others’ weaknesses. Jesus is judged by Pilate. He is quiet. Jesus is scourged and crowned with thorns. He is broken. Jesus bears the cross. He endures. Jesus is helped by Simon of Cyrene to carry the cross. He allows others to help. Jesus meets the women of Jerusalem. He thinks of others. Jesus is crucified. He feels pain. Jesus promises his kingdom to the good thief. He forgives. Jesus speaks to his mother and the disciple. He watches over his family. Jesus dies on the cross. He weeps. Jesus is placed in the tomb. He loves. To live out social justice, we have to feel what others feel, accept our own situations with grace and hope, face up to the evil around us, reach out to those who need us, and answer evil with love.”
― Gary Jansen, Station to Station: An Ignatian Journey through the Stations of the Cross

“The street was quiet, like the waking moments after your name is called in a nightmare,”
― Gary Jansen, Meditations at Midnight: Poetry and Prose

“the Passion asks us to find Jesus in the midst of loneliness, heartache, pain, and exhaustion as they occur in our own lives. We are called to seek God in all these very human things, these broken places and vacant rooms where we think God is not present.”
― Gary Jansen, Station to Station: An Ignatian Journey through the Stations of the Cross