Dawn > Dawn's Quotes

“The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays.”
― Soren Kierkegaard

“Jesus is God's way of refusing to give up his dream for the world.”
― Rob Bell

“In Gethsemane the holiest of all petitioners prayed three times that a certain cup might pass from Him. It did not.”
― C.S. Lewis, The World's Last Night: And Other Essays

“Featherweight by Suzy Kassem


One evening,
I sat by the ocean and questioned the moon about my destiny.
I revealed to it that I was beginning to feel smaller compared to others,
Because the more secrets of the universe I would unlock,
The smaller in size I became.

I didn't understand why I wasn't feeling larger instead of smaller.
I thought that seeking Truth was what was required of us all –
To show us the way, not to make us feel lost,
Up against the odds,
In a devilish game partitioned by
An invisible wall.

Then the next morning,
A bird appeared at my window, just as the sun began
Spreading its yolk over the horizon.
It remained perched for a long time,
Gazing at me intently, to make sure I knew I wasn’t dreaming.
Then its words gently echoed throughout my mind,
Telling me:

'The world you are in –
Is the true hell.
The journey to Truth itself
Is what quickens the heart to become lighter.
The lighter the heart, the purer it is.
The purer the heart, the closer to light it becomes.
And the heavier the heart,
The more chained to this hell
It will remain.'

And just like that, it flew off towards the sun,
Leaving behind a tiny feather.
So I picked it up,
And fastened it to a toothpick,
To dip into ink
And write my name.”
― Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem

“Don't spend time beating on a wall, hoping to transform it into a door. ”
― Coco Chanel

“It is wonderful how much time good people spend fighting the devil. If they would only expend the same amount of energy loving their fellow men, the devil would die in his own tracks of ennui.”
― Helen Keller, The Story of My Life

“To build community requires vigilant awareness of the work we must continually do to undermine all the socialization that leads us to behave in ways that perpetuate domination.”
― bell hooks, Teaching Community

“You don't think your way into a new kind of living. You live your way into a new kind of thinking.”
― Henry Nouwen

“Do all the good you can,
By all the means you can,
In all the ways you can,
In all the places you can,
At all the times you can,
To all the people you can,
As long as ever you can.”
― John Wesley

“I am not a saint, unless you think of a saint as a sinner who keeps on trying.”
― Nelson Mandela

“Theological formation is the gradual and often painful discovery of God's incomprehensibility. You can be competent in many things, but you cannot be competent in God.”
― Henri Nouwen

“In every conceivable manner, the family is link to our past, bridge to our future.”
― Alex Haley

“When someone loves you, the way they talk about you is different. You feel safe and comfortable.”
― Jess C. Scott, The Intern

“The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.”
― Carl Gustav Jung

“For outlandish creatures like us, on our way to a heart, a brain, and courage, Bethlehem is not the end of our journey but only the beginning - not home but the place through which we must pass if ever we are to reach home at last.”
― Frederick Buechner, The Magnificent Defeat

“God did not enter the world of our nostalgic, silent-night, snow-blanketed, peace-on-earth, suspended reality of  Christmas. God slipped into the vulnerability of skin and entered our violent and disturbing world.”
― Nadia Bolz-Weber, Accidental Saints: Finding God in All the Wrong People

“What we have to be is what we are.”
― Thomas Merton

“Moses knows that prosperity breeds amnesia.”
― Walter Brueggemann, Sabbath as Resistance: Saying No to the Culture of Now

“Sabbath is the practice of letting life rest safely in God's hand.41”
― Walter Brueggemann, Finally Comes The Poet: Daring Speech for Proclamation

“What matters in life is not what happens to you but what you remember and how you remember it.”
― Gabriel Garcia Marquez

“Christianity did not begin with a confession. It began with an invitation into friendship, into creating a new community, into forming relationships based on love and service.”
― Diana Butler Bass, Christianity After Religion: The End of Church and the Birth of a New Spiritual Awakening

“All I have seen teaches me to trust the Creator for all I have not seen.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“If all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be; and if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger.”
― Emily Jane Brontë , Wuthering Heights

“For resurrection faith means courage to revolt against the "covenant with death" (Isa. 28:15), it means hope for the victory of life which shall swallow up and conquer life-devouring death. ~ p.14”
― Jürgen Moltmann, Theology of play

“The old must be torn down for the new to be raised; to have a resurrection you must have a crucifixion, but God wastes nothing, not even the wrong we have imagined into existence. In every building torn down there is much that remains that was once true and right and good, and that gets woven into the new; in fact, the new could not be what it is without the old. It is the refurbishing of the soul.”
― Wm. Paul Young, Cross Roads

“I alone cannot change the world, but I can cast a stone across the waters to create many ripples.”
― Mother Teresa

“A baby is God's opinion that the world should go on.”
― Carl Sandburg

“Love is always bestowed as a gift - freely, willingly and without expectation. We don't love to be loved; we love to love.”
― LEO BUSCAGLIA

“Find the person who will love you because of your differences and not in spite of them and you have found a lover for life.”
― Leo Buscaglia

“Love is not a thing, it is not lost when given. You can offer your love completely to hundreds of people and still retain the same love you had originally.”
― Leo Buscaglia