Jenny > Jenny's Quotes

“For me to be a saint means to be myself. Therefore the problem of sanctity and salvation is in fact the problem of finding out who I am and of discovering my true self.”
― Thomas Merton

“If you ever find yourself in the wrong story, leave.”
― Mo Willems, Goldilocks and the Three Dinosaurs

“Do not give your heart to that which does not satisfy your heart.”
― Abba Poemen

“You rarely have time for everything you want in this life, so you need to make choices. And hopefully your choices can come from a deep sense of who you are.”
― Fred Rogers

“she said, “I think I’m having a crisis of  faith.” To which I thought, What the hell does that look like for a Unitarian? “Yeah,” she continued. “I think I believe in Jesus.” Oh. That’s what it looks like. “I’m so sorry,” I replied. “But sometimes Jesus just hunts your ass down and there’s nothing you can do about it.”
― Nadia Bolz-Weber, Accidental Saints: Finding God in All the Wrong People

“Authentic prayer changes us, unmasks us, strips us, indicates where growth is needed.”
― Teresa of Ávila

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

“We're all just walking each other home.”
― Ram Dass

“But what if the great secret insider-trading truth is that you don't ever get over the biggest losses in your life? Is that good news, bad news, or both? . . . . The pain does grow less acute, but the insidious palace lie that we will get over crushing losses means that our emotional GPS can never find true north, as it is based on maps that no longer mention the most important places we have been to. Pretending that things are nicely boxed up and put away robs us of great riches.”
― Anne Lamott, Stitches: A Handbook on Meaning, Hope, and Repair

“It is customary to blame secular science and anti-religious philosophy for the eclipse of religion in modern society. It would be more honest to blame religion for its own defeats. Religion declined not because it was refuted, but because it became irrelevant, dull, oppressive, insipid. When faith is completely replaced by creed, worship by discipline, love by habit; when the crisis of today is ignored because of the splendor of the past; when faith becomes an heirloom rather than a living fountain; when religion speaks only in the name of authority rather than with the voice of compassion--its message becomes meaningless.”
― Abraham Joshua Heschel, God in Search of Man: A Philosophy of Judaism

“People of our time are losing the power of celebration. Instead of celebrating we seek to be amused or entertained. Celebration is an active state, an act of expressing reverence or appreciation. To be entertained is a passive state--it is to receive pleasure afforded by an amusing act or a spectacle.... Celebration is a confrontation, giving attention to the transcendent meaning of one's actions.
Source: The Wisdom of Heschel”
― Abraham Joshua Heschel

“You can do anything, but not everything.”
― David Allen

“People know when their gifts are being wasted, and this knowledge can eat away at the soul like a cancer.”
― Barbara Brown-Taylor

“Justify my soul, O God, but also from Your fountains fill my will with fire. Shine in my mind, although perhaps this means “be darkness to my experience,” but occupy my heart with Your tremendous Life. Let my eyes see nothing in the world but Your glory, and let my hands touch nothing that is not for Your service. Let my tongue taste no bread that does not strengthen me to praise Your great mercy. I will hear Your voice and I will hear all harmonies You have created, singing Your hymns. Sheep’s wool and cotton from the field shall warm me enough that I may live in Your service; I will give the rest to Your poor. Let me use all things for one sole reason: to find my joy in giving You glory.”
― Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation

“The measure of your solitude is the measure of your capacity for communion.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen, The Genesee Diary: Report from a Trappist Monastery

“Advent . . . leads to a growing inner stillness and joy allowing me to realize that the One for whom I am waiting has already arrived and speaks to me in the silence of my heart.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen, The Genesee Diary: Report from a Trappist Monastery

“Christ has no body now but yours. No hands, no feet on earth but yours. Yours are the eyes through which he looks compassion on this world. Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good. Yours are the hands through which he blesses all the world. Yours are the hands, yours are the feet, yours are the eyes, you are his body. Christ has no body now on earth but yours.”
― Mother Teresa of Calcutta

“I may err but I am not a heretic, for the first has to do with the mind and the second with the will!”
― Meister Eckhart

“First, silence makes us pilgrims. Secondly, silence guards the fire within. Thirdly, silence teaches us to speak.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen

“Life is made up of sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles predominating.”
― O. Henry, The Gift of the Magi

“The mind is a wonderful servant, but a terrible master.”
― Robin Sharma

“When Brueggemann writes about the Jewish people at one historic point in their story, the sacking of Jerusalem and the loss of the temple in 597, he uses the word relinquish.6 It becomes a metaphor for the opening up to the new gifts and new forms of life given by God that become possible just when everything seems to have come to an end. Of course there is loss and it is right to grieve and not to pretend otherwise. Insecurity makes certitude attractive, and it is in times like these that I want to harness God to my preferred scheme of things, for it is risky to be so vulnerable. Yet it is this vulnerability that asks for trust and hope in God's plans, not mine. So I try to learn each time that I am called upon to move forward to hand over the past freely, putting it behind me, and moving on with hands open and ready for the new.”
― Esther de Waal, To Pause at the Threshold: Reflections on Living on the Border

“Stability says there must be no evasion; instead attend to the real, to the real necessity however uncomfortable that might be. Stability brings us from a feeling of alienation, perhaps from the escape into fantasy and daydreaming, into the state of reality. It will not allow us to evade the inner truth of whatever it is that we have to do, however dreary and boring and apparently unfruitful that may seem. It involves listening...to the particular demands of whatever this task and this moment in time is asking; no more and no less.”
― Esther De Waal, Seeking God: The Way of St. Benedict

“You shall love your crooked neighbor with you crooked heart.”
― W.H Auden

“We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.”
― Jonathan Swift

“Do not be so open-minded that your brains fall out.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“It can feel like Eights don’t care about us, but the fact is they simply aren’t thinking about us—they are thinking about what needs to be done next.”
― Suzanne Stabile, The Path Between Us: An Enneagram Journey to Healthy Relationships

“Fours are not jealous of our possessions; they long for our comfort in the world. They want the apparent ease with which other types move through life and they don't know how to have it.”
― Suzanne Stabile, The Journey Toward Wholeness: Enneagram Wisdom for Stress, Balance, and Transformation

“Fives have a limited, measured amount of energy for every day so they are careful about what they offer to others and when. It is extremely brave of them to show up for relationships because it costs them more than any other number.”
― Suzanne Stabile, The Path Between Us: An Enneagram Journey to Healthy Relationships

“We have found Him, He has found us. We are in Him, He is in us. There is nothing further to look for except for the deepening of this life we already possess. Be content.”
― Thomas Merton, The Intimate Merton: His Life from His Journals – A Spiritual Memoir of Monasticism, Activism, and the Search for Authentic Spirituality