Divinia

“In contrast to our society’s mistaken emphasis on positive emotions in our relationship with God, the great Spanish mystic and poet John of the Cross (1542–1591), who is most famous for his reflections on the “dark night of the soul,” also wrote a piece called “Advice on Disregarding Spiritual Sweetness.” In this work St. John compliments the person who loves God without feeling any emotional sweetness, for that individual is focusing on truly loving God and not the feelings. To set our will on gratifying and soothing sensations, to concentrate on capturing them and basking in them, is simply to set our will on what God has created, instead of God Himself. Thereby, we turn those created feelings into the end instead of a means—and a non-necessary means at that. According to St. John, we are ignorant if we suppose that because we fail to have any sweetness or bliss God is failing us. Similarly, we are uninstructed if we presume that in having such delectable emotions we have God. But the height of ignorance, he claims, is if we would follow God only to seek the sweetness and consequently stopped our yearning for God to wallow in delightful feelings when we acquired them.”
― Marva J. Dawn, Being Well When We are Ill: Wholeness And Hope In Spite Of Infirmity

“One of the greatest gifts for my life as one who serves God is observing the Sabbath. Celebrating a holy day and living in God's rhythm for six days of work and one of rest is the best way I know to learn the sense of our call - the way in which God's Kingdom reclaims us, revitalizes us, and renews us so that it can reign through us. Before we can engage in the practice of our call, we need to be captured afresh by grace, carried by it, and cared for.”
― Marva J. Dawn, The Sense of the Call: A Sabbath Way of Life for Those Who Serve God, the Church, and the World

“Discussions usually separate us; actions sometimes unite us.”
― C.S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer

“The goal of the Christian life is that for more and more seconds of each day what we think and do and say is to God's glory, that every moment is worship of the true God instead of various idolatries of our making or of our culture's.”
― Marva J. Dawn, In the Beginning, GOD: Creation, Culture, and the Spiritual Life