Kevin Cummings

“We do not see God in contemplation - we know Him by love: for his pure love and when we taste the experience of loving God for his own sake alone, we know by experience who and what he is.”
― Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation

“As Christians we are always in tension - in an anguish and at the same time in bliss. This is mad, ridiculous. But it is true - accepting the dark night just as we accept the brilliance of the day. We have to make an act of surrender - if I am in Christ, there are moments when I must share the cry of the Lord on the cross and the anguish in the garden of Gethsemane. There is a way of being defeated, even in our faith - and this is a way of sharing the anguish of the Lord. I don't believe that we should ever say, 'This cannot happen to you.' If we are Christians we should go through this life, accepting the life and the world, not trying to create a falsified world.”
― Anthony Bloom, Beginning to Pray

“One of the dangers in prayer is to try to find words that will be somehow on the level of God. Unfortunately, as none of us are on a level with God, we fall short and waste a great deal of time in trying to find the right words.”
― Anthony Bloom, Beginning to Pray

“Have you never noticed that to be rich always means an impoverishment on another level? It is enough for you to say 'I have this watch, it is mine', and close your hand on it, to be in possession of a watch and to have lost a hand. And if you close your mind on your riches, if you close your heart so that you can keep what is in it safe, never to lose it, then it becomes as small as the thing on which you have closed yourself in.”
― Anthony Bloom, Beginning to Pray