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P33: She was overwhelmed with shame that she had so quickly acted like her old name and nature, which she had hoped was beginning to be changed already..She did not dare look at the Shepherd, but had she done so she would have seen with what compassion he was regarding her.

P29: "You must remember that as soon as you reach the slopes of the mountains there is a wonderful system of communication from end to end of the Kingdom of Love, and I shall be able to hear you when you speak to me. Whenever you call for help I promise to come to you at once." -Good Shepherd

Are we lured into Christianity merely for everlasting life?
P120: Let's make an impossible supposition—His voice, unmistakably His, said to me, "They have misled you. I can do nothing of that sort for you. My long struggle with the blind forces is nearly over. I die, children. The story is ending," would that be a moment for changing sides?

P116: In the perfect and eternal world the Law will vanish. But the results of having lived faithfully under it will not.

P99: over-just and self-displeased for self offense more than for God offended. I have found that the degrees of shame and disgust which I actually feel at my own sins do not at all correspond to..their comparative gravity.

P97: Anger—no peevish fit of temper, but just, generous, scalding indignation—passes (not necessarily at once) into embracing, exulting, re-welcoming love..Hot wrath, hot love..Turn God's wrath into mere enlightened disapproval, and you also turn His love into mere humanitarianism.

P91: People are amusing themselves by asking for the patience which a famine or a persecution would call for if, in the meantime, the weather and every other inconvenience sets them grumbling. One must learn to walk before one can run. We—or at least I—shall not be able to adore God on the highest occasions if we have learned no habit of doing so on the lowest.

P82: The prayer preceding all prayers is "May it be the real I who speaks. May it be the real Thou that I speak to." Infinitely various are the levels from which we pray. Emotional intensity is in itself no proof of spiritual depth.

P81: I remember that my apparent self..is a real person with an off-stage life..In prayer this real I struggles to speak, for once, from his real being, and to address, for once, not other actors, but—what I shall call Him? The Author, for He invented us all? The Producer, for He controls all? Or the Audience, for He watches and will judge, the performance?

P75-76: Watered versions of Christianity..leave out all the darker elements and try to establish a religion of pure consolation..The soul that has once been waked, or stung, or uplifted by the desire of God, will inevitably awake to the fear of losing Him.

P52-53: Religious people don't talk about the results of prayer; they talk of it's being "answered" or "heard." We can bear to be refused but not to be ignored. In other words, our faith can survive many refusals if they really are refusals and not mere disregards.

P52: To think of our prayers as just "causes" would suggest that the whole importance of petitionary prayer lay in the achievement of the thing asked for. But really, for our spiritual life as a whole, the "being taken into account," or "considered," matters more than the being granted.

P39-40: I cannot pretend for moment to be able to feel it as you do..A few years ago when I was in my own trouble..You wrote , "I know I'm outside. My voice can hardly reach you'." And that was one reason why your letter was more like the real grasp of a real hand than any other I got.

P:35-36 Our Lord in Gethsemane made a petitionary prayer and did not get what He asked for..He asked with a reservation—nevertheless, not my will but thine. When poor Bill..asked us to advance him £100, he said, "If you are sure you can spare it," and "I shall quite understand if you'd rather not." This made his request different from the nagging or even threatening requests.

P34: Have we any reason to suppose that total self-knowledge, if it were given us, would be for our good? Children and fools, we are told, should never look at half-done work; and we are not yet, I trust, even half-done. You and I wouldn't at all stages, think it wise to tell a pupil exactly what we thought of his quality. It is much more important that he should know what to do next.

P34: St. John: if our heart condemn us, God is greater than our heart, if our heart flatter us, God is greater than our heart. I sometimes pray not for self-knowledge in general but for just so much self-knowledge at the moment as I can bear and use at the moment; the little daily dose.

P: When we are yielding to temptation, we make ourselves believe that what we have always thought a sin will on this occasion, for some strange reason, not be a sin, shan't we persuade ourselves that something we have always rightly thought to be innocent was really wrong?

P23: those who have not learned to ask Him for childish things will have less readiness to ask Him for great ones. We must not be too high-minded. I fancy we may sometimes be deterred from small prayers by a sense of our own dignity rather than of God's.

P28-29 to forgive the same offense again and again every time it recurs to the memory—theres the real tussle. My resource is to look for some action of my own which is open to the same charge as the one I am resenting. If I smart to remember how A let me down, I must still remember how I let B down.

P22: It is no use to ask God with factitious earnestness for A when our whole mind is in reality filled with the desire for B. We must lay before Him what is in us, not what ought to be in us.

P4: As long as you notice, and have to count, the steps, you are not yet dancing but only learning to dance..The perfect church service would be one we were almost unaware of, our attention would have been on God.

P32-33: When Jesus is telling us to become like little children, he isn't telling us to do anything he isn't already doing. Jesus is, without question, the most dependent human being who ever lived. Bc he can't do life on his own, he prays.

"In heaven there is no ownership. If any there took upon him to call anything his own, he would straightway be thrust out into hell and become an evil spirit." -Theologia Germanica, li

P22-23: All that you are, sins apart, is destined, if you will let God have His good way, to utter satisfaction..God will look to every soul like its first love bc He is its first love. Your place in heaven will seem to be made for you and you alone, bc you were made for it—made for it stitch by stitch as a glove is made for a hand.

P21-22: I am considering now how, but why, He makes each soul unique. If He had no use for all these differences, I do not see why He should have created more souls than one. Your soul has a curious shape bc it is a hollow made to fit a particular swelling in the infinite contours of the Divine substance.

P16: Love, by definition seeks to enjoy its object.

P13 Condensed: Prayer is a feast for my soul. Prayer is interconnected with every aspect of our lives and changes our attitudes towards our work and responsibilities. Tension leads to change and hope. Prayer is inseparable from repentance, from encountering God.

The quest for a contemplative life can be self-absorbed, focused on my quiet and me. If we love people and have the power to help, we are going to be busy. Learning to pray doesn't offer us a less busy life, it offers us a less busy heart. In the midst of outer busyness we can develop an inner quiet. Bc we are less hectic on the outside, we have a greater capacity to love.

P19: Which leads us to this realization: the only art we can create is that which authentically reflects who we are. Our soul is the material for all we create. Thus, to nurture the artisan soul, in essence is far more important than talent.

P18: All art is an expression and extension of ourselves..authenticity. Art finds its deepest value when it is the authentic expression of a deep human experience. Art becomes profound when it exposes us, explains us, or inspires us. Art in its purest form is an extension of the soul. This is exactly what life is supposed to be.