Spiritual Readings of the Day

This is an archive of the book excerpts that have been linked off the top of the Updates column on the homepage of Spirituality & Practice. Most of our book reviews now include excerpts.

Adele Azar-Rucquoi in Money as Sacrament
"Make a habit of often spending a small amount on someone else. Slip money into a charity box or buy someone's lunch. Spending money on deserving people and causes makes life better."

Daniel Wolpert in Creating a Life with God
"God knows all these people, really knows them, knows their thoughts and feelings, their desires and histories."

Kenneth Cohen in Honoring the Medicine
"When we breathe with a silent mind, we share the breath of life with nature."

Joseph Rael in House of Shattering Light
"When I am helping someone, it is really myself, but in another body or in another context."

Lyn Klug in A Forgiving Heart
"Today I choose to pray for others.
But how shall I impart to them
The gift of peace and love
If my own heart is still unloving."

David Steindl-Rast in A Listening Heart
"Day and night gifts keep pelting down on us. If we were aware of this, gratefulness would overwhelm us."

Christopher Titmuss in Mindfulness for Everyday Living
"Even if we make mistakes and the results do not work out the way we want, we can take note of our intentions. If we know deep in our heart that our intentions are wholesome, then we should take comfort in this knowledge."

Jacob Needleman in Money and the Meaning of Life
"The ultimate source of every human activity, every human function, is something, some force, beyond the ego. Money can't touch that, but it touches everything else."

His Holiness The Dalai Lama in The Art of Happiness at Work
"As long as you are living, life will have good things but also some problems that you don't like. That's life."

Duncan Baird Publishers in The Relax Deck
"Try to look at everything with fresh eyes, unclouded by habit: you may discover untold riches."

Donald McCullough in The Wisdom of Pelicans
"This God continues to blow the divine Spirit across the unformed, threatening darkness of our lives to bring creation out of chaos, life out of death."

Arthur Green in Seek My Face
"If we are going to enhance the divine image in this world, we must work to maximize human freedom, always remembering that it was only after we came out of bondage that we were able to look toward God's mountain."

Cheri Huber in The Fear Book
"Once you establish the mentor relationship with yourself, it feels the way it should have felt in childhood. You are absolutely safe and cared for and loved and approved of and watched over."

Peter Levitt in Fingerpainting on the Moon
"When we offer this act of intimate touching without touching, and do so with humility and respect, the union it creates can, if only for a moment, repair what life has broken."

John R. Claypool in The Hopeful Heart
"Again and again, the Holy One invites us to use our own creativity and resourcefulness in finding solutions to our problems."

Tom Cowan in Yearning for the Wind
"The pulling, the longing to let it fill you, the yearning to know the sublime nature of a beautiful scene reside in both you and the scene itself."

Thomas Merton in The Inner Experience
"The life of contemplation in action and purity of heart is, then, a life of great simplicity and inner liberty."

Peter J. Gomes in Strength for the Journey
"Hope, you see, is not an act of will so much as it is an act of imagination and of courage."

Edwina Gateley in Christ in the Margins
"When oppression and violence threaten or destroy human dignity, those who hold all human beings precious in God's eyes and are vulnerable to the spiritual power within them cannot stand by."

Kirk Byron Jones in Addicted to Hurry
"Be on the lookout for those things when you should — and more than you normally would — 'take your time'."

Paul Rogat Loeb in Soul of a Citizen
"Community is the mirror that best reflects our individual choices, our strengths and weaknesses, our accomplishments and failures."

Corinne McLaughlin and Gordon Davidson in Spiritual Politics
"Help melt down the walls of separateness among co-workers, neighbors, and people you meet on the street."

Keith Beasley-Topliffe in The Upper Room Dictionary of Christian Spiritual Formation
"True solitude cannot be entered without an attitude of abandonment or surrender — surrender of the ego and the affectations of the false self."

Jakusho Kwon in No Beginning, No End
"If we pick up in a distracted way, with our minds on something else, we just make more litter. That's why we give to this task and to all of our activities one hundred percent of ourselves."

Sharon Cohen Ainsfeld, Tara Mohr, and Catherine Spector in The Women's Passover Companion
"When we are in the presence of beauty, the world seems charged with a new vitality, with a splendor that does not belong to it."

Elizabeth A. Johnson in Truly Our Sister
"The Holy One calls all people, indeed all women, and gifts them for their own task in the ongoing history of grace."

Ellen Birx in Healing Zen
"As you practice acceptance, you grow in your ability to face and fully accept people, circumstances, and things just as they are."

Joan Chittister in Scarred by Struggle, Transformed by Hope
"Hope is a series of small actions that transform darkness into light. It is putting one foot in front of the other when we can find no reason to do so at all."

Tibetan Buddhist chart in The Path to Bliss
"Do not think of others' failings, even when you see them."

Nevada Barr in Seeking Enlightenment . . . Hat by Hat
"Goodness is a living thing, it needs to be tested, rediscovered by each of us in our own way so we can find out how to best use our idiosyncratic abilities to serve others."

Reshad Feild in The Last Barrier
"The only real joy is to be a servant of God, and that means being awake all the time to the needs of the moment."

Elaine Pagels in Beyond Belief
"What I have come to love in the wealth and diversity of our religious traditions — and the communities that sustain them — is that they offer the testimony of innumerable people to spiritual discovery."

Tara Brach in Radical Acceptance
"Whenever you find you are stuck or disconnected, you can begin your life fresh in that moment by pausing, relaxing and paying attention to your immediate experience."

Kimberly Snow in In Buddha's Kitchen
"If you let yourself quietly be with food, something else takes place, something just outside the usual range of the senses, another order, another way of being. The it takes over. The me is gone."

M. Basil Pennington in The Monks of Mount Athos
"We must be constantly seeking, searching, longing for, wanting, pressing on to full possession and revelation of that which can only be possessed in this life in darkness and desire — painful but sweet and much to be desired."

Donna Schaper in Sacred Speech
"It is important to remember that no one likes to be judged. Most people are extraordinarily sensitive to judgment."

Cheri Huber in When You're Falling, Dive!
"It appears we are separate, we've been taught to believe we are separate, but we are not. Nothing can happen to you that doesn't happen to me."

Sogyal Rinpoche in The Spirit of Buddhism
"So often we make something huge out of a simple problem, and blow it out of all proportion. How many of our difficulties start with one tiny misunderstanding."

John Selby in Seven Masters, One Path
"There is no greater miracle than being conscious in this present moment. Everything begins and ends with this."

M. J. Ryan in The Power of Patience
"Lots of times we are impatient because we are overloaded. There's no prize at the end of your life for doing so much, particularly if you do it in a frazzled state."

Robert W. Fuller in Somebodies and Nobodies
"Dignity is innate, nonnegotiable, and inviolate. No person's dignity is any less worthy of respect, any less sacred than anyone else's."

Barbara Cawthorne Crafton in The Almost Daily eMOs
"The Spirit gives the gift of life. Gave it at creation and gave it at the first Pentecost. Gives it in the moment of forgiveness and in every sacrament of the church."

Plains Native American Tribe in WomanPrayers
"O Great, Holy Spirit, I take this step into the day you have given. I embrace all I see — the season, the wind, the fragrances, the weather."

Margaret Bullitt-Jonas in Christ's Passion, Our Passions
"When I pray to see the other person through the eyes of God, slowly I begin to see that the other person is wounded, hurting, and imperfect, as I am; sinning, as I am; and yet beloved by God, as I am."

Gregory K. Popcak in God Help Me! This Stress Is Driving Me Crazy
"Courage and fortitude represent the drive and desire to become your authentic self, no matter how difficult the journey may be."

Erik Kolbell in What Jesus Meant
"I know of no issue more tragic than our unwillingness to live at peace with one another."

Ray Riegert and Thomas Moore in The Lost Sutras of Jesus
"To know only one religion is to know none at all. The stories, devotions and sacred places of an unknown faith bring a richness and depth to our own beliefs."

Evelyn Underhill in Evelyn Underhill
"The people of our time are helpless, distracted, and rebellious, unable to interpret that which is happening, and full of apprehension about that which is to come, largely because they have lost this sure hold on the eternal."

Jacob Needleman in Time and the Soul
"The answer to the problem and the sorrow of time is one thing and one thing only: the experience of meaning. And this experience occurs only when the Self touches the self, when the soul touches the ego."

Hasidic story in Minyan
"No matter how sincerely you desire to undo what you have done, the harm caused by thoughtless speech cannot be rectified."

Pat Youngdahl in Subversive Devotions
"Jesus spoke of loving ourselves in the same breath with loving God and loving each other as the deepest calling of our lives."

Michael Strassfeld in A Book of Life
"As human beings, created in the image of the Divine, we are ultimately more alike than unalike. Gossip only serves to sidetrack us from confronting both our own goodness and our own flaws."

Sylvia Boorstein in It's Easier Than You Think
"It's wonderful to have confirmation that spacious acceptance is humanly possible. A spiritual practice might be discovering that potential in ourselves and enlarging it."

Mariana Caplan in The Way of Failure
"When we appreciate the value of loss — that it can provide us with something that nothing else can — then we find ourselves doing strange things that yield equally surprising outcomes."

Alfie Kohn in No Contest
"The higher the concentration of competition in any interaction, the less likely it is to be enjoyable and the more likely it is to be destructive to our self-esteem, our relationships, our standards of fairness."

The Dhammapada in Nothing Special
"Let none find fault in others. Let none see omissions and commissions in others. But let one see one's own acts, done and undone."

Mary Oliver in What Do We Know
"Now we are thanking the Lord.
This is easy,
for the Lord is everywhere."

Barbara Kingsolver in Small Wonder
"The possibility of a kinder future, the existence of God — these are just two of many things that fall into the category I would label 'impossible to prove, and proof is not the point.' Faith has a life of its own."

Jacob Needleman in The American Soul
"To live at peace is to embrace life in all its aspects, all 'four directions,' all 'the winds,' all the creatures outside and within."

Thomas Moore in The Soul's Religion
"A first step in spiritual progress is to find the empty place, the hole in the fabric of meaning and culture through which the infinite and mysterious can enter."

Philip Simmons in Learning to Fall
"Let us pray that we do not shun the struggle. May we attend with mindfulness, generosity, and compassion to all that is broken in our lives."

Kevin Anderson in Divinity in Disguise
"I, like you,
have many routine days
and moments
of sheer joy."

Norman Fischer in Taking Our Places
"True maturity can never exist self-contained; it is relational, for we are relational beings, co-created each moment with what we come in contact with."

Wayne Muller in Learning to Pray
"For the untouchable, God comes in the form of touch."

May Sarton in The Language of Spring
"But who has ever seen
The latch sprung, the bud as it burst?
Spring always manages to get there first."

Philip Goldberg in Roadsigns
"Since it's not likely that one package will satisfy all of your changing needs, the opportunity to shop around would seem to be a blessing — as long as you stay focused, conscious, and informed."

Hafiz in In Search of the Hidden Treasure
"I am in love with every church and mosque and temple
And any kind of shrine
Because I know it is there
That people say the different names
Of the one God."

Brennan Manning in A Glimpse of Jesus
"Do you ever think that Jesus is grateful to you for pausing to smile and comfort one of his children who has a great need to see a smile, to feel a touch?"

John R. Stowe in The Findhorn Book of Connecting with Nature
"Imagine that the tree is another human being. If you saw a person on the street with the same posture and personality as this tree, what might that person look like?"

Patricia Adams Farmer in Embracing a Beautiful God
"In every situation, God is working with my changing needs and experiences to bring about well-being for myself and all creation."

Geri Larkin in The Still Point Dhammapada
"Being upright means staying smack dab in the middle of what's going on. No running away. No pretending that the situation is any different than it is."

Paula Reeves in Heart Sense
"A heart broken open is an invitation to become real — to stand before the altar of your soul and pledge that you will no longer waste this precious life on unconsciousness."

Richard Mahler in Stillness
"Among the first casualties of a too-busy life are the simple, sensory enjoyments that often do not survive in the fast lane."

Gary Kowalski in Science and the Search for God
"Some challenges can never be met through science; they require the cultivation of love, serenity, discernment and wisdom, which are all the province of religion."

Susan Jeffers in Embracing Uncertainty
"So practice not making decisions when you are confused. Let your intuition make the decision for you."

Etan Boritzer in What Is Beautiful?
"Maybe somebody is Beautiful because
she or he has something
which we can't see, hear, or feel right away."

Terry Tempest Williams in Red
"Each of us belongs to a particular landscape, a place that carries our history, our dreams. . . . And in each of these places, home work is required to make certain all is not destroyed under the banner of progress, expediency, or ignorance."

Johnny Ray Youngblood in Upon This Rock
"Every time I see a man go back to school, there's a resurrection goin' on. Every time I see a man hug his son, there's a resurrection goin' on."

Louise Diamond in The Courage for Peace
"Even if we hold a strong moral or ethical view about the importance of nonviolence, we need to come to terms with our own experiences of frustration and rage that can turn into violent action."

Harold Bloomfield and Philip Goldberg in Making Peace with God
" 'The suffering in this life is enormous.' The spirit replies, 'So is the beauty, my friend, but you wouldn't know it. You're not looking for it.' "

Wendy Wright in Seasons of a Family's Life
"Looking good is not the point. The point is, you don't earn belovedness. You receive it. It descends like a dove, unbidden."

Kathy Coffey in Immersed in the Sacred
"A certain grace permeates the dressing room where age and beauty cease to matter, honesty reigns, and affirmations abound. . . . In a sense, we're trying on different selves"

Jim Wallis in Peace Prayers
"When we have brought our enemies into our hearts in prayer, it becomes most difficult to maintain the hostility necessary for violence."

Alice O. Howell in The Dove in the Stone
"My reverence is all the greater for realizing that, through a deeper awareness, every moment of my life could be seen to be precious and sacred."

A Sufi sheikh in The Beejum Book
"For every good-bye there is another hello. As you grow older, perhaps you will discover that in a strange way you are saying hello and greeting the same one you said good-bye to."

Molly Srode in Creating a Spiritual Retirement
"All those years I had demanded so much of myself and was critical when I did not live up to my expectations. I never thought to thank myself for what I did accomplish."

Robert Corin Morris in Wrestling with Grace
"I turn to blessing, and a new daily practice is born: a heart-blessing for people who are different from me, especially those whose means of expression rub against the grain of my own."

Dudjom Rinpoche in Counsels from My Heart
"Never neglect even the slightest positive deed. Just do it."

Kerry Walters in Jacob's Hip
"Because times of crisis reopen the old wound and bring its pain and anguish to the surface, they also offer us the chance to examine the wound, see it for what it is, and free ourselves from its power."

Rosemary Radford Ruether in
"We need a new generation of prophets to arise to denounce the misuse of American might for blatant power mongering and self-enrichment of the super-rich."

Joel and Michelle Levey in The Fine Arts of Relaxation, Concentration, and Meditation
"A first step toward peace is learning to recognize the outbreak of internal conflict and war in our own minds."

Ron Miller in Wisdom of the Carpenter
"Our perfection is to be awake, God-centered, and without the burden of any fear or anxiety. To be perfect is not to be without any flaw but fully to be."

John Dear in Jesus the Rebel
"We do not worship the God of nonviolence, the God of peace, the God of Life. Instead we worship the idols of death and place our faith, hope, trust, and security in our weapons."

Edward Hays in Psalms for Zero Gravity
"Awaken us, O God, to how each day
is the dawn of a new millennium
for some plant, creature, planet or star
in your ever-expanding universe."

Daniel Berrigan in Lamentations
"War turns all theories, even the most virtuous, to smoke. Neighborhoods are kindled, afire. People of any age or condition stagger about under the guns, the bombs."

Marcy Heidish in A Candle at Midnight
"A vigil is an offering of your time and presence. This time is dedicated to be specially aware of God, in varied ways."

Mary Margaret Funk in Tools Matter for Practicing the Spiritual Life
"Since the heart provides us our innermost experience of 'being with' God, we should guard all our choices to 'be with' God."

Mary Mercedes in A Book of Courtesy
"When we become aware of our own shortcomings, we can more readily understand and forgive the faults of others."

Peter Reinhart in Bread Upon the Waters
"Courtesy is, at one level, a type of civility that allows people to get along better. . . . At its most profound level, it recognizes the inherent divinity of another."

Donald Richie in The Inland Sea
"Beauty is not a state, but a quality. It is like strength or width or weight. It implies that there are many kinds of beauty — not just one ideal beauty."

Robert Sardello in The Power of Soul
"Perhaps the most challenging virtue in this time is discernment, and it may be the one most needed. We have to discern the difference, for example, between revenge and protection."

Cynthia Kneen in Awake Mind, Open Heart
"When we say a person has HEART, it doesn't mean they are weak and sentimental. We mean they are willing to be exposed, willing to be touched nakedly by the world."

Sakyong Mipham in Turning the Mind into an Ally
"The enlightened alternative is to appreciate how incredibly rare and precious human life is."

Winifred Gallagher in Spiritual Genius
"Like a compass, spiritual genius always points us toward a reality larger than the ego and the status quo."

Debbie Ford in The Secret of the Shadow
"Our stories give us something and someone to identify with."

Fred Luskin in Forgive for Good
"Forgiveness is the feeling of peace that emerges as you take your hurt less personally, take responsibility for how you feel, and become a hero instead of a victim in the story you tell."

Jane Goodall and Marc Bekoff in The Ten Trusts
"Thousands of us know the peace that can steal through us if we can spend a little time among trees and flowers, in a meadow or garden or forest, especially when birds are singing."

Joyce Rupp in Rest Your Dreams on a Little Twig
"In pondering nature, I gradually moved from my small place of self into another world of existence."

H. E. Davey in Living the Japanese Arts & Ways
"Whether at home, outdoors, in the city, or in the country, our lives can reflect an essential naturalness, simplicity, and ease of living that are our birthright."

Cynthia Kneen in Awake Mind, Open Heart
"The way to develop courage is not to cast out fear, but to find out more about it by looking directly at fear."

Arthur P. Ciaramicoli and Katherine Ketcham in The Power of Empathy
"Empathy leads us to tolerance, for only with empathy can we build bridges to others who seem so unlike us."

Lama Surya Das in Awakening the Buddhist Heart
"Raising a hand in reverence means that we must put down our weapons. After all, it's difficult to harm or manipulate someone when you are bowing to them."

Abraham Joshua Heschel in Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity
"Piety is an attitude toward reality in its entirety. It is alert to the dignity of every human being, and to those bearings upon the spiritual value which even inanimate things inalienably possess."

Susan Perry in Remembering O-Sensei
"We can achieve something we really want, not by fighting but by being harmonious. That's why it is important to work together."

Miriam Greenspan in Healing Through the Dark Emotions
"Our only protection is in our interconnectedness. Despair is not just 'my' despair; it is everyone's despair about life."

Geri Larkin in Love Dharma
"We all get lonely sometimes. It's just a part of life. Our only job is to name it, lean into it, and then let it go."

Alan Jones and John O'Neil in Seasons of Grace
"Seeing things with a grateful eye requires attentiveness and engages our imagination; imagination is a way we take part in the world, not escape from it."

Paul Woodruff in Reverence
"Reverence begins in a deep understanding of human limitations; from this grows the capacity to be in awe of whatever we believe lies outside our control — God, truth, justice, nature, even death."

Thomas Merton in Seeds
"Do not be too quick to assume that your enemy is an enemy of God just because he is your enemy."

Gary Eberle in Sacred Time and the Search for Meaning
"People treat their daily planners the way monks and nuns used to treat their prayer books. They keep them close at all times."

M. Basil Pennington, Thomas Keating, and Thomas E. Clarke in Finding Grace at the Center
"In the center of your being lives God."

Sylvia Forges-Ryan and Edward Ryan in Take a Deep Breath
"How little we actually need, how much we can give without any effort, how much easier life is than we had thought."

Rumi in Rumi: The Book of Love
"The miracle of Jesus is himself, not what he said
or did about the future. Forget the future."

Hugh Prather in How to Live in the World and Still Be Happy
"We confuse so many strange and silly things with our identity, our self."

John S. Dunne in The Road of the Heart's Desire
"We think we are in a story of chance happenings — chance in the interactions of matter, chance in the evolution of life, and chance in the ins and outs of human affairs — and yet chance is the name for our unknowing. The story we are really in is hidden in our unknowing under the appearance of chance."

Ronald Gross in Socrates' Way
"We do need to know how to conduct a self-examination of our beliefs when it is required. Otherwise, we will live our lives as unwitting intellectual puppets."

Paula D'Arcy in A New Set of Eyes
"To experience something fully, you must be present. You must be joined to it with your breath and being. Then you will no longer be an observer."

Thich Nhat Hanh in Thich Nhat Hanh: The Joy of Full Consciousness
"Even in the commotion of a big city, you can walk with peace, happiness, and an inner smile."

Bruce Epperly and Lewis Solomon in Mending the World
"Through holy imagination, we can see angels in the boulders of our lives and discover in ourselves courageous lions where once were frightened goats."

David Michie in Enlightenment to Go
"If possible, cultivate a sense of gratitude that your own life, in relative terms, is so privileged."

Indian poet Kabir in Compassion in Action
"We can only work on ourselves to keep another person in our heart: to be there, open, waiting, loving, spacious, nonjudging, appreciating, and listening."

Jim Conroy and Basia Alexander in Tree Whispering
"I am here to comfort them from all their cares.
For, you see, my purpose is to protect, for all those who seek comfort from me."

Thomas Keating in Active Meditations for Contemplative Prayer
"Nature seems to have provided us with the need of interior silence. We seek it as we seek returning to a place of security, warmth and love."

Anthony de Mello in Sadhana
"The primary effect of God's grace when it enters our heart is to make us feel intensely loved — and loveable."

Derek Lin in The Tao of Daily Life
" The sack is . . . that which allows me to hold on to negativity. It is something within us that makes us dwell on feeling offended . . . it is my inflated sense of self-importance.

Lao Tzu in Tao Te Ching
If you plant the tree of wisdom deeply in the heart, it can never be uprooted."

Robert Corin Morris in Provocative Grace
"Jesus' ultimate challenge to us — the provocation behind all other challenges — is this: we can decide to have faith in God's venture among us or not."

Frederick Buechner in Beyond Words
"Grace is something you can never get but can only be given. There's no way to earn it or deserve it or bring it about."

Gabriel Marcel in In the Company of Rilke
"The most genuinely receptive being is at the same time the most essentially creative."

Walter Brueggemann in The Collected Sermons of Walter Brueggemann
"Prayer is the core gesture by which we stay in faith, by which we hope for the world, by which we keep justice as the issue before God and ourselves."

Chogyam Trungpa in Work Sex Money
"We have to work on our own attitude, to develop an attitude of openness. That will create an entirely new approach to working with situations such as life in the city."

Thich Nhat Hanh in Your True Home
"Getting in touch with the beauty of nature makes life much more beautiful, much more real, and the more mindful and concentrated you are, the more deeply the sunset will reveal itself to you."

Michael Moore in Sorry White Men & Other Sorry Excuses for the State of the Nation!
"We're number one in likelihood of children under the age of fifteen to die from gunfire.
We're number one in likelihood of children under the age of fifteen to commit suicide with a gun.
We're number one in becoming the first society in history in which the poorest group in the population are children.
Pause for a moment and reflect on that list."

John Dear in Lazarus, Come Forth!
"We too are summoned out of the culture of death into the way of nonviolence. All of us are called to share the risen life here and now."

Edward Hoffman in The Kabbalah Reader
"Every person, no matter how uneducated or poor, has something to teach the wisest and richest among us."

Robert Atwell in The Contented Life
"Above all, a contented life is one characterized by thanksgiving for what we have rather than moaning about what we do not have, or what the adverts tell us we ought to have."

Lewis Richmond in Aging as a Spiritual Practice
"Elders, from childhood are early models for our own aging selves."

Joan Chittister in Happiness
"We become happy by concentrating on the gifts of life rather than obsessing over its possible pitfalls."

Paula Huston in Simplifying the Soul
"True hospitality — opening one's arms to an interruption — cannot be faked."

Heather King in Shirt of Flame
"Blessing the other person in traffic, even though nobody heard or saw, somehow encouraged someone else to bless the next person."

Teilhard de Chardin in Teilhard de Chardin and Eastern Religions
"Spirituality is not meant to be an alternative lifestyle, a road of retreat and escape; it needs to be an active leaven of life, feeding the zest and healing the wounds of life."

Teilhard de Chardin in Teilhard de Chardin and Eastern Religions
"Spirituality is not meant to be an alternative lifestyle, a road of retreat and escape; it needs to be an active leaven of life, feeding the zest and healing the wounds of life."

Mo Hardin in A Little Book of Love
"This journey begins with who we are this very moment. From this starting point, love is a journey outward."

Charles Wesley in John & Charles Wesley
"Jesus, thou art all compassion,
Pure, unbounded love thou art."

Thomas Keating in The Human Condition
" 'Repent' is an invitation to grow up and become a fully mature human being who integrates the biological needs with the rational level of consciousness."

Andrew Linzey in Animal Gospel
"I rejoice in animals as fellow-creatures: loved by the Father, redeemed by the Son, and enlivened by the Holy Spirit."

Gustavo Gutierrez in Gustavo Gutierrez: Spiritual Writings
"Most important is not to lose sight of either the universality of God's love nor that the weakest and insignificant come first."

Paul Brunton in The Gift of Grace
"Grace comes from outside one's own self although it seems to manifest entirely within oneself."

His Holiness The Dalai Lama in Beyond Religion
"To bring about this better world, therefore, let us all, old and young — not as members of this nation or that nation, not as members of this faith or that faith, but simply as individual members of this great human family of seven billion — strive together with vision, with courage, and with optimism."

Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche in Tibetan Yogas of Body, Speech, and Mind
"As long as you keep grasping, you have something to protect."

Rod Stryker in The Four Desires
"Contentment can spontaneously enliven your most constructive qualities and inspire you in ways that you might never have conceived of."

Zenju Earthlyn Manuel in Tell Me Something About Buddhism
"All spiritual paths require a great amount of patience."

Henri J. M. Nouwen in Finding Our Sacred center
"Nothing can be predicted. Yet all is already held safe in the divine embrace that holds me, too."

David Starr Jordan in Energetic Boundaries
"Wisdom is knowing what to do next; skill is knowing how to do it; virtue is doing it."

Michael Casey in The Road to Eternal Life
"Routine goodness can easily lead to complacency and judgmental attitudes; a well-formed conscience, on the other hand, is always indicating new paths of progress."

Herman Melville in Grace Notes
"All profound things and emotions of things are preceded and attended by Silence."

Timothy Mullner in A Spiritual Guide for the Unemployed
"Unemployment is teaching me to be still and reflect
Assessing the real quality of my life"

Don Mackenzie, Ted Falcon, and Jamal Rahman in Religion Gone Astray
"Loving unconditionally means that there is nothing you can do to make me stop loving you."

Thom Hartmann and Tai Moses in The Thom Hartmann Reader
"In helping 'save the world,' the most important work you and I face is to help individuals transform their ability to perceive reality and control the stories they believe because people do tend to live out what they believe is true."

Elizabeth Liebert in A Spiritual Life
"The spiritual life is, after all, about responding to Holy Mystery."

Margaret Silf in Landscapes of Prayer
"We discover, if we truly journey to the core of our being, that this is precisely where we encounter the living God."

More Spiritual Readings of the Day:
1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / 7 / 8 / 9 / 10 / 11 / 12 / 13 / 14 / 15 / 16 / 17 / 18 / 19 / 20 / 21 / 22 / 23 / 24 / 25 / 26 / 27 / 28 / 29 / 30 / 31 / 32 / Current Readings